I found this tomato being munched on by a few Japanese Beetles and thought to myself this is the day our youngest chicken gets to experience the tastiness of a tomato.

He seemed to be a bit perplexed and decided to go ask his mother what he should do.

I used to think I had a favorite season, but recently I've discovered that I just like seasons in general.  I love the way you can start to feel winter losing its grip on the world by New Year's, when the days get noticeably longer.  And now, in the middle of the dog days of summer, I cherish the first inklings of fall in the air.

Autumn flowers are slowly opening --- first a shade-tolerant goldenrod, then this woodland sunflower, then hints of ironweed and Joe Pye weed.  Here and there, a drought-stressed tree loses a brilliantly colored leaf, and I continue to plant the fall garden (peas and turnips this week.)

This post has no thesis, except this --- I would be a very bad candidate to retire to Florida.

We went to see our 2nd movie of the year today in an attempt to beat the heat.

Inception is a non stop, intellectual thrill ride that did not disappoint.

It was a little heavy on the action scenes, but that's Hollywood for you. Christopher Nolan has created a compelling story with one of the most convoluted plots I've ever enjoyed.

I'd give it a solid 8.5 out of 10. Compare that to our first movie of the year....Avatar, earning a rare 10 out of 10, and you get an idea of how I rate films these days.

When Anna and I target practice with the Highpoint rifle we usually take turns shooting 4 shots each and then check the results.

There's room for improvement, but we're getting better.

In my opinion, chicken butchering is not something you want to learn out of a book.  We acquired the skill by helping out at a couple of different chicken-processing days on friends' farms, picking up lots of hands on information that we never would have found in print.  So when we read on Everett's blog that he'd had a hard time with poultry processing on his new farm, we invited him to our next kill day.

We thoroughly enjoyed meeting one of our long-time readers in person, and hope that Everett got something out the experience too.  He certainly sped the processing along, not only with his hands but with his fascinating tales of his business endeavors (beginning with selling gum in grade school, progressing through writing about surfing in Australia, and culminating with his current SEO skills.)

We feel very lucky that Everett ended up settling only two hours away, and we're looking forward to meeting his wife.  Maybe next time, Missy will come along to paint our fence...um...er...kill our chickens.

I got this scar today by not obeying the first rule of the Hitch Hikers Guide to chickens which is to always have a clean towel handy.

This round of chicken catching was twice as difficult due to their increased size and speed. One of the more aggresive roosters jumped up and karate chopped me during my first attempt.



Once I took a moment to catch my breath it became obvious where I went wrong. No towel.

A good sized towel can act as a shield/net when you're going up against a coop full of roosters.

Once I developed my towel technique it started to feel similar to what you see during a bull fight, minus the sword and dangerous horns, but those chicken claws are nothing to sneeze at.

This is the petroglyph we based our Walden Effect T-shirt on.

Petroglyphs are rock carvings found all around the world dating back as far as 12 thousand years.

This one seemed to be trying to transmit some sort of message which I'm still trying to decipher.

As you can see in this photo of my mom, we've had our Walden Effect t-shirts for two solid weeks.  I've been holding out on you because I can't seem to figure out whether we'll be able to send the t-shirts for a couple of dollars as first class mail or if we have to pay $5 for priority mail.  I finally decided to just let the first few customers buy them at the cheap price ($10), and if it costs more to mail the shirts, we'll raise the price later.  So buy them while they're hot!

Here are some quick stats so you'll see whether our t-shirt is right up your alley:

• Color is "serene green" --- as pictured.  I chose the color because it's light enough to work in outside in the sun, but earthy enough that those pesky weeding stains will be less visible.
  
• T-shirt is "2000 Gildan Ultra Cotton", which is 100% cotton, unisex, 6.1 oz.
• Printing is on the front in black and gray.  The image is based on a petroglyph, tweaked to suit our permaculture farm.  You can see a more head-on image of the design here.
  
• Sizes are M, L, XL, and XXL.  Be sure to note your size with your order!  I decided to merge the slight additional cost for the XXL into the overall price, so all of the t-shirts cost $10 apiece (with free shipping in the U.S.)  But I ordered fewer XXL and XL than perhaps I should have --- if that's your size, you might want to buy now.  (If you're medium or large, you can probably wait a while.)

I hope you'll enjoy our t-shirts and then email me an image of your Walden Effect style in your own garden.  I'd love to post a collage of all of our loyal readers on their home turf.  (If you hate the design, though, don't feel in any way obligated to buy one.)

"That fence is just there to keep the dogs out, right?" said one cockerel to the other as they roosted on their coop roof and peered out into the unknown wilds.

"I think I'll stay inside anyway," replied his brother, drowsily.

(I consider this evidence in support of the domestication contract.)

Although I should have been taking advantage of the cool, rainy weather to get the garden weeded, I played hookie on Friday.  I've discovered that when I get an idea for a written or visual project, I should drop everything and explore while I'm enthusiastic, letting those creative juices flow while they're in motion.  This freedom to create is the best part of homesteading.

The truth is that I'd been wanting to work up some sketchbooks from my year abroad into a story for common consumption, but my memory is so fuzzy that I couldn't visualize life a decade ago well enough to write about it.  Maggie's memory is considerably better, and she wrote interesting tidbits in her journal that complement my copious scientific notes very well.  We churned out a joint post last night about our first day in Costa Rica, and I'm excited to keep collaborating on the project.

As usual when I get obsessed with a non-homesteading topic, I'll stop posting about it over here after this entry.  So, if you're interested in reading about my decade-old journey (and the natural history of Costa Rica), be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed over on Clinch Trails.  Maybe this will make up for the continued summer vacation of the lunchtime series.

"Come right on over," I said.  "But be prepared --- I may not want to see you in the morning."

No, I wasn't setting up a one night stand.  I was inviting my sister to the farm to leaf through our journals, photo albums, and sketchbooks from our Costa Rican adventure a decade ago.  (And being realistic about my introvert tendencies that consider house guests and fish bad after about five hours.)

I don't want to be too specific, because it's summer and a bad, bad, bad time to take on new writing projects.  But I'm currently fired up to  summarize the highlights of our past journey on my Clinch Trails blog.  I'll let you know if it turns out to be anything more than a pipe dream, but for now, Maggie and I are enjoying the music.

I've always thought the traditional pop up style campers had room for improvement.

The Yurtle will put an end to your square lodge blues with a nice circular structure to rest within. This portable model will run you about 6800 bucks, which seems comparable to other new pop up campers. The Yurtle will take at least an hour to set up compared to seconds on the pop up.

Seems like this might be a great alternative to the FEMA trailers we heard so much about after hurricane Katrina?

Go to Laurelnestyurts.com for more round options and details on their small community of 14 yurts. They've got a few sections to their blog where they discuss permaculture and gardening, topics that drove me to their site in the first place.

This weekend, I tricked Mark and his mom into taking me to Sunwatch Indian Village in Dayton.  My companions win the patience award for not even looking bored while I took notes for three hours on how Native Americans fed themselves 800 years ago.  Okay, maybe they do look a little bored....

I was intrigued by this particular window into the past because corn had just become the mainstay of the Native American diet, making up over half of the villagers' diets.  Meat (76% of which was venison) made up another 40% of their diets, so I wasn't surprised that the Sunwatch villagers were actually less healthy than their recent ancestors, with over half of their children dying before the age of six.  We all know that a diet of corn and meat with very few fruits and vegetables isn't going to promote good health.

