A Field of Dreams

This weekend, our neighbor came over with his tractor to till our garden cover crop under, and, as a huge bonus, he plowed our South field! Our neighbor, who is uneasy about heights, is happy to do work trades with my husband to help do things up on ladders in exchange for tractor work. It's a beautiful arrangement! And, we now have a field! I always imagined that one day I would grow fields of food. My latest dream has been a U-pick pumpkin patch and lavender farm. I can just see this field filled with ripe orange pumpkins on their vines.

It is a very good feeling, indeed, to have a field, but at the same time it's a little overwhelming. The field is bigger than our house! It feels a little reminiscent of bringing your first baby home from the hospital (two babies in my case!) when you're been so confident that you will just inherently know how to take care of them, but then there comes that moment of wondering, "what do I do now?" I am realizing that I don't know that much about planting an entire field, but fortunately, we have lots of books and the O.S.U. extension office for support. I think the immediate answer is cover crops! We threw in some rows of sprouted potatoes and garlic I found in the free pile at Grower's Market, so if nothing else, we can fill the pantry with potatoes and garlic in the fall. Besides, we have our hands plenty full with the garden right now. At least it's only half the size of the house.

We got the greenhouse finished and seedlings started a little late, but I am still excited to plant rows of corn, squash, peppers, peas, onions, kale, lettuce, and many other delicious things! In honor of our first field, I will share the lyrics to a Grateful Dead song I always enjoy this time of year. Here's to sowing the seeds of our dreams!

"Round and round, the cut of the plow in the furrowed field

Seasons round, the bushels of corn and the barley meal

Broken ground, open and beckoning to the spring;
 black dirt live again

The plowman is broad as the back of the land he is sowing
As he dances the circular track of the plow ever knowing
That the work of his day measures more than the planting and growing

Let it grow, let it grow, greatly yield."

-From "Weather Report Suite: Part II, Let it Grow"
by John Perry Barlow

An Interview With Erin Gilday, Craftswoman and Urban Bus Pioneer

It is a great pleasure to introduce you to my dear friend and professional crafting inspiration, Erin Gilday. Folks here in Eugene may be familiar with her business, The Patchwork Underground, from the Eugene Saturday Market and Holiday Market, and I know some of my readers also follow her blog. Not only is Erin an amazing craftswoman, seamstress, and freelance writer (check out her articles in the new Stitch Magazine!), but she is owner and co-creator of Luna, the house bus. After carrying and housing Erin and her partner Julia for over two years, Luna has arrived at their house in Oregon City, the end of the Oregon Trail.

I will never forget the day I met Erin and Julia. They showed up at my door one sunny autumn afternoon to visit my housemate, a friend of Julia's from high school. Erin was carrying a basket of little fresh baked oat cakes and wearing these amazing handmade clothes. We all hung out in the yard chatting and eating delicious oat cakes in the sunshine, and I knew we were going to be great friends. I soon learned of their dream to build a house bus, and it wasn't long before I watched them make their dream into a reality.

So, here it is folks. An interview with one of the craftiest ladies of them all, and the story of her bus.


1. Tell us about building Luna, your bus. What were your inspirations? When did you and Julia decide you were going to do it?

I always loved the Boxcar Children and dollhouses and clubhouses growing up. I really think that's what started it. When I was in high school, I used to talk about buying a party bus. Then when my partner, Julia, and I were graduating college all we knew was that we wanted to be together. Other than that, we really had no plan. All through school I was in my head all the time and never working with my hands. I really missed that connection so I just started saying that I wanted to make things again. Then we found this book called Some Turtles Have Nice Shells. When people asked us what we were doing after graduation, we just pointed at the book! I started drawing floor plans and that was it. We were doing it. There was an unstoppable energy to it, we just said it too many times to not do it at that point.

How did it go?

