Perennials, Lazy Gardener's Best Friend

This spring has been a strange one. We had our usual freakishly warm weather in February, but then we had a 20 degree frost for the better part of a week. Since then it's been very wet and generally cold, with a sunny day sprinkled in there. For me this means, between work and school and rain, the garden isn't where I want it to be.

However, I have been getting the perennials we have planned on having at our place in the ground. We are planning on four perennial crops, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and asparagus. As of today, we only have the blackberries left. The strawberries we planted, almost a month ago, now are doing really well and all of our plugs took =].

We planted twelve blueberries last week. They are already flowering, which is a great sign. I have been picking the flowers off for now, so they put their energy into establishing, not fruiting. I can wait. By letting your perennials get well established the crop is larger for the rest of their lifetime.

The asparagus, I planted today. We planted 26 asparagus plants, two rows of 13. We won't get any this year, but next year we can harvest half and after that we can have full harvests for as long as we live here. The asparagus are going to be a great investment, because they are quite expensive at the store and they start producing around the beginning of March and keeping going through July. I'm really excited to have them part of the family.

Perennials are so nice, because they often have less maintenance and produce well for years once we invest the time for first growth period. This is one of the reasons I have planned for a good number of perennials to plant and depend on while we live here. Other than the fruit bearing ones I mentioned, many herbs are perennials and I'm planning on planting some basket willows, which are perennials as well.

(The strip between path and driveway is where we are planting blackberries)

Whether certain herbs are perennial or not depends on your location. Since we have mild winters here there are many herbs that are perennials. I have started thyme, oregano, marjoram, and chamomile for perennials. I have some lavender and a beautiful rosemary bush already. I also have a young California Bay tree that is waiting for me to decide on the perfect spot for it.

The great part of many perennials is they often produce more then you need. For example fruit trees are great, easy plants to care for and one tree often produces more than one family could eat of that fruit. This means there's plenty to trade with others that have fruit bearing perennials. I have friends with fruit trees, so I will trade my extra berries for peaches, plums, lemons, cherries and apricots. I just need to have a friend with some apple trees and I'll be set.

How are you gardens going? Planting any perennials? Hope they are growing as well as mine! Until next time! 

Chickens: Our Flock

I am an animal science major at my university and it has been difficult at times for me to be patient when waiting to start our dream farm. This is largely due to the fact that you need land to have livestock, which is a main focus of mine. We have finally got to a place in our lives where we can afford to rent a house with a yard. Since our city allows the keeping of chickens, we have a flock of our own. This has been one of my greatest pleasures, from raising the chicks to taking care of the hens. So I thought I would share with you all about our flock.

At the moment we have seven hens. We have two "generations" in the coop, so we are getting half full sized eggs and half pullet eggs. Our older girls we raised from chicks in the spring of 2016. We raised them in my Dad's garage as we were preparing to move to a place where we could have them. We started with seven chicks, two of them turned out to be males and one was too independent for her own good and got lost (literally).

Of the four in our flock now one is a Gold Sex Link, one a Rhode Island Red, and two are Americanas. I have fallen for the Americanas and not just, because their pretty blue eggs. The Americanas are smart and watch out for the others. The Gold Sex Link has impressed me with her laying, she lays an egg just about everyday. I will not get another Rhode Island, they are just unimpressive in just about every way.

I won't bore you with everything about each hen, yet. I will just mention my top hen, Bumblebee. She is a gentle Americana and watches over the others like a rooster most of the time. She and my other Americana are very attached to me and follow me around the yard. Bumblebee is especially friendly and will often let me pet her. She's a great head of the flock.

For the new crew we wanted to increase our production so we could sell to others more consistently. This made us consider some higher producing breeds. I'm general against leghorns, they just look weak and would make great prey for anything, so we skipped those. We went with an sex link, but black this time. I'm hoping she turns out to not be such a brat as Lily, but still produce good. We also got a Astrolorp, Walnut. They are known to be excellent layers. Then I got another Americana, because I'm in love and a silver laced wyandotte, since they're gorgeous. Unfortunately, the Americana turned out to be a little boy =/. The others are laying well and have integrated into the flock well now.

