A View from Sierra County

Sustainable Sunday: Upcoming Events

I have been working on two different class offerings, to help others quickly increase their sustainable living skills, and thought this would be a good opportunity to share that information with you... even if it is Tuesday.

The first is a series of Sustainable Living Skills workshops that I have put together to benefit the Camptonville Community Partnership, which is the nonprofit Family Resource Center that is my employer.  Several people involved in our early childhood program had requested classes addressing the two topics we have lined up for August:

CCP Sponsors Sustainable Living Skills Series

Camptonville Community Partnership is sponsoring a series of small workshops to help our neighbors expand their sustainability.  These are practical skills that used to be far more commonplace, but have fallen by the wayside in the last several decades as we have grown used to getting everything we need daily from stores.  The first two classes will be half day sessions covering canning and herbal preparations.  The net proceeds of these workshops will benefit the Camptonville Family Resource Center, located on the school grounds and operated by CCP.  Watch for additional workshops in September, and let us know if you have something you want to teach your community! 

 Canning and Preserving – August 11^th  8:30-12:30 at Camptonville School Kitchen

Taught by Camptonville School Chef Patsy Prout, this workshop will cover the basics of jam-making and canning tomatoes, and participants will go home with a jar of jam, information about food safety, and some recipes to get them started.  $30 fee covers all materials.

 Herbal Tinctures, Salves and Oils – August 22^nd 9:00-12:00 at Family Resource Center

Taught by CCP’s own Birdsong Sundstrom, long time herbalist and permaculturalist, this class will learn the basics of making home remedies.  We will make a tincture, infused oil, and salve as a group and participants will go home with a small container of salve and plenty of sources to get them using and sharing their harvest to prepare for first aid and winter ailments.  $30 fee covers all materials. Call 288-9355 to reserve your spot!

Weekend Retreat in September

The second project is a retreat entitled "A Weekend of Sustainable Living", to take place at Ananda Dhiira from the evening of Friday, September 10th through Sunday afternoon, September 12th. 

What does Sustainable Living mean and how do I get started?
This introductory weekend takes you through simple steps to begin your journey in living a
more sustainable life.

• Learn why we need to live more sustainably and how your daily choices make a difference
• Discover ways to reduce your environmental footprint and save money
• Take practical steps towards sustainability in your home, workplace, and community
We’ll take time to rejuvenate your mind and body
• Yoga sessions
• Contemplative nature walk
• Stargazing
• Swim & relax in the South Yuba River

Earth Care • People Care • Fair Share
Join us for an unforgettable weekend!

Gayle Marsh, who attended the Introductory portion of my Permaculture Design Course, asked me to assist her in preparing a program and the proceeds will benefit Ananda Dhiira's retreat and sustainability center.  I will be helping her with marketing and teaching and am very excited about this!  If you are interested in coming for this event, please leave a comment or email me!

Fly-By Blogging

The few regulars that this irregular blog still has following it will have noticed that there wasn't a Sustainable Sunday post a few days ago.  I have to say that the summer has turned out to be full of lots of family-connected activities which are using up most of my energy.  I simply haven't had enough of me to go around for the past several weeks.

The biggest one is probably the impending wedding between youngest son, Jesse and his bride and baby mama Dawn.  The pace is definitely picking up, with less than three weeks to go.  I don't really recall getting around to posting that I would be officiating... I have been a Universal Life minister since 1978, though I haven't performed a wedding in over a decade.  I had some dear friends back in the mid-seventies, a multi-generational extended family whose land was next door to my place at that time and was also set up as a church.  The matriarch was from Chicago, had marched in civil rights marches in the South and spent a brief time in jail for protesting.  She refused to pay the IRS for taxes that would be spent on the Vietnam war, and eventually set up her own church.  She ordained me as a minister, and I helped to care for her later when she died of lung cancer.  When the happy couple asked if I would officiate, my children were surprised (though not really, they said) to learn I was already an ordained minister.

Plans have included a bridal shower held the weekend before last, and shopping... much more of it than I would like.  DD and I have shopped together to find appropriate outfits, and we even braved one of the hottest days of the year to search for shoes.  We found them, as well as consuming copious amounts of water and iced tea, on Sunday (there will be wedding pictures, sometime after August 8th...).  I also found this wonderful item, which all my homesteading, self-sufficient buddies need to request from their local suppliers.  You will note that the link isn't 'local', and I will freely admit that mine was an accidental find, while picking up other needs at a Target in Auburn. 