Building it was crazy hard for us because we never built anything before. I had sewn plenty of things and done a lot of hot gluing but never any real construction. I didn't even know what a 2x4 was when we started and I was scared of drills! My ignorance was so sad in retrospect. I really think it's criminal to raise a kid without teaching them basic skills like that. We had a lot of supportive friends cheering us on at the time but we also had plenty of doubters. I'm really glad we decided to build our bus because it taught me how to teach myself how to do just about anything worth doing. We almost gave up a bunch of times during the process (and the intense group project-ness of it almost ended our relationship at a couple points!) but I'm really proud that we just kept going.

Would you do anything differently in retrospect?

Oh yeah, tons of stuff. I can't even list it all here!

2. Describe your sustainable and eco-friendly bus building practices.

We tried to be as environmentally friendly as possible given our budget. We put solar panels on top and used a lot of recycled things from Bring recycling for the interior. The insulation we used is made of recycled blue jeans. We used a ton of Safe Coat products - their metal primer, their caulk. We were building our bus *right* before the whole eco-building product thing went huge. Right as we were finishing, the specialty stuff we were mail ordering or driving to the next county to get started to be available at Home Depot. People started to understand us when we said low VOC. We witnessed the change just as we finished our project; it was pretty funny.

3. Tell us about your adventures and travels in the bus and the places you lived in it.

Well, we were very focused on making the bus into a home so we put all our money into habitability first. Circumstances made it so that we were never able to invest in the veggie conversion so that we could power the diesel engine with used veggie oil. In terms of miles, we didn't get very far in the bus at all. We made a 2-week trip down to CA when we went to live in the Santa Cruz mountains for a while. We also stayed in Santa Rosa for a bit at my mom's house. We built the bus in Eugene and lived in it there for a while and then eventually we moved to Portland's Alberta Arts District. Then just a few weeks ago we actually moved out of the bus after living in it for 2+ years. We rented a bungalow in Oregon City on 1/3 of an acre with plenty of parking. We're hoping to save up and finally get that veggie conversion done so that we can take the bus on road trips like we always wanted to. Even after all this time, it's just so much fun to drive!

4. How has being an urban bus pioneer shaped your crafting career?

Well, I think that all my craftiness comes from the same impulse. It's political, its personal, it's preference. It's a choice but it's also a natural way of being. It's resistance to specialization and "experts"; it's based on the idea that if you can't make it or fix it or improve it yourself then maybe you don't need it. You can also comfortably extend this concept to communities - if someone in your community can't make it or trade it or whatever then maybe you don't need it. It's the inverse of corporate consumerism where you think you need EVERYTHING and you know how to make nothing.

5. Tell us about Patchwork Underground and your freelance writing.

Patchwork Underground is the name I gave my business back when I was making custom wearable art - mostly patchwork and applique one-of-a-kind designs. It stuck. I transitioned more into design and writing work last year, writing sewing patterns for Threads, Sew News and Stitch magazines. Right now I'm working on a patchwork book tentatively called Stripped Down Patchwork for Leisure Arts and I have a few more magazine articles due out this spring. I have dreams of starting my own pattern line but that is a whole different ballgame.

 

6. What are your future dreams for yourselves and the bus?

On the homefront, my eyes have been set on real property, not rolling property. I want a place that I own where I can be in community, raise children, eat food and hang out with animals in a reasonably sustainable way. I definitely want to convert my bus to veggie oil but I don't see myself pouring a ton more energy into any other element of that project that this time.

On the professional level, my #1 top secret aspiration is to write top 40 country music and retire at 30. Failing that (or perhaps in addition to that) I see myself growing my business into a self-sustaining crafting empire. I want to continue to move away from production work and towards design stuff. I see more articles, more books, more patterns. I would love to expand into fabric design. Ultimately, I would love some type of opportunity to work with other creative folks on a common vision. I have also been fantasizing about starting my own pattern publishing company where I can write some patterns but I can also contract with other designers to publish, package and promote their patterns for them.

And, of course, every old lady (or old lady wannabe) wants her own quilt shop.

