What I've Been Up To: January

Hiking at Cuivre River State Park on a freakishly warm day

 This has been the month of both change and stagnation, a month of breathing easier and mastering myself and feeling depressed and letting myself go. Winter is a tough season for me because it feels claustrophobic— no amount of getting outside helps with that (incidentally, this is how I feel in the middle of summer, too)— and the feeling is intensified by the pandemic. But despite this, I've been finding joy in leaning into my everyday life, cleaning and decluttering my physical space, and reading good books. And let me just say, having a president who actually 1) believes in climate change and 2) is actually doing something about it is enough to make me feel like I've dropped into some sort of alternate reality. And yet in the middle of that sensation, I feel the gap between what's being done and what needs to be done, the social justice that still needs to happen, the systems that need to be remade, and I don't celebrate long. But still, the weight of being actively sabotaged at every turn is lifted, and I feel flickerings of hope that society can make some headway.

And maybe so can I. 

Homestead Update 5/13/20: Wave After Wave of Foliage

The April-to-May transition is one of the most stunning in St. Louis. Despite unseasonably cool weather (including two frost warnings), the garden, in the words of farmer and poet Wendell Berry, ‘Like a tide it comes in/wave after wave of foliage and fruit/the nurtured and the wild". 

Homestead Update February 2020: Maple Syrup, Seeds, and More Swapping

Another little interlude for a long-overdue Homestead Update! Here's what we've been up to lately…

Things We Learned Whilst Attempting to Make Maple Syrup: 

1. Tapping trees is super easy. It's a lot of fun to see the sap running out through the spile into the bucket!

2. But then comes the part where you have to reduce it by 40 times to make the syrup.

3. This cannot be done successfully over a campfire with a stock pot.

4. It cannot be done inside in one go because the vapor will increase the humidity in your house too much.

5. So we had to do it a tiny bit at a time, over campfires, with our rocket stove, in an open crockpot, and finally on the stove. It took for-ev-er.

6. This is on our "do not try again unless you have a better set-up" list until further notice.

7. However, we still got a lot of syrup! We thought we had half a gallon, but it's very thin so we'll have to reduce it again. But it has a complex flavor and was very tasty on buckwheat pancakes. 

Planting spring seeds

This year I swore that I would not fuss with spring crops, as I have have very little luck with them in the past due to St. Louis's weather pattern of nightly frosts, a week of "spring," and then 95 degrees from April until November. But I also had a ton of seeds picked up from the seed swap, as well as leftovers from our attempts to grow spring crops last year in Portland (they failed there, too). So on a warm day, I emptied all the seed packets into a single bowl, mixed them around, raked some soil in the back yard and front yard, and sowed the seeds, raked them in, watered them, sprinkled them with some fertilizer, and called it a day. We'll see if any of them grow!

Planting summer seeds

We also got some tomato and pepper seeds set up in the basement, on top of heating pads and underneath grow lights. Some of the tomatoes and one pepper just started sprouting last night! 

We were originally going to have a couple more varieties of tomatoes, as well as tomatillos, but the post office has continued to refuse to believe that we live here, and has sent our package from Baker Creek Seeds on a marvelous adventure to who knows where (this is the third time we've contacted them to confirm that we actually do live here). I was pretty bummed about that, but am trying to remind myself that we can buy seedlings in May when planting time comes.

Another swap n' shop

Following on the heels of the previous swap n' shop, another one, this time at my church! About 15 people showed up and filled up seven tables full of fun stuff. I came home with a dart board, some candles, a nice glass storage jar, and a ton of home goods for a friend who is currently furnishing her house. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and we've agreed that we should do this quarterly! Most people had never heard of this idea before, so I was happy that I got to share the fun (as well as the household goods).

One last sunchoke harvest

On a warm day, we put on some gardening gloves and harvested the remaining sunchoke tubers! We got two five-gallon buckets for eating, and at least that many for replanting and giving away. Sorting through the soil in search of tubers feels like a treasure hunt! 

I'm excited that spring is coming and that we'll get to see a gardening season (more or less) all the way through this year. Here's to the 2020 season!

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This Month: Swapping, Skillsharing, and Sunchokes

Celebrating Imbolc by hiking on an obscenely-warm February 2nd in my cute new thrift-shop dress: it haaaass pockets!

January began quietly, and quickly snowballed into a very full schedule… but it was all good stuff, so I'm coming into February energized instead of drained, which is a wonderful feeling.

