open pollination

A clean slate

2010-04-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

A few days before my trip to Texas, I deep cleaned the kitchen.

Moved around all the jars of bulk food, labeled the tops of mason jars with white board markers for better reference, wiped everything clean, rearranged.

I also got a new dish rack, which I am completely smitten with.

The best part? I forgot about all of the cleaning entirely by the time I got home. It was like coming into a beautiful, newly arranged kitchen!

New obsession

2010-03-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I got my pair of Darlingtonia Moccasins in the mail. I am beyond in love.

I've purchased handmade shoes before - I wore walnut Mohop heels for my wedding - but these are a whole other dimension of awesome. My main concern with handmade shoes is that I have extremely high arches, narrow feet, and long toes, which causes the fit to always be just slightly off. These moccasins are perfect - the leather stretches to fit my toes, the sides are sturdy enough to not roll outwards, the insole is incredibly thick and squishy. I'm already planning on purchasing another pair, probably in grey or black.

potting up

2010-03-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

whew. that strep throat totally knocked me out for a whole week. trying to make up for it today!

potting up some striped roman tomatoes

rehoming some peas... matt kicked over the tray with the markers on it, so these are mystery peas.

letting some baby seedlings get some fresh sun and warm air.

It's been nice and warm here lately, but today is the first day I've been outside in a while. It feels wonderful. Only now I need to clean the house!! 4 loads of laundry, clearing out the pantry (wiping all the jars, throwing out bad/bad for me things, mopping the floor), and more planting is on the list for today.

Also - today is my 1 year anniversary being married to the most awesome guy around.

Best day, so far, of my 22 years here on earth.

Slow Week

2010-03-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

a typical scene on top of my washing machine

I've been sick for the past few days, and it's been truly exhausting. Lots of chicken stock with brown rice, peanut butter, applesauce, warm tea, and cranberry juice around here. Time to drown my sore throat in raw milk with honey.

A quiet Saturday

2010-03-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

Grateful for eggs from friends.

Grateful for tiny projects.

This week went by so quickly I feel like I never had a chance to get my footing before it was over. Yesterday stormed hard and today it's beautiful and sunny. Bay Area weather is fickle.

Today I want to try out my new wringer from Lehman's, and hang up some hand washed laundry, inspired by Adrie of Fields and Fire. I suspect it will be a bit messy, and a good workout. But overall, incredibly satisfying (which is how I feel about almost all domestic tasks, conincidentally!).

Quiet mornings

2010-03-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

Making sourdough noodles in the good morning light.

I love starting out the day with some elbow work.

Natural body care

2010-03-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

[A view of what we use in the bath]

I feel like a big [self-imposed] weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. For a long while I've been trying to minimalize all of the products I used in the bathroom, making sure that nearly everything was edible or natural. I think this is finally the right combo!

Clockwise from the soap:

-tallow Soap from a local farm, Marin Sun Farms

-a mixture of ground up apricot kernels, apple cider vinegar, honey, and lavender oil

-a small bottle of straight apple cider vinegar

-an empty mason jar

-another mason jar half full of local honey

We soap up with the tallow soap, use the honey on our faces and use the scrub occasionally.

My biggest breakthrough is with the "no shampoo" method of washing my hair. I had dedicated myself to it about 8 months ago, but rubbing straight baking soda into my fragile, colored hair wasn't working too hot. It actually gave me a scalp issue! I realized about one week ago that if I mixed the baking soda with extremely hot water, it would make a hair rinse that wouldn't leave chalky build up. Amazing!! To do it, I just scoop some baking soda from a bulk bin in the bathroom into the mason jar, fill it while the water is heating up, and stir. Once the hair rinse is in my hair, I let it rest for however long it takes me to soap up, then wash it out and put the straight AVC into the same jar. Get some hot water into the jar, pour it through, and rinse out after washing my face. Perfect! This is seriously a big big step for me - I used to buy way too many shampoos, conditioners, hair products, etc, to tame my extra thin, fragile, colored, frizzy hair. Now it's much smoother, shinier, and healthier than it has been in years [I'd also attribute that to raw milk and cod liver oil, but the no shampoo is REALLY helping!].