Visit The Patchwork Underground here for a regular dose of crafting inspiration, and The Patchwork Underground on Etsy to see Erin's shop.

For more info on the adventures of this amazing house bus, the story of how it was built, and some bus building tutorials, visit Building Luna and read through the blog archives. For any of you who have ever wanted to create a house on wheels, this is a must see.

To the Lighthouse

Every April for the last few years, our family has gone camping at Cape Blanco State Park. Each time we go, there, the abundance of things to do, and beautiful places to spend time outdoors keeps us coming back. Cape Blanco lies on the Southern Oregon coast, near the town of Port Orford. The westernmost point in the state, the cape juts out into the ocean between the Elk and Sixes Rivers, and the 1,800 acre park offers eight miles of spectacular hiking trails through spruce forests, wetlands, beaches, and along ocean cliffs. I heard that the cape was once covered in ancient Spruce forest so tall that they created their own fog, but the high incidence of shipwrecks prompted the clearing of this forest. The lighthouse, built in 1870, is the oldest standing lighthouse in Oregon and is open for tours April through October. We went up in the lighthouse during our trip last year, and my kids were fascinated with the huge, sparkling Fresnel lens. We aren't even lighthouse enthusiasts by any means, but it was still very cool to see up close.

Since the weather this time of year can be fairly erratic, this trip is usually our last "luxury" camping of the season, and we stay in a little one-room rustic state park cabin looking out over the cliffs at the ocean. They're very similar to the state park yurts in layout and cost. (Here I need to thank my Grandparents for the Oregon State Parks camping gift certificate they gave us for the holidays. It was a very thoughtful and useful gift that has kept us camping through the winter months this year! If this gift idea is striking your fancy for the outdoorspeople in your life, these gift certificates can be found at Oregon State Parks by calling 1-800-551-6949.) April is still off-season enough to make a warm, dry place to sleep a key ingredient in ensuring that we get out camping before the weather warms up. There was a pretty wild windstorm our first night there this year, so it was a good thing we weren't in our tent.

From the campground, there is a trail with a short walk down to one of our favorite beaches. This is a beach you can also access with a vehicle, so if you find that piece of driftwood that you just can't live without (and need to turn into a gnome cave) it makes it much less of a stoic feat to bring it home. I like all the little nooks and crannies to explore along the shoreline and the forts that folks build in the driftwood. It's also a low-traffic beach this time of year, and we have gone for morning walks where we had the whole beach to ourselves.

Another thing I love about this part of the Oregon coast is the landscape of beautiful green rolling hills beside the sea dotted with grazing sheep and cattle. Tall grasses sway in the breeze, lazy rivers meander through, and sea birds soar above. It somehow feels like I've journeyed to a far off land. The days are often sunny and mild in April and this is when I start to really feel like Spring has arrived. This is just the right sort of place to lay on your back in the sunshine and watch the clouds float by.

We often stop for a tour the historic Hughes House, the 1898 farmhouse of an Irish pioneer dairy farming family. They offer volunteer guided tours April through October. I like wandering through the big kitchen and drooling over the old wood fired cook stove, and imagining it's my own house and kitchen. From here, a trail weaves through the tall grasses along the Sixes River out to the beach. It's a very mellow hike, and we have enjoyed seeing river otter playing along the banks a time or two.

For a day jaunt, we travelled up the Elk River this year to visit one of our favorite campsites on a large gravel river bar. In the summer and early fall, this is one of the best swimming holes we have ever found. The kids went wading in the chilly, turquoise-blue spring runoff and declared that it felt like summer. I had to agree.

Then we stopped at the Elk River Fish Hatchery. For those of you who have never taken your children to a fish hatchery, I would highly recommend it. Kids love seeing all the fish up close in the long shallow ponds where they're raised for release into the wild. We have yet to visit a hatchery where someone didn't come out to greet us right away and offer to let the kids feed the fish. I think they're really excited when kids come. It's great fun. The trout all jumped up to eat their tasty treats, and they were close enough to touch!