A few notable things from January…

Two swap meets

I hosted a "Swap n' Shop" party at my house, and had a lot of fun giving away stuff I no longer needed and picking up a few items in return! (Most notable: a copper candle holder and a book titled "How to Stay Alive in the Woods.") The next day I attended a seed swap hosted by StL Seeding Frenzy, and in return for a bag of sunchokes, some kale seeds, and other miscellaneous seeds I'd saved, I now have packets of seeds for tomatoes, peppers, turnips, radishes, Italian dandelion, wormwood, marigolds, cosmos, heirloom melons, and more! 

As if that weren't enough swapping, I'm also co-organizing a swap meet with my church later on in February! My local friends will get more details about that soon.

Skillsharing classes

Zach and I co-taught two different classes in January: one about sauerkraut, and one about milk kefir, water kefir, and kombucha. We had a ton of fun hanging out with friends, discussing ferments, and poking at blobs of symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast! Moments like this remind me how much I love teaching. (I mean, yes, I teach for a living, but teaching online isn't the same.) It's my goal to offer about two in-home classes a month this year, and hoping I can stick to it.

Sunchoke bread! 

As mentioned in a previous post, I did in fact dig up sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) from our backyard, scrub and clean them, blend them into a slurry with water, dehydrate them, then grind them into flour in a blender. We made our usual whole wheat bread, but substituting 10% of the flour with sunchoke flour. The result is a complexly-flavored loaf that was slightly denser than usual (I think I'll add some white flour next time for extra gluten in hopes of getting it to rise a bit more): overall, a success! It was a ton of work, but I'm proud of it.

The sunchoke slurry after I dehydrated it

I used the blender to blend it into flour. Here it is on top of the whole-wheat flour for bread-baking

Loaves ready to go into the oven! Of course I forgot to take a photo after
they came out of the oven, and now both loaves are eaten. #badblogger

My first "zero-waste" grocery shopping

Because of our linear economy (materials become goods become waste), living with "zero" waste is literally impossible. However, I use the term because it's become mainstream enough that it's the name of a movement of people trying to create less waste in their lives. So I finally did one of the basic ideas of zero waste: brought my own containers to a local grocery store (Local Harvest in Tower Grove), had them tare the containers, and then filled up from the bulk section. It was a bit more time-consuming than usual, and I didn't get much since I was schlepping it all home on a bus and a mile-long walk from the bus stop, but it felt good to be able to support a local grocery and bring my own containers.

Some notes on this: I would never drive all the way across town to Tower Grove just to buy groceries; the fuel I would burn (even in an electric car) would not be justified, in my opinion. But, my best friend now lives right by the grocery store, and I will justify burning fossil fuel to see her. So I get the grocery store thrown in for free!

Eco anxiety, eco action

Mid-winter is always a tough spot for me to get through, and this year a lot of my feeling bad centered around eco anxiety, as I wrote about in this blog post. I was heartened and encouraged by several responses to that post, ranging from simple sympathy to a detailed analysis of community psychology as it relates to environmentalism.

Now that the days are lengthening and Celtic spring has begun with Imbolc on February 2nd (their seasons line up with St. Louis's far better than the North American seasons, anyway), I can look back at January and see the things I've managed to set in motion to help me keep fighting for the planet even when I feel exhausted or discouraged. I'm finding ways to share what I've learned, whether that's waxing eloquent about sauerkraut or putting together an upcoming blog post about how to make more ethical buying choices with grocery store meat. I have a lot of goals and plans for the rest of 2020, and I'm excited to see how many of them I can reach.

What have you been up to this month?

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My New Year's Habits and Goals, 2020

"How do you eat a tree?" "One bite at a time."
I take inspiration from the beavers who are terraforming the landscape on Bangert Island.
They know how to break down a goal into bite-sized pieces!

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind: between extended family and siblings visiting from all corners of the U.S., helping a friend clean and paint her new house, and generally celebrating Christmas for all its twelve days and beyond, I have been spending a lot of time away from home, and a lot of time with other people. It's been fun, but exhausting. Fortunately, the past couple days have given me a chance to slow down, get my bearings, and prepare for starting up my online teaching semester on Thursday.

The past few years I haven't been making resolutions but "intentions," but this year I realized that I had several specific habits and skills I wanted to cultivate. So, for the sake of accountability, here are my 2020 New Year's Habits and Goals, and how I'm working on them so far.

