Sweet and Steady

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the
 changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
-Maya Angelou
 

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Its been awhile since Ive written, almost six months actually.  Life has been both cruel and kind in its lessons.  As an open hearted participant I can truly say I am always learning and growing, give thanks for evolution!  Much has transpired here on the farm since the last post in August.  The turkeys matured and went to their new abode in the freezer (weighing in between a whopping 30-40lbs each!).  Our Wild Feast Thanksgiving was amazing.  We successfully cooked our first enormous home grown turkey in the cob oven with an abundance of sage and rosemary.  The bird fed almost thirty people and the chef received many happy compliments. (Thank you beautiful birds for nourishing our family!)  We will definitely be raising turkeys again this year.
 
 

There is also a fairly new addition to the family.  Cinnamon (aka 2G) is our new jersey cow who we bought last August from an organic dairy up north.  We recently did pregnancy tests on both Cinnamon and Ginger and its looking like both girls are pregnant and due in late spring.  Pretty exciting for us!  The milk has been slowing down as we get ready to dry them off for a break before calving. 


As the weather warms up, the bees are active and buzzing everywhere while the hillside has become lush and green.  The garden is getting more productive with peas, favas, cover crops and perennial kale, collards, chard, lettuce, garlic, onions and artichokes bursting.  Time to plant potatoes and start the summer squash and tomatoes in the greenhouse.   

 
We have a ton of chayote starts this year and are excited to line all the fences with these versatile squash.  Ive also ordered more perennials bushes for the food forest...aronia, seaberry, gooseberry, along with more fruit trees including mulberry, hawthorn, and Asian pear. This time of year it is hard to contain myself from ordering everything, its like having planting fever.


Classes and tours have also been going extremely well.  We have been blessed with so many wonderful students and great interest in what we are creating here. 
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And so as we continually work on externally developing this land we are stewarding and internally developing our character, we experience the sweet and steady; the effort and the rewards.  We look forward in 2015 to implementing many new ideas, creativity, fun, travel, friendship, health and balance.  Many Blessings!
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Forging Farmers Celebrating Women Transforming the Food System

Last week I had the pleasure of participating in this wonderful event hosted by MESA, the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture. What a privilege to be part of a panel of such amazing women working diligently to build more resilient food systems around the world. 

The panelists were all so different and accomplished including the fiery Joelci Dannacene, a militant organizer with The Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil and Myriam Kaplan-Pasternak, owner of Devils Gulch Ranch in Marin, founder and director of HaitiCoffee.com, Inc and a USAID Farmer to Farmer volunteer in Haiti and El Salvador with Partners of the Americas, Winrock International and HaitiCoffee.  The panel also included Clara Nicholls, a lecturer in the Latin American Studies Program at UC Berkeley, teaching "Perspectives for Sustainable Rural Development in Latin America" and president of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology, as well as, Shu-Chen Cheng, a beginning small-scale farmer from Taiwan who hopes to educate farmers in sustainable methods, and share with her community the importance of supporting local farmers.

Not only was the conversation inspiring and stimulating, the homemade Puerto Rican tapas were off the hook!  Thank you MESA for including me in this uplifting evening, I am honored and excited to collaborate further in the future!


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Grounding Back In The Spiral

We are a circle within a circle with no beginning and never ending...
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rooftop photo of the spiral garden at Grow Bio-intensive Agriculture Kenya

Greetings of Peace and Love!  It has been many months since Ive written, so much has happened.  I have had the profound opportunity and gift to go on several life changing adventures, travel around the world, visit some AMAZING farming projects, meet many inspiring people, make life long friends, start a new business and learn a whole lot about myself and the creation.  I am excited to share so much information I have picked up along the way, much more than can be shared in a single blog post.  So the next few posts will be full of pictures, ideas, and inspiration from my journey.  I pray that you enjoy.  And that there is something new and inspiring for everyone who reads.  As always, we are sending and channeling love and healing light to you all, above and below like mycelium running through the veins of Mother Earth!  Many Blessings..?
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Sharing Knowledge Among Women

"Dont ever take more from a plant than what you need,
they enjoy having life as much as we do."
-Gypsy Wisdom


Sunday we spent our afternoon in class creating the beginnings of an herbal apothecary. The class was full and we celebrated many useful medicinal plants for boosting immunity and supporting the respiratory system.  Fresh locally wildcrafted elderberries stole the show with their juicy blue lusciousness.  