Before heading home on Sunday, we decided to check out Grassy Knob. My favorite local author, William Sullivan, wrote about it in his book, Listening for Coyote, as he described his hike across Oregon from Cape Blanco to Hell's Canyon. He began at Cape Blanco, since it is the westernmost point of the state, and headed up the forest service road to Grassy Knob from which he took off cross country to connect in with another trail. We were intrigued by his description, so we went up to see it for ourselves. A short .3 mile hike from the end of the road took us through the forest to a small rocky outcropping where a fire lookout tower once stood. We could see the coastal range and the Grassy Knob Wilderness stretching out to the east, and the Pacific Ocean and Cape Blanco the the West. It was a beautiful spot. We were all very impressed that Sullivan had taken off cross country from this spot. It looked like a lot of rocky ridgelines, steep slopes and thick brushy forests as far as I could see. My husband, moved by the sunny day and beautiful views, treated us to a lively reading of the love poem on the inside wrapper of our dark chocolate. It was a memorable time and place.

All good things, and all camping trips have their beginning and end, and although I would have not minded staying at Cape Blanco camping for an undetermined amount of time, we had to head back home. We returned invigorated, refreshed by our time out in nature, and loaded up with rocks and sticks. I can't wait for our trip next year.

How Free My Garden Grows

At the root of every homesteading dream lie the seeds of self sufficiency. That good feeling you get deep down in your soul when you do something for yourself by hand, from scratch and without paying someone for it or to do it for you is what I'm talking about. Doing something directly that contributes to your sustenance as a human being is a feeling that cannot be bought or sold. It's honest work. Still, money seems to always be a part of the picture and finding ways around that takes a lot of ingenuity, flexibility, and patience.

One of my lifelong skills and resources seems to be a tendency to attract and collect plants, rocks and sticks. Each time we've moved, it has become apparent to me just how many plants, rocks and sticks I have. For example, there are the plants I have been hauling around with me from garden to garden for the last 13 moves. These are the hardiest of hardy plants that survived being dug up in the heat of August for summer moves, living in pots while we were living mobile in our housebus, and life in over-shaded garden beds when we had nowhere else to put them. Here is a picture of my garden when we lived in the bus. Notice all the pots on the lower right hand side. Great Grandma Elsie's rhubarb, my special rosemary bush, an elecampane gifted to me by our herbalist...they all came along on our adventures.

I was just too thrifty and determined to leave them behind for any landlord's benefit. I figured I needed those plants a lot more than they did. I even moved all of the blueberry plants from my brief stint working as an inventory technician at at blueberry nursery. I asked if I could have some of the plants they were throwing out that didn't quite make the grade, and ended up with 25 blueberry plants. They had lived the last couple of years in very ill suited, shady location, but I moved them anyway and they perked right up.

As I began to plant and plan my garden beds and plots on our land, I quickly ran into the money wall. With an acre and a half to plant, my hard core survivor plants were helpful, but it was still looking a little sparse. A trip to the nursery to get a few perennial herb starts quickly overextends the family budget for the month. All the impulses within me saying "plant it now because it will take a couple of years to get established" were running up against the high price of a 2" potted plant. I realized I would just have to get more creative. I had to think long and hard about un-noticed resources around me. Outdoor recreation and closer proximity to the woods were some big reasons for our moving a half hour outside of town, but it took me a while to realize the wealth of resources I was overlooking. On our many trips to the woods to wildcraft mushrooms in the Fall, I started to notice all the young plants growing along the BLM roads. To the BLM, these would be unwanted weeds hindering visibility on the narrow one-lane roads, and requiring mowing or removal. So, we collected some evergreen huckleberry, oxalis, wild ginger, ferns, elderberries and other "weeds" along the road, and planted them in our garden beds. Voila! Instant garden and edible landscaping!

