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Mountain Jewel

Center for Earth Connection

  • Gardening,  Permaculture,  Squash breeding

    Community Squash Tasting Day

    January 22, 2022 /

    Saving seed and growing food is inherently place based. The characteristics of the seeds you save becomes the nourishment that fills your and possibly others’ bodies. It is one of the great gifts of growing food. Cooking it and sharing it brings us together and infuses us with a sense of place. 

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Wren & Ini tend the gardens and Food Forests & practice Natural Building at Mountain Jewel Permaculture Homestead in the heart of the Ozarks.
Getting to know corn will surely take me a lifetim Getting to know corn will surely take me a lifetime. Spending time with her is to love her and begin to understand the depth of relationship humans have cultivated with her for thousands of years from the wild teosinte. This is my second year growing this very diverse ‘Harmony Grain’ corn which has been bred & tended by Joseph Lofthouse and before that countless humans in central and South America, and then in North America. The lifeways of the eagle and condor meeting. This year I added new heirloom varieties that were given to me. At 75 plants, my plot is small and maybe even dare I say impractical by some standards. Sweet potatoes & squash perhaps give us more calories for the inputs and space they need. But something within beckons me to grow corn, to enter into relationship. After last season, after I had saved back the seed from the best ears, the seed which appealed to me in color and form and health, I then had to learn how to use it! I didn’t grow up in corn culture, but ini was influenced by his time in rural Mexico. So we nixtamalized the corn, tried to grind it fine enough to make masa and attempted to make tortillas (and also added it to stews unground). Last night I had my first pockets in my tortillas- not from corn I grew; I bought some nixtamalized organic blue masa, to practice on, because making masa out of corn I grow feels so very special and I want to get good at it. There is nothing that compares to the fresh corn tortilla, loaded with long cooked duck wings from our land, with fresh cilantro and fermented homemade hot sauce. I could eat versions of this theme all year and that is the goal. Add ground venison we’ve put away, fresh tomatoes and salsa in season. Mmm! Corn is so direct that I can grow by hand, process by hand and eat. It is an accessible food and one we humans have relied on for a long time. In times of GMO narrow corn lineages grown all over this good land, I breathe the life back into these very diverse intelligent seeds and keep them as they awaken, enliven and keep me too.
Morning walk through the gardens. So much is in fl Morning walk through the gardens. So much is in flower or fruit! This area isn’t easy to photograph as all the greens tend to blend together in full light, but the mix of dew, shadows and morning sun helps the plants stand out. ::Some of what’s pictured:: Asparagus dripping with her green ornaments, stately elder’s yeasty blooms, Pawpaw tucked in, valerian standing tall always courting the butterflies, goji continues its spread & the blueberries are laden this year. Juneberry coming on, aronia replete with future fruit... Goumi berry’s red gems! The landscape is studded with edible poetry.
Building for oneself is surely a labor of love. It Building for oneself is surely a labor of love. It is a delicate task of implementing a vision while dancing with expediency, time/energy, available resources, etc. Through building I learn so much about myself. What is important to me and what makes me feel good inhabiting my body in spaces. Back to living in the sauna this summer. Switched out winter/spring clothes for summer garb, nestled into the back room and am making myself cozy here. I love the way these curtains carry so many good relations: fabric gifted from @chelsea.the.mermaid , dyed with indigo last summer and Osage orange (from scrapings from @asimplesarahlynn making a bow for herself). Ini sewed them up n hung them. I enjoy how the light comes through. Also putting some finishing touches in the form of terra cotta colored milk paint and a braided rope border above the barrel stove. Wrapping that nicho in love. 🕯 This building sees many iterations; from a dozen humans sweating it out in winter to chilling in here with the AC on in summer, to snoozing in the back room in total darkness. Many layers and I’m grateful this space has so much flexibility to hold me and others.
Beautiful friends, beautiful journey. The southwes Beautiful friends, beautiful journey. The southwest always heals my heart.
Hopniss & Trout. Inhabiting this place & making re Hopniss & Trout. Inhabiting this place & making relations with what is here is a great honor.
🍄Wine Cap🍄 we’ve been hankering to add str 🍄Wine Cap🍄 we’ve been hankering to add stropharia here for a while now. In past years, we’ve inoculated forest thinnings with shiitake spawn as the main mushroom to cultivate, but this year we made good on our intention to bring king stropharia aka garden giant aka wine cap here. It’s an easy process that can be done even in one’s yard with a little shade. Wine caps are decomposers extraordinaire. They can colonize substrates (wood chips or straw) without sterilization because they are so aggressive and adaptable. In turn they transform straw and wood chips into yummy fungi and humus, the backbone of healthy soil. Looking forward to the fruits of our labor this fall and rich soil in years to come. The bed is positioned in deep shade to offset our droughty hot summers, so perhaps it will turn into a nursery bed for woodland medicinals once the wine caps have done their thing. The super easy process includes: Clearing brush, laying wet cardboard (poking holes in it to let water go through), adding soaked straw, breaking up spawn onto the straw, tossing in more straw, adding recently cut hardwood chips (within one month is best), and stomping it down. We covered ours with hardware cloth to protect from ducks and chickens. I’ve never tried a wine cap so I’m especially looking forward to tasting the harvest.
