Eat local. Live seasonal.

A vegan who shops at the grocery store causes more environmental unrest than an omnivore who shops at the local farmers market.

There are a lot of fabulous people out there who are thinking about what they eat, and taking on this task can be a huge challenge! When I first became more conscious about my food, I became vegetarian and ate NO meat at all for NINE YEARS! That’s a long time to me, since I’m only 25. It was an eye opening experience for me and I went all out, really.

After 5 years or so, it finally became apparent that there is massive environmental corruption and slavery happening to PLANTS, not just animals. This realization took me to farms and communities where I lived and worked for the food on my plate. But I still looked at those big, beautiful eyes on a cow or the cute little chicken butts and I just wanted to cuddle them. Who could eat something so full of life??

Plants are full of life too though!!! I finally realized it when I was traveling recently. Everything on this planet, everything in the UNIVERSE is totally and COMPLETELY CONNECTED! We all need eachother. We all work together and effect one another! Every rock. Every tree. Every carrot. Every goat. Every human. We are all one.

We are creatures of this earth, humans on this earth, who should use and eat what is given to us by our surrounding environment. In the wintertime when the skies are bleak and the ground is covered in a layer of snow, fresh produce is scarce. This is when I begin eating canned and fermented produce, plus more meat! Animals live through the winter and they are readily available at local farms and farmers markets. It seems only right to eat animals when that is what nature is offering to me. I take what is given to me and I am ever so delighted and grateful to receive!

Eat local. Live Seasonal.

Let’s Change the World in 2013

For the past few years of my life I have had the gift of travelling to many different states and meeting some totally super amazing people! It is eye opening to stay at farms across the country that are taking their life and their livelihood into their own hands in a way that is totally respectful and harmonious with Mother Earth. The world is changing! People are lighting up from the inside out and truly considering the power of their thoughts and actions in their world! It’s a beautiful thing.

The New Year is a ritual for many, a celebration of life lessons, growth, and a chance to make things even better in the coming year. To celebrate, over the past week I have been working on a 2013 Incredible Life and Business Workbook. I rejoice in the lessons I have learned this year, the new skills that I have been taught, the beautiful experiences I have had… and I dream a BIG DREAM of the year to come. A year of greatness and gratitude, a year of respect and fulfillment, a year of being the best I can be and treating my world with perfect harmony!

Peace & Harmony

A list of wonderful things I will achieve this year –

• I will do yoga for at least 15 minutes a day.
• Practice meditation
• Finish school and become a certified Doctor of Naturopathy!
• Eat greens and a fermented food daily.
• Grow a beautiful community garden.
• Mobilize the local food movement in Branson & Springfield
• Turn my small business into a money making success, with love and sustainability at it’s core.
• Drink tea daily.
• Release judgement.

I feel it is far more powerful to think of what you WILL DO, instead of what you don’t want to do… You are all amazing, beautiful, talented gods and goddesses so go forth into the world and be the best that you can be!!!

Naturally Prepare Your Spring Garden This Fall

Get a head start on your Spring garden by preparing great soil now! For many plants and animals, the winter is a time for rest and rejuvenation, but there is lots of action happening under ground even beneath a blanket of snow.

Let’s think for a moment about the way a forest functions naturally… In the fall, Oak leaves on Oak trees begin turning beautiful red and orange colors and the acorns drop off. Squirrels and other little forest friends will come along and pick up many of the acorns, but those that don’t get picked up will accumulate and rest under piles of leaves and sticks. The Oak seeds are planted. In the Spring they have the possibility of sprouting and turning into Oak trees themselves! The preparation was done in the fall and the results can be seen in the Spring and in years to come.

the forest floor

The first thing you can do to prepare your garden now is create compost. Take your leftover plant debris from last season and throw it in your compost heap. Need some composting help? http://blog.ecoetsy.com/2012/10/food-gardening-fall-composting-tips/html

Instead of digging and tilling which breaks up and destroys the structure and habitat of soil, try adding organic matter to the surface and let it rest until the Spring as nature intended. People who practice permaculture, a lifestyle of natural gardening, call this sheet mulching. Others call it lasagna gardening. It’s a very simple practice and in my opinion is way more fun than digging and tilling!

Sheet Mulching –

The possibilities are plentiful and abundant when it comes to sheet mulching. Most recently, I have been working on building an organic garden on a 1/4 acre of grass lawn. I have a vision for the whole thing to be covered with an edible food forest, and to accomplish this I have been smothering out the grass using supplies that are free and available locally.

Don’t be scared to use what you have and be open to any new ideas because they might work out perfectly! I started off by collecting cardboard from the restaurant my dad works at. We took off the tape, broke them down, and laid them out flat. Then we collected piles of leaves and covered the cardboard with that.

