Permaculture Learning

I did a thing this summer.

I don't really think of myself as having a green thumb. I tend to have a very laissez-faire approach to gardening (I think I come by that honestly, but perhaps what I thought of as laissez-faire landscaping growing up was more about aggressive experimentation in seeing what nature will do on its own).

I also have zero knowledge of plants. Like, I could barely identify the trees on our property (thank you Plant ID apps). I have no idea what flowers bloom when or what vegetables are best planted together (thankfully, all knowledge that can easily be looked up on the Internet).

So, imagine my sense of overwhelm when the deal with this house was that Ben would address the inside design/renovation while I would take care of the transformation of the grounds. We have 1.8 acres of nearly cleared grounds ripe for homesteading, and it was up to me to figure out how to use it all.

Enter in the Maine Ecological Design School's Permaculture Design Course (seriously, check out their website and the summer class; I cannot recommend them enough).

I, on the other hand, don't have the ability yet to plant things
to deter the deer, so we went the fencing route.

I had known a little bit about permaculture beforehand. I had read a couple chapters in Gaia's Garden, known about sheet mulching (not that I had ever done it), and knew that a lot of permaculture's about observing the land and where the snow melts last or what wildlife shows up, etc. What I didn't really appreciate until taking this class is that permaculture is essentially a systems approach to landscaping. You can actually apply permaculture principles to organize a wide variety of things, like nonprofits, communities, churches, etc., but it really is about developing resilient systems and figuring out how (and when) to intervene. You don't like the deer munching on your apple trees? Maybe there's a way to plant a hedge to make it more difficult for them to gain access. Something not growing where you want it to? Maybe it's not in the right place (too shady, too wet, too sunny, etc) or maybe in needs nutrients that can be supplied by a nitrogen fixer. 

I also appreciate that permaculture takes seriously that humans are a keystone species - that how we use the land is important too (it's not just for plants and insects and wildlife). You have kids? They need outdoor space to play too so having some lawn for them to kick a soccer ball around is useful. Your energy and capacity are important, so the parts of your system that need more maintenance (like your kitchen garden) go closer to your house vs. the parts of your ecosystem that need less (like your orchard) which can be further away. Goals - like having an edible landscape or growing most of your own food or providing for pollinators or reducing reliance on your well for watering - shape the design of the land. 

We now have a plan for the land (which has already been tweaked) and it's a plan that can guide the next 10-15 years (it won't all be planted or implemented at once - that would be *a lot* of work that we don't have the capacity for). This fall will be about getting our wood shelter up and prepping the ground for our kitchen garden and herb spiral by laying down some sheet mulch (thank you seaweed, leaves, compost, and cardboard!). We have to prep the chicken coop for winter. I'll work on destroying some bittersweet and pruning branches on the edges of our property that prevent us from keeping bittersweet at a minimum. I'll hopefully get to pruning the heck out of our autumn olive shrubs and try to kill the worst of the Japanese barberry. I think that's ambitious enough for a few weekends of work. 

I feel pretty confident in what I've laid out - and pretty confident in being able to work though the process again. It was really wonderful connecting with this community of learning and forming friendships with people from different backgrounds and perspectives. It's the first serious learning I've done outside of anything ministry related, so I feel pretty proud of the fact that I went outside my comfort zone and tried something new (and more than that, I did the drawing by hand which was a huge accomplishment!).   

If any of you are thinking about your land, thinking about preparing for whatever might be ahead, wanting to develop a resilient system on your plot of earth, definitely check out permaculture. I don't think you'll be disappointed in the process of intentionally working through your goals, observing your land, and dreaming about how it all fits together.

 

   

Life, man

Life, man.

We've been planning this trip to North Carolina for about 5 months (because when you have 3 kids, one of them being an infant, Trips take Planning). We found a great travel plan where we'd drive a small chunk on day one, get the kids to bed, and stuff them into the car at 3:30 in the morning to do the bulk of the drive in one day. 

And it worked. Mostly.

Much like the last 30 seconds of a basketball game can take 30 minutes to play, the last hour of our drive stretched into two as our middle child complained of belly pain and then threw up all over the car seat. And then again 20 minutes down the road in the Circle K bathroom after we'd already stopped for cleanup and wardrobe change.

We wrote it off to motion sickness.

We were wrong. 

How wrong? Well, it passed to everyone in the family (and, unfortunately, beyond - our 2024 Spring Forest pilgrimage became known as the Plaguerimage).. I got it the least severely. It apparently spread beyond our family because…norovirus does that. We had pinned a lot of hopes and expectations of rest on this time away and yet…life happens. Kids pick up germs. Kids get sick. Parents comfort kids. Parents get sick. Suddenly it's five days later and you're all healthy but somehow, even though you've all rested, you're all seriously wiped. Except the kids aren't wiped, it's just the parents.

