Officially Permaculture Certified.

Wooooooweeeeeee. These last two weeks have been crazy in every sense of that word--crazy busy, crazy awesome, crazy fun, crazy tiring... just straight up crazy. Where to start... going backwards.
Yesterday was my last day of the permaculture intensive. I am officially certified! Haha. The last few days have been major project cramming night and day. Not only were we having new material fed into our overflowing brains for 8-plus hours a day, but before class, after class, and during all our breaks we were rushing to finish our design presentations. Earlier in the course we were assigned clients (our instructors) with plots of land (pieces of Alderleaf's land) and a design task that they wanted us to present (my group's client wanted his land designed for a childrens' outdoor school). It was a lot of fun, especially since I had a lot of experience pushing me in the right direction. On top of that, we all had to find an individual part of the design to focus on and present. I chose to design an outdoor, all natural playground. Anyways, it was all a great success, the teachers and students loved our design (the main instructor even said with a little work mine would totally be publishable!). But I'm just happy to have it all done. So anyways, this is why I have not written in over a week. :-) Man the days are flying by.

Last weekend a friend drove me out to Mosswood to see my yurt. Damn it is beautiful there. The yurt overlooks this amazing wetland and is so cozy and welcoming both inside and out. The pictures that I have on here barely do it justice. After I moved in what I could, we went to a restaurant and I had my first large quantity of food in a long time: a bacon-avocado burger and sweet potato fries. There are no words... Since then, I've been a lot better about making sure I'm eating enough and eating healthy. Wednesday and Thursday of this week I had two of the best meals of my entire life. Wednesday a group of us campfire-cooked this amazing veggie/potato stir fry and fresh salmon. We harvested all kinds of amazing herbs and spices from the garden and loaded them on. The flavors were insane. Then on Thursday we had a meal with the whole permaculture class. Everything was harvest by hand here in the gardens or from next door neighbors. We had all kinds of fruits and vegetables, potatoes, sheep's milk, and chicken. It was soooooo good to have milk. And to top it off there was a maple/pumpkin custard for desert.
Eating the chickens was a special honor, for earlier in the week they were two young roosters that gave up their lives to teach the class how to butcher. It was such a powerful experience, one of the most intense I've ever gone through actually. Though I have skinned my fair share of animals, I had never witnessed death that closely. It is really making me think twice and give extra thanks each time before I sit down to eat. I send my hopes that you all get a chance to feel that spirituality and reconnect with your omnivorous roots. Anyways, that meal was one of the best of my life. Sitting down at the table, sharing stories, laughing, eating... There was such joy around the table I could not help but feel at home. :-) Just thinking back on it makes me bubbly all over again. On the same note, that feeling of thanksgiving and respect sort of constantly seeps from the land here as well. It's so obvious (both spiritually and visually) that Mother Earth is well taken care of here.

What else... I've been hanging out mostly with the interns and people who live here permanently. Been practicing my archery a lot with one of the residents. There were like three or four days in a row where we target shot, played archers tic-tac-toe, or horse for hours at a time. One night we even shot at candles under a crazy star-lit sky. Needless to say, my accuracy is getting a lot better... it's sweet.

One day I got invited to go fishing at a nearby lake. Didn't actually end up fishing at all, haha, but did a lot of wading through muck, balancing (and not balancing) on floating logs, and identifying local plants. Here's a picture of Junco trudging fishing-poll-in-hand out into the bog and another of friend weaving some cattails.








I've also gotten to participate in many little jam sessions. There are so many great, passionate musicians here that there's usually a good mix up every other day--guitar, banjo, and drums mostly... Everyone is all about bluegrass. I've been getting a lot better at harmonizing on the spot too so it's been tons of fun.

Oh, good news! I'm staying here at Alderleaf until September! I'm so excited. I realized that if I could continue camping here I would not only save on a month's worth of rent, but I would also be able to hang out with my new friends for an extra like 2-3 weeks. So I asked if I could stay in exchange for helping on projects and in the garden and such, and they said they'd love to have me. I'm PUMPED.

I can't get over how nice everyone is here. Not only happy, but also unique. The students taking the permaculture course ranged from 20 (me) to like 45 years of age, and each person was so confident in their path. It was so refreshing to have such unique personalities coupled with such a diversity of skill sets. There were kids running around and babies and parents and elders and games and dancing and ahhhh! Okay, okay, I'm sure you get the point.
Alright well I'm going to try to write less sporadically and spontaneously from now on, but no promises. It's probably pretty easy to tell my mind is straight up mush at this point. Excited to keep in touch. Please email, facebook, or text me. I miss you all and love hearing from you.