On top of the leaves, we added coffee grounds, manure, dirt, and wood chip mulch. Go into your local coffee shops (like Starbucks) and ask them for their spent, or used, coffee grounds. More info on coffee grounds in the garden – http://groundtoground.org/ For free manure, try searching craigslist.org for “manure” and you may be surprised at how many farmers give away livestock waste free of charge.

lasagna garden

In my first sheet mulch / lasagna garden I used newspaper, hay, and manure and it turned out super rich. We grew abundant broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, bell peppers, basil, green onions, and a few other herbs. It was fantastic!

It’s wonderful to add soil enriching extras to your fall garden preparation. Scatter some seaweed or kelp powder, bone meal, compost, and anything else you like and may have experience with. I like to use perlite for moisture retention and because I got it in bulk from a guy on Craigslist which leads me back to…

Use local supplies!

I have grown food in California, Texas, Oregon, Washington, and Missouri and no matter where I go, there are so many amazing resources. The possibilities are endless!

 

How to Save Seeds – Seeds are MAGIC!

Fall is in full swing here in Branson, Missouri. The frosts have come, the tomato plants have withered, carrots are ready to come up, and the most exciting part for me…everything is going to seed!! To me, it’s like everyone around is having lots and lots of babies! It’s absolutely incredible how many seeds are in one tomato, one pepper, one marigold bud. Total magic! If you have never saved seeds, I highly recommend trying it. Here you will learn bit about what goes into saving them – it’s a cinch, really! And it will save you money $$$.

Mexican Marigolds holding seeds inside.

Last year we had 4 marigold plants in our garden. I don’t even know where they came from. We let them go to seed and they all fell on the ground and just sat until the spring.. and then we had probably 300 plants come up! I spent lots of time thinning them, fertilizing with bone meal, manure, and lots of love and we probably ended up with about 50 full, wonderful plants.

ABUNDANCE

A marigold flower sprouts out of the bud, stays open for a while, then it curls up, works on producing it’s seeds, turns grey/brown, and then starts to droop… pick em before they fall, pick em off the ground, or just let them lay on the ground til Spring and you’ll have tons of little plants in the Spring! I did a little math… cuz I’m a bit of a math nerd. Every flower bud that I counted had between 40 and 60 seeds inside. Most plants had about 100-200 flowers. From 200 plants I could get ONE MILLION seeds! Magic, I’m telling you.

Morning Glory bud holding seeds inside.

So here’s my method-

• Get to know the plants and what the seeds look like.. by letting it go to seed.
• Pick off the buds, fruits, or whatever contains the seed and
• If it is dry, it’s ready and you can store it in a cool, dry place.
• If it is something wet (tomatoes) then squish it in a jar, let it sit a few days, then rinse the seeds, let them dry, and store in a cool dry place.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Some seeds are super easy and some are harder to germinate.. but the process is usually similar. There are many seed saving resources to look into and much to learn. I’m only a beginner and I have so much fun with it! Next year I’ll be planting homegrown pumpkin, zucchini, marigold, morning glory, gourd, and bean seeds!

Hurricane Sandy – Love and Positive Thoughts

Hurricane Sandy is a totally huge superstorm that is just going nuts on the east coast of North America. I have looked at some photos of the storm from satellites and it’s just incredible how huge this girl is! I am fascinated by the weather.

I send much love and safe thoughts to all those people living in the storm’s path. I hope you all find safety and well being wherever you end up. To the storm, I also send my love and positive thoughts. To me, this is a way for Mother Earth to cleanse some of the toxins we have dumped all over her. The water cycle is a powerful source of cleansing out the bad and rejuvenating the good. It is great for the ocean, the lakes and rivers, streams and creeks, and the ground and atmosphere too. The water is beautiful and amazing.

Positive thoughts are so powerful. We create our own destiny with the power of thought. We have the power to create a loving, beautiful environment or a hostile, hateful environment. I create beauty and love. 🙂

Homage to Spring and Summer

Last night there was a freezing freeze, and many of our plants have wilted and withered away. So today I picked all of our tomatillos and many Reisentraube tomatoes. Still much to do to catch up on the Fall / Winter prep here at our apartment complex. Yes, we have a wonderful garden here where I live in Branson that I am super grateful to be a part of! I started it a couple of years ago when I came to visit my parents and since then it has grown more and more every year. I now also have this wonderful opportunity at JoAnna’s house / the community garden! 🙂 Life is beautiful.

Huge bean plants!

These bean plants grew super huge and covered our bedroom window! It was pretty cool, blocked out the hot summer sun. I learned a lot from them. Next year I will set up a trellis much differently and give each plant more room to grow. I planted FIVE of them, not knowing how much they would like sprawling. I think 2 would have done the trick. And that’s a nice patty pan squash there in the front that eventually got eaten by a squash bug infestation… go to know those little fellas real well this year.

Lovely basil

These lovely ladies have since grown much taller and are now living in our office.

Beautiful mexican marigolds

Butterfly!!!

We had more butterflied than I’ve ever seen! 30 at a time would flutter around our garden from flower to flower. I recently did some really cool math and I figured that from 200 marigold plants, I could attain ONE MILLION seeds. I kid you not.