The villagers stored their corn for the winter in large, grass-lined storage pits.  Each family of six to eight people had their own pit, which would hold 500 or more pounds of corn.  I loved the museum's reconstruction of a typical storage pit while in use:

...and then, once emptied of corn, how it might have looked when filled with the family's garbage...

...and, finally, what the pit looked like when archaeologists carefully picked through it 800 years later:

The reconstructed village also included a typical three sisters garden, which I've pictured here.  Unfortunately, there was much less interpretation about the garden than about the buildings, so I came away with more questions than answers.  Most importantly, I ended up curious about how the Native Americans combatted the squash vine borers, which my trained eye noticed were already hard at work wiping out the pumpkins in Sunwatch's garden.  Does anyone know?

I posted some images of the lodges in my review of Sunwatch Village over on our Clinch Trails website (which I've decided to reenvision as our travel website), but what caught my eye in the architectural arena was the way the Native Americans burned the bases of their posts to protect the wood from insects and rot.  I would have thought that charring the base of a post would make it less structurally sound, but presumably they knew what they were doing.

On the other hand, the buildings weren't meant to last forever.  Like my method of intentionally underbuilding, the Sunwatch villagers were used to moving on after a couple of decades when firewood and game in the immediate vicinity had been exhausted.  As with slash and burn agriculture, the sustainability of using up all of an area's resources and then travelling to a new region is questionable, but the method might make sense if populations are low enough that the land is given a century to recover after each episode.

Finally, doesn't this watch platform look perfect?  I've long wanted to have one of these in the middle of the garden with a ramp up to the platform so Lucy could nap there and watch over our entire domain.  Who knows --- the Sunwatch villagers might have even let their dogs stand watch there too!

Even though I'm the primary cook around here, Mark does nearly all the grocery shopping.  I just hate shopping, so every two weeks, I hand Mark a list and send him to the big city.  He always comes home with everything on the list...plus this and that.  When I first started converting him to Walden Effect eating, the "this and that" were things like biscuits-in-a-can and lemon cookies.  Nowadays, I roll my eyes when he brings home...an out of season butternut.

Yes, we've become such fans of butternuts (especially butternut pie) that Mark's hard pressed to live without them over the summer.  I didn't know they would be such a hit, so I only put in two small beds last year, and we ran out of the delicious fruits in the middle of the winter.  This year, I expanded the planting to encompass three beds, and I fed the soil well.  Cucurbits love a good meal of manure, and before I knew it, the butternuts had zipped off their own beds, across the aisle, and were partying with the tomatoes.  Bad butternuts!

As every parent knows, proper limits are essential in raising a healthy child...I mean, butternut.  And parents definitely have to work together to set those boundaries.  So Mark and I went out as a team to train our recalcitrant butternuts to toe the line.  Mark hammered in fence posts and I strung up pea trellis material to cage our butternuts in.  Now they can play as hard as they want and we won't have to worry about them skipping curfew.

I hope you all didn't miss us too much.  Our power's been out for the last day or so, but an intrepid worker just came and cut the tree off our line, restoring juice.  Stay tuned for your regularly scheduled farm updates returning tomorrow.

If you need your homesteading fix (Walden Effect Junkie, this is for you), you might enjoy reading all of the details of our forest pasture experiment which I've spared you all by posting on our chicken blog instead.

Weeding may be a boring job, but it has its perks.  While ripping up big weeds in the upper raspberry patch, Mark came across this tiny box turtle.  Ten minutes later, he found another!  I guess our berry patch has the box turtle seal of approval.

I have to admit that I'm a bad, bad farmer.  A good farmer would move the box turtles out of the area since they like to eat strawberries and tomatoes.  Instead, I carefully relocated the pair to the shade under the worm bin and gave them a strawberry apiece.  What can I say --- finding a hatchling box turtle has been my life-long dream.

Our homemade chicken waterer is a quick and easy DIY project.

Mark and I are thinking of printing up some Walden Effect t-shirts roughly based on a petroglyph, but tweaked to more closely resemble our farm.  Poll time!

Even if you hate t-shirts, please vote in the first poll so that we can get an idea of the size of our readers.  We want to make sure to have the right sizes on hand for giveaways.

What size t-shirt do you wear most frequently?

Are you interested in buying this t-shirt (somewhere in the $10 to $15 range)?

Do you like this t-shirt design?

Would you be interested in a t-shirt larger than XL even though it costs about $5 more?

Thanks!  Once we get an idea for sizes and quantity, we'll figure out a price --- our cost plus shipping --- and will put in an order.

Left-o-ver straw-ber-ry
[left-oh-ver straw-ber-ee] 
--- noun, plural -ries.

1. Fruit that makes it into the house to be shared with the long-suffering husband after the primary gardener has glutted herself for two weeks on sun-warmed strawberries.

Origin: Previously considered an erroneous combination of "leftover" and "strawberry".  Added to the dictionary in 2009 when excess rain caused a decline in flavor.  Despite full flavor in 2010, the phrase has been retained.

"Soooo...." I said.  "I think the best way to move the hen and her chick to their new home is for one of us to grab the hen and the other the chick.  What do you think?"

Mark had finished building a protected nook in the fenced off portion of the chicken pasture, and we were dying to get the chick to its new home.  The brood coop was damp and stinky, both from accumulated poop and from the ten eggs that didn't hatch (ticking time bombs, just waiting for a wrong move to send waves of rotten egg scent through the farm.)  But the mother hen is pretty intimidating and I was, frankly, a bit afraid to grab her.

"I'll get the hen," said my brave husband, donning his gloves.  And he did --- one minute later, the squawking bundle of white feathers was being deposited into the chicken pasture.

The trouble was, I couldn't catch the chick.  It was just too fast for me, slipping in and out of the brood coop, then fleeing in fright into our barn.  I went in after it, trying to tease it out of a stall full of old boards, until Mark called a halt to the proceedings.

"Just wait a minute and see where it is," he admonished me.  We waited, and seconds later, the fuzzball reappeared.

"Mom!  Mom!  Where are you?!" it cheeped desperately.

"Cluck, cluck, over here," she replied from across the yard.

We stepped back, and the chick sprang forward.  "Mom!  Mom!" it exclaimed as it scaled the plum's raised bed.  "Mom!  Mom!" as it trotted through the blackberries.  "Mom!  Mom!" as it crossed the driveway, its mother now in sight.

"Well, get in here," the mother clucked soothingly, and her adoptee slipped through the chicken wire to be reunited at last.

Some days, my life lacks coherence and is simply an unending string of awed discoveries.  Here's Monday in a nutshell....

I woke to the sound of rushing water --- the floodplain is submerged.

A scuffle in the hallway --- Huckleberry caught a mouse.

Blueberry bushes are coated in hundreds of flowers, some starting to open.

Seven male toads beckon lovers from our mushroom soaking kiddie pool.

Tiny fuzzball peaches are swelling fast, now bigger than my thumbnail.

Stir-fry for dinner --- dozens of Egyptian onions, some overwintered carrots and parsnips, and shiitakes sodden from three plus inches of rain.

The first lightning bugs danced in the dark.

I hope your spring days are as sweet!

In most ways, I'm completely uninterested in appearances.  I happily wear goodwill clothes for a decade, until holes in inauspicious places make them inappropriate for public consumption.  I'm pleased as punch with my free trailer, and have no dreams of big, fancy houses.  When I see people drive by with shiny sports cars, I roll my eyes.