 

Living Paganism

Paganism means something different to each pagan. That was one of the things that I love about it, there is no book says how to be a "good pagan". It is wonderful in be in control of your spiritual path, however this does mean that there's no one way to be pagan, or what is means for a pagan to be a good person.

In other religions there are different ways to express their connection to their faith, for some it's being informed on the religion, for others it is going to set meetings of their religion, and for some it's about incorporating the teachings and values into everyday, every moment of their lives. For me it's all about living it in every moment, however it not an easy thing to do. You first need to have a clear idea of what paganism is to you and then you need to decide how live that.

For a long time I focused on the holidays or Sabbaths. I worked hard to figure out the root ideas and themes of those holidays I felt strongest about. Yule became about family or community, Imbolc was about dreams, wishes and planning for the future, Ostara was about freedom, Beltane about pure enjoyment of all kinds, Lithia was personal strength, Lughnasa about harvesting the things you planned at Imbolc, Mabon was about restraint and preparing for the coming darkness, and Samhain was about death, ancestors and the darkness within ourselves. From here I thought on how to best express/practice this themes during the holidays, which I will share with you in future posts.

Recently, I have focused more on how to live by morals developed from my pagan values. I have been asking myself some big questions as I learn more about agriculture and decided how I will interact with my environment. This is an important thing for every person to examine. I think more than any decision you make, it's more important to make the decision for yourself. Not just keep doing what your family, or everyone else does, because it's easy. It's important to take the time to really think about what you feel is right or wrong and live by that.

Daily life in our society has a way of making it easy to forget about spiritual things and just move through your schedule. I found that to be true for myself as I'm finishing up my Bachelor's degree. Being connected to the world around me is very supportive to my well being, because of this I started to focus on how I could increase the spiritual in my life.

I made some goals for myself regarding things I wanted to do or increase in my life.

