the gift economy, the abundance of community

When the universe smiles on you, it really smiles. This has been our experience as of late. First, the gifts of time spent working from our friends Badger, Mike & Abby. Mike and Abby weeded out Kaleigh's playhouse which enabled me to replant it with scarlet runner beans and morning glories. Badger was a double digging machine, as well as a stump removal man. We now have two deeply dug garden beds, free of stumps, going all the way out to the grape arbor that borders our yard. (And yes, indeed, it is thick black loan three feet down.) I pulled up a pile of weeds for the compost pile & was able to get the rest planted in potatoes, tomatoes, asparagus, carrots, beans, basil, and sage. We also got the wonderful gift of community often, kicking it, the general sharing of having fun and general enjoying of one's self and friends.

A more material gift, our futon frame was overslacked, and my friend Mary is giving us a couch. I am excited about that, because the futon mattress will soon be on our bed, and we may wake up without back aches soon.

My friend Bill dropped by tonight with this homemade bike trailer (next to the hydraulic log splitter we got from our neighbors), made by a guy named Joe Kozak. I don't know the welder, but he works at the pizza machine, and he seems like he'd be a good guy to know. The bike trailer is made out of a champagne rack, and it easily holds a 55-gallon drum. Kaleigh wants to take it on a test ride tomorrow. I'm glad Bill thought of us!

And tomorrow, my friend Mindy is dropping by a pond liner. What an incredibly useful thing to have! We're thinking about graywater modification, or having a pond, or wetland--so many possibilities. We are going to the farmers market in the morning, and then we're dropping by her house to talk about a thousand gardening questions. It'll be fun!

The gift economy works beautifully--someone's abundant surplus becomes another's need or want fulfilled, usually without money exchanging hands (and certainly no taxes paid on it!). This is the kind of wealth a functioning community generates. The great thing is that the more this kind of wealth is given away, the more abundance there is for all. Much nicer than the scarcity economy that we exist in now. We all knew this different world was out here, didn't we.

Potato flowers are surprisingly haunting. I have a thing for nightshades. Potato flowers produce highly variable seeds. So if you're wanting to experiment, and produce new and personal varieties, playing around with highly variable seeds (like potatoes and apples) is fun. Luther Burbank could tell you more. I like Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire. It goes into a lot of detail about four particular crops: apples, potatoes, tulips and marijuana. Great book, and full of arcane knowledge that fascinates plant geeks like myself.

And so, back to doing the dishes and hauling out graywater I go.

sharqi

remembering community

So far this year, we've logged at our house almost 24 inches of rain. We also got some 20+ inches of snow since January 1. Our normal average is 37 inches. We're fortunate to be getting all this rain, to recharge our land after last year's moderate drought. Everywhere around us, it is flooding.

Our good friend Badger is here visiting, and yesterday he turned the compost piles and stomped down our woody compost. Both are smaller & working more efficiently. He and Kaleigh helped extend a garden bed a few more feet, and if it dries out, I'll plant some more tomatoes & seeds. Kaleigh said, "I want to stay out here & work with Badger!"

Don was working on our diy ghetto-style graywater system. He unhooked the pipes to flow out to the sewer & installed a bucket. We are quickly learning how much water we use & have a great incentive to conserve. Even though we are getting a lot of rain now, I am sure this summer our garden will be thankful for the extra moisture.

I have been working on making wine--23 gallons so far, I think. We have three carboys of strawberry, one of strawberry rhubarb, and some small gallon jugs of mint, lemon balm and one mixed.

I also made some laundry soap, and I will share the recipe. Melt one bar of soap in some water on the stove (alternatively, wait for a stinking hot day & it will melt on its own). Transfer to a 5-gallon bucket, and add 1 c. washing soda (like baking soda, but specifically for washing) and 1/2 c. borax (available in the detergent aisle also). Add water to fill to make 5 gallons of soap. I'm still trying to figure out how nontoxic this stuff will be for our garden. The laundry water still goes to the sewer so far. At least the soap is locally made without dyes & perfumes & other nastiness. And it's way way cheaper than 5 gallons of laundry soap, and we also don't have to lug it home on the bus. My mom told me that was how my gramma made laundry soap.

We are delighting in friends from afar this week. Not only did we have our good friend Merry here this weekend, and Badger here now, but also Mike & Abby are rumored to be on their way back, or possibly here already. We are looking forward to seeing them also. We have a lot of hanging out to do!

sharqi

spring is crazy busy

We've been spending the last couple of nights in the basement and some last week, huddled on the floor beneath a table, while funnel clouds swirl over town. Storms have been popping up suddenly and turning nasty. Our ears have been glued to the weather radio and our eyes peeled for dark clouds. We've been getting a fair amount of rain, often an inch or two a night, but not so much as a few miles north of us, where they have been getting 3-5 inches a night. Normally rain is a good thing, but in the low drainage lands of central Illinois, it can get ugly fast. Our basement is wet, but manageable.

