The Beginning

I’ve begun this blog as a practice, a way to enhance my learning process and share with others the trials, successes and failures of small scale homesteading. We began this journey three years ago with a dream of owning land and connecting with it daily and building our life around our connection to that land. The idea has morphed many times based on what is actually available to us as first time buyers with no money for investment. The dream of wild acreage has been put aside for a couple of years, thanks to the last eight years housing troubles our options for buying land on credit and building were pulled from beneath our feet right at the critical moment when we put an offer in on 33 beautiful forested acres. So the dream changed, we decided upon smaller acreage and it would have to have a house already on it. After crying and rearranging our dream we found the piece of land for us, a small, three acre farmstead in need of much work after years of neglect. The land has many heirloom fruit trees including D’s favorite, Asian pears, a creek that runs all but a month out of the year and a house in the shadow of Whitehorse Mountain in the North Fork Stilliguamish River Valley. Out our windows looms the lowest altitude glacier in the lower 48 states. It is a rocky peak covered in countless waterfalls that flow to the river that is only a two minute walk from the land.

 

The land itself if covered in countless blackberries, and although blackberry was my first herbal ally, my first duty will be to remove all the bushes I can to make room for a goat paddock and create healthy land to begin replanting. The journey will be long, the house needs much work, the land needs ample help to reclaim its balance, and I am in desperate need to live closer with the land. Here’s praying for a mutually beneficial and rewarding relationship between us all.

 

I intend to fill this blog not only with the stories of the home remodel and the land restoration but with my experiments in small scale susatinabilty. From trials in lacto-fermenting, wine making, farming, wildcrafting, hunting, food processing, canning, food preservation, mushroom hunting, crafts and fine art, the creative process, home herbalism, cooking and anything else that suits my fancy. I hope you enjoy.

Listen With Your Heart

-Edna Jaques

Go out, go out I beg of you,

And taste the beauty of the wild.

Behold the miracle of Earth

With all the wonder of a child.

Walk hand in hand with nature’s God

Where scarlet lilies brightly flame.

Make footprints in the virgin sod

By some clear lake without a name.

 

Listen not only with your ears,

But make your heart a listening post.
Travel above the timber line,

Make fires along some lonely coast.

Breathe the high air of snow-crowned peaks,

Taste fog and kelp and salty tides.

Go pitch your tent among the pines

Where golden sun and peace abide.

 

Follow the trail of moose and deer,

The wild goose on her lonely flight.

Savor the fragrance of the wild,

The sweetness of a northern night.

Drink deep of distance, rest your eyes

Where centuries of peace have lain.

And let your thoughts go winging out,

Beyond the realm of man’s domain.

 

Lay hold upon the out-of-doors

With heart and soul and seeking brain.

You’ll find the answers to all life

Held in the sun and wind and rain.

Where’er you walk, by land or sea,

The page is clear for all who seek.

If you will listen with your heart

And let the voice of nature speak.