Tis a special and important thing to have time for women to gather, share age old knowledge, and create holistic remedies for ourselves and our loved ones.  From generation to generation it has always been the women who held this task.  


Together we offer information, support, and community.  Our baskets at the end of class were full of immunity adaptogen tincture, mullein thyme lung tea, elderberry glycerite, herbal vapor rub, and our famous fire cider.  A wonderful collection of remedies to strengthen and encourage fall and winter health.  Definitely a day well spent.  
Blessings!




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Iroquois Women Stand up to the Corporate Colonial Criminals

This article was just written by my friend Thahoketoteh of the Kanionke:haka, the Mohawk Nation of Turtle Island (Canada Inc)- for Mohawk Nation News

You know what is the most ridiculous part of all of this?  .... I mean, beyond the fact that the Corporate "Governments" are  still trying to pull this bullshit.

Lacrosse is a Game that was INVENTED by our First Nations People!!!   Theyre holding the Lacrosse World Championships in Scotland.... and tell the First Nations teams that they cant play, because they dont have (and dont want, lol) a corporate employee identification number, ie: a Canada Corporate Passport.

L O V E  these women for standing up and NOT bowing to the pressure of the bullshit corporatocracy.   Well Done!!!


love d


PS: This past monday night Thahoketoteh joined Lisa and I on the One Peoples Roundtable Discussion.  I will publish the archive video as soon as its available.




http://mohawknationnews.com/blog/2015/07/15/those-wonderful-iroquois-women/




THOSE WONDERFUL IROQUOIS WOMEN!


mnnlogo1

Please post & distribute. Nia:wen.
MNN. JULY 15, 2015. Our proud young people stood up to the powers that be. The Haudenosaunee under-19 women’s lacrosse team withdrew Thursday from the upcoming FIL U19 Women’s World Championship in Edinburgh, Scotland. The corporatists say our Rotinoshonni-issued passports are not valid because they do not meet their corporate standards. We, the natural people of our land, need a colonial passport for international travel. This is illegal and immoral as we ongwe’hon:weh are not Canadian or American colonial settlers.iroquois passport

In 2010 Rotinoshonni sovereignty drew worldwide media attention when the U.K. would not allow the Iroquois Nationals men’s lacrosse team into its borders without Canadian or American passports. They withdraw from the tournament rather than use a corporate imposed identification. In 2014 in Denver they participated and earned the bronze medal because it took place on ono’ware:geh, Great Turtle Island.

The colonialists would not wish others to know that we had a sophisticated system of issuing passes to those who would enter our nation and territory. We gave them a special name in our language to use when traversing among us. Other systems existed for those who wished to remain.
Haudenosaunee Womens Lacrosse
Haudenosaunee Women’s Lacrosse
The Rotinoshonni issued passports in 1923 when Cayuga statesman Deskaheh went to Geneva to apply for membership in the League of Nations. Canada, a colony, had no right to be a member. Britain created underhanded pressure on the nine nations [Estonia, Ireland, Persia, Panama and other sovereign states] that supported us. Britain illegally made all indigenous people worldwide into wards of the colonial entity occupying their land.
pilgrims arrivingThese corporate “nations” will not recognize our sovereignty because it would destroy them and make them liable for all past crimes. The corporations of US and Canada do not want to respect the rights of the legitimate non-incorporated natural people of our land. Our identification does not meet the corporate requirements of the CROWN/Vatican to issue banking numbers.
Canada is violating an international treaty by breaching the 1701 Great Peace of Montreal, making the colonial settlers illegal occupiers on our land. The tehiohateh – Two Row – is the most brilliant piece of diplomacy ever devised for nations to live in peace perpetually.
These women stood up for freedom, dignity and integrity as a model for the world.
Bob Marley, the international traveler, would so admire these women. He would sing, “Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights”.


MNN Mohawk Nation News kahentinetha@mohawknationnews.com more news, books, workshops, to donate and sign up for MNN newsletters, go towww.mohawknationnews.com  More stories at MNN Archives.  Address:  Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada]J0L 1B0 Thahoketoteh@mohawknationnews.com for original Mohawk music visit thahoketoteh.ws
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