Monumental shifts...

I write this post from West Hartford Connecticut, from the armchair in my father's living room - to let you know I won't be posting much for the next little while.  Today I drive up into the Berkshires  and prepare to dive deep into myself and into my study...  I will be spending the next month at Kripalu's Yoga Teacher Training.  This has been something that I have planned for the last year or so, and dreamed about for longer than that...  It is a one month residential program and while there is internet access available, I doubt I'll use it very much.
I'm anticipating a month of diving deep into myself.  (And meeting wonderful yogi folks too, I'm sure!)  A month of intense learning and gaining of perpective.  But little in the way of homestead-y things....

Namaste y'all!

Three Buckets Bubbling and Three Bags Full

Actually there are now two buckets bubbling, since the weekend now two weeks past saw us bottling the batch of gruit ale.  This left a birch ale and a birch wine still slowly bubbling.  The original post title still sounds better...

Two Buckets Bubbling and Three Bags Full

Three bags full of wool, that is.  My dearest housemates found me three bags full of wool.  Where did they find such a bounty you ask?  Why the same place the Woodsman found me an even bigger bag of wool a few weeks earlier.  The TransferSite, of course!  This brings my tally of found and gifted bags of raw fiber (alpaca, llama, sheep) up to a ridiculous number.  Which means that I really, really must get out my spinning wheel and (re)learn to spin... Though I'm thinking, these three particular bags I may felt.  It looks like mediocre quality fiber, short staple though kinky, and not at all cleaned or picked through or washed.  I have some really nice spinning wool awaiting me and I rather think that I ought to (re)learn before I set my self too much a Herculean task.  That probably not the best metaphor.  Psyche-ic task?  Didn't jealous mother-Venus set her the three impossible tasks before sh could reuinte with Cupid?  And wasn't one of them about a golden fleece?  Or is it a different fairy tale, now nameless in my mind, where the heroine must sort the the three mixed types of grains into three piles by morning - and does so with the help of the ants she was once kind to?  I recall there being three similarly impossible tasks.  At any rate,  I think I would be overwhelming myself unhealthily if I expected myself to spin it all just yet.  Not to mention I have more yarn that I could weave in a year already.  But these three bags, in three different shades, look like they will felt nicely.  It is nearly two years since I learned Kyrgzh and Mongolian style felting at Convergence .  I keep meaning to make more things... and to play with dyes.... I promise another post on all the possibilities for felting that dance in my head.  I fear this post might get too unwieldly-long, even for me, if I go into it all here.  At any rate, I think I have enough in these bags for another small rug.  

And now for the Buckets Bubbling: 

Back when we were tapping the birches, we started three batches of homebrew: 

~ a birch sap wine (vaguely) following the recipe in "The Alaska Bootlegger's Bible" by Leon W. Kania - great book, I highly recommend it!- as well as two ales.  It's currently waiting, and about due, to be transferred into the carboy the Woodsman is loaning us for its secondary ferment.

~One ale was based on a recipe my mom found on the internet:  it used birch sap as the liquid, added honey (we used the honey from my mother's hives last year) for the sugar, and steeped birch twigs in it for flavor and bitter, and ale yeast for the fermentation.  It is currently sitting in a bucket in the middle of the kitchen floor going through a secondary ferment and clearing process - as we were racking it (I think that's the right term?), I did fill a single liter gralsh bottle with this brew; so we'll be able to compare it between after only a primary and after having the chance at a secondary ferment.

    I'm not going to take one side or the other in what I understand is a sometimes bitter arguement - but since this beverage uses honey as its sugar source, there is an argument to be made that it is not actually an 'ale' - ale yeast and name not withstanding - but rather a type of mead.  Either way, I'm looking forward to drinking it! I think I'll probably call it "Bunchberry's Honey Ale" and leave it at that.  