DAILY HABITS:

• Every time you think about it, do a plank. Many people are surprised to learn that I hate exercising. Sure, I will gladly hoe a field for eight hours straight or climb a 12,000-foot mountain carrying a 40-pound backpack… but standing in my house lifting weights or even doing stretches makes me want to cry. Since the only activities I consistently do are walking and biking (and a three-minute series of stretches that I have a remarkable ability to forget about), I have very weak core and arm strength. So I promised myself that every time I have a moment, I will do a plank (it's like a push-up but without the "push" and "up" parts— my arms aren't even strong enough to do a woman's push-up). It can be for five seconds or a minute, I just have to do it. (Yes, I did pause in writing this post to do a plank.) If I do that enough times, I will have something resembling core and arm strength, no crying required! 

So far I haven't been doing it as much as I should, but I'm going to post more reminders around the house to keep me on track.

• Check Facebook and Instagram just once a day. I had slipped back into the habit of checking both of these multiple times a day, but I've committed to spending time on them with intention, rather than scrolling through my feed whenever I need a mental break. Since I have a lot of tasks to do on Facebook (such as managing my card company and writing various people), I make a running list of stuff I need to do on the site so I don't forget and have to come back. 

It turns out that when you stay off your two biggest time wasters, you have a lot more time in the day! I've been keeping some light reading around (such as Mother Earth News magazine and an illustrated volume about herbs) and trying to turn to that (or actual blogs with content I want to read) whenever I feel the need for a mental rest in between tasks.

• Consistently track monthly expenses. Since Zach and I live so far beneath our means, we've often gotten lazy about keeping track of what we actually spend in a month. Since November, I've been itemizing our receipts, and that's a habit I intend to keep up all year. So far we have yet to tabulate all the expenses, but at least I'm keeping track! I'll post an update about this soon. 

• Avoid eating for the first few hours of being awake. Because of Zach's work schedule we usually eat dinner at 8:30pm or even 9:00, and I began to notice that giving my stomach a solid 13 or 14 hours between dinner and breakfast made me feel more alert, more energetic, and actually less hungry. Having more free time right when I first wake up also gives me motivation to work on tasks that would normally be overridden by breakfast (like writing this post!). This eating rhythm certainly isn't for everyone, but it's a reminder to listen to what your body is telling you rather than following some prescribed formula. 

• Avoid buying industrial animal products of any kind, not just meat. For the past few years, Zach and I have committed to (mostly) avoiding meat that was raised in inhumane conditions (you can read more about that here and here). However, a lot of animals products that are just as bad or worse have slipped under the radar: industrial dairy products that are difficult to find organic, such as sour cream and cream cheese, and foods that contain eggs and dairy, such as Little Caesar's pizza. I've known for ages that buying industrial dairy is just as bad as buying industrial meat, but I clung to my old ways because, well, I'm addicted to Parmesan. But that's not a valid excuse, so back in November I announced to Zach that I wanted to take the plunge and try to avoid buying any animal products unless they were raised ethically. 

It turns out that this is manageable when you're buying food for yourself and cooking at home, but gets tricky when you're out and about, or buying food with other people, or deciding what to accept and what to refuse from people buying you stuff. As I said, I've been away from home a lot, and often have split buying groceries or takeout with people. I did the best I could, and I tried to quell my anxiety about it, but it will certainly be easier now that I'm home again and calling my own shots on what to purchase. It's a learning experience!

One of the best parts of this resolution has been finding all sorts of substitutes for the animal products that I once used— usually ones that are cheaper than the original! I'll be writing a blog post about this soon.

GENERAL GOALS:

• Teach workshops to share knowledge. Sometimes I look at myself from five or even two years ago and marvel at the insane amount of stuff I've learned since then! Although I've blogged a lot about my learning experiences, this year I wanted to commit to passing on that knowledge in a more hands-on way. So far I've taught two classes in my home, both about making sauerkraut, and both were a blast! It was a joy to be able to pass on this hands-on knowledge to people who were eager to learn. Zach and I are teaching a class about water kefir, milk kefir, and kombucha at the end of the month, and I'm planning to schedule at least one class (hopefully more!) every month. 

• Learn herbalism (and grow more herbs!). I've dabbled in learning about herbs, but I decided to deep-dive into this subject after an experience back in October. I was having menstrual cramps, and I thought, "Man, I'm out of raspberry leaf tea," my typical remedy. Then I looked out my window and realized that I literally had raspberry plants in the backyard! I gathered a few, along with some peppermint to lift my mood, brewed myself a cup of tea, and immediately felt relief. I thought, "What if I could go to my backyard for headaches or stomachaches or a sore throat? I should learn herbalism!"