::Chinese Mnt Yam:: I’m so excited to get to kn ::Chinese Mnt Yam:: I’m so excited to get to know this plant more, even as it spreads beyond my comfort zones. Dioscorea batatas (polystachya) is an incredibly powerful plant with an edible tuber and aerial bulbils that can be eaten like potatoes. Often called an invasive, I prefer to look at the bright side: a nutritious food that is hard to get rid of! Tending it for me currently consists of trying to lessen populations in my annual garden beds. I dug these up yesterday after abundant rains to stop the spread. This may seem a curious way to grow food for some, but I’m interested in the interplay of vigorous plants that easily create food in abundance. Without effort… in a mingling of “errrg I can’t get rid of you” and “mmm look what I weeded out in 10 min” kind of way. I have an open mind to plants that are staple crops in other places. Reading about grating these tubers raw to create a mucilaginous goo may not seem attractive yet, but I await the day that cooking with and using these tubers becomes familiar. That said, I likely will steer them in a direction I gleaned from Joe Hollis - and that is growing them in containers that one can turn on their side to harvest the long fragile roots. They go deep into the subsoil and break off. The relatively tiny roots you see here are roots in their second year that were close to the surface of the soil. If I truly need to eradicate the deep tuber from my main garden beds, it’s unlikely that I will be able to get the whole thing (and it will regrow from remnants), so I’ll probably just keep cutting back the vine until it loses vigor. Happy to be developing a relationship with this plant. If anyone is familiar with cooking up that ol yam, I’d love to hear about what you like.
Epic Beltane fire at East Wind Community. Conjure Epic Beltane fire at East Wind Community. Conjure the feeling of fire on your skin. Banjo tunes in good company. People laughing, lounging, chatting, dancing. Some so close you brush elbows. Greeting and Goodbye hugs. The metaverse will not have this. For all the benefits of the internet: non proximal connection, communication, commerce, entertainment… it will never be a substitute for felt, in-person connection. We are land based animals. Our bodies built by the earth. Though our minds may take us many places through simulation, these are our roots and where our power comes from. I think that’s something worth fighting -and living- for.
Everything is much more magical and interconnected Everything is much more magical and interconnected than I can even perceive at this point. I am in awe at the wonder of it. Been sitting with the subject of energetics and how that can influence a place. Intention, action (or lack thereof) and also feeling. We brought goldenseal here 4 years ago, planting over a hundred rhizomes. Since then, seeds on the wing or rhizomes tunneled below ground by voles or ___?___ has spread the initial plants to scattered patches throughout the woods. The ease with which this has happened makes me realize that these hills were likely covered with goldenseal at some point. There’s an anger there at the heedless overharvesting and also a joy of gladness at realizing how easy it will be to repopulate the woodlands with this beloved berberine. Twice I have spotted goldenseal from the vantage point of doing dishes. I’ve looked up to see a red Berry that … if I’m not mistaken is goldenseal… upon further investigation, it is. The tell tale dense green patches now catch my eye. We discovered three new patches this year. My mind wanders as I see the bird poop on this leaf… I picture a bird sitting on the spicebush limb above pooping out the original seed that started this stand. I am a broken record: The earth propagates itself and it was our inaction in “not doing anything” with our goldenseal patch that allowed the seeds to proliferate and spread to an abundance beyond our wildest inaction. Energetically I wonder if the goldenseal knows we are an ally in its residency and multiplication. It is safe here and wanted and loved. If you have a feeling to tend this native wild medicinal, I’d definitely encourage ya to go for it.
In catching & keeping feral honeybees over the las In catching & keeping feral honeybees over the last few years, I’ve grown a good ear for a swarm. I’ll be out in the gardens and tune into the familiar buzz. Today I saw one of our hives swarming before I heard it and hung out beneath the cloud of honey gorged ladies to see which way they’d head. Never got this lucky before! We’ve retrieved swarms from 30 ft up, dropping the clump into a box (and had to do it multiple times before successfully landing the Queen). They’ve been high on a peach limb. And way up in a cedar. Today though they went for a low hanging ‘Marge’ Elder branch that was nearly touching the ground- thankful for her weeping limbs. A snip into a box and a shake into an open horizontal hive and we have secured a new colony. Nature doesn’t deal in scarcity, folks. A constant blessed reminder around here, one that continues to act as a balm in our modern times.
So much abundance! Sochan by the creek. Eating m So much abundance! Sochan by the creek. Eating more wild food than ever before. Gratitude to the wild greens & the passing on of that knowledge. It is a language of interaction with the land. I think many humans in today’s world see “the wall of green” that is the backdrop for an anthropocentric life, but our ancestors lived and thrived through intimate connections with the wild foods. We must remember and nurture these food ways, especially as supply chains & agriculture weaken. There is food everywhere if we speak the bioregional language. What wild foods are you munching on these days?