Another family activity that has taken some of my time, and certainly sapped my energy on Friday... the hottest day on record so far this summer, has been helping my cousin.  We used my small Nissan pickup to move two truckloads of the potted plants she wanted to keep, and then I took some home for myself.  Working outside in 100+ heat to load and unload made me very aware that as I age, I simply cannot tolerate the heat as well as I used to!

The biggest time commitment this summer has been caring for my baby granddaughter, Odessa, three or four mornings a week for the past six weeks.  I have been able to bond closely with her and watch her move through some fun stages of infant development and it also helps me deal with to be working reduced hours, and not be able to find another job.  I was feeling like a real slug about getting so little done as the weeks of summer fly by, until I realized that between being with her and traveling to and from home, I have spent between 18 and 24 hours a week for the past six weeks!  There's that second job, and at least it was a needed one that could be filled by a family member.  Dawn has been taking one, last community college class before transferring to university this fall, I have been able to play with the cutest baby in the world (and even take her to visit her Uncle Cody at Lake Tahoe twice), and have even managed to walk almost every one of those days!  Still, on the hottest of those days I have come home wanting to nap or stretch out on the couch in the cool house and read.  I have made it to the end of the Tour de Fleece with a weak finish.... though thanks to a visit from Mary the other day, now have more wool!  There will be better spinning days ahead....

I think the real energy thief has been my health... my doc's office called to adjust my thyroid meds after a blood test a few weeks ago.  It doesn't look like I will ever fully balance that issue and it and the 10-20 extra pounds (depends on who you ask on that one) all aggravate the arthritis/inflammation symptoms.  I am still happy to say that being 55 is better than the alternative, and that I awaken each day happy to have more opportunity to love my family and do productive and meaningful work.  I am especially grateful that my garden's mostly looking out for itself right now!

Sustainable Sunday: Summer Planting

The traditional time for garden planting is spring... after a long winter of cold, the earth is finally warm enough to germinate seeds or accept transplants.  All of those items you swooned over in the seed catalogs and at the nurseries can now get going.  You work hard preparing the soil, amending it, planting, weeding, setting up irrigation, and now it is finally going strong.  Why would you go back to planting?

My answer is because you can! July is not the time for every plant in every place to try and gain a toehold.  For instance, here in California we are beginning to hit our stride for summer, with humidity dropping down to the traditional single digits, nary a cloud in sight and temps climbing well above the mid 80s.  This is what summer is here in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and I won't be planting lettuce or peas anytime soon.  However, in those parts of the country with daily afternoon rain, perhaps you would.  My point is that, with all this warmth and light, and winter a long ways away, there are still plenty of things that can go in the ground.

Maybe you lost some plants to frost, or slugs, or birds (they really like peas and beans around here).  There are a few holes in your rows or clumps of plants.  Or, maybe you noticed a 50% off sale of veggies in 4-inch pots.  Those two scenarios would match up perfectly into adding something to the mix that will probably take off and catch up with the rest of the garden.  Or, if you couldn't resist that sale but the planting beds are full, perhaps this is your chance to try out filling up a half wine barrel with some extra plants for extra food!  Perhaps there is a crop (for me it was the snow peas), that still might look like it is growing, but has stopped flowering because of the hot weather.... might as well pull it up now and replace it with something that has a chance to be productive in the heat of late summer.

Now, there have been lots of years where I didn't get around to summer planting... summer gets busy with things like swimming, hiking, camping, spinning with friends.  However, I decided to cruise through my garden earlier this week and see how things were doing... general weeding, some feeding, staking up plants that had grown top-heavy.  I realized that there were a few nooks and crannies, and tucked in a Trombotta squash that a friend left on my porch.  My other squash plants will be far ahead in their bloom and fruit cycle, and there's a pretty good chance I will avoid any cross-pollination this late; the squash will take off with the heat and I will get a good late summer into frost crop (I hope - I'll keep you posted).  I also planted three shortish rows of tepary beans this morning, since they still have time to reach maturity before first frost in my area.  I have some space to add Bright Lights Chard, which is a green that will grow well in hot climates.