I know how I learn best, and it always begins with a trip to the library to clear out their herbalism section. My favorite so far has been The Backyard Herbal Apothecary by Devon Young because it focuses specifically on what you can grow and forage. I already have a huge wish list of herbs to plant in the garden this year!

• Start a food-sharing network. This year, I'm determined to garden in community. That way, when I get a bumper crop of cucumbers, I will actually know what to do with them! Several neighbors have already expressed interest, and I'm brainstorming what this kind of network could look like. Stay tuned!

~~~

This Week: Christmas Traditions, Sickness, and Landmark Lasagna

Mikko is always excited to visit Santa!

As all my friends know, December is always my busiest time of year: finishing up the teaching semester while entertaining thousands of people on weekends, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My delightful friend Mikko the Scandinavian Elf is appearing for her 12th season (and my 14th) of St. Charles Christmas Traditions, and she is crazy and hyper as ever! Our cast and crew this year are truly amazing, and even though the work is physically exhausting, my heart feels full after spending a day with these beautiful people. If you're in the area, please come down and visit! (Check out the link here.) 

Other random stuff we've been up to:

Getting sick. I have gotten sick not once but twice lately, possibly due to the aforementioned interacting with thousands of people every weekend. I've been sipping bone broth, chugging cold-kicker remedy (apple cider vinegar infused for a month with garlic, onion, horseradish, cayenne, sage, rosemary, and turmeric), and getting lots of rest, which has helped… but my body is definitely telling me that I need to wash my hands more and build my immunity better.

Making this lasagna. I went on a clean-out-the-freezer kick and unearthed some nettle we'd foraged and tomato sauce we'd grown in 2018, and it was begging to be made into a lasagna. So I made foraged-nettle béchamel sauce, homegrown-tomato sauce, and from-scratch noodles, and baked it together. I was so ridiculously happy about all that this lasagna signified: I have learned so much in the past couple years! This was a very tasty way to celebrate my progress.

Christmas sale for my cards! A few of my card sets are on sale at my Single Candle Card Productions shop— please click on the link to check them out!  I was happy with the way these chickadees turned out, since they are one of my favorite birds.

Also, our housemate Eddie being cute: You're welcome.

~~~

This Week (Leaves and Snow, Water Kefir, and Pasta)

(Well, past couple weeks— but who's counting?)

Anniversary trip

Zach and I have been married seven years now, which kind of boggles my mind! We took a mini road trip (in our electric car!) which involved hiking during peak leaf season as well as visiting Cahokia Mounds, the largest ancient earthenworks in North America (I'd only visited once when I was a kid, and was not impressed— coming here as an adult, I was completely blown away!).

Pere Marquette State Park

Monk's Mound at Cahokia

View from Monk's Mound: see the St. Louis skyline in the distance?

Dismantling the compost pile

After two years of "cooking," our compost pile was ready to be taken apart so we could get some of the goodness inside. We pulled apart the pallets, raked off the woody stuff, and excavated more than a cubic yard of beautiful black soil! We hauled this to our front yard and covered half of it with a new layer of compost, into which we seeded some winter rye. The rye didn't get a chance to sprout, though, because sub-freezing nights and then an inch of snow hit soon afterward— crazy weather for this time of year! (We also harvested like three sunchoke plants and already had more tubers than we knew what to do with.)

Zach trimming our 15-foot-tall sunchokes

Getting started on the front yard!

First sunchoke haul of the year

Sunchokes pickling (bottom right) next to some daikon and carrot (bottom left), and sauerkraut and pickled beets up top

Water kefir

We got a new fermented pet— water kefir, which is a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) that feeds on sugar water, and with some care can produce a sweet carbonated drink. I'll write a more detailed post on it later, but suffice it to say that it tastes like soda with a fraction of the sugar, so Zach is very happy to be working with it!

The "grains" we got in the mail

Homemade pasta and experimental lentils

I'd been wanting to try pasta-making for quite a while, and in the past couple weeks I've tried it out three different times, with success! My favorite recipe is this one because it doesn't require eggs (meaning I'm more likely to have the ingredients on hand to make it), although I used an egg-noodle recipe to make pierogis. Other kitchen adventures included lentil burgers and lentil loaf (like meatloaf), both of which turned out pretty well. We have a ton of lentils in our pantry for some reason, so I'm looking for ways to use them up!

What have you been up to this week?

 

Pierogis: mashed potatoes, cheese and sauerkraut tucked into a pasta wrapper and boiled, then fried in butter. YUM.
(May I also draw your attention to that delicious red-cabbage-apple-beet-ginger sauerkraut. Also yum.)