Never seen a crayfish so large! Saw this one after Never seen a crayfish so large! Saw this one after we forded the river on a hike today. Beautiful day spent forest bathing and nibbling on wild edibles like the young shoots of cat briar, sour sorrel leaves, slender leaved toothwort, variegated (!) violets, young spicebush leaves, wild oregano, wild ginger and more. The autumn olive was in full bloom, heady and covered in pollinators. We all decided we would definitely wear it as a perfume. Ended the day with a jump in the spring - sacred place- & drinking some of the freshest water around.
From the ground up ✨ From the ground up ✨
“This world has been regenerated then lost again “This world has been regenerated then lost again many times over, either ground to dust, burnt to ash, drowned by flooding water and more, but every time the seeds were hidden, to resprout Time all over again. They are the _rumuxux sacriq_, ‘the belly buttons of dawn,’ that which collectively sprouts a place called the Fruit of the Soil from which this earth grows back alive all over again, making a place where all plants in turn can resprout and all things can jump back to life.” Homegrown corn tortillas, radishes, greens n cilantro, and fermented watercress hot sauce; hunted venison with smoked jalapeños. Meals like this are a prayer. So nourished from this land. We as a culture have lost our seeds, but as we begin to reinhabit these sacred agreements, we remember so much of what it is to be human and how much the earth cares for us. Quote by Martin Prechtel in The Unlikely Peace at Cuchamaquic
Grateful for this lil homestead of ours. To have a Grateful for this lil homestead of ours. To have a place to come home to. A place to build and to plant, to learn and grow and share. The foundation building dreams are thoroughly in motion. Maintenance, tending, expansion, coming back around and building it better…. All of that is on the table now. This life certainly isn’t easy. But I wouldn’t trade it.
The time of foraged, feral and cultivated greens i The time of foraged, feral and cultivated greens in abundance is upon us once again. I love that meme showing the spinach before and after pic —> swipe … all the more reason to forge relationship with greens in abundance. Believe it or not, but dandelion, dock, plantain, and chicory- all prevalent “camp plants” (follow human movement around)- didn’t exist on our land when we moved here. I collect seeds when I see them and introduce them. I finally have a self supporting collection of dandelions established enough to take as many roots as I want- same with chicory- while eating greens! We’re also eating watercress & sochan greens (1st pic) from the creek. Violets, nettles, chickweed, yarrow, young mugwort, and other perennial herbs. Mustard greens, kale, radish greens, pea shoots, mixed Asian greens and more from the high tunnel. My body craves greens in abundance this time of year. I hate getting into a spinach-as pictured-situation so over the years I’ve cultivated and tended patches of varying greens to provide for us. I prefer if they are self supporting patches of reliable standbys. Many of these plants are easy to tend in “wayside” places and are found nearly every where. Gratitude for the green 💚🌿
There is a flywheel of abundance that we can align There is a flywheel of abundance that we can align with. Lately thinking about the interplay of birds that alight in trees & shrubs we have planted, pooping out seeds, bringing in biodiversity and untold layers of microbiota. This elderberry ini is standing beside was a volunteer, likely from bird droppings. We’ve had a couple “show up” on our land, as we also expand our plantings each year. We planted 50+ elder plants this spring of hardy select cultivars with strong root systems from our nursery. I imagine these great genetics cross pollinating with each other rippling out into our bioregion. How will that impact the genetic selection over the next 50 years? Elder is one of the best bird attracting plants in North America: insects bring all the birds to the yard in spring, berries in late summer, the shrubby nature makes great habitat… The flywheel of abundance happens as the work of our hands propagates itself, radiating out from these core plantings, becoming exponential through the digestive tracts of avian kin as numbers grow. The earth often works in abundance. It’s a very human thing to take part in that. We have some black vultures that roost in a tree above a native Pawpaw patch near our forest cabin and they remind me not only of transformation, but also of nutrient cycles and how nothing is lost. It all returns & takes on new life a part of the whole. We asked the question if a vulture ate a roadkill that had seeds in its gut, would they drop those seeds beneath the vulture tree here... How things show up and move around is mysterious yet also part of a direct line telling the story of relationships in this place. Observation is the 🔑 💥
As I was listening to Joseph Lofthouse talk today As I was listening to Joseph Lofthouse talk today I realized just how much he has influenced me. I’ve grown, crossed & saved corn, squash, beans, tomatoes and cucumbers from the work of his hands and taste buds. I’m grateful to grow together with these plant genetics! They’re such a beloved precocious gift. His thinking/action is radical yet brilliantly simple and draws on dynamic place based personal and community relationships. It’s inspiring, adaptable and easy to adopt. Landrace gardening is a tool in the face of climate change and a path of joy. Really thankful I could fangirl today, connect and absorb the ethos further.
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