Then as I worked away on my renegade garden, and brainstormed ideas, I remembered my wild foods instructor's garden in Portland. He just went around the alleys in his neighborhood digging up edible weeds and planted them in his nice, rich garden soil where they thrived. He always had some great experiments going. I decided to rescue some ox-eye daisy (deliciously tender edible leaves in the spring) and some wild chamomile and plant them in my nice, rich garden soil. That spindly little ox-eye daisy grew into a giant!

Then, when I was harvesting nettles for tea, I decided to start a wild nettle patch in the shade behind my garden shed. I dug up some rhizomes and planted them in a big patch. I'm looking forward to harvesting fresh nettles from my own land in the Spring.

My most recent garden inspiration came when I was wanting more herbs in the garden for teas and seasonings, and especially wanting chives and lemon balm. One day on a walk by the Willamette River near an old homestead, I noticed all these little chive and lemon balm starts popping up at the edge of the woods. They were mostly along dry side channels, so I supposed they washed down in flood years, or maybe were deposited there by seed in bird droppings. I happily came back with my trowel and got some little volunteer starts going in my garden. I'm going to have chives coming out of my ears in the summer!

So, you see, a garden doesn't necessarily have to be something you go out and buy at a store. Gardening stores are wonderful, and sometimes you do have to spend money to get set up, but it's good to think about all the options out there. I've had success in the past bartering work trade for plants, asking to dig divisions from other people's gardens, and rooting cuttings in water. Seed saving is another way that I hope to try my hand at in the fall. Of course there are plants we'll have to buy, but I'm aiming to whittle that down to the necessities. After all, they say the best things in life are free.

Support Your Local Food Co-op!

I discovered the wonders of food co-ops when I was attending college in Eastern Washington just across the Idaho border from Moscow. In the aisles of the Moscow Food Co-op, I found good food, community, and my ideals reflected. Not long after our moving away, they expanded and moved into a spacious, beautifully renovated grocery store building complete with an organic deli and bakery and an eating area. When we went back to visit, we felt like we were in organic food wonderland. Then when we lived near Portland, we drove into the city once a week to shop at the People's Food Co-op. It was cozy and fun with beautiful cobb structures and a xeriscape garden out front. Being an urban food co-op and being that we didn't exactly live in the neighborhood, the community aspect was different, but they had some great classes there and a canned food trading event in the fall. When we moved to Eugene, it was hard to accept that the co-op was only open a few hours at a time a couple of days a week, and none of these hours fit in my schedule. With all the amazing local health food stores like Sundance and Kiva, I wasn't feeling too deprived. Still, I missed the feeling of pride in ownership of a co-op. Finally, a Friday morning opportunity presented itself while my kids were in school and a friend had a volunteer shift she wanted to hand over to me. I decided it was long past time get involved with Grower's Market.

I immediately appreciated the peaceful, relaxed, Friday morning grocery shopping experience. I come and set out all the boxes of produces and buckets of bulk oils, nut butters, etc. from the walk-in cooler, and get my shopping done while chatting with fellow volunteers. The 15% discount is a good incentive too. The savings on our weekly groceries were immediately noticeable and when you're feeding a family organic food on a shoestring budget, this is important. When I talk with the other mothers there about why they volunteer at Grower's, the answer is almost always that they couldn't afford to feed their family organic food any other way. This is one of many ways that food co-ops play a vital role in our communities.

Working together for a common purpose creates community. I don't even shop at the busiest times when everyone is there and the big social scene is happening, nor do I attend any meetings. Still, the handful of people I spend my Friday mornings with feels like a community to me. We talk about our lives as we do our Growers jobs and pick out our nourishing healthy food to feed our children. Sometimes we bring our children on no school days and it gets a little wild in there, but everyone is understanding about it. We talk about how we're cooking which vegetables and what new food we've made. We share our joys and sorrows. You can't find that at a supermarket.

