Unstuffed: August 2010

Friday, August 20, 2010

Solidago canadensis

Goldenrod: "The oil or liniment makes a fabulous and very effective topical treatment for any sort of hurt, strained or damaged muscles."

This is the oil and liniment together. Yep, it works a treat.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Populus balsamifera

"Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?" ~Jeremiah 8:22

Two days in a row of heavy wind and intense thunder storms this week caused a bit of damage across the city including power outages, flooding and fallen trees. Luckily I only suffered minor flooding in my humble basement apartment and the trees in the park next to my house held up well. We did lose quite a few balsam poplar (also known as Balm of Gilead) branches.

Cutting through the park after work yesterday I noticed poplar buds all over the downed branches. The branches, buds and all came home with me and I spent a bit of time in the backyard this afternoon popping the buds off for tincturing.

At this time of year they're not nearly as deliciously sticky and aromatic as the buds I gathered in late winter and the medicine from them will be correspondingly milder. Still, they smell oh so heavenly and I can't wait to see how the tincture turns out!

The 6 to 8ft tall branches I was left with will eventually get used as plant supports in the garden.

Herbalist Ryan Drum has this great post on the harvesting, preparing and uses of poplar buds.

Monday, August 2, 2010

The Pickle Crock

"Fermentation generally requires only a little preparation or work. Most of the time that elapses is spent waiting...Many ferments get better the longer you leave them. Use this time to observe and ponder the magical actions of invisible allies." ~Wild Fermentation, Sandor Ellix Katz

Tending the pickle crock takes a calm and watchful eye, a sense for transformation, patience and a little faith.

Tending the pickle crock requires testing and experimentation, but this is not hard science, nor is it conducted in a sterile environment.

The pickle crock is a living breathing thing. To care for it is to enter into a relationship with microorganisms and become responsible for their well-being.

The tender of the pickle crock is an alchemist, nurturing the miracle of transubstantiation.

The pickle crock is as mundane and dull as skimming surface mold, yet sacred and eternal as primordial, salty brine.

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali