Life After Graduation

Hello again! Long time to see!

Sorry about the long lapse in posts. I graduated at the end of May with my B.S. in animal science and have been trying to settle into live without school. It's been challenging. I have a habit of making lots of huge goals for myself and being down on myself for not accomplishing them all. My keyboard for my computer also broke and I've only been able to use the touch screen for about a month, which makes typing out a post frustrating.

Anyways, I'm back and excited to make more posts about the goings-on around my little city cottage. In this post I'd like to share with you guys what I've been working on. There are three main areas that I've been focusing on:

Cooking;
My goals for this is to cook all of our food from scratch ingredients. That a big goal and I have taken little steps towards this. I've gotten back to baking our bread with my sourdough starter and we only drink the kombucha I make. I've been baking other snacks for us as well, like muffins and granola. I want to make mayo, since we have lots of eggs from the girls, but haven't quite got the courage.

Gardening;
This has been going great so far. I started my garden, as you can read from older posts, this last spring. I have beds of peas, salad greens, summer squash, gourds, lots of tomatoes, onions, melon and cucumbers. I'm now looking to begin the transition to a summer garden with planting corn, beans, pumpkins and some fiber flax. I've learned some stuff I plan to change a bit for the autumn season and for next spring, but a lot of our produce we've been eating in straight from our garden =].

Crafts;
The crafts have been a big deal, because this is the area I plan to make money at until I can buy land to start our farm. I have been developing several items to use on an Etsy store I will be opening by Monday. For the last week all of my energy has been directed towards sewing, designing, and researching for the opening of the Etsy store. I was out, just yesterday, taking pictures in the woods for the six dresses I plan to start out offering in my store. I will make a post when I open my store so you can come check it out =].

That's a quick overview of how life's been the last month or so. How are your summer's going? Is your garden looking good? Until next time!

Annual Beds: Where the Action Really is!

I've written about the perennials I've been putting in, but now I'm going to talk about the set up I've finally got done for the bulk of our garden, the annual beds. First I should probably make sure you know that annuals one live for one year and perennials for many years. Annual crops make up a large portion of what we grow. Things like peas, carrots, potatoes, salad greens, broccoli, melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, ect.

We put in 16 beds to be used for annual crops, this will provide all of our produce needs, aside from the perennials we plants and different tree fruit. This will also be the major labor demands for our garden. Here in California we have about five growing seasons early spring, spring, summer, fall, and through winter. Each season has different crops you can plant in them. This allows for a lot of food to be produced and a lot of different kinds of food. Right now we are squishing our two spring seasons into one, because with my last bit of school I wasn't able to get the beds up as early as I wanted. 

We are doing a no-till system which is nice for setting up a garden, because I don't need to dig anything up or mix the soil at all. We just created slightly raised beds by adding 3 inches of compost directly to the top of the soil where we wanted over beds. The hardest part of this process was just getting the beds measured out. I am so glad I only have to do this once! 

Our beds are 30 inches wide and ten feet long, with three feet of wheelbarrow path in the middle. Two rows of eight beds each. We also added a short fence so my dog doesn't go snacking on my young plants (he likes to graze) and my chickens might think twice before jumping over (probably not). We added some gypsum to the beds before the compost, because our clay soil tend to be lower in calcium and when the calcium and magnesium is in balance clay soil don't clump so tightly.

Then we spread over the compost evenly and pulled out our marking sticks. We added trellises to the beds that needed them and pushed in our signs marking the beds. Since we plan to rotate the beds through seasons of different crops and from year to year, we did not label them by the crop growing within. Which crops are where is recorded in our garden journal, which I keep all my garden records. 

In the next seasons we plan to transplant most of our crops, but with the extra work from school I didn't have time to do that, so many of our crops are direct seeded. The only ones I started in our little greenhouse was some herbs, and tomatoes. Next year there will be a lot more in the greenhouse.

Hobbity Home

I get a lot of inspiration in life from the Hobbits of Tolkien's writing. I find the lifestyle and overall feeling of the hobbit culture draws me in. It also helped me find an answer to a question I had spent a long time thinking about, how to decorate my home.

The way we view decorations, pretty things only to be used for make the look nice, directly goes
against many of the values me and my husband hold. However I can’t stand the minimalist decor
styles like modern. I think they have no comfort to them and no warmth. I would never like to live
in a house like that. I also like decorating with the changing seasons, this adds another level to the friction with our values. The idea of having four sets of items with minimal use that we only use each a quart of the year really rubbed me wrong and my husband even more so. With these two things headbutting in my mind, how would I be able to have a warm, cozy home, that was full of useless pretty things.

I started researching lots and lots of decorating ideas. First I was interested in the vintage styles, but it didn’t quite fit. Then I found the primitive style. I really liked that for awhile, but it had two things I didn’t like. One, was that it always looked like an abandoned home, not one is use. Two, when I looked closely at the pictures, they were full of useless decorations they would look nice, but in the end just take up space.