But there is a seamy underside to my supposed disdain for mere looks.  A place where I fall prey to beauty before utility, where my common sense is forgotten in the face of mere charisma.

You guessed it --- garlic!  Despite the fact that Silverwhite Silverskin is by far the best producer in our garden, I snuck in two beds of Music Garlic last fall.  Music is a huge hardneck garlic that looks stunningly vibrant when the more productive Silverwhites seem a bit dusty and tired.  In a few weeks, Music will uncurl its scape and put on an even more intriguing show.  Sure, hardneck garlics don't yield as well as softnecks unless you offer them perfect conditions, but the eye candy is worth it.

Then I woke up.  What, you don't dream about the possible dangers of your mulch choices?

My mulch nightmare was brought on by Daddy's explanation that he always weighs down his newspaper mulch with something to keep it from blowing away.  Sure enough, when we got back from our trip, an uncharacteristic wind had whipped through our farm and blown around about a tenth of the paper mulch.  In contrast, last year's partially decomposed junk mail and cardboard was still in place, suggesting a long term solution to the blowing paper problem.  For now, I just dribbled a bit of composted wood chip mulch on top of the newspaper to hold it in place and stave off those terrifying mulch nightmares.

Driving home from our whirlwind visit to my father in South Carolina, we seemed to be travelling back in time.  The tree leaves shrank back into their buds until they were a mere haze and black locust flowers gave way to redbuds.  As we crossed the border of our home county, we passed a large strawberry field coated with row cover fabric --- a good reminder to check the weather and notice a frost warning in effect.  I followed the strawberry farmer's lead and covered as many of my strawberry and broccoli beds as I could, even though the light frost didn't seem to harm the plants left unprotected.

Lucy had broken into one of the chicken tractors while we were gone, not to eat the chickens but to eat their scraps.  So I chased down three hens as they happily scratched through my garlic's mulch (then chased them down again half an hour later when I realized where the hole in their cage was.)  Across the yard, the chicks seem to have eaten the majority of the grass clippings I gave them, along with a gallon of feed, and were begging for more.  We were only gone for 36 hours!  Could everything really have grown so much in a day and a half?

A film and radio crew came by the farm Wednesday to interview us for the local radio station.  They were doing a piece on how the internet brings opportunity to an economically depressed area, and our Avian Aqua Miser business fit the bill.  Hopefully the segment will air and I'll be able to point you to the station's website to listen and/or watch, but for now I thought you might enjoy reading some highlights of our interview.

We try not to make guests walk through the floodplain (aka the alligator swamp) unless they really want to, so Mark drove the golf cart to pick up the crew.  Four people, a big camera, and an even bigger microphone crammed onto the cart --- I'm glad Mark added on the truckbed in the back since it seated two.  "Hold on tight!" Mark warned, and they were off.  And then, with a bump, one was quite literally off --- the camera woman lost her hold and ended up in the mud.  Luckily, the camera came through fine.

Back at our homesite, we showed off our chickens (though the journalists seemed even more struck by Mark's deer deterrent.)  Then we headed inside our frantically-cleaned-up-this-morning trailer, which is still barely presentable.  Good thing Huckleberry was on hand to take their attention away from the cobwebs --- he seemed bound and determined to answer their questions, and kept meowing as we talked.  (Strider doesn't take well to unusual events like cleaning so he was absent.)

Thanks for coming by Rich, Mimi, and Sylvia!  I hope the dunking in the mud doesn't scare you off for good.

During the winter of 2008 to 2009, I quit my job and finally had time to work on a book about central Appalachian ecology.  I started studying the topic as a hobby in high school, majored in biology in college to round out my expertise, then worked for a half dozen years leading hikes and conducting ecological inventories.  When an acquaintance broached the idea of publishing a trail guide about a local park, I jumped at the chance to get those ecological stories down on paper.

All winter, I wrote and polished, but once we got to the final publishing stage, the deal fell through.  Basically, the aquaintance and I had been operating under two different assumptions about how our collaboration was going to work, and neither of us was willing to bend to meet the other's reality.  (Note to self --- ignore Appalachian conventions and get agreements down on paper on later deals.)  For me, it came down to not wanting to have to be the one marketing the book --- how would I have time to obsess over my garden and keep you all informed about the most boring aspects of my daily life?

Meanwhile, I'd discovered that publishing ebooks just makes a lot more sense than publishing paper books for niche subjects.  With the success of Microbusiness Independence under my belt, I decided to publish my Appalachian ecology book in the same format.  As an experiment, I'm also making the entire book available for free on the Clinch Trails website.

Sugar Hill: A Microcosm of Central Appalachian Ecology spans 300 million years, with tales of chemical warfare, sex changes, and murder.  The book is one part trail guide and two parts stories about our local ecology, flora, and fauna.  Even if you never plan to visit southwest Virginia, I suspect the book will explain at least one mystery relevant to your own ecosystem.  I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think!

I know why the caged gate swings, oh me,

When its frame is warped and its hinges sore,

When it scrapes its bottom and almost swings free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a squeal that it sends from its deep rooted core,

But a plea, that someday again it will swing-

I know why the caged gate swings.


There's a lot of places on the web that claim to be an authority on making your own gate, but Jeff Greef's wood working site delivers detailed pictures backed up with a real world explanation of each step.

If you've never built a gate before, or remember how the last gate you built sagged and rubbed on the ground then save yourself some grief and skim over these three pages before you draw up your plans.

This view of our neighbor's gate prompted me to start a series of pictures dedicated to Appalachian fences and the gates that connect them.

I don't think I've ever been happier to see rain in March than I was this weekend.  After our cold, wet winter, a week of sunny days in the fifties and sixties was irresistable and it took the rain to remind me that working from dawn until dark every day requires intermittent days of rest.

The frogs were happy to see wet weather reappear as well.  Spring Peepers and Chorus Frogs were joined by dozens of Wood Frogs (captured in the embedded video) by Friday night.  Ever since the first spring when I hunted them down by flashlight, I've had a very soft spot in my heart for Wood Frogs --- hopefully you'll see the appeal too.

When it snowed the first four days of March, I started feeling like maybe we weren't getting spring this year.  But then came four days of brilliant sun, and our farm now looks completely different.

As I worked more buckets of stump dirt into the garden and planted greens, I felt like I was living in the climax of How the Grinch Stole Christmas:

Not only did my heart grow three sizes, I saw two species of butterflies out flitting about --- the Mourning Cloak I captured in pixels and either a Comma or Question Mark.  The bees were foraging in earnest, though I didn't take the time to hunt down their quarry.  Best yet, Mark got the golf cart all the way out to the parking area with just a bit of encouragement.  We're back in business!

 
Last week's Arctic homesteading documentary really managed to stay with me and inspired a medium sized search for another similar type story.

That seems like all there is of the free stuff, but the Homestead National Monument of America just updated the movie that plays in their Museum. It's not online yet, but if you're in or near the Beatrice Nebraska zipcode you might want to plan a visit.

160 acres of land free for the taking sounds like a good deal, but I'm not sure if I would have gone for such a dream if I were alive back then. I guess it would depend on if there were any other options at the time.

While digging around in the stump dirt Thursday, I uncovered some found art.  Lucy must have buried a carcass in the base of the stump because my scrabbling fingers turned up tufts of fur and leg bones...and then this perfect skull.

I found a very useful key for identifying mammal skulls and soon discovered the skull's owner.  The answer is after the second picture for those who want to guess.