While it isn't always easy to balance carrying local goods and produce with carrying produce that hard working families can afford, I think Growers does a decent job at this. With produce coming from the Organically Grown Company, the emphasis on local farms is certainly there. Bulk items are carried and may be ordered from Hummingbird Wholesale, another local business. Among the regular local products are local farm fresh eggs, Nancy's Yoghurt, beeswax candles, Julia and Jason's Oak Barrel Kombucha, Genesis Juice, fresh bread from Eugene City Bakery, tinctures and herbal remedies, wildcrafted seaweed and mushrooms, and much more. Within the walls of this co-op, a whole community of people and food come together!

Grower's Market isn't fancy, it's an unassuming old warehouse building with a wooden plank floor, but I love it. The ideals, community, and food housed within those walls are what makes it a special place. If you have a local food co-op where you live, it's worth going to check it out and see what their membership looks like. Some have an annual membership fee to get the discounts, some have volunteer hour requirements, and often times you can find a regular shift you want to do. Many co-ops offer the discount to nursing mothers, families with very young children, and elders. If there is not co-op, you can always get a group of folks together to work on starting one. This may take time, but it's worth the effort.

Visit the Grower's Market website at: http://www.growersmarket.net/

Since it's always good to know where your food is coming from, check out Organically Grown Company's website while you're at it (a very cool company): http://www.organicgrown.com/
and Hummingbird Wholesale's website: http://www.hummingbirdwholesale.com/

Growers Market can be found at 454 Willamette Street, in the train station parking lot behind Morning Glory Cafe. Growers hours: Tues. 5pm-7pm, Thurs. 2:30pm-7:30pm, Fri. 9am-6:30pm

The Resourceful Greenhouse

This Spring, we finally built our first greenhouse. With all the other projects to do during our first year on our property, starting small seemed wise. In spite of limited monetary resources, my very resourceful husband managed to build our greenhouse for around 30 dollars with scraps and salvaged materials we had around our place. Some extra panels of heavy duty livestock fencing made the 12 foot long hoop frame. These were secured to some old 2 x 12's a neighbor gave us, and the 6 foot ends were partially covered with plywood scraps and pieces of scrap pallets. The only thing we had to buy was the sheet of four-year greenhouse plastic to cover it.

We picked the location up against the south side of our metal shed in full sun with the idea that this would reflect some heat and create a passive solar heating situation inside the greenhouse. It is also an area where the previous owner had dumped the wood shavings from their horse stalls, so the grass and weeds were pretty minimal. My husband framed in a little window on the back that can be opened a few inches for ventilation on hot days.

The entrance to the greenhouse on the front end is a simple flap of plastic with scrap wood at the bottom to keep it secured in place when shut and keep the wind from picking it up. A hole drilled into one end of this piece of wood fits onto a nail near the top of the outside to hold the door open when need be. Some extra wood chips from our mulch covered the floor, and some salvaged pallets made the greenhouse "benches".

For some reason we had ended up with many many plastic plant pots over the years that we had hauled around with us on all our moves, but there were not quite enough small ones for starting all our seeds in. While I was trying to figure out some creative seed sowing pots, I happened upon a large bag of cleaned salsa and yoghurt containers at the food co-op, and with a few holes drilled in the bottom for drainage, we had all the pots we needed.

It is such a good feeling to step inside our warm greenhouse holding all the seeds we planted and the promise of a bountiful garden this year. It is an even better feeling to know it is our very own greenhouse. For my first garden, I used to start my seedlings in the WSU Horticulture greenhouse. Then, when we lived near Portland, I did some volunteer work trades with a woman who had a greenhouse at an assisted living facility to start my seedlings for the garden. Now I can plant my seeds, put them in my greenhouse, and enjoy the self-sufficiency of growing my own food for my family from start to finish. When you work with what you've got, amazing things are created!

Kombucha, I Love Thy Sparkle!

