"Scrub the Fairy"

We have been playing games in the evenings quite a bit and a favorite is called Scrub the Fairy. It takes quite a few people and each person starts out with a large blank piece of paper and writes a phrase or sentence across the top of the page. They then hand it to the person to their left who reads the sentence and draws a picture to represent the sentence, not taking up too much room on the page, folds the sentence over so it can't be seen and hand the paper to the person on their left, who looks at the picture and writes a phrase to represent the picture, folds down the picture so only their sentence shows and hands it to the person on their left, etc switching back and forth between a picture and sentence/phrase. When the paper is used to the bottom or in a smaller group the paper gets back to the original person, the game is over and the papers are flattened out and read/looked at and laughter ensues.

It can be quite amazing how transitions get made, we had one where Arnold turned into Elvis, and one where a yoga mat turned into a log, then into sushi but the scorpions also included in that one stayed scorpions throughout although the person pictured changed from one person to someone else then back then into a fairy, then a mosquito queen. It is fun and very funny.

Beautiful, Bright Stars

Last night was clear and there was no moon and the stars were beautiful and bright, although there was a little moisture in the air. We fired up the sauna and between times sweating sat on the deck outside talking and looking at the stars. I want to learn the constellations, I do have two star ID books, but so far I have just been enjoying them, when it was not overcast and the moon wasn't too full. Tonight is mostly overcast again, so no stars, but I will still get to fall asleep to the sound of the frogs and bullfrogs in the pond. I can even hear the frogs from here, the office loft in the common house.

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Drawing Flowers

I finally got around to doing some drawing. I have been intending to and brought a number of different types of art supplies up here with me but for one reason or another never got to it until today. Late this afternoon before dinner I managed to draw two pictures of flowers in the garden, well one was a flower planted in front of someone's house, the other was in the garden. I was using new colored pencils and had a hard time with some of the shading. The yellow one is called Jerusalem Sage, of course the purple one is an Iris.

sunflower sculpture

I took pictures of the sunflower sculpture I made on the back of the smaller bench in the sunny garden shed. I think it looks better in person, it is more distinct, but it has to be low relief since it is the back of the bench.

Anastasia and I went back on Monday afternoon and used up the rest of the earthen plaster we had mixed up on Sunday, and plastered about half the outside back of the shed.

Birds

Lots of wild birds around, and quite a few domesticated ones too. I have not seen wild turkeys since I got here, but I did see some on the drive in. I have seen lots of ravens, and heard them too, not only vocalizing but there wings overhead when they fly by. The sound of the wind on their feathers is quite loud. They also steal chicken food and eggs from the chicken house :( There are lots of small twittery birds too, I do not know what kinds they are but every morning I wake up to bird songs. Not really intricate songs but the sounds of birds chirping. A few days ago I saw a red headed woodpecker, it didn't seem scared of me at all, it went on pecking, looked up at me for a second, and went back to pecking, looked up at me, etc. Bright red head, pretty large bird. It must have been looking for bugs in the fallen oak it was pecking at.

And today next to the path I saw a smallish blue half an egg shell, I didn't see a nest above it so I am not sure quite how it got there.

And they ordered a bunch of baby chicks. There already are chickens here but only hens and they don't seem to be hens that want to sit on eggs, even when there was a rooster (it got eaten by raccoons a while ago). So they ordered baby chicks through the mail, they get mailed right after they hatch and there are a few days when they don't need to eat so they arrive at the post office alive and thirsty, and hungry. We got quite a few, they are all living in a large wooden box with a light in it for heat, boards on top, and blankets on top of that to keep it warm enough. They are already getting in some of their larger feathers, at first they were just fuzz balls with heads and feet. I think 10 different varieties were ordered, and they do look quite different from each other.

Rough Plaster on the Sunny Garden Shed

Work party this weekend, not as many people showed up as at the last one. Partly due to the rain threat. It didn't really rain much over the weekend though, it was cloudy and not hot, great working weather. On Saturday I dug at the housesite, both holes for footings and some of the beginning of the drainage trench around the outside of where it will be. Then in the afternoon I worked with two women here for the work party pulling up thistles. But I didn't take photos.