Not pictured: I use jojoba oil on my face after washing it, and Jason toothpaste.

For Matt, I made a mixture of sweet almond oil, tea tree essential oil, and rosemary essential oil. We apply this about 20-30 minutes before taking a shower, and it has completely revitalized his hair. He suffered from some pretty brutal scalp issues, and this has cleared up about 90% of it.

Being able to put together a small group of natural, easy to source ingredients has been fabulous. Less clutter in the bathroom, less clutter mentally about different products I might need to use, less money spent on designer shampoo with awful ingredients in it! I love it!

A few lost photos...

2010-03-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

I ordered a new cable for my better digital camera last week, and once it arrived I finally got to charge my camera and see what was on the memory card. A mix of the sweet (photos of my wedding taken by someone else) and the sad (photos of loved ones no longer with us), it was a snapshot of the past year.

Where we stayed for our honeymoon - Mar Vista Cottages

The meals we made during our honeymoon - the eggs were from the chickens in the garden, and the tomatoes were freshly picked outside our door. We bought the cheese, bread and bacon from a local health food store before setting out on our drive.

These were some of the only pictures we had from the honeymoon and for that I'm thankful. We had no cell signal, no computers, no clocks, no tv's/radios/music while we were there. It was blissful.

In the garden...

2010-03-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

Today I had the chance to get out an work in the sunshine - it's about 60 degrees and alternately sunny/overcast. Perfect weather for some heavy duty weeding and soil maintenance.

I potted up some cabbage seedlings that were just starting to show their true leaves.

This is the floor of my studio right now - the newly potted up cabbages, some eggplant, tomato, tomatillo, patty pan squash, bell pepper, hot pepper, kale, chard, cauliflower and broccoli seedlings. This is my smallest set up, and it'll be expanding quickly very soon.

This is the left side of our front yard garden. The final bed filled with cover crop was chopped down today by Matt, and I pulled up a somewhat crazy amount of weeds. I should start weighing how many pounds of weeds I pull each day.

This is the right hand side. Everything looks pretty brutal right now because we chopped down the cover crop and then mulched with it.

The poppies are crazy invasive - I didn't even plant them this year! They are all volunteers from last year, and about 20x the amount from then, too. It's a nice seasonal splash of color, but damn...

what's in the kitchen this morning

2010-03-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

Sourdough rising for rolls.

This bubble formed while I was getting breakfast ready! I am consistently awed by sourdough.

Crispy walnuts fresh from the oven.

Making another batch of soaked granola. I've found that the cleanest way to get honey out of the gallon jar is to use an ice cream scoop. For the coconut oil, I use a vintage ice cream scoop.

Putting the soaked granola down for their nap.

I've found that I'm most productive between the hours of 7am-10am, and 7pm-10pm. This morning was no different. I put chili on, made the granola, and cooked breakfast of bacon, trumpet mushrooms + egg with cream topped with Vermont cheddar. Now I get to relax and check my RSS feeds with some apple cider and cheese. Mornings are my favorite time of day.

Raw milk and food cravings

2010-03-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

I've been drinking raw milk (from Organic Pastures) for about 6 months now. I didn't like the mouth-feel of most whole milks that I'd found locally, but when a friend pushed me towards raw milk, I trusted her opinion. I absolutely had that "holy crap, this is going to kill me" moment after my first drink, and didn't take any more for a few hours. Once I realized that it wouldn't kill me or at the very least make me supremely ill, I finished off the chocolate milk in one more sitting.