The first distinguishing feature is the large gap between the majority of the teeth and the incisors, which determines that the animal was either a rodent or a rabbit.  If you look closely below the big incisors at the front of the jaw, you'll notice two smaller teeth tucked back into the skull.  These peg teeth are used for grabbing or cutting food and identify my skull as a rabbit.

I find skulls endlessly fascinating and once had a collection, but eventually learned that collections bog me down.  So I gave this rabbit to our winesap apple tree as a source of calcium.

 

The occasional water line damage is to be expected when your wife is just starting to learn the finer points of 40 caliber marksmanship.

      Video credit goes to Anna for capturing this 38 second driveway moment.

 

If you enjoyed yesterday's documentary on Arctic homesteading then you will most likely appreciate how Robert Long and his family get by homesteading in the New Zealand bush.

It's a nice short video which takes time to interview the 13 and 16 year old kids and show how they feel about growing up in such a remote and beautiful setting.

We have a glorious moat between where we park the cars and our trailer.  There's the creek, of course, but also a third of a mile of woods --- far enough that we usually can't hear any road noise and never get trick-or-treaters or uninvited visitors.

Even when the golf cart can't make the trip and I'm stuck hauling in big sheets of plywood by hand, I never wish we lived closer to the road.  In fact, if given a choice, I'd rather be a bit more isolated --- we can actually see one neighbor's light if we stand in just the right spot in the yard during the winter.

When we come home from the outside world, the ten minute walk back to the trailer is decompression time, returning us to the present and reconnecting with nature.  I see wood ducks and great blue herons along the creek and check out tracks in the mud.  By the time I get home, my head is filled with beauty, not cars and stores.

 

Heimo Korth grew up in the suburbs of Wisconsin and when he was 18 wrote a letter to a random trapper in Alaska looking for work. He got a job as a packer, learned to love the wilderness of Alaska, and has been there ever since homesteading with his Eskimo wife Edna.

A small 3 man film crew spent 10 days with Heimo and Edna to get a feel for what it's like to be one of the last full time homesteaders in the 19 million acres of prime boreal forest that is now known as the Arctic National Wilderness Refuge.

It's an excellent documentary you can watch for free here that provides a glimpse into this lifestyle and climate. The producers don't hold much back and you learn first hand how to snare and skin a rabbit without using a knife. I really liked Heimo and Edna and felt like I was visiting them with this film. Makes our recent bout with a colder than normal winter look like a day in the park compared to the struggles they've got to go through to get by.

We played hookie Thursday morning to help our movie star neighbor film an audition tape.  I was a bit daunted by the idea of reading lines with him, but was thrilled once I learned I didn't have to be on camera...and found out that we'd get some of his homegrown honey as payment.  I forgot to mention that the beeswax we used to seal over our oyster mushroom plugs also came from this same neighbor, traded for a dozen eggs.  It sure is fun to barter with like-minded souls!

When the camera stopped running, I drooled over our neighbor's Meyer lemon tree.  I posted a picture of it last year, loaded down with over a hundred fruits, and this year the tree felt like it was twice as big.  I hesitate to call it a "dwarf" anymore, although the lemon isn't tall --- just six feet wide.  "My tree is so big, I can't move it outside any more," our neighbor complained.  "That's part of the reason I want to add a room to the house, to give my lemon space to grow.  I feel like I'm married to a tree," the bachelor finished, in mock despair.

"I can take it off your hands if you want," Mark said, ever helpful.  "I'd trade my wife for two of them."

Okay, so Mark only mentioned the part about two trees when I got indignant at only being worth as much as one lemon plant.  Luckily for us both, our neighbor only had the one tree on hand, so we decided to beef up our own lemon tree's existence instead.  Our neighbor attributes a lot of his success to the huge pot his lemon tree is growing in --- it looks to be about ten gallons in capacity.  We'll have to plan on hunting down a couple of mammoth pots to give our citrus room to grow.

I should have given our honeybees credit for more good sense this weekend.  I thought the bees were out scouting the woods for witch-hazel, but now I suspect they were instead out for the first real spring flowers.

Monday, I stumbled across this speedwell blooming in the yard.  Even though it's an alien invasive species, I was pleased as punch --- this blog post had about fifty exclamation marks in it before I toned the punctuation down.

The little blue flowers were closed up from the cold rain, but had clearly been in full bloom over the weekend.  Since blue is one of the honeybees' favorite colors, I think it's highly likely that our workers found the patch and sucked it dry.  No wonder they were so visible on Sunday --- our bees probably found spring's first flowers long before I did.

Did you know that checking on your honeybees in the winter can be dangerous?

I tossed together this video of Friday's events to prove it.

Hey you two...what's your secret to a smooth working team?
George W-Texas
 

Thanks for the question George. It's really hard to pin down just one thing that makes two people work well together. We try to figure out which task is best suited for our skill set. For example. Anna is really good with math, so she is in charge of measuring for this project. I've got a little more upper body strength so I usually do most of the heavy lifting.

Last but not least you should both agree on a time to stop working. A sure way to create extra friction is to have one person thinking it's 10 minutes till the end of the day and the other wanting to push through till sunset. Anna and I usually wind down around 4pm and shift into an evening chore routine.

Last year at this time, the snowdrops were blooming, but this year the ground is hard and chilled.  So I set out on Sunday afternoon to search for spring.

For the first time in weeks, the bees were out on cleansing flights and the nearby wild hazel bushes were close to blooming.  The catkins had elongated and softened, but still no sign of stamens --- not spring yet!


In the forest garden, the comfrey leaves had died back into a brown mulch.  But in the center of each plant, little green tufts of new leaves were poking up.  Spring?


Down at the baby creek, I got captivated by flashing ripples over the clay streambed.  Not spring, but definitely pretty.


Then, at last, I found a flower.  Sure, it's witch-hazel (which can bloom at intervals all winter), but I'm counting it!  February's first flower --- spring!

Are you looking for some more blogs to follow?  I read over fifty, ranging from personal odysseys to nonprofit newsletters, but only a few are so rivetting I want to share them.  These top three blogs are my personal picks based on: posting frequently enough to keep me hooked, mixing personal and informational in a fun proportion, and either being beautiful or well written (or both.)

Causabon's Book is probably the blog I discuss the most at the dinner table.  Sharon Astyk is a Jewish homesteader and peak oil writer who sucks you in with her tales of family life and simple living but adds plenty of meat about how to store your food and prepare for the end of civilization.  Her posts are thought provoking and mirror my own world while also veering off in other directions.  (She used to write over on her personal blog, but is mostly writing at the link above.)

Sugar Mountain Farm is "stories from a small farm in Vermont's mountains raising pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, dogs and kids naturally on pasture."  I started reading because we're contemplating running pigs on pasture some day, but I kept reading because Walter's photos were astounding --- really the best I've seen on any blog.  It's also fun to read about someone running a successful small farm.

Not Exactly Rocket Science is a new favorite, interpreting new scientific discoveries into layman's terms.  This isn't precisely homesteading, but you need to know the science to make it all work!

What are your top three blogs and why?

 

It was a great day to take in some southern Appalachian contemporary art and well worth a trip to the big city on a Saturday. We got drawn to the William King museum to see some big names like Matisse and Picasso, but I think the local collection had more style and flavor. It was curated by Ray Kass, a painter and writer who bi locates between Blacksburg and Manhattan.