1. Learn more about local plants, especially trees. To connect to things and creatures around me it has always been easy to start with learning more about them and what their lives are like. I've always revered and felt a strong connection to trees, but I don't have as much knowledge about them as I would like. Here's the book I want to get to begin my studies.
2. Learn more about local animals. I have much more knowledge on my local animals than I do the plants, but there are some creatures that I could learn more about. Insects tend to be me weakness and I would like to at least know more about local California bees and butterflies.
3. Use more reusable objects and use more natural materials. I've been working on getting away from using plastic at all, but it's a slow process. I'm starting first with only using reusable things, especially in the kitchen. Some of the things I've been trying to get away from is freezer bags, and plastic wrap. For the wrap I've found these bees' wax cloth wraps that you can make yourself and as soon as I get some time I'm going to make a bunch!
4. Get more serious about recycling. We do recycle, however it's just trash and recycling bin. I spent a year in Germany and would like to get closer to that system then what we are doing now.
5. Start a vermicompost. We've been working on composting and what kind of system would work best. We only just moved into a house instead of an apartment, which makes composting easier. However, we have to go through the garage to get to the backyard, making it a pain to go out to put kitchen scraps on a compost pile. We've decided to set up a vermicompost right inside the garage, so we just have to open the door and put the kitchen scraps in for the worms. The cool part about this is worms need constant feeding and it would encourage us to cook even more to have scraps for the worms. 
6. Start more cultures in the kitchen, Kombucha, sour dough, and ginger bug. I used to have a sour dough starter going, but in the last two years we've moved three year and things outside the house have gotten busier. This meant I had to put the bread baking on the back burner, which is a huge bummer. If you want to get into caring for your own cultures I would recommend Kombucha. It's really pretty easy and you only have to feed it once a week after you make your batch of Kombucha. I got a scoobe from a friend two weeks ago and can make a batch of six bottles per week. It's been really great! When I'm done with school (next spring) or if next semester isn't so crazy, I'll start a sour dough starter and a ginger bug (which is for making homemade sodas).
7. Maintain household better, cleaning and general management. This is one, to keep myself well centered and generally to help cope with life, but also I have a strong connection to the Earth element and it helps me feel connected and satisfied in that way.
8. Work with spirits more, especially household spirits, encourage development of home guardians. When I first became a pagan I basically only did spirit work. It has been the base of my practice from a long time and I haven't had enough time for it recently. I want to develop deeper connections with the spirits close to me and generally have a more magical home.
9. Build shrines in garden and yard, for fey and other spirits. This kind of goes along with the more magical home and spirit work. I have always loved the idea of shrines, especially in nature, so we can leave offering and show our respect to the spirits/creatures around us. I want to create a shrine or two in my yard and garden to not only encourage spirits to live or visit there, but also to have a place to thank spirits that are around already.
10. Build shrines in natural areas for spirits I work with there, like the Bay tree spirits so I can have a place to leaving offerings after I gather my bay leaves. I often gather different things from a near by forest and I would like to have a place to leave offering and to maintain for the creatures I depend on there. This may also become somewhere that other people can use to do the same or some other form of practice. It will also be messed with by people who are not respectful, but I feel this is part of the maintenance. 
11. Take weekly walks in the forest, maybe invite pagan friends to come along. This is to give myself scheduled time to spend out in nature. If I don't get around to anything else that week, I can at least depend on this time to recharge myself. It also helps me become more familiar with the forest, which is important to me.
12. Study more herbalism. I have studied this in the past and often mix teas for colds and such. However, I want to expand this area to tinctures, ointments, creams on other medicines. I also have a pagan friend that is going to study this with me, which will make it even more rewarding.
13. Start a garden.
14. Harvest more wild foods. I have a book, California Foraging, that I used to gather some wild foods, but I would like to do this more. It's also important for me that I care for the species that I harvest, so they grow more abundant and more healthy.
15. Learn to hunt and fish. This last summer I dedicated myself to Cernunnos, and learning to hunt and fish for my own food has a sacred meaning for me. I want to learn to do this, although I am looking for someone to hopefully mentor me in this.

These are things that I feel will draw my pagan values into my everyday life. If you have questions about any of these things and want me to do a separate post on them, please let me know! I will post more about each of them as I accomplish them. For now I hope it gave you some inspiration for how to bring your values, pagan or otherwise, into your everyday lives. I'd love to know things you do to connect to your values in your lives as well!

Spring Fever!

Spring has come to our little valley town. The bulbs and almond trees are blooming all over. We've been feeling it too and have been outside working on the yard every moment outside of work and classes. It's slightly slow going, but definitely rewarding. We bought ten yards of soil and and have been moving it into the places it needs to go. Which is the front flower bed and in the back for the produce garden.

We have so many plans for this place! Little by little we've been getting them done. When we first moved in the grass had all died from getting no water in the summer heat and was covered by years of decomposing leaves. It was straight dirt. However, the winter rains have brought back the grass and we've been maintaining it well as it fills out. We also had a large flower bed, or at least it had been at some point. It had been filled in with gravel and looked terrible! When we first moved in we raked up the gravel and got rid of it. We finally filled it with soil just last week and I seeded it over with several pollinator flower mixes. That bed will be my play ground for flowers and herbs.

In the back yard it was a leaf and stick covered dirt lot. since July we have raked and slowly picked up stick into a pile and we still don't have all the sticks up! We were able to get some soil back there already to put in two strawberry beds and just finished putting in the starts we bought. We plan to make an asparagus bed next to the strawberries and then 14 annual beds to grow other produce. We are going to put a little fence to split up the garden from the other side of the yard as a mental barrier for our dog (he like to eat small corn plants) and for the chickens. I found this cute little fence at Lowe's and Tom is going to make a little gate for it so we can get the wheelbarrow through.