Just when I was ready to give up, we decide to look to the Hobbit movies for inspiration. Bag End always seemed like the most comfortable place to live. Something surprised us as we watched the scene in Bag End over and over. There weren’t any “decorations”. The set was full of beautiful mugs, candles, vases, books and other everyday things. Nothing was there just for show. That’s when I realized how we could combine my need for a pretty home and our desire to not be wasteful. Everything in the house would need to have to purposes. One was a job, like dishes to eat off. The other was to be beautiful and add that comfortable feeling that comes from pretty things.

When you think back to things you use in your house, it’s easy to see things that could add beauty to your home. A throw blanket that sits on the back of my couch keeps me warm on cold days, but it also adds beauty. A pitcher I use to hold juice may sit on my table to easy use, but it’s a pretty color and has flowers on it. Or a tablecloth, it protects the table, but makes my dining room look great.

This concept can of course work with any style. For us we are planning on focusing on natural materials, because they often last long, work better, and to me look much better. We look for items made from glass, stoneware, wood and natural fibers like cotton and linen. Here are some things we have looked at adding to our home:

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With this new idea everything we buy for our home not only makes it look nicer, but adds to functionality
of it.

Dedication to Cernunnos

Last summer I did something I never thought I would, I dedicated myself to a deity. I've worked with spirits my whole life, but not until recently did I work with deities. Honestly, just saying "I worked with a deity" sounds wrong and disrespectful. I feel deities are the same as other spirits, but older and more powerful. For them to even notice me seemed unlikely and arrogant to assume.  

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However there has always been an energy or force that I've spent my life being drawn to, even knowing that it would be a challenging path to walk and attempting to walk another. That is where the name for this blog comes from "Undomesticated". It was this wild force that would not allow me to join into the normal flow of life many other take. I could never make myself fit into the shapes needed to do the things so many do everyday, month and year. 

After learning more about myself and the deity connected to the name Cernunnos I realized there was something different about this energy than just a personality trait or a little spirit. It was something much more powerful than that. I knew it was Cernunnos when I read about him and not just the horned god in general. He was different from the rest. He was wild, but not "out of control". He was in control of himself, but nothing else controlled him, nothing else could. There is a nobleness about Cernunnos that isn't always connected to wild gods. That was the part that made me sure it was him that called me so powerfully. 

I couldn't deny it any longer, there was a deity that called out to me, my spirit was drawn so strongly to it that I couldn't possibly turn away. So I accepted it and myself fully. This was the way I am and I would have to live according to this energy and what it represents or I would not find happiness within myself. That's when I decided to ritually dedicate myself to Cernunnos. 

I was lucky enough to preform this ritual in a group of other pagans. They were dedicating themselves to their own deities the same day and it made for a very powerful experience. This of course doesn't mean you need a group to dedicate yourself, but for me it was rewarding to do so. Here's the ritual:

I began the ritual with just a robe on and quickly removed it, preforming the ritual sky clad. I felt this was the best way to express my dedication. I then cleansed myself with burning cedar and awaiting my time to speak. 

Once everything was set I began my dedication:

“Great voice in the woods,

You call to me,

Your voice shakes my soul.

I have tried to ignore your song,

To follow others way of life,

But I find myself humming your tune,

Singing it under my breath.

I accept now that I am of you.

My soul was born to dance to your song,

no challenge can keep me from your side.

I know that my place is forever with you,

Singing along on the great hunt.”

“I ask for your forgiveness,

For the time I spent quieting the wildness inside me.

It hurt me,

It hurt to turn away from you.

I will never do it again.

I will never deny you,

For my soul is made from your smile.

I feared the pain of not being able to reach you.

For your feet are the fastest,

and I may never catch up,

But to never look and chase after you,

Would be a fate worse than death.”

At this point in the ritual I planned to un-robe, but in actual practice I went sky clad earlier. Finish up with the rest:

“Cernunnos!

I run with you always.

From today onwards,

I am yours, as I always have been.

I will sing your song,

and dance your dance.

You have my heart, my soul and my body.”

Then place the oak crown on your head, expressing your connection to Cernunnos, but also becoming the offering itself. Lastly I finished off with this:

“Thank you for never giving up on me.”

Then I had another member of the group draw the symbol for Cernunnos on my chest with henna. You can also use something else, I wanted to have the reminder on my body for an extended amount of time. However, ashes paint or many other mediums would work fine.

We were lucky enough that the home we conducted the ritual had a pool and we finished off the ritual by diving in all sky clad. It was a soothing way to finish off some very powerful magic.

Have any of you dedicated yourself before? Or do you have a deity that you find yourself connecting to strongly? Are any of you fond of Cernunnos? Or want to know more about him? I would love to hear from you! 

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!