Mark read my post this morning and said, "Everyone's going to think that I'm a slacker, sitting back and watching you carry all that plywood in!"  I said, "Of course not!  Everyone knows you were working really hard on another job and that you usually do all the hauling anyhow."  "Hmph," Mark replied.

Clearly Mark was right, since my mom just sent me this email: "Does Mark haul any plywood in?? I love the photos of you,--but, seriously, does he??  What has Mark been doing while you've been dragging?"

I'm going to post more about it tomorrow morning, but Mark was busy doing manly chores in town, talking to mechanics who won't really talk to me and moving forward on the driveway repair project.  I took the photos of myself using the timer function on the camera.  Shame on you all for not thinking that Mark does his share!

To further muddy the waters, here's a picture of the golf cart in the snow a week ago....

 

Another winter day at Wetknee where the snow is taking its sweet time saying goodbye.

 

The home made storage building passed its first heavy snow test...yes, I know, 6 inches doesn't count as heavy for some of you out there, but it was heavy enough to dominate the small talk in both the Dollar store and the Post Office around here during the days leading up to this latest visit by Jack Frost.

Last weekend, Mark had a two day board meeting out of town, which culminated in being towed home since his car wouldn't start.  He descended from the tow truck with his backpack of overnight gear, his laptop, and his wading boots in hand.

But while Mark was gone, warm rains melted a lot of our snow and gushed into the creek in frigid, muddy rivulets.  The creek had risen far past the point where wading boots would do any good.  Luckily, Mark had a backup plan --- scoot across the creek on a handy log.

For future reference, when scooting across a raging creek on a log, it's best to carry as little as possible.  Mark knew the drill, so he paused before embarking to toss his wading boots to the other shore.  Boot number one whizzed through the air and landed on the creekbank.  Boot number two swung aloft and --- thunk! --- hit an arching limb, then --- splash! --- landed in the flood waters.  With a last gulp of air, the boot sank.

Now, you have to understand that those boots are Mark's babies.  He bought them less than a month ago in an attempt to keep his feet dry through the freeze/mud cycle.  So when his boot landed in the flood, Mark went in after it...waist deep in cold, cold water.  But the boot got away, and Mark came home dripping wet and worn out.

Ever since, Lucy and I have been patrolling the creek on our daily walks.  Finally, Wednesday morning, the waters cleared up enough that we could see all the way to the bottom.  And, just fifteen feet downstream, there was our quarry!  We pulled it out and brought it home, triumphant.  Lucy won three dog bones and I won a kiss.  Sure is nice to be the hero.

This was my solution yesterday to the problem of the creek still being a few inches too high.

You still get some water creeping in, but your pants and socks stay dry for a quick trip into town to visit the post office and hardware store.

This video started out as a serious summary of Monday morning's work on the homemade storage building.  Then I sped it up so you wouldn't be sitting around waiting for something to happen.  And suddenly the chipmunk noises made me laugh.

Mark watched it and said something along the lines of, "That's nice, dear."  I think I may just have an odd sense of humor....  Hope at least a few of you get a kick out of it.

My sister has been doing a lot of thinking and writing about the impact of routine in her life, and that got me thinking about my own routines.  The first half hour of my "work day" is always the same --- walking Lucy and then taking care of the chickens.

Although I rarely write about it here, the morning chores are a very important part of the Walden Effect.  They clear my head and give me time to think through any thorny issues that need my attention.

Saturday, I brought the new camcorder along to document my journey.  I hope you enjoy seeing a glimpse of my daily life rather than finding it boring --- if the latter, take heart that the video is less than two minutes long.

The temperatures rose above freezing at last, and the month-old snow began to creep back toward the hill.  The first daffodil leaves peeked through the soil in the sunniest spot, and an amorous cardinal started to sing.

I celebrated by washing our laundry, pumping water down the hill from the thousand gallon tank since our water line is still frozen.  Then I turned off the pump...and water kept right on flowing.  Gotta love capillary action!  Now I know that I only need to use electricity to get the suction started --- after that, water will flow four feet up out of the tank all by itself!

Today was a great day for laughing and celebrating Anna's mom's birthday.

Baking a cake on the farm is always an adventure.  As the culmination of Mark appreciation week, I decided on a rich chocolate cake that called for seven eggs...only to look in the fridge and see a mere four eggs!  So I put on my boots and coat and headed outside in search of three more.

Usually, our nine hens give us more eggs than we can eat, but this abnormal cold spell has frozen the chicken tractors in place and put our hens in a bad mood.  Some days this month, we've only gotten one egg between them.  Would we get lucky today?

I opened the nest box door in the Plymouth Rock's tractor --- one egg.  The young Golden Comets are always good for at least an egg, so I wasn't concerned there --- sure enough, one egg.  But the last tractor has Golden Comets who are finishing up their fourth year of life and are starting to slow down in their laying.  I opened the dryer door and peeked in the last nest box...and breathed a sigh of relief.  One last egg!

Back inside, I melted and beat and mixed.  It was the first day this year that had reached above freezing (even if only by a degree) and the cats were feeling their oats.  Every time the sun came out from behind a cloud, both cats begged to be let out.  Five minutes later, the clouds closed and two chilly cats wanted in.  My routine was a bit like this --- turn on the microwave, let in a cat, stir in the butter, let out a cat, measure the flour, let in a cat.  I think I didn't miss any ingredients (or cats.)

Finally, the cake was ready to hit the oven...except that I couldn't find the second round cake pan.  After a few minutes of looking around the kitchen with a furrowed brow, I realized that I hadn't baked a double layer cake since we stopped watering the bees in a marble-filled cake pan.  Out came the marbles, in went the batter.  Finally, the cake was in the oven and I could relax.  Happy birthday week, Mark!

 

I puzzled over these strange ice formations for several minutes this morning wondering how such a thing could have occured and where the source of water was coming from.

I got my answer when I noticed Anna trying to hold back a serious case of the giggles when I went back in. Turns out she thought it would be nice to break off a couple sticks of ice and implant them as "dragon horns" for the golf cart.

You know when you're a homesteading geek when...

• you go to a party and one of the big attractions is heading down into the basement to check out your host's stored produce...
• ...and all of your friends want to go too so you have to wait your turn.

Check out these homemade shelves spaced apart with log sections.  Very classy!

 

We made it out this afternoon for a wonderful Christmas party that had been rescheduled due to the Blizzard of 09. A big thanks to Steve and Maxine for making such a fantastic chocolate cake and helping to ring in my 41st year with a delicious bang.

 

A new layer of snow and some frigid temperatures kept us working inside today. Brrrrr.

The movie Avatar was a fantastic initiation into the new realm of 3D cinema. Science fiction is the perfect genre for this new technology and Avatar was a non stop ride that remains with you long after the house lights come on. A great way to celebrate the beginning of my 41st year.

We kicked off Mark appreciation week on Thursday with a trip to the big city to see Avatar in 3D.  Even though the story had some flaws, the world building and visuals were so stunning that by the time we stepped back out the door, we were shocked to see snow falling on a dark, cold night.

The roads get dicey fast in the mountains, and it took us about two hours to drive what usually takes 45 minutes.  On the north side of the hills, the snow that knocked out our power three weeks ago is still hanging on, but is now invisible under another layer of white.  Luckily, Mark's an experienced driver and we made it home with no mishaps.

The world has been white and frozen for so long that I feel like I've moved to New England for the winter!

