Sugar was never so sweet July 6, 2011

The thing that a bee profits from the most is that it derives its sustenance from the very parts of a plant that are pervaded by the plant’s love life. The bee sucks its nourishment, which it makes into honey, from the parts of a plant that are steeped in love life. And the bee, if you could express it this way, brings love life from the flowers into the beehive. So you’ll come to the conclusion that you need to study the life of bees from the standpoint of the soul.

You can study the matter further by eating the honey. What does the honey do? . . . Honey creates sensual pleasure, at the most, on the tongue. At the moment when you eat honey, it creates the proper connection and relationship between the airy and fluid elements in the human being. There is nothing better for a human being than to add a little honey in the right quantity to food . . . it makes human beings strong.

 Whoever looks at a beehive should actually say with an exalted frame of mind, “Making this detour by way of the beehive, the entire cosmos can find its way into human beings and help to make them sound in mind and body.”

~Steiner

The day after I left the hot sultry Ozarks for Lotus Land, Qik harvested 3 gallons of honey from 1 of the hives. Though I wasn’t there, I still wanted to share the wonders.

Honey is the magic elixer in our home.   Bad burn?  Honey.  Deep wound?  Honey.  Can’t sleep?  Honey.  Emotional, mental, spiritual or physical upset?  Honey!

Extracting Honey

Super sweetness

Foul play July 3, 2011

To preface the glory of chicky babies,  I will recount in brief, the chicken murders we had over the last month sans the gruesome details.  While out dancing the nite away to the funky sounds and sexy sax of Buddhas Groove Shoes @ Dawt Mill a few weeks back,  a raccoon found an opportune moment to get in one of our coops and kill most all the hens.  He (surely it was a boy)  only ate one.  Was he scared the other hens would attack him so, he had to do them in as well?  If you know hens after dark (ooooo a good band name)… you know that wouldn’t happen.   After many ‘have a heart’ trap attempts we were able to catch a few possums but no raccoon.  Seems the little bears can eat the bait then actually open the door and leave.  We moved a few hens around from another coop to keep the remaining rooster happy (that’s what it is all about – right ladies?!) and that nite, I heard an ‘uh oh’ noise at 3am.  I ran down to find the rooster out of the coop and the door open.  He was shepherded  back in and I returned to restless sleep.  An hour later, the dogs were barking and I ran down to the bottom lands again to find all but 1 hen and the rooster killed.  It seems so impossible to imagine anything other than a human opening the different latches on the coop that I could hardly believe it.

Lets end that story and cut to this…

There was a sweet brooder who made some babies around the time we were loosing others

5 babies born June 16th8 days old

There was also a not so cute, styrofoam incubator doing its thing – keeping a dozen eggs warm so we could replenish the flock.

22 days later... a break through

As soon as they started to come out, their eggs were put under the sweet mama in hopes that she would see them as her own-

Good mama- tending 3 stages of life - teenagers, just hatched and eggs still cookin'

low and behold…

5 teens and 6 newborns- better her than me!

Life death life cycles.

Thanks to the many friends who offered to keep us in eggs for the winter if we don’t have enough and even gave us a few more hens to appease the rooster.  Latches are reinforced, trap set nightly – so far so good.

Many mornings of late, as I begin my asana practice I seem to obsess a bit over the animals living around me.  Using their perceived needs to forsake my practice altogether or at least distract myself from my own divinity with thoughts of their potential demise, I know this must change.  Why worry now and later Lauren says.  When you find yourself thinking thoughts born of tension and control, relax.  Relax into the current of that which flows from the hearts intelligence and there you will find truth without fear.  All is well.

I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture… July 2, 2011

I am so drunk
I have lost the way in
and the way out.
I have lost the earth, the moon, and the sky.
Don’t put another cup of wine in my hand,
pour it in my mouth,
for I have lost the way to my mouth.

~Rumi

Having been asked many times how we make our bio-delicious wine, and since I racked a carboy today, I thought I would chronicle this batch of blueberry brew for you.

Started picking berries on June 8th.  By 9am it was 90 degrees already.  Things were starting to buzz around my head (and you know how I feel about that) when we reached our quota for the day. We finished with about 20 gallons to toss over our shoulders.  Most went into the freezer and a few gallons went to friends and family.  Marcus lovingly shmooshed 6 gallons by hand into juice which I put directly (pulp and all) into a 5 gallon bucket lined with a wine bag and topped with an airlock.  To this I added 1 quart of water and 4 cups of sugar, stirred it up with my right hand in a clockwise motion for 15 minutes ;)(that, of course, is the key to the bio-deliciousness) and called it a day.

By the next morning,  the fermentation began.  It is a glorious sound to have wine percolating in the house all summer long.  I made sure to stir the bucket a few times a day to keep the pulp from blocking the air at the top.  Around a week later, fermentation had slowed so, I added another few cups of sugar to 1 quart of water, gave the wine bag some good squeezin’ and let it roll once again.

A week after that, it was time to move the juice into the second fermentation vessel.  After wrestling with the bag for a while, I asked Qik to use his man hands to coax every last bit of the juice out.  I then ‘racked’ the wine into a 5 gallon glass carboy using a simple hose siphon and gravity.  Starting the siphon myself gave me the taste opportunity I had been waiting for and damn if it wasn’t good already!  Since I don’t want a whole lot of surface space, I added about a gallon of water plus another few cups of sugar.  So, at this point, it has taken 6 gallons of berries, 1 and 1/2 gallons of water and 8 cups of sugar to make 5 gallons of wine.

Another week and the process had slowed again. We racked it into a clean carboy avoiding about an inch of sediment at the bottom and added 2 pints of water.  I don’t really want to add anymore sugar unless I have to so, I will wait to see what happens tomorrow with this and will continue to update this post as I go along.   Feel free to ask questions – and start making your own wine.

So, after that transfer, the natural yeasts started eating up the sugars again like crazy within 24 hours.  My assumption is that in 2-3 weeks it will need to be racked again.  Taste will tell what we need to add.  Hopefully not too much more sugar.  I like a dry wine but, not too dry with the blueberries.  We may just add honey if need be.

The Lovers
will drink wine night and day.
They will drink until they can
tear away the veils of intellect and
melt away the layers of shame and modesty.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don’t even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated from God again.

~Rumi

So here we are, almost 2 months later. The fermentation seemed to have died about about 2 weeks or so ago.  All is well tho, no need to add anything,  just one more racking before bottling time.  It is tasting good  already so, I think this will be a good batch to get us through a potentially perilous winter ;).

Late winter update.  This has been a frighteningly warm winter.  Here we are under the new moon in late February and hardly enough has happened to kill the ticks.  But, that is not the point.  How is the wine?  Ok-la.  Not the best batch for some odd reason – in fact, there was a period of time where it sort of smelled like corn chips before we bottled it.  Oddly, I was the only one that didn’t enjoy it.  Most folks said they did and asked for a wee bit more.  The apple wine turned out better this year for my taste.  Last month, we opened the last bottle of Elder/blueberry/mulberry from 2009 and that, my friends, may have been the best I have ever had.