I would like to take a minute to share some kind words about my kombucha. Some of you may be wondering what sort of exotic thing I am referring to, and I will tell you. Kombucha is a wonderful, fizzy, tasty, fermented tea beverage originating from the Ural mountain region of Russia. It's like healthy soda (at least that's what I tell my kids). We have been making kombucha for more than a year now, and our family loves it!

It all begins with the kombucha "mushroom". In Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon describes the kombucha "mushroom" as a symbiotic colony of yeast and bacteria which acts on sugar to produce acetic acid, lactic acid, and glucuronic acid. Glucuronic acid assists the liver in neutralizing toxins in the body, which aides in cleansing, boosting the immune system, and protecting against degenerative diseases. On top of that, it's just plain tasty.

Here is a picture of a kombucha mushroom for you curious folks out there. I know, it isn't pretty, but it does it's job well.

Here is the Kombucha recipe from Nourishing Traditions that we have been using for the past year. Like the other recipes I've shared from this cookbook, it involves little effort and mostly time to do the work for you.

Kombucha
(makes about 2 quarts)

3 quarts filtered water

1 cup sugar

4 tea bags or 4 Tsp of organic black tea

1/2 cup kombucha from a previous batch

1 kombucha mushroom

Boil 3 quarts water. Stir in sugar until it dissolves. Remove from heat, add tea and steep until cool. Remove tea bags, pour into a gallon glass jar and add 1/2 cup kombucha. Gently float "mushroom" on top of liquid. Cover top of jar with a cloth and secure with a rubber band. Place in a warm dark place for 7-10 days and voila! Tasty kombucha. You can start a new batch at this point with your new baby mushrooms and compost or give away the old ones. I feed them to our chickens. I figure it's good for their overall health. You can store the mushroom in the fridge for quite some time before reusing. If it turns black, it's no good anymore. If you are wondering where to find a mushroom, ask your friends. If no one you know has one, Nourishing Traditions suggests Laurel Farms at 941-351-2233, G.E.M. Cultures at 707-964-2922, and A.F. Kombucha at 1-877-566-2824.

If you are wondering about sugar and caffeine, the sugar is eaten up by the fermentation process (and it really does have to be sugar. Honey does not work.) and there is a minimal amount of caffeine left. For those who are very caffeine sensitive, I do have friends making kombucha decaf style with green tea, so it can be done.

I also added a step 2 inspired by a friend. I place the finished kombucha in re-used glass commercial kombucha jars with 1 tbsp sugar and some fruit or fruit pulp. I have used blackberries, elderberries, strawberries, ginger, mint, huckleberries and grapes. Then you put the cap on and let it ferment in the cupboard for another 3-4 days. It comes out delicious and fruity and oh so fizzy. Yum.

"What Are You Anyway, Some Kind of Granola?": A Mountain Hearth Gluten-Free Granola and Yoghurt Recipe

There is something very wonderful about a bowl of granola with yoghurt and some crunchy toppings. You throw on a handful of nuts or berries, a spoonful of jam or maple syrup, and a sprinkle of bee pollen, and you have a tasty breakfast, snack or dessert. It is also very good to eat plain, just on it's own. What I have discovered is even better is homemade granola and yoghurt. It's simple, delicious, and it helps stretch out the grocery budget.

I've been making yoghurt lately from the raw milk we've been buying, and I decided it was time to make my own granola to eat with it. I looked at all the granola recipes in all my cookbooks, and every one called for lots of ingredients I just didn't have. Plus, I needed to make it gluten-free so my son could eat it too. In The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook, I finally found a recipe I could work with and change to suit my pantry and family dietary restrictions. Here is my new improved recipe:

Mountain Hearth's Gluten-Free Granola

Mix together:

3 cups Bob's Redmill Certified Gluten-Free Oats

1 1/2 cups corn and/or rice flour

1 cup sunflower seeds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, etc.