 

I had my 2nd flat tire of the week just as I got yesterday's fixed. The first one was due to a sharp tree root jutting out of the frozen ground and jabbing itself into the side wall, but today's deflation could have been avoided if I'd had an inner tube in the tire, which it now has.

At least we got all the 2x4s shuttled back to our storage building project before this next storm sets in.

 

Happy New Year!

We started 2010 on a level footing by plugging away at our latest storage building project today.

 

We got our 5th visit yesterday from the electric company. I tried appealing to this guy's sense of duty by casually mentioning that we've had four other visits, each ending with a bit of looking around and head scratching at how deep our creek is.

"I didn't come all the way from North Carolina to just look around," he calmly stated. His confidence filled us with with a newfound hope and sure to his word the lines were back up before he headed back home last night.

We spent the morning waiting, trying not to think of all the obstacles that could be keeping the flow of cheap electricity from coming back to our trailer when all of a sudden the hallway light came on and the power outage of 2009 was officially over.

It's good to know we can get by without the grid, but this has been a wake up call for us by pointing out a few areas we can improve upon for a more streamlined approach to off the grid living.

My big brother arrived on Sunday bearing gifts!  He looked just like Santa, walking up the trail with his sack of goodies over his back...except for the way his legs were bare from where he'd stripped down to his underwear to wade through the creek.

Mom and Maggie sent delicious pies and treats and Joey brought a real, live Dutch oven!!!  Then he pulled out yet another package --- Agricola, a great homesteading board game.  The board looks just like the dream farm I drew six years ago, where I allowed myself to pencil in another square of orchard or pasture or creek every time I saved up a thousand bucks for an acre.  We played Agricola twice, then heated up supper in the Dutch oven --- what a luxury!

As a certified non-Christmas-gifter, I feel a bit hypocritical enthusing about my gifts, but they sure made me happy.  Thank you, everybody, for the Christmas treats!

 

We had a visitor from the sky come out this afternoon just before dinner. It seems like this iron bird was inspecting our downed power lines, which gave us hope that we might get our power turned back on before next year.

Someday, we'd like to be off the grid by choice, so we've considered this extended (and still ongoing) power outage as a useful dry run.  It's been very helpful in giving us an idea of infrastructure we need to be adding to the farm, and reminding us which aspects of our electrified lives are really just optional.

Here are the top electricity-free items we've added to our wish list for next year.  Some are to buy, but a lot can probably be made from the parts at hand.

• DC fan to keep the wood stove blowing hot air while the generator's off.  (Daddy suggested that we look into the fans that cool off car engines --- we might be able to get one cheap at a junkyard.)
  
• Alternator setup to get juice out of the golf cart so that we can run low electricity items (like the fan and maybe a router!) for much longer periods.
• Solar charger for the golf cart so that we can fill the golf cart batteries back up.
• Rocket stove (which we might be able to build) and a real Dutch oven for easy cooking.
• A second sub-zero sleeping bag so that we can both stay toasty during short-term emergencies.
• Solar LED lighting.  You'd be amazed at what a difference it makes to have enough light to read by on long, dark, electricity-free nights.  Flashlights have served us well, but we'd really like to take some of those solar yard lights you can get so cheaply in the big box stores nowadays and turn them into indoors lighting with the solar panel outdoors for charging.  Even though our current bulbs are CFLs, I suspect that this would lower our electric bill during our on-the-grid times too.
  

I also need to remember to keep more library books on hand --- I'm starting to run a bit low, which is a pain since the creek has flooded as the snow starts to melt so I can't get to the library.  We would have had a much easier time with water, too, if we'd had the water line completely buried and the big tank all the way full.  Still, all told, I think we've done pretty well so far.

When Mark mailed our week's chicken waterers (made without the benefit of electricity) this week, he overheard a lady in the post office complaining about how difficult the power outage was since she couldn't do her dishes.  I feel so lucky that Mark's ingenuity has enabled us to want for very little during this power outage!

Our driveway snow was close to melting, and this hoe method really worked in helping to break up the icy spots where the Festiva was slipping in the ruts.

Lately when I've been using a hoe I can't help but to think of the original Hobo from where the term came from. Hoe boys were a large group of soldiers from the Civil war who came home to a devastated farm. Most of them started traveling around with their hoes trying to find a place to belong and perhaps a garden to tend to.

This is the image I've had since I heard the short explanation on a radio show, but it seems like nobody is exactly sure where the word came from if you can believe what Wikipedia says about the term.

Despite the phone dying again on Monday night, Tuesday was an outstanding day.  By mid morning, the sun started to poke through the clouds that had kept the sky white for the last three days.  Solar radiation quickly started melting the snow, and it only took a bit of hoeing to work our way out of the driveway.

On the one year anniversary of our marriage, we ended up in the parking lot of the same courthouse...but this time we were poaching wireless.  Our goals for this trip to town were really quite simple --- we wanted to fill up some big jugs of gas so that we could continue to run the generator an hour a day and I wanted to upload all of my past posts (thus the poaching).  While we were out, I figured we should also stock up on some other essentials --- citrus, chocolate, and flashlights.

Back home, we thawed out the top of our wedding cake on the wood stove and ate it along with some chicken cooked in my homemade Dutch oven.  And then two miracles!  First, an electric company employee came wandering through our yard.  He was lost and needed help reaching the road, but the mere fact that he was scouting the downed power line gave us hope (even though he said it may still be a week before we get juice.)  Finally, halfway through our generator hour, I picked up the phone and heard a dial tone.  Internet at home!  Rapture!

You all have been astoundingly patient with my shut-in, run-on blogs.  Now you're up to date!  Starting tomorrow, we'll be posting in real time (and will hopefully have a video to share with you.)  Meanwhile, check out our microbusiness ebook for some Christmas reading.

By Saturday afternoon, the snow was a bit mushy on the bottom layers.  Trees began to shake themselves like wet dogs, tossing off their mantle of wet snow and turning back up to face the sky.  The cracks of falling limbs and trees slowed and finally stopped, and Sunday morning I decided it was time to explore our world.

I borrowed Mark's knee-high over-boots, put on damp jeans over dry fleece pants, and headed out to see what the outside world looked like.  I had to cross the downed power line, which I had skittishly steered clear of for the last day even though it was coated in snow and Lucy, Huckleberry, and a deer had all trotted across with no problems.  This time I was determined, though.  So I tucked Lucy's leash over her back and took a running leap across the white snake of wire hidden under the snow.

Nothing happened.

Lucy, of course, trotted over the wire behind me and waited for me to pick back up her leash.  We trudged down the driveway, past dozens of fallen tree limbs.  Some trees had ripped their whole root masses up out of the wet soil and toppled over, making me laugh that I'd thought a little leaf raking would do any damage to the forest compared to this catastrophe.

The cars were, luckily, branch-free, but the driveway between our parking area and the public road hadn't fared so well.  I counted seven full grown trees toppled across the driveway and when I reached the main road, I knew we would be stuck on the farm for a while.  Two trees had collapsed across the asphalt within sight and the road was unplowed.  I began to suspect that the electric company's estimate of giving us back our power by Sunday was a pipe dream.

Stay tuned for part IV.  Meanwhile, check out our microbusiness ebook.

The trees started splintering before sunset on Friday.  Heavy snow weighed down their limbs and kept falling, heaping up four inches deep.  By dark, the wet snow took down an electric line somewhere, and suddenly the trailer powered down.  Off went the furnace fan, the computers, the fridge.  I called the phone company and was informed that power is off all over the county and that they expect it back on by Sunday at midnight.