This bout with the stomach flu (and honestly, this season of sickness stretches back all the way to the beginning of the year when we got COVID) highlighted to me that we're in a super tough season of life right now where our capacity is much more limited than our ambition. Are there things we'd like to contribute to the community and to neighbors and things to develop on our land? Absolutely. Are we also in this season where kids take up most of our available time and energy and the unpredictability of their needs take up what little margin we have left and anything we give beyond this mounds up like insurmountable credit card debit with a 30% interest rate? Also yes.

I can't help but think that there must be some solution out there to rebalance our lives (i.e., how do we refinance the credit card that is our life?!?). There isn't much more that can be chucked off our plates. 

And then I remember our baseline reality is that we have a household where we’re always negotiating chronic illness with careful stewardship of energy and sleep. It means common viruses take longer to recover from (and can possibly trigger a relapse if we aren’t vigilant, thank you to COVID for that lovely gift).So there’s already some limits baked into our lives. Sometimes we don’t have to worry about them too closely and sometimes it’s an all-too-present reality. Add in the recent stressors in our life, constant germs, and a baby with unpredictable sleep, it's no wonder there’s little margin in our life right now.

I also remember the birthing class we took at Birthroots when we were expecting Michael, and the instructor shared that this particular season of parenting small humans - the in the thick of it season - is about the first three years of their life. She compared this particular season of parenting to a labyrinth - a journey winding its way to the center and our again with twists and turns. With a labyrinth, you have to trust the path to find your way back out again. Our instructor noted that this part of the parenting journey is about 3 years. (Of course, she did also mention that by the 3rd year mark, many parents are planning on entering that labyrinth again by adding more children to their family). We're in our third pass through this labyrinth, and definitely feeling like we're in one of the twisty bits.

It’s only a season (though you never know when seasons will end). And there are times where you need to rely more heavily on your community, trusting that there will be times and ways to give back as well. Yes, it’s a struggle knowing that we’re deep down in the kid hole, but I know we will emerge into a more stable rhythm one day.

Until then, we'll take all the viruses as they come.

A picture of Forest Feast Setup, and finally everyone was healthy! 

2024 Family Intentions (or, The New Year is Finally Here!)

To say that our new year has had a bit of a ragged start would be a bit of an understatement. All of us have had one respiratory illness or another since early December, with the latest player to the field being COVID. We had 17 days of various members of the house testing positive, isolating, masking, and testing, testing, testing. We're all finally negative, though recovery continues to be slow (and now our older two kids both have the cold that is going around!) We’re slowly finding our feet and getting the new year underway.

We decided to enter into 2024 trying to be more intentional about who we are being called to be as a family. Sometime in early December, we were having a conversation with Michael about consumerism - how our cultural obsessions with buying new things made us unhappy, was hurting the planet, and would not be sustainable going into the future. We talked about how they had more toys than the richest kids did two hundred years ago and what it meant to be content with enough. 

Michael said, “I think we shouldn’t buy ANYTHING for a year!” We bargained him down to three months, which became our first commitment as a family this year. We’re buying nothing beyond necessities until Easter. We’ve limited our spending to gas, groceries, personal care items (we’re still going to get floss if we run out!), giving to our faith communities, and obviously utilities (keep the electric company happy). At the same time, we’re picking up more quality family time together: board games, activities, and outdoor activities that can help recenter our family on something beyond screens and new toys.

The cookbook that will be 
the foundation of our 
recipe selection

The second intention is: One Family, One Meal. Practically, I’m really tired of feeling like a short order cook at times, and sometimes I get into the pattern where I have no idea what I’m going to make for dinner. I enjoy meal planning a great deal, but there are times when I don’t have the capacity to think about what we’re going to eat for the coming week when I grocery shop, so I just throw items into the cart based on what we normally have on hand. Also, our kids are not always adventurous eaters. Don’t get me wrong, they eat a lot of vegetables but they don’t do a lot of things…mixed together. Casseroles are out of the question. I made cheesy potatoes the other day and there was a less than enthusiastic response. They aren’t always keen on things that have seasoning. But they’ve made a commitment to try new things this year, and so each week, we - as a family - are going to pick a recipe and make it together. Our Thursday night meal will be something new for us to try together. The kids will get to pick one meal each week, on Wednesdays we’ll make pizza, and then it’s leftovers and adult picks for the rest of the week. 

