The wedding party has left the island; Alyson remains. The real adventure begins.
I'm couchsurfing again, with a Guyanese woman named Naomi. She has been on Anguilla for 5 years. Now I am seeing the local side of the island. There are goats everywhere, but I was not served any goat products to eat as a tourist. Not even sure yet if the locals eat them. The caretaker of our villa shared that he owns 5 goats as pets, to keep the yard maintained. He must have a nice yard because most people seem to have trash piles in their yards. The other thing everyone has are pvc pipes dispelling greywater from showers into the yard. Water is such a scarce resource on this island that it makes sense not to waste any more to treat greywater. The land is so dry, it doesn't seem to create any problems. Just like on the farms, chickens and rooster roam wild and scatter like the lizards when you step into the yard. I've also discovered, this is the land of hermit crabs! They leave beautiful shells all over. The national bird is a turtle dove and they are plentiful. People are looking forward to Carnival in June, but say it seems to be lacking in passion. Last year's Ms. Anguilla pageant had only 3 contestants. You need to be a native to enter. A lot of people I meet are from smaller neighboring islands like St Vincent and Guadalupe. Yet they all speak with a delightful creole/Caribe accent. The one love unity vibe permeates from Jamaica. Yesterday, I was snorkeling off Shoal Bay-supposedly the most beautiful beach in the world-and I saw a sea turtle eating his lunch on the bottom of the reef. Later I saw 4 squid swim past, glittering like the sun kissing the water. So many colorful fish, but the real star of the show are all the sea fans. Three-foot wide yellow, green, purple fans just waving back and forth in the underwater breeze of the reef. A few soft looking anenomies and spiny urchins that I stayed away from, as well as other surprisingly soft stuff that my snorkel guide let me touch. Rendezvous bay has the same white sand and crystal clear teal water that I saw all over the island PLUS an incredible view of the hills of Saint Martin. Almost looks like Jurrasic Park. My favorite beach trip was Little Bay. A natural slice of sand nestled in the hillside, only accessible by cliff diving or boat. We took kyacks from a nearby beach and also saw great snorkeling. This was the day before the wedding and the Ani Villa delivered us lobster wraps for lunch with umbrellas by boat :) Now I'm going to quiet down and listen to my heart. I want to move on from this scrub land and find lush jungles. I need to decided a direction to head: north or south. Ah the difficult decisions of island living ;)
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View from hillside villa in Sandy Ground
Ahn-gwee-la, British Virgin Island, wedding destination of my childhood friend, Beth and her beau Tom. The story about how we ended up here is that Anguilla is #1 google hit for 'destination wedding.' Beth visited a year ago, toured the whole island and reserved the most beautiful and contemporary cliff-side home on the island, Ani Villa. The couple wrote their own vows and Beth's brothers provided acoustic guitar music. We dined al fresco on swordfish and crayfish. I gave a toast about believing in miracles. As a youth, Beth professed to not be a lawyer (like her mother) or get married... now she is both! Oh the power of love <3
swimming in the Caribbean Sea on my 1st day!
Netherlands Antilles or France depending on what side of the island you are on. I flew into the Dutch side and stayed with a Kiwi (New Zealand) on a sailboat moored on the French side of the lagoon. (The Frenchies let you anchor for free so that half of the lagoon is packed with Brits, Aussies, all kinds of English speaking cruziers, aka people who live on boats and travel the world.) On mainland, the french grocery stores are a beautiful deja vous of my time in Paris. You can buy chocolate waffles and Camembert cheese!
April 21-28 2013, LaFayette, Northwest Georgia, Rivercane Rendezvous.