YUMMY patty pan squash!

Froggy friend

This little fella lived in the bean plant outside our window for much of the spring and summer. It was so cool to sit in our room and watch him catch flies and moths and eat em! Yum.

TURTLE! 🙂

This awesome turtle came up to our garden and chomped on our squash plants! I was more than happy to share. 🙂 One morning I was sitting in the living room with the door open letting some fresh air in, and then I noticed a sound, like a thump near the door and didn’t see anything. I got up to look for what it was and HELLO this little turtle friend walked right inside the door and was just sitting there looking around! It was incredible. S/he walked right inside our apartment!

Spring showers.

That’s my homage to the beautiful Spring and Summer seasons of 2012. Thank you mother earth! I am eternally grateful!

Raised Beds at the Garden

In my last post where I talked all about our new community garden project, I mentioned that we set up some raised beds. I know that a lot of people are into building raised beds so I wanted get a little more detailed about it. A lot of the time, especially in cities and suburban areas, the soil needs some initial help. Instead of spending hours upon hours with shovel, pick axe, and hoes or even worse – tractors *gasp*… I like to build on top of the soil! It’s super easy, VERY fun, and a lot of the time most things that you need are local and free! Here’s a picture of the raised beds we set up –

One of them is actually an old shelf that I found sitting next the dumpster at the apartment complex we live at. I took the shelves out and the back off, then just left the frame. A lot of people keep a bottom on their raised beds to keep out moles and other unwanted friends. I like them without a bottom so it is truly connected with the earth. To me, it seems nicer that way. 🙂

Carlos dug out the grass, we set down newspaper, and then we put the shelf down on top of that and filled it. For fill dirt we used aged manure from a local lady with horses and donkeys, a real sweet gal. We also mixed in some perlite for moisture retention, which we picked up on craigslist. $10 for a bag of it that’s bigger than I am! Next time I go I will add in some composted grass and more manure… then it’s ready to sit and mature and will be ready for the spring!

Please leave comments, questions, thoughts, and ideas below! I LOVE to hear from readers! 🙂

Building a CommUNITY Garden

Starting a garden bed

I have recently been working with a group called Homegrown Missouri that I totally resonate with. The goals of the group that stand out in my heart are localizing food and localizing the community by building relationships and connections with our environment, ourselves, and eachother. Everyone has their own ideas in the group and I totally honor and respect each individual, as they do me. 🙂 It’s a beautiful thing. The group has meetings every month and in November we are having a workshop about fermented foods where members of the group will be teaching what they know. I am sharing beet kvass and Carlos, my partner / soul mate, is going to be teaching sauerkraut. Check out my last blog that features the flyer I made – https://regrowroots.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/free-fermented-foods-workshop/

I would like to share my newest endeavor that is going incredibly well and will one day become everything I dream of… a COMMUNITY GARDEN! It is located in my dear friend JoAnna’s backyard. I’m sure you will hear much more about JoAnna in future posts, as she is an amazing woman in my life. Her backyard is mostly grass with wild onions and dandelions growing here and there, as well as a pear tree, an elm, and a couple other little trees. My vision is to shift the entire yard into a food forest / community space where people can share food, potlucks, community, music, love, and growth!

Alpine Strawberries and Echinacea

We picked up some Alpine Strawberry starts from a friend and put them in the ground. I cut off the tops of them so all the energy will go to the roots and build a strong plant that will pop up in the Spring! 🙂 I also planted a bunch of echinacea Purpurea seeds that will come up in the Spring.

Huuuge backyard space!

This is the view from the deck. It is north of the house so that will be something to keep in mind. The beginning veggie patch is in the back by a big tree and an elderberry patch. Right now there are kale, cabbages, jerusalem artichokes, elephant garlic, and one lovely marigold.

Closer view of the garden beginnings

To the left of the photo are 2 raised beds that Carlos set up and we have some buckets waiting to be relocated and filled with dirt. Carlos actually dug the grass out for the raised bed. For most of our future beds, we will place down cardboard to suffocate the grass and build on top of that. That way, we will get lots of beds done before planting time in the spring!

 

 

Symbiotic Relationships

a beautiful young carrot

I have been thinking about the symbiotic relationship between all things…

The Dalai Lama says that I should not look at one thing as just THAT thing. For example a door is not just a door. There is a hole in the wall in front of me, strategically placed so that if I go through it I will end up in the hallway that leads to the bathroom, my parents room, the living room, and beyond that… the outside world! So in this hole in the wall stands a door that fits just perfectly and is held up with hinges on the top and bottom to swing in and out… etc etc etc. So the door is not just a door. It exists as a door because of all the other factors.

This is like everything in the universe. It all exists because everything else exists. When one thing disappears, other things disappear. This allows new things to grow. There is no emptiness, only opportunity.

Emptying my mind allows creativity in. It is not empty, but an opportunity for brand new thoughts to swim, fly, hop… skip sing paint frollick dance yell laugh squeak.