Michael cooking 
quesadillas while we were
all isolating from COVID

Part of it is to get our kids to eat different foods, but the other part of it is trying to help our kids learn how to be grateful for what the earth has produced for us to eat and for the work of the many hands who grew, tended, harvested, processed, packaged, transported, and cooked the food. We are aware that our children have culturally-conditioned food aversions: that it is now a norm that our kids don’t need to eat anything that doesn’t instantly hit those pleasure centers in the brain - and the food that does that also happens to be highly processed, not very healthy, and, as we’re learning now, can have long-term health consequences that we don’t yet fully understand. However, living in mutuality with the Earth and learning that eating is first about community, and not about a hyper-individualized expression of personal preference, is not the norm. This requires learning new skills and attitudes for how we approach our food (both for us and for them.) By no means do we want to force distasteful foods on our kids, but we do want to teach them how to be grateful for the food that is available to them; especially as we begin to homestead and they learn more deeply the connections between animal, soil, and table.  

So far (in the past couple of weeks we’ve had the capacity to try it) it’s gone over OK. Cauliflower Paprikash was a bust (The onions! The onions!). Roasted broccoli with lemon and feta was accepted. When I made chicken curry the other night, Michael was excited about it (though the spice level exceeded his tolerance.) This week we will try a bean and cheese casserole topped with cornbread. 

No extra spending has been a bit easier, since we're not big shoppers anyway, but picking up intentional family time has proved to be a bit more challenging, mostly since we're exhausted and still recovering our energy from COVID. It's an invitation for us to evaluate how we're all spending our time and how we can recalibrate our priorities to make space. 

So, we're easing our way into the new year. After all, it's like the meme going around the internet this time of year, that January was the free trial period, with February being the real start to 2024! But maybe progress like this means that change will last, as opposed to diving in head first only to be overwhelmed by all the new changes and slipping back into old ways of being. In any case, I feel like these shifts, and the grounding beneath them, will prove foundational and fruitful, especially for our kids, as we continue to raise them to follow Jesus on our little two acre island of sanity.

Rhythms of Life

I posted a reflection several weeks ago on where I found myself about one year after stepping out of professional ministry. Not much has changed in those weeks (except for being perpetually sick with one respiratory illness or another, culminating in a bout with COVID which wasn't physically terrible but certainly logistically so), but I feel the need to be more intentional about stepping into vocation in this season and share more concretely how being nap-trapped, washing endless dishes, and herding chickens and children, is a holy incarnation of the ordained life for me right now.

For awhile I've been drawn to the work of David Gate; he posts his poems on Instagram and many are hand-typed on a typewriter for purchase. I finally decided to mark a few I wanted hard copies of for Christmas and I got both this past week. I find that right now these two poems are a helpful anchor for my vocation and identity right now as a clergy person not in professional ministry. 

Priesthood

Doing the laundry 
and the dishes 
and meal preparation 
are not tasks of the mundane 
because being clothed 
and clean 
and fed 
declares the dignity 
of human life 
and nurtures us 
into new days 
into new eras 
they are not mundane, no 
they are the rituals of care

Font 

This kitchen sink, the font 
of my home, where bread 
pans soak & milk bottles
swill, where we wash paint pots 
& brushes in the aftermath 
of craft, where salad leaves 
rinse to be rid of bugs & soil 
where I clean the abrasions 
of my working hands & all the blood 
from the little cuts of constant use 
in repetition & never-ending chore 
I come to these sacred waters 
daily to baptize the entirety of my holy life

First of all, I love these poems because they have a monastic feel to them. The work of the everyday, the seemingly endless cycle of cleaning and cooking, the rhythm of slowing down and tending to the needs of the present, is a holy act of hospitality. I've always been drawn to the monastic rhythm of work and prayer, and there's something compelling about being in relationship with a community of people who share that way of life. Whether that kind of neomonastic community will spring up here or not is not on the horizon yet, but it's a reminder that this path is a different witness than that of faith organized around a congregation.

Secondly, these poems remind me of the Greek word kenosis, which roughly translates as emptying out. It's used in the letter to the church at Philippi where Paul quotes one of the earliest Christian hymns, where he refers to Jesus as pouring himself out and becoming human. To me, it is this lovely image of downward mobility, that God more often than not is found in the mundane places. God is found in humility and service. God is found within as our ego loses control of our truest self. God dwells down and within; we don't have to reach for it as the holy is already there. For me, ordination is a commitment to intentionally and publicly live in this set apart way; it is not an elevated status but rather one that drives you into the deepest depths of self on the path of following Jesus.

I plan on framing these prints and placing them on the side of my cabinets over the kitchen sink, which is a place I spend an inordinate amount of time. Having these physical reminders will be helpful for my calling in this season (also these two poems need to be added to the collection...too many of them actually!) Focus on the present needs, tend to the rhythm of work and prayer, and give thanks for the mundane acts of love and care.

Bonus Picture of my Kitchen Sink