expect change

I'm getting ducks in rows in preparation for a big reveal. Blogging, for me, has increasingly been about the visual. Words sometimes fail me but articulating what I'm up to with pictures feels more intuitive and direct. With that in mind I've been hunting for a way to blog that focused more on images than text. While I was searching it occurred to me that I could incorporate a name change and why not just do the rebranding thing while I'm at it?

Consider this my two months notice, then. Because in searching for the visual solution to my blogging druthers I realized it meant a move to a more flexible platform. Namely, wordpress. I'm currently tweaking and playing with themes and layout but by November I plan on officially moving over there. Eat Agar Handspun will transform into...The Woad Spindle. Those new spinning kits inspired the new name.

So much for nightshades keeping the fauna at bay. 

Did you know that voles will eat potato plants. All of them. Or maybe it's just my voles that do. This pitiful handful is all I managed to rescue from my garden/their buffet. They made a delicious addition to some breakfast burritos last night, though. 

respect the cycle

 I've been thinking a lot lately about the cyclic nature of my process. I can get frozen trying to start my day because there are so many tasks between fleece and finished object to choose from. Clarifying the steps, right down to dorky diagramming has helped. Having a timeline does, too. Yesterday I watched Tara Swiger's creativelive class and the math at the beginning helped even more. After plugging in some numbers I discovered how doable it would be to achieve my production/financial goals on a quarterly basis. As long as I respect the cycle.

Blue spindles! I had a notion to dunk some spindles in my now ever present indigo vat and it turned them gorgeous. I'm going to put them up in the shop as part of the kits. They should be on display at the farmer's market next month, too.

The garden produced a lot of garlic and shallots this year, despite the wildlife slowly developing a taste for the sweeter shallots. It's the first year I've tried such a large crop of them. Aside from a few I left in the ground just to see what they'd do, I've been curing all of them on top of the fridge and putting them into everything. The garlic are all hardneck, so I'm nervous I won't use them up before they go bad. I suppose I could make dried stuff, but I love it best fresh.

a field full of ferrets and flowers

     All I can seem to do today is look out the window and stuff black licorice in my face. I've got plenty on my list of things to do, like turn these skeins of yarn into a pair of gloves. But some days end up becoming devoted to daydreaming and roving around in the yard planning my next move there.

     My mom bought me some flower bulbs and some garlic to plant. They're in the mail now and I'm pretty sure its not too late to put in the ground up here. Its not like the ground is frozen or anything. It's just so much more fall-y up here than most places right now. I was down in Boulder yesterday and there are so many trees with green leaves, it seemed unfair. But, on the other hand, we have a longer growing season up here at 9200' than I thought we would. A permacultural set-up isn't going to be an impossible dream, there are plenty of fruit tree varietals that will make it and with a greenhouse even tomatoes should be attainable.
   
     There are just so many things to build and get going to get there. I finally rallied and spent part of today scattering flower seeds I had been collecting in random spots in the front and back yard, then cultivating some of the prairie dog mounds out back with rye. Neither of these tasks is sure to result in either flowers for the table or grain for bread/beer but I'm more than willing to experiment a little with the year's leftover seeds. Especially if they do take and it means self-perpetuating soul food in the form of poppies and calendula and bachelor buttons and a less violent means of giving the white-tailed ferret food the boot. Oh, how I would have loved to sponsor a few black-footed ferrets on our property. But you have to have thousands of acres for that, not slightly less than one. A girl can dream though.

visiting

We went to visit family last weekend and brought home what's become a regular assortment of veg and dyestuffs. There were even a few immature cotton bolls to play with and a surprise patch of japanese indigo. The kids splashed around in the ditch and picked popcorn and ran around with the dog. Most of what came home has been eaten or processed by now. The tomatoes were roasted and canned up, the green beans were munched like edamame with leftover ham the first night we got home. There was even a baby ladybug that hitched a ride in the squash and got transplanted to an aphid-ridden artichoke I'm attempting to overwinter.

                                                 

The dyestuffs have been put to work now, too. All of these are hanging out in various canning pots and those giant pails you use for beer brewing, tucked into a corner of the kitchen to ferment and soak up the color. Some were heated beforehand to draw out the dye, some were not and some don't even have fiber in them yet because I haven't quite made it to that step. I'll get there...eventually. The only plant I haven't harvested yet is rabbitbrush. I'm not sure what I'd put it in, I seem to be out of large pots. Maybe I'll skip it this year, unless I run into a good patch of it out there. There's no shortage of it, but sometime soon it'll all have gone brown for the year. 

Getting through

I've been reading Permaculture: a Designer's Manual by Bill Mollison along with some other folks at Permies.com this winter. I'm actually a little behind. Okay, a lot behind. Despite my lack of devotion it's a very interesting book. Lots of sciencey bits you don't normally run into in other books about growing things. Like, now I kinda know how a thermosyphon goes and why the wind gets all crazy around here toward the evening. The Permies site is my new favorite place to find anecdotal answers to whatever neo-hippie question pops into my brain these days.


This is one of Anais's drawings. I'm not sure why it ended up on a paper towel. We blow through art supplies, but not that fast. It's now the background image on my iPhone. She seems especially fond of drawing funny little animals and eventually I'd like to print up a bunch of them up for her via Artifact Uprising or something. So I've been collecting them like this for a bit now. We've officially decided that the kids are going to the school the next town over next year. I have forms to fill out and everything.

Part of the reason being that we are set (knock on wood) to move out of this teeny space and into one space both inside and out. I've been planning what to do with all that space outside. It's hard because I have to be realistic about what will grow here instead of just growing all the things. I have yet to coax a significant amount of tomatoes to ripen before the end of the season. I've only had two tries, but still. One of my goals is to grow the kind of food we can store, the staples of our particular diet like rice and quinoa and potatoes and beans. I'm also going to test out several medicinal and dye plants. And there may, MAY be a chicken or two involved. Possibly also a fluffy rabbit. I'm am almost certainly getting too excited about it, what with it meaning a bedroom for each kid and not living on the second floor. But there's also the fact that its at the base of a mountain, which means a constant deluge of chilly air in a region that doesn't have its last frost until June. So excited, but trying to stay realistic...I think.

Tiger, tiger

This summer, my tomato growing wasn't the do or die affair it sometimes becomes. In fact I almost didn't bother. Living over 8,000 feet up with only a falling-apart cold frame to keep them warm...it felt a little too masochistic. But 3 farmers markets into the season and I had already carted a Tigerella varietal home with me. I planted her way too late but she did her best and I was able to bag ripen the dozen or so fruits after temps dipped a few weeks ago. They (and my first attempt at veg stock) made a delicious addition to some japanese fried rice this evening.