Unstuffed: Giving Thanks

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Giving Thanks

Not much posting around here these days I know. It's quiet on the blog because I've been busy with other things. After an introductory weekend in the spring, I signed up for my permaculture design course with the Permaculture Institute of Eastern Ontario (PIEO) and I'm right in the thick of it, with cool homework assignments and a group design project.

I'm taking time to observe a spot in nature, gathering information and making connections about what I notice. I'm learning about plant communication, specifically, secondary metabolites and alleopathy. I have to map out a piece of property and draw a contour line.

I'm so excited for our design project. We'll be creating a design for a small section of the Just Food Community Food and Urban Agriculture hub project!

Aside from that I've been making homemade dried apple rings with some delicious local apples from the organic farmer's market.

The ADG and I are still working in the garden, harvesting and preparing for winter. I successfully grew and harvested sweet potatoes this year. We ended up with about 40lbs of tomatoes. Tons of potatoes. Sweet, fresh corn. Black Spanish radishes. Kale. Chard. Lots of fresh herbs and much more. In a few weeks I'll dig up my medicinal roots. Dandelion roots for coffee: yay! There's work enough in the garden until the ground freezes.

But all this will have to wait for a few more days, as I'm heading out of town this afternoon to spend time with family for the Thanksgiving weekend. My mom and I will have a day together in the backyard working in her garden. I'm making elderberry syrup with my dad and stepmom, from the berries he harvested and froze a while back. I'll visit my Oma and Opa too, in the gorgeous Muskokas, and if I can find some time to sneak away, I'll look for juniper berries on the bushes that grow out of the cracks of pink granite.

And when I sit down for the holiday meal, my heart will be full of all the things I'm grateful for.

Wishing the same for you!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: And a wonderful day it was, spending it with you in the garden. Thanks so much for all your help in cleaning and storing of all my garden ornaments. I'm looking forward to seeing your "surprise" tulip garden, next spring. Yes...it is a great weekend to be thankful for all we have. Love you! Mom.; October 8, 2011 at 10:29 AM
Tony R said...: Was it hard to grow the sweet potatoes? We tried three years straight to grow potatoes and just never had any real luck...10lb harvest at best from ALL the plants together...I really want to try sweet potatoes but I'm just wasn't up for it this year. Any advice? I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving; October 12, 2011 at 9:05 AM
Amber said...: It was a great day in the garden with you mom!

Tony, the sweet potatoes were given to me as beautiful, healthy starts by a garden neighbour who had extras. I have no idea what variety they are.

I just stuck them in the ground and pretty much ignored them all summer long. After the leaves died back from a light frost, I dug them up and lo! we had sweet potatoes. I'd like to try growing them again next year, but imagine I might not have the same beginner's luck again!

Sorry I can't really give you any helpful tips. :); October 13, 2011 at 9:26 AM
Amber said...: Tony! I just remembered this post on sweet potatoes that you might find helpful. It's from an Ottawa blogger, so still not sure if it will suit your climate, but at least she gives detailed how-to's and a book recommendation.; October 13, 2011 at 11:07 AM

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