The snow kept coming.  When we went to bed, it was already six inches deep, and all night gunshot-like cracks heralded trees crashing down.  I slept fitfully and was out at dawn to assess the damage.

During power outages, I'm constantly expecting a miracle --- the lights will flicker, the fridge will hum, and we'll be powered again.  At first light on Saturday, I discovered that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.  Our powerline was down straight up the floodplain, across the garden, and then up the powerline cut going the other way.  I called my mom to share the excitement, hung up, and then picked the phone back up.  It was dead.

I don't want to overwhelm you with the whole story at once, so stay tuned for part II soon.  Until then, feel free to check out our ebook about starting your own business and quitting your job.

Our power and phone are out, and look like they'll stay out for the near future.  Honestly, the hardest thing for me about life without the grid is an inability to blog.  We've made it to town for a quick check in so that I can upload the masses of posts I've written while off the grid --- I've set them to autopost over the next couple of days so that you'll have something to read while we're out of touch.

Don't feel rejected if your comments don't show up until I return to the internet and if I don't respond to your emails.  We're thinking of you, in between our efforts to stay warm and dry.  Meanwhile, Happy Winter Solstice!  Merry Christmas!  And, if the electric company doesn't bring us back to the mainstream by then, Happy New Year!  Many thanks also to Joey for letting you know we're alive and well.

Can't live without us?  Download our microbusiness ebook and have some fun reading while waiting for us to come back.

Fire.

We now have the exterior wood burning stove operating in the half finished storage building. This must be what it felt like when early cave men figured out that keeping your woman warm equals keeping her happy.

 

           I'll take warm and muddy over cold and frozen any day.

I've always been fond of Boxing Day...even though few people have actually heard of it in the U.S.  In the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the day after Christmas was traditionally a time for people who could afford it to give a box of gifts to their poorer neighbors.  Granted, Boxing Day is now more akin to our Black Friday, but I like the original holiday I read about in British children's books during my formative years.

Until I moved to the farm, I was a bit of a vagrant, moving every year.  The yearly move gave me a great opportunity to go through all of my possessions and cull out items that I really didn't feel like carrying up and down several flights of stairs, donating them to Goodwill.  Now that we've been living on the farm for over three years, lack of a yearly move has led to far too much clutter.

This week, Mark and I started on our own version of Boxing Day.  We each went through our clothes with a fine-tooth comb, culling about half of them to be given away.  The result is immediate gratification --- space!  Next on my "Boxing Day" agenda will be culling my books, the only other items that seem to build up in my living space.

Two and a half inches of rain following a week of frozen ground means flood!

I'm working on my video skills, so hopefully this one will be more entertaining than my previous flood video.

If you hate videos (Mom), here's a photo of a snail I caught climbing a wingstem stalk to escape from the rising waters.  Also, feel free to check out our newest feature --- a link to the week's top three most visited articles at the bottom of the sidebar.  If you go read all three, it's almost like being popular!

It's awfully nice to visit friends and family, but when you live in the middle of nowhere without a tv or neighbors, being in the outside world is a lot like going to Disneyland --- overwhelming.  Once we cross our moat and come home, it takes two warm cats, a heavy snow, and a pot of soup boiling on the stove to return to farm mentality.

 

These are a few pictures from our peaceful trip up north where winter feels just a couple of weeks stronger.

Mark and the farm are training me to be more flexible, to resist my urge to set up trips weeks in advance.  Monday, I took a look at the weather forecast and saw chilly rain all week with nights above freezing.  Cold rain is the absolute worst weather for working outside, and with the warmish nights from the cloud cover we won't have to worry about our chickens' waterers freezing.  Time to head up to Ohio to visit with Marks' family!

I have to admit that my new-found flexibility was due in part to not wanting to do our laundry outside in the rain.  I'm usually pretty hardcore, but now and then I wimp out and look forward to using a real, live washing machine.  Warm water, here we come!

 

Finding a quicker and safer route to take to my Grandmother's house feels like discovering the Northwest Passage of Eastern Kentucky.

Thank you Google maps.

On Friday morning, we hopped out of bed, fed the animals, and jumped in the car for a quick trip to South Carolina to visit my father.  We drove out of the Great Valley, up over the rumpled Blue Ridge Mountains, and then down into the Piedmont.  By the time we reached Daddy's house, I had slipped out of my winter coat and was marveling at the number of leaves still on the trees.

The difference that a bit of mountain elevation makes to the climate is amazing.  Daddy's garden seemed to be a month behind mine, with the basil dead but the last cucumbers and peppers still littering the ground.  We gave him a bucket waterer to keep his chickens hydrated, along with our first homegrown lemon of the year.  In exchange, we loaded up the car with some more wild River Cane starts, some oregano plants (part of my endless search to find the most tasty type), and sage and rosemary cuttings.  The last two are long shots, but I figure if they don't root, I can put them in dinner with no harm done.

Speaking of food, we ate our first Thanksgiving dinner of the year..and our second from the leftovers the next day.  Thanks, Daddy!

 

The word delicious doesn't even begin to describe how wonderful it was to grill up part of Anna's first deer last night.

We've been using these light duty water hoses for about 3 years now and the only disadvantage I can see is the ease at which they tend to kink up.

Lisa Katayama from Boing Boing had an interesting post pointing to the January 1938 issue of Popular Science where they spotlight an Ohio farmer who used a metal mold to form this surreal image of a face onto a pumpkin. Ohio farmers really were ahead of their time when it came to thinking outside of the box.

Richard Twedell is the president of Vegiforms, a company in Ohio that offers a few different plastic molds that might tickle your fancy and satisfy your vegetable sculpting urges. He claims his heart shaped zucchinis sell for 3 bucks to a local restaurant, which could add up to some real money if it caught on as some sort of new holiday trend.

 

This will be our 4th Halloween here on the farm and still no trick or treaters.......it's hard to complain when that equals extra chocolate for us.

...you have a chicken tractor up on blocks in your front yard.

 

There are 2 ways to handle a chicken escape. Scurry around and capture each offender and return him or her to their proper place.... or sit back, take a few pictures, spread a handful of feed in the tractor and wait for your flock to casually return to the roost.

Our second day on shore, we decided to take it easy --- our excursion to Uxmal had both worn us out and drained our wallets.  Instead, we got off the boat on the island of Cozumel and simply explored.  We ran the gauntlet, passing vendors trying to lure us into their booths, taxi-drivers anxious to take us for a ride, and time-share salesmen.

The water was the stunning turquoise you see in photographs and never quite believe and so clear that we could look down from the pier and see fish swimming several feet below.  I was intrigued by the plant life in a vacant lot, full of species I had no way of identifying.  One, though, especially caught my eye --- could that be Mexican Sour Gherkin climbing wildly over a fence?  I was 98% sure the plant was at least a relative, but decided against nibbling on its fruits.

After walking for a couple of hours in the heat, trying to reach an elusive museum, Mark found us an out of the way corner to relax against a replica Mayan statue.  We posed for photos, let a little Mexican rain sprinkle on our heads, then headed back to the ship for a stunning meal and a nap.

(Do you like my sombrero?  Mark and I got matching hats as our one concession to being tourists.  They should be great for weeding the garden next summer.)

We spent three hours at the ancient Mayan city of Uxmal, Mexico, walking through air that dripped with humidity.  There was so much information to soak up that I eventually just took in the landscape instead.  So this post is short on information, but long on pictures.

There are literally dozens of Mayan ruins on the Yucatan Peninsula.  We chose to visit Uxmal because it is the second best.  All of the tourists flock to Chichen Itza, which is reputed to be the very best on the peninsula, with the result that the government had to close off most of the structures to protect them.  At Uxmal, we were able to explore and climb everything except the Magician's pyramid.

The Magician's pyramid was closed off while it was undergoing renovations.  Workers were carefully marking each stone, taking them off, then mortaring them back in place, all while standing on a flimsy scaffold made of tied together saplings.  The human element softened the ruined stone buildings and captured my imagination.

Even more tantilizing were the stone sculptures coating the walls of various buildings.  I love the flat animal sculptures with intricate linear patterns, and it's hard not to like the endless versions of Chaac like the one on the right, with his long hooked nose.  Chaac is the rain god --- I wonder if our visit to Uxmal will bring us yet more rain?

Of course, being who I am, as soon as the tour guide turned me loose I headed in the opposite direction from the rest of the group, toward the woods.  The Yucatan Peninsula is covered with dry, scrub forest due to very thin topsoil over limestone.  Trees were short, and many were legumes --- presumably the poor soil gives trees that can make their own nitrogen an advantage.  Butterflies abounded, as did huge iguanas that had taken up residence in the abandoned rooms all around the ruins.  Swallows soared and chittered, Africanized honeybees gathered pollen in the grass, and Mark and I sat in the shade and lived Uxmal.

After Moundville, we got on the boat for our five day cruise.  I had been concerned that spending so much time at sea might be a bit boring, but instead the experience was so astounding that we'll definitely repeat it soon.  I summed it up in my second editted video --- this one's shorter and tighter than the last one, I promise.

We also learned about two other intriguing Native American crafts at the Moundville festival --- cane baskets and pit-fired pottery.  The lady on the right is splitting a piece of river cane (a native bamboo) in half, then in half again.  Next, she will shave the top off each quarter to make a strong, slender cane perfect for basket-weaving.

River cane used to be ubiquitous throughout the South, and Native Americans put it to good use, turning the canes into baskets, spears, shelters, and much more.  I was inspired by the demonstration to work harder at planting our own mini cane brake where the power line cut creates an opening in our floodplain forest.
Crowds of school children pushed us onward, past the basket-weaver to the pit-fired pottery demonstration.  I took pottery classes in high school and college and loved the feel of mud on my hands, but always found the kiln infrastructure too daunting to try on my own.  Native Americans, of course, used simpler techniques than electric kilns.  Instead, they dug shallow pits about a foot deep, placed pots on a mound in the center, and built a fire around the edges.  The fire starts small, but is slowly allowed to engulf the pots over the course of five to six hours, turning the pots first black then back to clay color.  Again, I resolved to try to mine a bit of the clay along our creekbank and give pit-firing a shot.

Now that we're back on land, it's time to bombard you with pictures and stories of our adventures.  We can't force you all to come over and watch a mind-numbing, three-hour-long slide show, so instead this week's lunchtime series covers the highlights.  This way, rather than falling asleep in the dark, you can just skip our posts if they get too boring.

As we mentioned previously, before hopping on the cruise ship we spent a day at Moundville's Native American Festival, the highlight of which was learning to make fire.  I summed up the fire-making experience in a four minute video --- my first effort at video editing, so please excuse my growing pains.  The expert on the video created an ember out of two pieces of pine, a bow, and a cap stone in less than three minutes.  It didn't quite catch in his tinder due to humid Alabama weather, but the concept is extraordinarily well explained.  Watch and learn!

Our tour of Uxmal in the Yucatan of Mexico was one of the highlights of the cruise. We had an awesome tour guide by the name of Armando Chan who was part Mayan. His words really added a nice element to our understanding of this amazing culture.

The atmosphere of history is fascinating and we decided 3 hours was just not enough time to explore such a mystical place. Maybe we can plan for an extended adventure at Uxmal for our next Yucatan excursion?

In doing a little research on the ship we sailed on I discovered it was one of three ships contracted by FEMA after hurricane Katrina to provide housing for relief workers and victims of the storm.

Politicians from both parties criticized the deal due to the ships not being fully utilized, but with a little hind sight it seems like it was a quick decision in the face of a disaster that didn't quite work out as planned.

I like the idea of relief workers having a comfortable place to recharge after a long day or night of helping people as they try to put various pieces back together. Maybe the government should consider designing a ship with this purpose in mind?

 

Sailing on the cruise ship Holiday is considered the lower end of the cruise industry, and our expedition was one of its last voyages before it gets retired next month.

It's hard to believe this level of luxury is considered out of date. We had a stellar time aboard the Holiday and have managed to sum it all up with a couple of videos and some pictures for next week's lunch time series.

We're home, safe and sound!  Two purring cats, an ecstatic dog, three tractors of happy chickens.  Deer damage in the garden --- I will consider it a tithe to the earth for our stunning cruise adventure.  Plenty of orders for our homemade chicken waterer --- yay!  The earth smells of damp leaves and the creek is middlin' high.

We'll be more talkative later.  For now, I'm just glad to be home!

I've always said a cat would be worth its weight in gold if it could pull weeds out of the garden.

I guess the next best thing is to have your cat keep you company while you get the job done yourself.

During the last frantic day before our wedding celebration, I noticed a monarch licking the handles of our iced tea jugs.  One of the butterfly's wings was slightly crumpled, and I guessed that the insect was having trouble making the long journey to its wintering grounds in central Mexico.  Even though I believe that nature picks off wounded animals for a reason, I had to carry the monarch over to the sunflowers, where it began feeding greedily.

Since we're currently cruising toward Mexico at this moment while my brother watches the farm, I thought this monarch was an apt symbol of this week's mini-adventure.  Despite being a homebody, I've always dreamed of traveling.  Nine years ago, I did --- setting off with a backpack full of camping supplies and sketchbooks for a year-long expedition through Great Britain, Australia, and Costa Rica.

In the end, what I remember most from that journey was the homecoming.  How American grocery stores seemed huge and slighly obscene.  How the dozens of boxes of books and clothes I'd stored in my mother's basement seemed even more obscene --- what did I need with so many possessions?

In a way, that trip was the beginning of my path toward simplicity.  Slipping outside my own world, I saw myself in a completely new way.  What insight will this adventure bring?

Eight hundred years ago, Moundville, Alabama, was the home of a city of 10,000 people.  Once a year, a thousand of their descendants and random tourists descend on the mounds for a day of fun and edification.  Mark and I were thrilled to discover that the Native American Festival was being held the day before our cruise ship departed, and was nearly on our way.  The stars were aligned to bring us to another Native American mound.

While our visit to Moundville wasn't the same soul-bending experience as our trip to Serpent Mound, we still ended up rivetted.  The mounds themselves were amazing --- a dozen "small" ones and one sixty feet tall, the last of which we were allowed to climb.  But what really captured my attention was the educational booths set up for the festival.  I learned so much about Native American crafts that I'll have to turn it into a lunchtime series --- fire making, river cane baskets, pit-fired pottery!  Then there was the semi-authentic Native American food, an actual archaeological dig, and an astonishing number of vendors whose crafts should have been in a museum.  Despite hundreds of screaming kids, we stayed until the Alabama heat sent us scurrying for cover.  If you're ever close to Alabama in October, I highly recommend that you drop by the festival!