Around the same time, I went to the doctor for asthma-like symptoms that wouldn't go away after 4 months (constant sore throat, coughing, wheezing, difficulty taking deep breaths) and while there was nothing wrong with the x-rays, he prescribed me 2 steroids. I took them for about 2 days... (and was irritable, my throat hurt MORE, and I felt hazy) then tried raw milk. My symptoms immediately disappeared, I stopped using the steroids, and I haven't had any breathing problems since.

When I visited Disneyland last November, I bought a half-gallon of raw milk the night I arrived and finished it in less than 24 hours - when your body needs something, it will let you know. I'm trying to let my body guide me on what it truly needs - I tend to crave meat and eggs when I'm low on iron, milk when I haven't been getting enough calcium; too bad I can't crave my fermented cod liver oil...

Lately I've been really craving maple syrup, walnuts/pecans, oats, and apples. Thankfully, those ingredients are so tasty together! To fulfill my cravings, I made a giant batch of soaked granola yesterday. It is seriously AMAZING - smells like honey and buttermilk, but so warm even though it's just room temperature. I mixed some crispy nuts (walnuts and pecans) and raisins into the granola and it was the perfect snack. With some raw milk and an apple - heaven.

Books I'm lost in...

2010-03-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

I read a LOT of books. Probably anywhere from 5-15 per month. I read in the mornings, at work (shh...), on public transit, walking to the store, while taking breaks from gardening, during lunch. All. the. time. I have a good sized library of my own - at least 300 books, by my count. I like to own books for a few reasons - I like to be self-reliant, and be able to look up some obscure statistic or snippet over and over. I like to keep lots of cookbooks around so I can have refreshers for different things that went well, or for what the right temperature my meatloaf needs to be cooked at (160 degrees) because I never seem to remember. In fact I had to go look at How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman just to make sure I knew that temp. I like knowing that if my water suddenly needed to be turned off, I would have a resource on how to wash my hair with our emergency water backup, or how to soak/sprout my grains. I like the feeling that if the power was down, I could look up different recipes and figure out how to finish a knitted garment without resorting to youtube videos. I'm very big into disaster preparedness (being on a fault line can do that to you), and my library is crucial part of my preparations that I wouldn't want to be short-handed with.

Here are the books that are currently haunting my backpack and bedside:

Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes

This book has totally affirmed the choices I've made in the past few years. Last summer I was lucky to choose to be a housewife instead of taking another job. I felt this deep connection to my food, my community, and my household that I hadn't experienced before - everything was so frantic and scattered that I never had enough energy to go around. I enjoyed having the ability to hang my laundry to dry, having the time to process and can tomatoes for storage, having the time to really dedicate my energy to my garden and having the ability to truly learn what it meant to be a homemaker. I was able to really study what "real food" meant to me, and connect with others about my new choices.

This book interviews several "Radical Homemakers" from around the country, from all different paths of life and circumstances, and finds some key motivations and connecting factors (some of which I share!). For me, it was like reading a history of something that I was currently experiencing; reading about the cool aunts and uncles who had tread the path I was just barely making steps onto, and gleaning their wisdom. It's so incredibly affirming to know that there are others out there who make the same sacrifices, and the same choices I do - especially when it seems like I'm the weird one without a TV, who likes to do laundry and grind my own flour.

The Raw Milk Revolution by David Gumpert

Gumpert's book is simultaneously frustrating and inspiring. He recounts an important trend that is happening right now in America - the government's agenda to shut off and/or limit access to safe, healthy, raw milk. I have a post going up tomorrow about why I drink raw milk, so I'll save my fanaticism for that, but this book has illuminated me about how food that is less-processed, less-handled, less-chemically altered is so tightly controlled by the FDA. It drives me insane that corporate agri-business gets free passes, but puts out tainted food at a bigger scale, more often than small, family-owned farms like the ones featured in The Raw Milk Revolution. I still purchase pasteurized milk (my buttermilk seems to die in raw milk), but only from an organic, local dairy that I've visited.