~The other ale, which is now bottled and aging in the pantry (its also pictured here), is a birch sap version of a gruit ale.   It was made by modifying the recipe found in "Strong Waters"by Scott Mansfield - I also highly highly recommend this book!  A gruit is basically a brew that uses herbs to supply the bitters in the place of hops.  In the middle ages, before hops became cheap and plentiful and widely available, almost all ales and beers were gruits.  Monasteries and brewers and alewives would have their own individual (and probably guarded and secret) recipes.  Gruits would be developed for specific purposes - medicinal or psychotropic - using different combinations of herbs.  The herbal base of a gruit allows the nutritional qualities - vitamins and trace minerals - and the medicinal qualities of the herbs to come through in the ale.  If I remember correctly, the "small ale" that Shakespeare speaks of is a gruit.  

The recipe from "Strong Waters" calls for using equal parts of yarrow, saint John's wort, and mugwort. The yarrow I used was last summer's harvest that I had wildcrafted.  The other two came from the bulk herb section of our local health food store.  I look forward this summer and fall to playing with a few gruits of wildcrafted herbs - I'm thinking specifically about yarrow, coltsfoot, and labrador tea.  The recipe calls for water, and we just substituted birch sap, so its natural sugar content was added to the malt syrup.  It was a roaring blaze of fermentation for a while there!

When we bottled this one, we poured ourselves a couple pints to try.  Its certainly a different taste than your normal, commercial, hopped beer.  But I quite liked it.  It was a bit um, young-tasting - and you could almost watch the yeast precipitating out of it.  After it has settled in the bottles and aged a bit, I'm quite looking forward to it!  We'll ration it out across the next 6-12 months, so I can see how the aging changes the flavor.... stay tuned!

It was really satisfying and validating to actually bottle some home brew.  A few years ago, I tried my hand at some fruit-based wine making.  Let me tell you, brewing is much much easier with running water than in a dry cabin!  My attempts then went to either mold or vinegar which was really disheartening, so its good to feel some success this time around.  I also find that I really enjoy having the ongoing process and presence and life of things fermenting in the kitchen.  It gives the kitchen - already so much the heart and the hearth of the home, and really of my life - this added quality of vitality and aliveness...  I look forward to many years of the same!

TransferSite Finds: Wolverine

~

....with many thanks to the spirit of the wolverine....

~

So, The Woodsman was at that magical magical place -the TransferSite - this morning, and he found something amazing, something chart-toppingly unbelievable...  (hint, there's a photo of it above.)

He found a tanned wolverine pelt.  Wolverine!  As in the animal who's fur sheds frost and is therefore a favored ruff for hoods...
Can you imagine?  I mean, who traps wolverine and gets the hide tanned only to throw it away?  I suppose that karmically the universe wanted to be sure the animal was honored in death and in life and so set it up to be found by a trapper and leatherworker who would truly and fully appreciate the gift and the find of this pelt.  I can't wait to see what he makes of it!

Clucking Blossom VIII

Cluck Cluck Bloom y'all!

where  the sun always shines and everything is always free: music, love, art, food, and dancin'.  There was lots of dancin'

The festival

Clucking Blossom successfully celebrated its eighth year in true Blossom fashion this year, with music, hippies, art, and dancing.  Clucking Blossom is a free community festival every year, and this year my Darlin' Man was one of the main organizers.  He's been working on this project for months, fundraising and planning, and after a last minute craziness of Borough sound ordinances and event insurance, he (they) pulled it off phenomenally!  You'll see pictures of the ArtWalk below, its something he started a few years ago, and every year he stays up most of the night the night before hanging art in the trees, and then most of the night the night after taking it down.  Oh yeah, and his band performed as one of the closing acts. 

I had a great time, but more importantly, I'm so proud of him and the fruits of all his hard work.

Art Walk entrance

These flowers actually made me do a double take.  I was like,
what kind of Georgia transplant is actually blooming already?

Books above the path.

Floppy Disks installation

Little'un being swung around by dad.

Hooping.