And we've now reached the point of "it's not the heat, it's the humidity" part of summer where I scratch my head and try to remember why I am fond of central Illinois. I've been attempting to dry lambs quarters leaves, ridiculously so, in a week of near 100% humid stickiness. We've also been getting the porch ready for painting--cleaning and scraping. Hakim has been doing most of the scraping. I don't believe the fridge has stopped running today. And enough about the weather.

The yard is lush and moist. We've eaten a few strawberries from the yard. The raspberries are just loaded with fruit, more than I have ever seen. The peaches have put on fruit also, tiny and fuzzy. The potatoes are awe inspiring, and the tomatoes and peas and herbs actually started visibly growing, with all this heat and rain. It's been like early spring until this last week, and suddenly bam it's summer. My gramma's roses have finally bloomed in my yard after appearing to die when I planted them years ago. They smell like ROSES. The flowers/weeds are blooming beautifully, the dame's rocket, a mustard (yellow rocket?), spiderwort, catmint, pinks (dianthus), and everything else is growing beautifully.

I've been reading some books to Kaleigh by Robert Burch. They are really good rural stories, without schlock or violence or Drama. He has a very good way of writing about people and their thoughts and feelings. Good kid lit seems to be hard to find. Or maybe it's that we read too much, and we're running out of good stuff.

The farmers market downtown has opened up, and we have been enjoying it. We got 12 quarts of strawberries today, two flats. Kaleigh ate one at the park, sharing with new friends at a homeschool get-together (even though we are not Catholic, we were welcomed, and they are a great group of moms and kids). I am in the process of making the first carboy full of strawberry wine, and hopefully a second will follow tomorrow. I made a small batch of rhubarb wine, and we'll see how it turns out. I am cranking out the wine. I'm very motivated when I have no wine to drink, and we ran out night before last.

The neighborhood kids are cranky, which has been unpleasant for everyone. Kaleigh's been having almost daily meltdowns, not just because of them, but it sure isn't helping. The last month of school is always like that with them. Their bodies need to be outside in the fresh air running and they are trapped in small rooms with teachers who need to be outside just as much. School ended today, hooray.

Springfield's food not lawns is going well. Our number has been published in the paper along with news stories, and we've been getting a lot of phone calls. People are not only interested in the group, but have a lot of questions about gardening. It's difficult being an experimental chaos gardener, and having to answer exact questions about standard gardening. Lots of people are interested in growing at least some good food for themselves. Even my own brother is planting some tomatoes. His wife doesn't like produce because it's "dirty", but I guess food prices are getting expensive enough for him to want to at least grow his own. Or maybe it's the utter lack of taste that store produce has.

Our vermicomposting workshop went well and we've given away about 15 bunches of starter worms. We also harvested three kitty litter buckets full of rich worm castings, i.e., poop. I spread some around the garden plants right before all the rain started. I guess it's working.

My friend Kaya came into town last week from Colorado, and I spent a great day out with her. We went up to Funks Grove & got our year supply of maple sirup (they spell it that way). We had a fun time, visiting and talking, went to a greenhouse, walked around, and came back. She and her husband just bought their 20 acres in Colorado, and she has been thinking about and making plans for a self-contained mini farmlet with massive woods. They have about an acre or two of open flat land with black soil and a spring. What luck. I am excited for them, and I know they will be fortunate in their endeavors. Kaya is interested in permaculture, and she has already helped raise free range chickens.

Ah, I think the dirty rice for supper is about done, even though I nearly filled up on ice cream (today was the day for it). I need to finish making wine, do dishes, destem and stuff almost dry lambs quarters (finally) into jars....the homestead work is never done. But it sure beats being hired out for a living.

sharqi

Tonight's Storm Update

We're OK so far. Word is, a couple funnel clouds / tornadoes were seen in Springfield, one of them several blocks from us. Also, hail up to 1.75 inches. We were huddled under the table in the basement. When the skies cleared up for a minute, a look around our yard showed everything really OK! But more storms are on their way!

Thunder approaches, I better shut off the computer again.

how do the days go by so fast?

It is nearing May, although it feels like early April most of the time--chilly. It has been a weird spring. We were blessed with a morning prairie thunder storm, just enough noise to be interesting, and an inch of rain for the living souls. Kaleigh and I talked about god and nature, and about how there are a lot of different ways of looking at god, and how one of them is nature. Kaleigh likes to call it nature and not god. I told her I thought how people going to church this morning might be complaining about having to get their good clothes wet, or have to run into church while it was thundering. But we were sitting in the slacker chair, snuggled, with a blanket and the windows open, listening to rain pour, reading the last chapter (the Christmas chapter) of a good funny book. We could appreciate god/nature for the storm, and be happy about it. Yeah, we had a good time.

A neighbor who sells scrap metal came over today to let us know he had a manual hydraulic log splitter. It needs no gas and no juice, but works with it being pumped. He sold it to us for $25, what he had in it. I'm sure it's worth a lot more than that. I'm glad to have such good neighbors. We gave them wood early in the spring, cuz they were cooking on their pot-bellied stove and needed some dry wood. This community stuff is nice. Better than any insurance I could buy!