How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons

My steady friend. It has master charts for in-bed spacing, how to transplant, soil temperatures, companion planting, diagrams to understand double-digging (which Matt did to our front yard last year), designing gardens, information about the science of soil, and a ridiculous amount more. I find myself going back to this book again and again for more information. From January to July, it's basically attached to my hip, and perpetually open (or with something stuffed inside the most applicable page) on a table. I just found out that it's offered as a spiral bound book, as well! I almost want to order another one and donate this one to a new gardener.

There are a few other books that have been plauging me - begging to be finished, but quickly moved out of my bag in favor of another one. I'll highlight those a bit later, but for now it's time to crawl into bed and finish the last few pages of Radical Homemakers while enjoying an apple + cheese.

Why "open pollination"?

2010-03-02T09:42:00.000-08:00

One week ago, I was beginning to plan my garden, and flipped over the handful of seed catalogs that were around the house. I'd only ordered from 2 of them before, but somehow I'm now on the list for 6 different companies. In several of the catalogs, I noticed at there were "hybrid" seeds; I checked quickly to make sure that the companies weren't selling GMO seeds (none of them do), but I was at a loss what the difference between a hybrid seed and an open pollinated seed was. I didn't really think anything of it - I was ordering from various sources, so I figured a few hybrids wouldn't hurt.

[I'm missing 3 catalogs from this pile. I took my Baker Creek Heirloom one to a show of my husband's and longingly flipped through it during his entire set]

When I finally began planting the seeds indoors, I noticed that a few of the seed packets said clearly "hybrid" and a few of the said "open-pollinated". Hmmm. It perplexed me again, so I decided to do some research. It turns out that hybrids are a result of two species of plants (let's say tomatoes) that are intentionally bred together for different reasons: more vigor, higher output, better resistance to blight or other diseases, etc. That didn't seem really bad to me, but then I found out you can't save seed from hybrids!! Ack!

[none of these seedlings are hybrids, because the hybrids haven't germinated yet!]

Technically, you can save the seeds from hybrid plants, but when you replant them, you may or may not end up with the same kind of tomato that you had originally. A good example of this is the Sungold F1 tomato that has been super popular at farmers markets the past few years. If you save the seed it's almost gauranteed that it won't produce the same sweet, golden fruits as the year before - it might be another cherry tomato, it might not produce very much, it might be a tart taste instead of the sweet.

I ended up purchasing 3 hybrids: cabbage, a sweet bell pepper, and a hot pepper. I think it will be an interesting experiment, and hopefully the seed next year will give lots of genetic variation. However, I don't plan on purchasing another round of hybrid seeds anytime soon.

Welcome!

2010-03-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

March has always been an amazing transition month for me. I moved in with my then-boyfriend in March of 2008 (after 2 months of real dating!), got married in March of 2009, and now for March 2010, I wanted to do something for me. This blog is my way of exploring my interests more fully - finding new resources and conversations about things I that I'm interested in: bread baking (especially sourdough), knitting, weaving, housekeeping, bio-intensive gardening, eating local/farmers markets, slow food/money, education, real food (I'll explain what I mean by that later) trying new crafts, culturing/fermenting. I want to highlight my progress in working my way through new project (sourdough! my first time using cover crops! weaving my own cloth!), and share my thoughts about different social issues that confront me daily (education, transportation, poverty).

Open Pollination, for me, is the sharing of ideas and resources that have sparked my interest. I've had a few blogs before, and loved the community they develop. Last year was a whirlwind for so many reasons (got married, lots of traveling, two best friends got married, more traveling, gardening, started new job, etc), but now that it's planting time again I had an urge to settle in somewhere and put down some new roots into the blogging community.

I have a habit of buying way too much wool yarn, so unless I write 25 entries during the month of March, I'm not allowed to buy any wool for 2 months! This is my way of motivating myself out of my rut of just reading interesting blogs and thinking "Hey! I do that, too!"

So here is Open Pollination, my little anti-consumerism, do it myself, real food, urban homesteading blog. I hope I'll be sticking around for a while!