This is how an acoustic band performs at an outdoor music festival.
Inside a tight group of audience, who sings along, so the vocals can
be heard by all.
Local Band = Feeding Frenzy.

spring wood violets along the art walk.

Why they call it the land of the midnight sun...
Photo taken at 11:30 pm

Fire Dancing to the Phineas Gauge.
That's my darlin'man up there on stage rappin'.

juggling fire

Fire hooping

AK fire tribe ladies being amazing with hoops.

Homestead Eating: Woodland-made sauce

"Carrot Pancake" with lingonberry sauce,
 sour cream, and gruit ale.

I hope and intend that this is only the first of many versions of 'woodland-made' sauce that you will see and I will eat.  Lingonberries, though better known as a Scandinavian specialty, are as common in the woods on this this side of sub-artic circumpolar north as they are over there.  I hear tell you can find them in the northeast (Vermont and such places) though I've no personal knowledge of that.  Every autumn, I gather quarts and quarts of lingonberries.  I generally make a lingonberry sauce at Thanksgiving and look forward to when it entirely replaces ocean spray tm on the table. I am much more regular about, and invested in, this harvest than that of the blueberries that the typical Alaskan is known for.  (Living uphill now from great blueberry flats may see that personal trend change.)
Also growing in the woodlands I gather these ruby berries in are such plants as labrador tea and spruce and birch trees.  There are others of course, but these tend to be prolific and perhaps more importantly, to figure intimately into the profile of this 'woodland-made' sauce.  The last time I was heating up a lingonberry sauce (coincidentally for this same meal on a different day - its a fave), I was not as assiduous as usual in picking out the stray leaves of labrador tea and spruce needles that had wound up frozen with the berries.  The next day I was eating the left over berries (with a spoon, out of the pot; that's how much I adore these tart ruby baubles) - and I noticed little pockets of intense flavor where spruce or labrador tea had mingled with the berry flavor.  It was unexpected and took me aback, but on second thought I rather liked it.
So this time, in preparing the sauce, I intentionally left the leaves and needles in and let the sauce simmer for longer than usual in an attempt to infuse.  It sorta worked.  I'm looking forward to trying again and actually ADDING some of both flavorings, picked in the woods on purpose.  I mean, the flavor was a leeetle bit there, but certainly not enough to hold its own in the meal.  To further the whole woodland sauce concept, I sweetened the sauce with a splash of birch syrup instead of the spoonful of sugar I usually use.

As for the meal as a whole it is (mostly) out of "Sundays at Moosewood," Moosewood Restaurant's ethnic cookbook.  It is definately a favorite kitchen tool and inspiration of mine, as evidenced by the way it beginning to fall apart and the number of bookmarks and notes stuck into it.  It has sections on the ethnic/regional food of various areas : Morroco,  Northern Britain, India, Japan, Southeast US, Northeast US, Hebrew, Bulgarian or Yugoslav, etc etc.  One of my recent favorites is the section on Finland.  I don't know why the idea didn't strike me earlier in my life here in Alaska, but it makes so much sense to look to Scandinavian cultures for traditional food-ways that are compatible with life here in the far north: the climate, the growing season, some of the wild species, the need for winter storage, etc are all so very similar.  It only makes sense their food would resonate here too.  This is an adaptation of traditional carrot pancakes that I gather are usually prepared more like latkes.  Here they're baked in cast iron.  I don't follow the recipe anymore, I've made it so many times, and such things are relative... but I'll tell you how I do it.  For a precise recipe to follow, I cannot recommend "Sundays at Moosewood" enough!

Saute a diced onion in oil or fat (I like to use bacon grease when I have it) in a cast iron pan.
Shred about 5 carrots into a bowl.
Crumble a half cup or more of bread crumbs into the bowl.  If you don't have dried stale bread, dice a slice of whole wheat or sourdough bread.
In another bowl whisk together 5ish eggs and some milk.  Maybe almost a cup?
Whisk in thyme and nutmeg (1/2 -1 teaspoon ish?) and salt and pepper to taste.
Whisk in a half cup of flour.  I use whole wheat.  You could use rye or white or buckwheat.

