Judith Browning

Natural warmth is our shared capacity to love,
to have empathy,
to have a sense of humor.
It is also our capacity to feel gratitude
and appreciation and tenderness.
It’s the whole gamut
of what often are called the heart qualities,
qualities that are a natural part of being human.
Natural warmth has the power
to heal all relationships—
the relationship with ourselves
as well as with people, animals,
and all that we encounter every day of our lives.

Pema Chodron
(1936 to pres., Buddhist Teacher)

what are you going to do with those oyster mushrooms?

I sauted some for lunch and the rest are in the dehydrator...there were many more than what's in the photo.
If we get another round I might saute and freeze a few.

I wish I was a more inspired cook...I love gathering garden produce, herbs and wild harvesting...making ferments and things but I lose interest when it's time to put a meal together with all of those lovely ingredients...

Today was going to be a town trip but my eye drop prescription wasn't in so we decided to take a hike instead as this was a nice cool kinda sunny day.
We found loads of oyster mushrooms on our 4 mile hike and saw young ones worth coming back for in a few days...then when back to town the chipper was on our street so we asked and they delivered a huge load with more to come...nice guys backed in right next to our big garden and said we'd have to tell them when to stop delivering🙃
That brought a neighbor out who wondered if we would like some deer meat so now we have a large bag of this seasons deer for the winter.

I feel grateful (and exhausted) for so much abundance in one day!

and I almost forgot my thanksgiving cactus is blooming for the first time ever!

more 'abundant day' stories to share?

People do meditation to find psychic alignment.
That's why people do psychotherapy and analysis.
That's why people analyze their dreams and make art.
That is why some contemplate tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum,
make theater, pry out the poem, and fire up their prayers.
That's why we do all the things we do.
It is the work of gathering all the bones together.
Then we must sit at the fire
and think about which song
we will use to sing over the bones,
which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn.
And the truths we tell will make the song.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés
(1945 to pres., writer and Jungian psychoanalyst)

All respect to you for living so many years on a low-cash flow the way our great-grandparents did, Judith. They would have grown up learning the necessary skills and had a community to support them, you would have had to learn it all for yourselves.

Well, we did have foxfire books and the whole earth catalogs...plus one straw revolution, and farmers of forty centuries, rodale, etc....lots of books with good information and a network of like minded folks with more info available from local 'old timers'.

Sometimes I wonder if such easy access now to 'how to do things' gets in the way of actually trying things for some?

Our area of the Ozarks is unique in that there was a revival of craft work in the early 60's here as a way for some in a very poor county to make money...by the time we moved here there were many excellent craft people to learn from and some opportunity for marketing things.

We were 'off grid' from '73 until '89.

No solar other than the sun...no appliances, no phone until a land line in '86, no screens at all...just a cabin, a wood cook stove and kerosine lamps and our sons, a couple horses, goats, chickens, rabbits, an occasional hog, dogs, cats...and a network of like minded folks that saved us repeatedly.

I suppose the biggest all encompassing 'misconception' was that we could do this with no money or very little.
I mean very little cash flow.

Couple that with inexperience and naivete somewhat balanced by young bodies and enthusiasm...lots of life's lessons learned during those years.

We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights.
We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights.
We must step into the reality of natural rights
because all of the natural world
has a right to existence
and we are only a small part of it.
There can be no trade-off.

John Trudell
(1946-2015, Santee Dakota author, poet, actor,
musician, and political activist)

as far as temperature goes our sweet potatoes grow well in the heat as long as they have water....summer temps here drop to 60F to 70F at night and 80F to 100F during the day....many are grown farther south where it's even warmer but with irrigation.

BUT, some of the largest I've grown have been dug when the weather has cooled down some, into october, even november if we had no freeze yet...maybe the growth spurt really is that last month or so as I've heard and coincides with cooler weather?

I try to leave until either we are expecting a killing frost or freeze, or until I start seeing signs of vole damage.  

Lisa Sture wrote:

Judith Browning wrote:I think allowing rooting along the vines in a longer season works and they will make more potatoes  along there also.  Here, I think it just takes energy away from the main plant.

Here's some photos of information from a book put out by our local extension service for this state...usually good info if we ignore the chemical solutions promoted and they do acknowledge organic growers now😊

Do you have the link to the webpage please. I’d love to pour over this!

hi Lisa,
the book I have is a hard copy paper one, not online, although I imagine most extension offices have a web site with access to the same information?

Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching