Homesteading Middles: The Art of Hugelkultur

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Homesteading Middles: The Art of Hugelkultur

One of my favorite nuggets from when I did the Permaculture Design Course was learning about hill mounds, or hugelkultur. Hugelkultur is a glorious construction of organic matter with soil atop. Organic matter like logs, branches, straw, upside-down turf, leaves, cardboard, shredded newspaper - if it can decay on it goes. Once the decaying matter of the hugel has enough nitrogen to start decomposing the hugelkultur works as a sink for moisture, nutrients, and carbon.

We built our raised beds over the large stumps from when we cleared the land for the house. I envision the vegetables fed by grandfather trees - and in turn, feeding our bellies.

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Letter to my children: Labels - the antiracism conversation begins

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Letter to my children: Labels - the antiracism conversation begins

Dearest Beloveds,

I was reading a book about Susan B. Anthony to the Bean for school. The book outlined her work against slavery, for women’s rights, and for the temperance movement.

I took a breath to read the next paragraph when Bean interrupted, “Momma, what is a black person?”

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Antiracist Triad: The process begins

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Antiracist Triad: The process begins

In early December of 2020, I made an ask of my tribe for two people to create a triad of white-bodied individuals to do antiracist work based on the description Resmaa Menakem wrote about in his article entitled, “When White Bodies Say, “Tell Me What to Do”. The Voice of Love, my gut, my heart, had been tugging me in that direction ever since I read his piece in May of 2021. His article provoked on so many levels and its main gist is this.

Get out of your white privilege bubble, seek confrontation to expose your bodily experience of racial trauma, examine your life, and “commit to growing up.” Do this with a lifelong triad (here is an excerpt from his article).

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Homeschool Learnings: Why I love homeschooling

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Homeschool Learnings: Why I love homeschooling

It may be someone evident by now I am a bit of an academic, a bibliophile, an intellectual, a lover of thoughts, ideas, history, and curious to learn more always of humanity and our shared history. All of these traits are continually being fed as a homeschooling momma. I was taught to always go back to the original documents so that is what we have been doing for the 3rd grader in the house. Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream, Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a woman? speech,* rereading The Declaration of Independence for the 4th of July.

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Letter to my children: Me Too, Aquarian Age, Self-Swaddling

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Letter to my children: Me Too, Aquarian Age, Self-Swaddling

My dearest Beloveds,

Recently, a teacher shared with me an amazing way of looking at the world right now - to paraphrase, “Our country has exposed our sexual traumas without a commensurate healing - it is affecting all of us. The trauma lives in our bodies and everyone is triggered.” When she said this, I immediately thought of Tarana Burke, founder of Me Too, and her concerns about unearthing such sexual violence without therapy, without safe spaces, without support.

It feels as though our country is a baby having a meltdown yet no adult is swaddling us close and singing to us - helping us process the pain. Everyone is upset about something. I can’t help but think if it is related to this unprocessed sexual national wounding - especially as so much of the news is being dominated recently by our former president who bragged of being able to “grope women with abandon,” in Brit speak.

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Letter to my children: Love languages

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Letter to my children: Love languages

Dearest Beloveds,

There are many ways to communicate. Words are very useful but also constrain. You will realize when you become familiar with more languages that languages are both a container and a funneling of experiences/wordview. The most glaring example that comes to mind is the ability to own land vs belonging to the land vis-a-vis the Europeans and the Native Americans (respectively).

The wonderful thing about strong relationships is that communication can happen without words - and often does.

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Letter to my children: On Inspiration, Electronic Distractions, and Boredom

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Dearest Beloveds,

Baba used to tell me when he was faced with a particular quagmire at work he would sleep on it. He would deliberately think of the issue before he fell asleep and, “9 times out of 10,” he would awaken with the solution in his mind.

This, my dearest children, is called inspiration. Sometimes it might take longer than a night. Sometimes it might take a few days. But, in my experience, it always happens. The key is giving the issue space.

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Letter to my children: Greased Pigs and Loud Yawns

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Dearest Beloveds,

We were a puppy pile in bed early on Saturday morning. Two of us were giggling and wrestling while the other two snuggled deep and soft in the expansive warmth. Your father extricated himself from tickling limbs and sat up. “Okay children, it is time to get dressed for breakfast. Who is ready?”

Dragon fired a response, “I am as ready as a greased pig!”

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Homeschool learnings: Snapshot and Math Curricula thoughts

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Homeschool learnings: Snapshot and Math Curricula thoughts

Homeschooling is an adventure. Every day looks different.

Bean and I had an appointment first thing in the morning in Poughkeepsie. On the way home we visited Eleanor Roosevelt’s home (Val-Kill - the only National Historic site honoring a First Lady). Unlike the imposing homes along the river (of FDR, the Vanderbilts. Astors, Livingstons, etc) the place feels people sized. The road wends to a small bridge where a collection of small building sit clustered on a small hill in the curve of the river.

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Letter to my children: Privilege and Poodle English

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Dearest Beloveds,

We are going to dive in right away with a quote from Vershawn Ashanti Young’s amazing article entitled Should Writer’s Use They Own English?:

Cultural critic Stanley Fish come talking bout - in his three-piece New York Times “What Should Colleges Teach?” suit - there only one way to speak and write to get ahead in the world, that writin teachers should “clear [they] mind of the orthodoxies that have taken hold in the composition world” (“Part 3”). He say don’t no student have a rite to they own language if that language them them “vulnerable to prejudice”;

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