Mix thoroughly the bread crumbs, carrots and onions in the first bowl.  Then add the egg mixture and toss or mix till thoroughly coated.  Scoop it all back into the cast iron pan (it should be all greasy from sauteing the onions), and bake at 350 ish for about half an hour.  When its done, it'll be a little puffy and golden on the top.  If you take it out too soon and its still goopy when you cut into it, just put it back in for a bit.  I sometimes overcook it, which just means there's a too-brown crust on the cast iron that is sometimes a pain to scrub out, but that the dog likes to eat.

Serve with lingonberry sauce and cultured sour cream (yoghurt would probably be good too).  The eggs and the sour cream are enough protein, but if you really want a winter-warmer style meal, it would be good with bacon, divine with sausage, and would hold up to left over roast or chicken. Wine, beer, and water are all good accompaniments.   Tea too, I'd imagine. Or apple juice.  I look forward to a lifetime of serving this meal to my family on a regular basis, I anticipate it being a weekly meal that my kids will know intimately.  Its healthy (and lingonberries are Vitamin C powerhouses!), easy, quick, AND best of all, can be made almost entirely from ingredients that I anticipate making or growing on this here homestead of ours.  Carrots and onions? Yessirree! They store well for winter too!  Bacon grease or butter? you bet!  Egss. Milk.  Bread.  Granted the wheat flour for both the pancake and the bread will likely be from off-homestead.   And there's always spices.  I will always import spices.

Words of Wisdom

I was speaking with an Athabascan elder this morning; she said that people keep telling her to write a book, I must say that I quite agree.  She was speaking of the challenges facing so many native villages wiht keeping culture alive, and staying a healthy community with there being rampant substance abuse in so many places...

I just wanted to share something that she said that I thought was so poignantly put, and that is so true for everyone.

"There's one thing.  There's just one thing we're here for.  To love eachother and to get back to the one who made us.  Anything else, culture-wise, is just of this world."

HGA "Small Expressions" Winner

The winners of the Handweaver's Guild of America's "Small Expressions" annual exhibit have been announced. 

I don't have the artist's permission to post a photograph of the winning piece, so I'll only link to it.

But I did want to post about it, and give it a shout-out, because it is phenonmenal.  And all kinds of inspiring. 

~

First Place in HGA's 2012 Small Expressions goes to Jenine Shereos of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.  The peice is entitled Leaves and is made entirely of human hair.  She uses

wrapping, stitching, and knotting techniques to create the ephemeral skeletons of leaves.

~

I love the idea of using human hair in textile (or mixed media) art.  When and if she ever cuts them off, I plan on turning my Breda's long long dreads into something amazing and powerful.  The Darlin'Man's (shorter) dreads are waiting for an artistic hand.  Either he will use them in a carved mask, or I will use them in a tapestry.  


I love the idea of art being the telling of a story.  Storytelling in all its form is powerful powerful stuff.   What better way to tell our own stories than through our own bodies as the medium?  This is why I do theatre.

In many cultures, creation myths are told in the form of stories about weaving or about spinning.  Spinning takes a fluff of 'nothing' - a puff of wool - and turns it into useful and beautiful thread.  Weaving takes thread and turns it into structure and form.  Weaving is also used as a metaphor for fate or destiny, that the cloth that is woven defines the fate of the thread. 
I love the idea of using hair as thread and entering into this mythic discussion.  Hair is something that is our own, that is literally created by us, out of 'nothing' in the same way that plants create themselves out of sunlight. 

I think of fairy tales like Rapunzel and Rumplestiltskin, and about one I read years ago where the maiden wins (back?) the love of the king by weaving him a scarf out of her hair. I think of folk tales like that of the Crane Wife.   I conceive of performance art peices where my hands weave while my hair is fed into the warp - it would probably necessitate extensions, as it isn't THAT long - so that I am both the weaver and the woven.