1/2 cup shredded coconut

Heat together and stir into oat mixture:

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tsp vanilla

Spread out evenly on two cookie sheets and bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes, or until golden brown (golden brown has been at 20 minutes for me). Turn with a spatula several times during baking. Cool. Stir in raisins, diced dried fruit, chopped dates, etc. Store in an airtight container.

Nourishing Traditions Yoghurt Recipe

(makes 1 quart)

1/2 cup good quality plain yoghurt

1 quart whole milk

a candy thermometer

Heat the milk slowly to 180 degrees and allow to cool to 110 degrees. Stir in yoghurt and place in quart mason jar with a lid. Wrap in wool blanket in a cooler and keep in a warm place overnight. Transfer to the refrigerator and you've got yoghurt!

Alone in the Wilderness: The Inspiring True Story of a Modern-Day Mountain Man

In 1967, Dick Proenneke retired at age 50 and set off on an adventure to build himself a log cabin homestead at Twin Lakes in the Alaskan wilderness. With his journal, and a camera and tripod, Dick documented the process of building a cabin, storehouse, outhouse, and all the furnishings with simple hand tools over the course of a year. A canoe and hiking boots were his only vehicles of transportation, and friend came in by plane from time to time with supplies. He settled in to live in solitude at this cabin for the next 30 years aside from occasional trips to the lower 48 to visit family. Bob Swerer produced the film "Alone in the Wilderness" from Dick's footage, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has ever fantasized about building their own home in the wild.

Sometimes you watch a film that's so inspiring you just can't stop thinking about it. My husband had been talking for awhile about this mountain man who built a cabin by hand in Alaska and documented it. He and I have secretly long-held dreams of leaving it all behind to homestead in the Alaskan wilderness (okay, maybe not so secret. I'm sure folks who know us have heard all about it a time or two). Realistically, I have heard that it can be a harsh place, and not so idyllic, but still it stands in my mind as the last frontier. He brought home this film one evening, and I loved it! The footage covering how to build a log cabin by hand interwoven with the beautiful scenery and wildlife was set to a soundtrack of serene harp music, and I was fascinated. Watching him take raw logs, branches, and burls, and turn them into a home, table, bench, sled, mallet, bunk bed, and wooden bowls was amazing. His commentary on wildlife and the wilds surrounding him were straightforward and poetic in a way. We showed the film to our kids and they loved it too. They seemed to remember every scene in great detail and were talking about it for days. Our son announced he was going to go build his own cabin like this in Eastern Oregon someday. Is he in the right family, or what?

Dick's skills and self-sufficient nature were apparent watching this film, so I was curious how he had spent his time prior to retirement. From Wikipedia I learned that he was a veteran of WWII in which he served as a carpenter for the US Navy. He contracted rheumatic fever in the war, and after his long period of recovery, vowed to devote his life to bodily strength and good health. He then went to school and became a very skilled diesel mechanic. From there he followed his love of nature and moved to Oregon to work on a sheep ranch, and then to Shuyak Island in Alaska. He spent several years working as a heavy equipment operator and repairman at a naval base in Kodiak, and then became a diesel mechanic and salmon fisherman for the state of Alaska. Before retiring, he worked for Fish and Wildlife Service on the Alaskan peninsula, doing mechanic work on the side until he had put away a good nest egg for retirement and homesteading.

Dick Proenneke died of a stroke in 2003, at age 86, a few years after leaving his wilderness homestead. He left his cabin to the National Park Service, who maintain the cabin and make it available to visitors to this day. Not only do I have a new role model for my old age (Right up there with my Great Grandma Gertie. I'll tell you all about her sometime soon.), but I now have a goal to go visit this spot when I finally make it to Alaska someday. Even if it's only to travel and not to homestead. You never can tell where the path of life will lead.

For more information on this inspiring homesteader go to: http://aloneinthewilderness.com/

At http://www.dickproenneke.com/ you can find several films books and publications of Dick's journal entries.

And, for some amazing photography of Lake Clark National Park, go to:
http://www.photo-mark.com/photographs/lake-clark-national-park/