Today I did cob and earth plaster work on the sunny garden shed. And I did take photos for you all. On Saturday a group of people had moved dirt from behind the building to in front to increase the flat space in front and to make more space in back too. This morning I helped mix up a batch of cob, using my feet to mix together the clay, sand, and straw. Two of us smooshed it together on top of a tarp then when it got pushed out flat we picked up a side of the tarp and pulled it up and toward the middle so the mixture at the edge fell onto the part in the middle. (I didn't get pictures of this, sorry.) We mixed and added ingredients until it was the right consistency. Then I took some of the cob and used it to add to a bit under the bench on the outside of the building, I was trying to make a part which wasn't built up as much match the rest of the bench. To get the wet cob to attach to the dry I hammered in old used nails so they stuck out a bit for the cob to cling to, I also wet down the old dry cob. Then I mashed the wet cob into the space and pushed it, both with my fingers pushing it and with the heel of my hand smoothing it to the edges. You should be able to see the place I added to, it is darker since it is wet, and under the middle of the bench, near the bucket (which had the wet cob in it).


In the afternoon I finished working on the bit under the bench then helped with the rough plaster, which is a very similar mix of ingredients but wetter and goes on the outside of the original cob to smooth it out some. There is normally a finish plaster on top of the rough plaster with finely sifted ingredients to get a really smooth wall. I helped with some of the rough plaster on the walls but mostly sculpted a low relief half sunflower on the back of a smaller bench under the window arch inside the building. This is mimicking the half sunflower on the back of the bench I had been working on. In the afternoon I was working mainly with three of the other work traders here. Diana was working on getting the shape of the arch window perfected, Bill and Anastasia were mainly putting the rough plaster on the flatter bits of wall, and mixing the plaster in the wheelbarrow.

I got quite muddy, one my feet, my hands, my cloths, even in my hair when Diana was plastering above me. It reminded me of when I was young and we had a really muddy place in the creek that we called the mucky mud bakery and made mud pies and the like. Then before dinner I took a nice shower and washed it all off.

I will take pictures of the bench back I sculpted soon. By the time we were done, what with the cloudy sky, the inside of the shed didn't have great lighting.

Rain

It has been hot and sunny since I got here, quite hot lately. We have been starting work at 8 not 9 in the morning so we can stop earlier due to heat. Different mornings of the week we work on different projects but they all seem to be in the sun. But yesterday late afternoon it got cooler and there were a few small high up clouds blowing by and last night more clouds came in and it has been raining some. Right now it is not, but earlier it drizzled. I had to get up pretty early this morning to but the rainfly on my tent. Luckily Diana, another work trader up here, was in the common house and could help, she is quite tall and was able to reach high enough to pull the fly over the peak of the tent. The weather forcasts says it will be like this until Tuesday. It is not great timing since there is a work party here this weekend. But I find the change nice, it was being too hot for me, and all the plants seem to be really liking the damp.

Soon I will take pictures of the house site and get them up here for you all to see. Please feel free to comment and ask questions if you have any.

time

I have been thinking about time lately.

Yesterday was the one month anniversary of my last day at FSRN, but I find that unbelievable, it feels like so much longer. The two weeks after I was done working went quite fast, between recovering & resting, and cleaning & packing it wasn't enough time to do things as slowly at I would have liked, so time seemed to be fast. The little more than two weeks since I got here on the other hand don't seem to have moved slowly or quickly, they seem somewhat uncalculatable.

My relationship with time is very different here then it was working with a daily deadline. That was one of the reasons I felt a need to do something so different. I wanted to work on projects with a totally different timeline, and so much less time pressure. The large change in how and where I am living is probably a main reason it seems like so much longer. It seems to me people don't measure time very accurately internally, but more measure change, more change seem like more time, less change even over a long period seems like not much time has gone by.