Lentil loaf with sweet chile sauce, quinoa, and sauerkraut

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This Month: Coming Home, Little Adventures, and Seeking a New Normal

Mist on the Missouri River

We've been back in the Midwest for over a month now, and I still don't know what life is supposed to look like. Zach is back to Walmart (in online grocery pick-up), I just finished the Legends and Lanterns Halloween festival, and we are both working a lot and trying to catch up with friends and struggling to find equilibrium and direction in our new life back home. It wasn't the roughest transition in the world, but it's been long, very long. 

My instinct is always to rush myself, to get my life together right now, but I'm pushing back against that and trying to take things in bite-sized moments. One step at a time, we're trying to figure out what we want, and what we should do, and what "normal" means in this phase of our life.

Here are some bite-sized bits of what we've been up to lately…

New housemates!

The biggest news is that we have housemates now! Lydia, who's been my friend since high school, lived in and took care of our house over the summer, and it worked out best for everyone for her to continue living here while we moved back in. Our other housemate is Lydia's adorable cat, Eddie— he is one of the friendliest cats I have ever met, not even trying to pretend that he doesn't adore us and want to be around us all the time. All the benefits of a cat without any of the responsibility!

New car!

The other big news is that our old car (a 1993 Oldsmobile) finally gave up the ghost, and we decided that it wasn't worth repairing yet again. After some serious discussion and consideration, we decided to buy a very new car— a fully electric one. We are now driving a Chevy Spark EV, which has a range of about 80 miles and we plug into a regular outlet at our house. I'm going to write a whole post about why we chose an EV, so if you're intrigued, stay tuned. (UPDATE: Here it is!)

Legends and Lanterns

As I mentioned, I just finished the St. Charles Halloween festival. Other than a single day of rain, the whole festival had absolutely perfect weather, and we enjoyed large crowds come to celebrate the spookiness! My favorite part of the festival are the regulars who come weekend after weekend— they are welcomed, included, teased mercilessly, and find a place where they truly belong. 

Baba Yaga, the most famous witch of Slavic folklore

A Weird Sister from Macbeth, Baba Yaga, and a Victorian mourner

Making music videos

Our friends Tyler and Adrienne were in town, and we got the chance to film footage for upcoming music videos for our band, Insomniac Folklore. This involved spooky lighting effects, vintage white gunnysack dresses, smearing fake blood on each other's faces, and trying reeaaaally hard not to get blood on the aforementioned vintage dresses! I was so glad for the chance to sing and perform with them a bit before they head back to Oregon. Although the videos aren't up and won't be for a while, you can still check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/InsomniacFolklore

Taming the garden

It's no secret that our garden is a jungle, and unfortunately we haven't worked on it as much as we've wanted to. I'll post a proper garden update soon, but in the meantime, just know that we've harvested a respectable amount of food with very little effort— raspberries, strawberries, figs, elderberries, volunteer tomatoes, amaranth, daikon radish, some sunchokes (we have a whole forest of them to harvest after the frost), and, of course, ridiculous amounts of kale!

Fermenting adventures

Zach and I are committed to having more live food in our diet, and have gotten some fun ferments going. We've been eating sauerkraut every day, and soon we'll have some red sauerkraut (made with red cabbage, beets, and apples) and some pickled beets to try! Zach has also been brewing kombucha, and, as always, we have our milk kefir and sourdough. Next up: water kefir!

Soft focus on the pickled beets!

Foraging

It's wonderful how many things there are to forage this time of year! We haven't had a huge yield of anything yet, but we're learning a ton, and have so far foraged pawpaw, gingko nuts, and sumac. I'm going to write a whole blog post about this later.

Hiking

We've been able to do a bit of hiking— at the Lewis and Clark Trail in Weldon Spring and at Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois— to reconnect to the flora and fauna of the Midwest. Autumn is my favorite season, and I'm so glad that we've gotten to see the leaves turn from the very beginning.

Views from Pere Marquette State Park

Reading:

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse (Update: After reading reviews from Diné (Navajo) critics, I can no longer recommend this book. Roanhorse is a member of a different nation than the one she wrote about, and appropriated sacred religious figures in a way that the Diné reviewers found harmful. You can read more here.)

The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz (A deeply thought-provoking book discussing the Enneagram personality lens and how it affects our spirituality as Christians.)

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (A gut-wrenching novel about one Syrian couple's journey to England as refugees. I felt really depressed after reading it, but it was an amazing book that reminds us of what refugees must go through to reach safety.)

Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin (Almost through my third reading of this book. I love it so much!)

What have you been up to lately?

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