What should you plant?  This is where the Sunset Western Garden Book and Organic Gardening magazine are my trusted stalwarts... their maps cover all of the climates and zones, and they routinely provide reminder lists of what to plant when for your individual climate.  I know it is still too early to plant peas for overwintering, but I also know from my own personal experience that I would be wise to do so, in about eight weeks when the nights start getting longer than the days and cooling the soil.  Something will be finished up, and the peas do better here when they winter over and get their own chosen early start.

Take a walk through your own garden, with the idea of finding what needs to be updated, taken care of, or nurtured along now that the heat of summer is upon us.

Once you have put a few remedies in place, take another walk, out in nature, where we learn so much about the patterns of how the earth works.  I took this photo, of bees living in the wilds of the federal courthouse in downtown Reno, last week.  The vertical, fin-looking things, are their own, self-created sheets of honeycomb.  This hive was active (I doubt my photo is detailed enough to capture bees in flight, but we saw them) and has been sandwiched in between marble columns for a long, long time.

Let me know how it's going for you in the comments!

Tour De Fleece Update

Several of the Team Sierra Spinderellas got together today at our monthly guild Spinning Saturday and compared notes... I must be running dead last on our team as far as yardage spun, and maybe even time put in.  Stephanie, our fearless leader (or at least she who proposed the team idea), insists that we are a 'no pressure' team, and not to worry about how I am doing. 

Yes, I really am spinning every day, but also reading (a lot), gardening (mostly keeping up with watering as we have had a week of hot and humid weather), taking care of baby Odessa a few mornings a week, and even working.  I managed to spend one Tour evening plying up another bobbin of pure white, squooshy merino, but it looks a lot like the last one.  I have done a good job on my slower speed/finer thread spinning of the lovely Mama Spider batt, though I showed a photo of that single on my bobbin in the same post as the white yarn... nothing but Wool In Progress here at Slate Range Camp.

However, several team members threw their skeins into a pile this afternoon, in solidarity and to show team spirit and all that. We are making steady, uphill progress as a team, at least!  There are browns from Luci, a big, fat and shiny red skein from Lindsey, blue plied with lighter blue from Sue, and green, blue, pink and white, all from Stephanie.

And this is just part of the team... wonder what the rest are up to?

If you are spinning along with the Tour, drop me a line in the comments and let me know how it's going!

Sustainable Sunday: Cherries for the Fourth

I am up to my elbows in cherries, wealthy in one resource right this very moment and thankful.  The irony is that many years it just doesn't turn out that way... either the frost takes the blossoms and there IS no fruit, or the birds swoop in before we do (they will eat a much more sour fruit than I consider 'fully ripe') and peck holes in all the fruit that I can reach.  I have two cherry trees, both well over 100 years old and still trying hard to produce bumper crops.  This year, the pie cherry tree is over the moon.... and the birds can HAVE the entire top two-thirds, as even with ladders we will never be able to get all the fruit.

I spent part of Saturday picking, pitting, eating and freezing cherries (they are such a treat in a mid-winter smoothie!), and hopefully jam-making, at least a little, will follow the holiday celebrating later today.  Here's a freshly-washed batch in the sink.

While picking, I had an opportunity to mull over the patterns of abundance and scarity and become immensely grateful to live in a region with a multitude of micro-climates.  Since yesterday was also spent in applying compost tea (dilute, aerobically-aerated, for those that want to know) to my annual garden, I could take stock and confirm that yes, I really did lose all of the peaches, persimmons and apples to the late frosts we got this spring.  My vineyard appears to have survived, since it blooms much later than the fruit trees, and I have quinces (another late bloomer).  Blackberries and raspberries have flowered and set fruit, and blueberries are ripening.  I was able to re-plant tomatoes and basil, which are doing well, along with putting in bean transplants grown in a local nursery's greenhouse, so there is still an abundance of food coming up in my home garden.

As you travel throughout my foothill region, there will be farms that didn't suffer so much from frost and I will probably be able to get peaches, though there might not be peach jam this year.  I will be able to 'make do' with other fruits, though, and certainly won't go hungry, though that might have been the case a century or more ago, with many things that froze being unable to have a long enough growing season when replanted.

This is what a pretty mess cherry-pitting looks like!  On this day celebrating US independence, I am most thankful to live in a country that still has room for free and open debate, and to live a lifestyle that nurtures independence.  I am also thankful to be surviving the recession, even if underemployed... working less has given me the chance to be the childcare provider for my granddaughter four mornings a week this summer, getting to know and nurture her.

What are you most thankful for?  What abundance are you experiencing this summer?