Shortly after I got here, on Monday the 1st I went into Boonville for the Day Without Immigration march. But since then I have not left Emerald Earth, not even walked very far away from the main living areas. There was a documentary film in town last night a bunch of folks from here went down to see but I felt reluctant to leave, and was tired, so stayed here. I don't feel a need to leave right now. So I am staying here where different days are somewhat different, we meet about the week on Mondays, and focus on different projects on different mornings, but really the passage of days is less noticeable. Seasons seem more important, when to plant and when to harvest, when the soil is moist enough digging is easy, when it is sunny and hot and when it is rainy. The difference between say Saturdays and Tuesdays are just human constructions, and I am ignoring them for the most part right now. Other people here do need to pay attention to them and go to work or school on certain days but the impact on me is not so great as to affect my view of time.

One interesting thing though is before we gather for events here, mainly meals, but also meetings or other events, someone rings the big bell outside the common house twice, then at the time the event is to start it is rung three times. So my skills at recognizing how long 15 minutes seems like depending on what I am doing is increasing, of course it also depends on if people really ring the bells at the right times.

Swimming in the pond

I went swimming in the pond for the first time today. It was cold, but I had been working in the sun and was way too hot so cold was welcome. I didn't stay in very long though. I jumped off the dock then climbed back on it twice then decided to really swim a little bit. At first I tried the slide but it is really meant for children, I am too big :(

You can see the three ducks in the photo of the dock.




I also took some more photos of the common house for you all. One is of the kitchen side, with outside dining and serving, and a cob oven. Another is the bench, oven and serving area. And the third is the "front", the side toward the garden, houses and parking, but the kitchen door seem more like the front to me. This is the house that was on the land when folks moved here, it was a hunting cabin, it has been remodeled some, but they plan on building a better common house on the sunny side in a few years.

More Photos. Here are some closeups of my huge tent. i am hoping to get some crafts done so set up one side for that, and have a "closet" in the other, with a bed in the back and a yoga mat in the front. I have been doing a bit of yoga each morning.



We have been eating outside a lot, here is a view of the outdoor dining area from the path to my tent.







In a previous post I mentioned dugging up thistles, this is the largest one i pulled up, look at my foot in the bottom of the photo for scale.





This is the bridge connecting the two sides of the land, the part where i am sleeping and the common house is and one of the gardens is is called the shady side, the other side is called the sunny side.








The chicken yard is on the Shadyside near the bridge.






And this is the tool shed in the Sunnyside garden. The wheelbarrow next to it is full of more thistles.

it's been about a week, settling in

It is peaceful up here at Emerald Earth. Things seem to move slowly around here in a nice way, not much rush at all. Last weekend, right after Sandra and Edrie drove me up was a work party, which was more busy and hectic, but since then things seem quite laid back, but it is easy to keep busy. So different from daily deadlines.



There is lots of land, a common house, houses for the members, mainly built out of straw, sand and clay with some wood, a pond and a creek which dries up in the summer, two gardens, ducks and chickens, a green house with a beautiful mosaic shower inside it, a sauna behind, and guest loft, a few composting toilets, tool sheds, a shop, there are two water systems one from a well and one from a spring, and lots of solar panels and batteries and an inverter to turn the 12 volt DC into 110 AC so devices made to be plugged into the US power grid can be used, and a complicated phone system which works but is expensive to use.


I got my huge tent set up and mostly unpacked and set up everything in it.


I have been helping with getting garden beds ready to plant then planting (mainly potatoes so far), digging into a hillside to make a pad for a new house, pulling out thistles, watering parts of the garden, moving firewood, and cooking and cleaning of course.

I've also been relaxing, sitting by the pond, chatting with people (7 people live here all the time and right now there are 5 people here doing work trade) listening to music (a few of the folks here play), looking at the moon and stars, and there was a sanua one night and have been evening fire circles twice. Aaron and Salam came up to visit on Wednesday, that was nice we spent the afternoon by the pond and Salam fished.