I came into possession of some smoky fennel, many many plants of it. I'm going to find a place to put it for my friend Patrick, and hopefully it will grow. He loves fennel!

We have harvested the worms in our worm bin. Apparently we were doing the do nothing way with the worms, and it worked, although it worked through sheer luck. It was kind of wet in there, but they still lived. The deeper layers smelled more like old garlic peels than bountiful black soil. Worms are cool, tickly and wriggly. We separated out many buckets full of moist black beautiful worm poopy soil. It is the richest stuff I have ever seen. Even though it is sopping wet, the particles do not cling to each other, but keep plenty of air in there. I spread it around some of our plants and trees before the inch of rain came down. The worms are going to be adopted out by folks attending our FREE vermiculture symposium on Wednesday. I hope we have enough for everyone!

It seems everyone everywhere is talking about gasoline costs (slightly down from the $4.16/gallon price the other day), which leads into talking about all the issues facing americans living the not-cheap-anymore fossil fuel lifestyle. I've talked to so many people about gardening lately!! People are thinking, concerned, evaluating. Our so-called leaders seem very out of touch with anything going on in the real world. The only time I hear politics mentioned by people I talk to face to face is with some sort of disgust. No one it seems, is really eager to vote--and I'm talking about normal people, not just crazy anarchists and other "apathetic" people. Well, anyway, gardening is a lot less mediated and less frustrating than politics.

I wrote a transition primer on car-free living in Springfield. It's a how-to guide on some ideas of living here car-free. It is getting easier for us. I think because shopping is such a pain on the bus, we don't do much of it. And because we don't do much of it, it's getting a lot easier to just not do it, ever. I am amazed, but we still have most of our economic stimulus $ in the bank, because we just hate shopping so much. And yet, I feel compelled to invest it in something tangible--quick!!!!--before the dollars lose any more value. Well, that hydraulic log splitter was something--local, reused (not recycled!), informal transaction. Is it the end of the world as we know it? Hallelujah!

carey

the li'l house gets pimped out

Pimped out by mutha nature that is. Abundance is flowing. We already have more salad than we could ever possibly eat, all made possible by weeds: garlic mustard, lambs quarters, violet leaves and flowers, raspberry leaves, wood sorrel, redbud flowers, lemon balm--it all makes a tasty blend, great with oil and vinegar. All the fruit trees except one made it through the winter.

Hakim has been running the chainsaw fast and furious. We no longer have wood in our neighbor's driveway, and it's almost all out of the future garden. A bed has been started, and we've planted some potatoes, beans, tomatoes, onions, herbs, and rhubarb in it so far. Now it's time to extend the bed, but there are weeds and trees taking over, arghhh! Well, they are mulberry trees and edible weeds, so....

We planted 8 more plum trees, bringing us up to about 23, I think. We have four concord grape vines growing, and several dozen strawberry plants. Hakim made an electrical fencing playhouse for Kaleigh. We have planted the walls and roof. I hope it works out okay. We also have electrical fencing (no juice!) grape arbor. So far so good. It is wonderful planting all this wonderful variety of food. I'm so excited for August!

Hakim and Khalila are up north at his parents' house in the burbs, attending family functions. They are having a good time visiting. I am having a good time chilling by myself. I have been puttering some, and cleaning and gardening.

The Food Not Lawns group is up and going. We met a lot of really awesome people. I am going to learn a lot, I can tell. A seed swap is up next. I got the food not lawns book from the library today, and I am so excited. The author is speaking her mind, and I find myself agreeing with her wholeheartedly. I guess it is preaching to the choir, but sometimes it is nice to have these revival meetings, just to assure ourselves we're not crazy.

We had a fun May Day. It was a beautiful weather day, warm and sunny. The kids had a great time playing outside. The food was good, friends and relations, all having a good time, instead of working or going to school. For real, community.

And finally, some pictures, from here and there and everywhere: fractal dandelions, mutant dandelions, and our ridiculous cat, Cozy.

the death-pledge numbers

As Rob Roy states in his book Mortage Free!, mortgage means literally a death pledge. I recently ran the numbers for our mortgage. We have "owned" our house for eight years, and during this time, we've paid double payments for a year, the minimum payment for most years, and $50 extra for the last year. Here's the numbers breakdown:

Cost of house: $25,900
Payments to date: $27,600

Wow, did we pay off our house, or what?! No. This is America. Here's where the money went:

Principal: $6000
Property taxes: $3200
Insurance and private mortage insurance: $4800
Interest to bank: $13,180

A rip-off? Indeed. However, making the death-pledge payment is far cheaper than renting (half as much as rent), while achieving "equity", whatever that is. If we continue paying $50 extra a month, we should have our house paid off in ten years. I'm looking forward to that.

sharqi