On the other side of the fence we are going to have a "lawn". I bought a poultry seed mix and plan to seed that over the backyard as a duel purpose lawn and pasture for the chickens. We are going to finish cleaning up the sticks and then seed that in. The stick have been giving us some warmth during this last sudden frost in our fireplace. It's been great to get rid of the all at once, because there's no way all of that is going to fit in the yard waste bin.

That's what has been going on here in my little home. I'll post an update when we make more progress =]. Do any of you have spring project going? See you next time! 

Hello all,

I just wanted to let everyone know that I will not be posting again until after the 5th of January, because we will be taking a trip to Machu Picchu! We will be hike the Inca trail and staying in Cusco for a few days. I will write a long post about it and finish up the last post on Yule (about the morning celebrations) when I get back. Until then I hope you all have a great holiday season and a happy new year!

~Sarah W.

Our Yule Celebrations: Yule Log and The Darkest Night

Our Yule is centered around the idea of community it all it's forms. With our Yule Tree we focus on our wild community, the non-humans creatures and spirits that are a part of our communities. The next part of our celebration focuses on the household community. We celebrate the darkest night by stay "up" together. Over the year we realized the actually staying awake was not needed to get that special feeling we got when we staid busy throughout the night.

We just stay out in the living part of the house, the living room, kitchen and other rooms we use during the day. Some people might sleep on the couch while others cook treats, tell stories or do crafts. We try not to use electric lights, because it gets in the way of your awareness of the darkness. I feel this helps with two things, one when things are dark you feel physically closer to the other people around, but it also keeps us from being afraid of the dark.

One thing that is the focus of this night is the Yule log, and no it's not a cake, although those are good too. We always keep a piece of our Yule Tree from the year before to burn on Yule night. As the sun goes down we build a fire and put the Yule log on there. we keep the fire going all night and it is a sources of warmth and welcome. I love having the fire going anytime, but on Yule night it is a magical thing to have. Everything is so dark and cold outside, but inside it is warm and everyone is together by the Yule fire.

A big part of the Yule night for me is baking! I tend to give gifts of food to people over the holidays, because I rarely have the time or money to by my many relatives all gifts. Plus, honestly, I think everyone enjoys it more anyways. Yule night is often when I do the baking for these gifts and put them together. It's also nice to give everyone treats throughout the night when each is finished. It kind of keeps everyone going through the long night.

Stories are one that I want to make a bigger part of Yule for my family, but somehow it doesn't happen when there aren't any children around. I will just have to collect stories to tell when I have kids celebrating Yule with us. Stories about Odin and Nordic Yule would be great as well as fey stories.

One that I would tell is myths about what happens on Yule night with the Earth and Sun. For those of you who don't know, it goes that the Sun God dies the day of Yule when the sun goes down and that the Earth Goddess is pregnant with the new Sun God and goes into labor during the night. For me staying up for the night was our way of supporting her through labor, being her midwives and giving to her. She gives birth to the new Sun God and he rises that next morning.

The last thing I would like to share with you is our way of doing stockings. I've always loved stocking, mostly for the aesthetic appeal, but they also played a role in how my families Christmas functioned. My parents often wrapped gifts last minute, in the middle of the night, and because of that the rule was we had to wait until 8am to wake them. We were not allowed to open them, because my parents wanted to watch. So we had our stockings, which generally had some sweets, but always had some fun toys and games in them. One year we had jacks, that was a good year. I think we played with those more than the actually gifts my parents got us.

Anyways, my fondness of stockings goes deep, but I wanted to find a way they fit into our new Yule and had some kind of meaning. I stumbled upon the old Nordic story of stocking and where they came from. Odin on Yule night rides his eight legged horse around visiting peoples houses, not always to give gifts, sometimes to play tricks and other not so nice things. However, some kids/people would hang a sock full of hay on their mantel from his horse to eat during its long night and Odin would be pleased by this and reward these people by fulling the socks with gifts. I plan to tell my kids this story, not so they think Odin is going to fill their stockings with gifts, but to remind them that thinking of others is rewarded. It has a good moral that goes along with Yule and I get to continue the stocking tradition!