My second primitive skills gathering this year, and the second most magical experience this year :) For a brief week in Spring and Fall, a community comes together to share skills, songs, and meals. It feels like coming home. You can learn basics of primitive skills: how to make fire, cord with natural fibers, and nap flint tools. I chose to take workshops in basket weaving. I made a black ash hexagonal weave pack basket and a hemp twined water bottle holder. Very practical. I also attended plant walks where we talked to trees and flowers. More practical for a shaman. My favorite skill share was making flower essence out of may apple blossoms. The may apple wants to teach us to come into our calling, both as individual self fulfillment and community service. It helps stimulate and balance inner and outward expansion. Looking forward to Falling Leaves Rendezvous October 1-6 2013. http://www.primitiveskills.org/ Juan is the New York-Puerto Rican caretaker of Coldwater Gardens. He takes out the trash, plays drums, grows wheatgrass in his front yard and generally ensures everyone is enjoying their stay. He also has a large stash of paint and string to make dreamcatchers. Juan is currently in the process of breaking the world record for the largest dreamcatcher-22 feet. Animals I've seen at EVERY farm: chickens and bees. I knew chickens were common, I even raised them in my backyard in Atlanta. Bees were new to me. Like the sawmill, since it's there, I had to try it myself. So I suited up for the weekly hive inspection. We were looking for a) honey-just observing levels, not harvesting yet, b) dead bees-collect for further investigation, and c) new queen cells-search and destroy to maintain a stable hive with one queen only. Coldwater Gardens was an ideal farm for me because there were a variety of different environments to work in and learn from. So far I've introduced you to the organic vegetable garden. That was the main event on the property but only occupied a small portion of the physical land. On two occasions, i got to help out at the sawmill where trees from the property were sliced down to dimensional lumber and bark sided trimmings for garden beds. I was really intrigued by this operation 1) for the sheer size of the equipment, 2) general lack of women in this workshop, and 3) a rare opportunity. Beyond what I learn from the farm managers, I learned a lot from the other volunteers. The two people in the above photo series, Nick and Kiera, are both graduates of Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. They met on the forestry crew and learned how to operate a sawmill as part of their work trade that all WW students complete in unison with their studies. Kiera was not a volunteer on the farm (she just visited when it was raining) because she had a paid job on the Alabama burn crew setting controlled burns in Pine forest of southern Alabama. She was an all around bad-ass chick who taught her boyfriend how to operate the saw mill ;) The long and the short of this sawmill operation is a menu of hydrolic levers that move and position the log, lock it in place with a sharp metal claw, then the blade moves across the log slicing off sheets of wood. To get dimensional lumber, first you need to shave off the four rounded sides of the log until you have a square or rectangular block to cut down to size, 2x4, 2x6. On teh property we had lots of pine, white ash, and american cedar.
However, there is no kiln on site (when you buy 2x4s in a store, they are dried in a kiln), so we just stacked the lumber on drying rods under cover. And there is also no wood grader on site-as in person who grades wood. From my Architect days, I know that lumber is graded like school papers, A, B, C, D etc. To receive an occupancy permit, the builder must prove that the lumber was graded, typically by purchasing from a retailer. Private owners, like Coldwater Gardens would either have to hire an inspector to come to their site or send out the lumber to be kiln dried and graded. Either path is contradictory to a self sustaining farm. Thus, the lumber we milled is destined for patio decks, chicken coops, and art projects-my favorite! hanging out at the saw mill was a great activity for me because at the end of the day, I got to take the bark scraps to Fort Juan for art projects :) At Coldwater Gardens, the primary fertilizer for both potting soil and foliar feeding (ie. applying liquid fertilizer directly to their leaves) is worm compost. Every stage of this rich, dark matter became part of weekly routines. First, mixing fresh kitchen compost into five-foot heaps of dry hay for the ' hot compost'. Once it's broken down into less recognizable parts, it's added to the worm bins. The worm bins at Coldwater Gardens are primarily four-foot deep cinder block troughs. The gardens are in a stage of experiment and reflect the patchwork of volunteers that revolve through its canvas tents, so there was also a one-foot deep wood planked box. Whatever your container, the worms and their food need to be covered by cardboard. So to the casual observer, a pile of cardboard behind the greenhouse is not a trash pile; rather black gold. Once the worms have eaten through all the compost, they leave behind airy, soft casting which make perfect potting soil for baby plants. Baby plants need more than the nitrogen in the worm casting (essentially just fertilizer), so homemade potting soil is amended with pearlite, vermiculite, and peat moss for water retention and root medium. This farm practices the Permaculture methods which mean a constant cycle of nutrients. Kitchen scraps to worm bins, to potting soil, to new plants, to our belly and around again :)
Mature, and growing plants, can experience benifits of vermiculture as well by brewing 'worm tea.' You literally take a few cups or handfuls of castings in a sock and simmer in bubbling warm water for 24 hours to basically explode colonies of good bacteria and multiply the nutrients. The result is a 5-gallon bucket of liquid organic fertilizer. I volunteered at this farm in Spring so every week was busy turning the compost, mixing new soil to re-pot baby plants into larger containers, and fertilizing plants in the ground. I became familiar with the feeling of worms in my palm, and I grew to love the feeling of light fluffy casting in my bare hands. |
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