bees. and birds.

finished building my top bar bee hive a while ago, and am still waiting to get the bees to put in it.

here are also some photos of the gigantically awesome swans we had swimming around in our field a few weeks ago.

only the most bad ass photo i've ever seen

photo swiped from change your life. ride a bike

food talk and talk talk.

i typed out the following draft on valentines day:

i'm on the second evening of (water only) fasting, and the two days before i ate nothing but apples. i really didn't even know if i would make it through a day of apples only, but so far so good. if nothing else, the experience has given me a new appreciation of food and the whole ordeal of eating. but combined with saunas every second day i'm sure it has been pretty detoxifying.
oli and finn are in on this too, so today we picked up a few tropical treats to break the fast with gradually; avocados, mangos, pineapple. i am so stoked.

in other semi-exciting news, we decided to take our fridge out of the house, at least for the winter, but i actually hope it's for forever.
apparently you can put blocks of ice in your root cellar, cover them with straw or sawdust and they will stay frozen all summer. if we had some more seriously cold weather we could give that a try.


and an update from today, today:

i ended up doing a one day fast yesterday with paul. i think a few one day fasts a month during the winter are a pretty good thing. helps break up the routine and gives a chance to think about your relationship with food.


starting to get ready for spring; we cleaned out the greenhouse and started some onions in the kitchen.

a few of us from the farm are taking a Secwepemc language class at this amazing school, and i'm really enjoying it. Secwepemctsín is the language of the Shushwap people of this area. last night we started telling (really simple) stories ourselves and it was great.

here are a few words i know and like:
st̓cétkwe - broth
xqweltálkweten - telephone (thing for communicating)
ts̓kméke7 - beak of a bird (like they use their hands for)

finally!

congratulations calgary on getting your water back!
(Calgary council votes to end fluoridation of municipal water)

a few photos and strange updates

yesterday, this bird was swooping around in circles around the house:

at first we thought it was the owl we often hear hooting at night, but turns out it's a northern harrier. (sweet jpg eh? it's like binoculars!) watching the harrier was some action packed "birding" activity, but i'm sort of disappointed it wasn't the owl.

here is paul re-racking wine, apple cider:


mean lookin' dogs:


we just put the dogs on their own parasite cleanse. hah!
also i just learned we have to start putting vaseline on the legs of the chickens (to kill leg mites).

hi, how are you?

i've been doing some amount or type of yoga every day and i feel richly rewarded by it. i feel limber and stronger. i can do a headstand!
i like this website: Yoga Journal/, especially the "POSES" section where you can sort poses in different ways and build sequences of them. i find it helpful to learn a batches of poses at a time and work on them until they are very comfortable, then go build a new sequence (on the site, or in your notebook, or brain).
of course paul is helpful with this, he is pretty much a natural born yogi, somehow.

let's see what else...
i blogged a blog on our farm site here.

i've been reconnecting with some people from my past (through email). i think i am going to keep that up, it's a better way to use the internet than reading about peak oil apocalypse i think.

two thousand and eleven

looking back at my '10 blog post, my resolutions involved:
1. knitting 2. being connected with people 3. learning/reading/evolving 4. writing letters to politicians

well. thanks to a crash course from caylie over the holidays i can say that i know how to knit. finally! i haven't made anything yet, but it's only a matter of time.

being "connected" is still a struggle. i quit facebook and i think that was a good decision but i have to compensate somehow. my situation has changed though; living in this community i would have to go out of my way to be isolated. i'm definitely learning about people and relationships. either way, i want to write more letters and emails. and maybe more phone calls.

always with the learning and reading and getting better, of course. perpetual resolution.

writing letters to politicians. frankly, i never did this and i am not interested in this anymore.


SO, new new new resolutions.

i want to evolve my own practice of physical and mental discipline and get a solid routine of stretching. (i'm skirting the word yoga because caylie hates it. although i'm sure she just hates the lululemon overly righteous carrying around a cup of starbucks in your ugg boots and talking about yoga all the time thing. which i also do hate but i'm just talking about intentional stretching.)

i'd like to become less of a culinary spazz. not hoping to be a chef, just able to cook up something to eat without crying. i don't know why i find cooking for a few people to be so stressful, but at this point it's too much to endure.