This year I planned to make us new stockings by hand, but we had some bad luck and didn't have the money for the supplies. I'll have to save that for next year, or make them after Yule for next year. However, I thought you all might like the patterns I found, because they are really great! These are some Nordic style patterns from Ravelry, and they are knitting patterns. There's whole book of 15 different designs each of them you can add a name into the top if you want. They even have a kitty and doggy stocking patterns which are super cute! These are the ones I plan to do for me and Melody:

That's all for the darkest night! I will post one more post on Yule about our morning celebrations. In the mean time I'd love to hear about your winter celebrations. Do any of you celebrate Yule? If not, how do you celebrate the winter? If so, what do your celebrations include? Can't wait to hear about your traditions!

Our Yule Celebrations: Yule Tree

My partner and I began celebrating Yule exclusively three or four years ago and we never looked back. We have worked on our ideas of the pagan holidays and what that time of year and the traditions surrounding those holidays mean to our lives now. Yule is the first one we really started practicing and the one I feel is the most fleshed out. We combined a lot of old traditions and ideas that make this holiday special with family traditions that we did as kids.

We start our celebration as most people might, with the Yule tree. Around here it's common to buy a special permit for cutting "Christmas Trees" in both Lassen and Plumas National forests. Normally we go to Lassen, like I did every year with my Dad. This year we will go to Plumas instead. We will also be lucky this year, because we just bought an all wheel drive Honda CR-V. In the past we have taken our little Civic up in the snow and strapped the tree on top on her. She has always been a good sport with this, since she has the soul of a Humvee. However, it will be nice to not have to worry about getting stuck up there.

We have to bring some supplies with us for cutting and some fancy Yule magic. We bring our map, permit, and saw for the practical part. For the magic part we bring an offering to the forest fey and some bells for our fey charm. Of course we add some snacks and hot drinks =].

Once we decide what tree we want we prepare the charm. Using the bells we hold them in our hands and invite the fey to come join us for the celebration. I do this by thinking about all the pleasant things about the celebrations, like the warm fire, the baked treats, and the feeling of happiness and excitement. We then put these bells on the tree and leave them for about 30 minutes to allow the fey to accept the invitation or not. Then we cut down the tree and leave the offerings we brought. One thing that is very important to do when you cut the tree is to leave the cut at an angle. This allows the tree to not be infected with rot and die. My father taught me this when I was young, and we would come back to see the tree from last year growing again.

Then the tree goes on top the car and tied in place. Then we get to return home and get warm again. We try to decorate that same day, but often we do the day after, because we are too tired. My partner and I talked about what we felt the tree meant to us during this time. For me Yule is all about community. During the dark, cold, harsh winter you draw your warmth and strength from those around you. For me the wild community around us is an important part of that. It is one of the reasons I love to share the season with our spirit friends, the fey. They symbolize that wild ecosystem that we are apart of and therefore we decorate our tree with things that remind us of that community. Or at Least that's the plan eventually. Many of our ornaments are still old ones we got when we still celebrated Christmas, but we are slowly working towards ornaments they symbols nature and nature spirits.

Once it is all done we always seems to just sit in the glow of the tree for awhile before bed. The one thing I do with the tree is I leave offerings to the fey somewhere near the tree. This year it will be on my altar. I usually just offer a portion of whatever treat I'm making that day. Of course I also water the tree every other day.

That is how we begin our Yule celebration. I will update you all with our other celebrations in the near future. Would you prefer I put it up before Yule, or would you want pictures of our celebration this year and I would post it shortly after Yule? What do you all do in your celebrations? What does Yule mean to you?