To Dreams

I’ve been planning for about a decade to live with my friends Noel and Danielle. Noel and I were roommates when I was 19 – we shared the apartment above the beauty salon and barber shop on North 4th Street where we hosted a number of punk shows. Noel hit it off with Daniele at Food Not Bombs (one of my most favorite events, tied with Critical Mass) and soon after we all took a road trip across the country.

We discussed wanting to find another place together, but the Appalachian mountains drew in Noel and Danielle. They started farming and I visited as often as I could – which was never enough.

In the mean time I met Trace. From his love for scavenging, DIY, and gardening it quickly became clear to me that he would get along really well with Noel and Danielle. I was right! Though the first meeting had a fair share of awkward silences, over time we eventually became good friends. The magnetic pull of Wilmington drew Noel and Danielle back. We didn’t hang out as much as I expected, though when we did we were always scheming: we’ll find a place that’s cheap and buy it together. We’ll create the lives we want to live: with good friends and good food! Nothing would stop us.

Today is my 1st year anniversary at Circle Acres: our radical farming collective that aims to give more than we take. Just in one year I:

watched the leaves change
had fun with a 500 yard diet
made schemes upon schemes
had the freedom to do whatever we want
and the freedom to fix it ourselves
walked the trails through the woods
gotten inspiration from a community of DIYers
endured challenges
practiced ingenuity
chopped wood
asked Noel a billion questions
had family dinners
fired up the wood stove (bikini weather)
mastered composting
oh, clay
friends
heartbreak
participated in regaining control over our lives
am mortgage free
watched the stars
listened to the owls
rocked crop mob
made friends at the plant
frequented thrift shops
spent time with favorite animals
found others with creative living situations
redefining
recreating
went to bed soon after the sunset
woke up soon after the sunrise

The other night I was doing my dishes by the moonlight, thinking: this is not a bad life.

Witch Doctor

Two weeks ago I got my first case of poison ivy and it’s BAD. It’s still itching me like crazy and making it difficult for me to sleep.

Unfortunately at the last Crop Mob, I didn’t put the comment that was made while pulling weeds “Oh, I think this is poison ivy” together with the fact that I helped pick up the stacks of weeds when we were finished. That night I developed a headache, which got incredibly worse the next day – this was probably a fever that’s associated with a reaction to poison ivy. I’ve had a few more since then, including one today (sigh).

Last weekend my favorite witch doctor was around and he walked me through making a salve. Jewelweed is a common remedy, but we don’t have that at Circle Acres, so we collected plantain and rose leaves which have astringent properties that can be used for burns, stings, and rashes as well as aloe which facilitates the healing of skin problems.

In minutes I turned into swamp thing. For the first 30 minutes it burned and itched more so I figured that I just agitated it more, though that subsided and it barely bothered me for the rest of the day. Unfortunately this mix did not work for long term relief.

Next I tried using hot water that had one drop of tea tree oil in it. Heat can offer relief for hours and tea tree is an astringent that speeds up the healing process. This helped a lot, unless I wanted to do anything or go anywhere because of the friction that would irritate it again.

Finally, this weekend another friend suggested that I try clay (which is abundant here) to help dry it out like calamine lotion does. It worked for a while as well, and seemed to work well, but occasionally it still bothers me. I need to find jewelweed in the area and cultivate it for next time. If you have other remedies, I’d love to hear about them.

Compost Everything

Finding ways to make waste a resource is totally fun. I love participating in Really Really Free Markets and Food Not Bombs, where perfectly good food, clothes, household items are diverted from the landfill and shared with community and friends. Since we have our own place I’m ready to get serious about compost.

Don't compost Brother, though.

I’ve kept (in a loose sense of the word) a compost pile since living with Trace – where one of our first set ups included a plastic bucket hanging outside of a window. We’d throw our food scraps in there and eventually Trace would empty the bucket into a pile to do it’s thing. Now that we’re in a location that doesn’t have weekly (or monthly for that matter) trash and recycling my already sensitive awareness of the things I throw away is even more heightened.

We’ve also been blessed/cursed to live in a house without running water. This means that we finally get to use a compost toilet – something that I fell in love with on a trip to a anti-nuke protest in New Mexico about a decade ago. Since then it’s always baffled me why humans shit in their drinking water.

I just finished reading the Humanure Handbook to learn more about composting our shit and I’ve found that it has been really great in helping me understand the mechanics of compost in general. BTW – I highly recommend the book if you are interested in starting your own humanure compost. It’s thorough.

Here’s a few tips.

Set up:

• Bucket, sawdust, go!
• When composting human waste, cover it well. You need a ratio of about 30 parts carbon (browns) to 1 part nitrogen (waste).
• Sawmill sawdust is more effective than lumberyard sawdust that may be treated (toxic) or dried.
• Don’t use chemicals, scrub that bucket with some soap and water.

Compost:

• 3 bins, the middle one is to pull from for coverings.
• Start with an 18” layer of leaves and hay (biological sponge).
• Layer with table scraps too!
• Rake flat, cover well with coarse material like hay and leaves.
• Make sure your compost doesn’t get too wet or too dry (more likely).
• After 1 year of filling, give it 1 more year to cure.

From the Humanure Handbook

Humanure compost seems to produce a richer product than food scrap compost, which tends to be low in nitrogen. To be sure that the pathogens have been removed from the compost, you’ll want it to become hot (thermophilic), so invest in a thermometer, and let it sit for a year so the microorganisms can do their work. You’ll then have ready to use compost that is rich in nutrients and will benefit the plants around your yard and garden. And – you’ll no longer be shitting in your drinking water. Yeay!

Navigating New Landscapes

Radical living involves more than black clothes and bad attitudes. For the last decade I’ve spent a lot of energy on rejecting pieces of our culture and unlearning the destructive habits and conditioning that I’ve been immersed in.

I haven’t had a TV for 8 years, and before that I often was the one who would turn the TV off in the house. I scavenge for fun – whether dumpstering veggies, clothes, or storage bins and curb shopping on trash day. I’ve tried many of the food fads, taking them to their extremes, eventually merging them into post-veganism with a seriously local twist that makes more sense to me. Until recently when I moved to a rural area, I biked and walked everywhere including to work, to do errands, to visit friends, and to party.

Now I’m involved in a project that’s been a dream that I’ve shared with the friends who are at Circle Acres with me – it’s about creating and redefining. And it’s taking shape in ways that I’ve hoped but haven’t been able to imagine.

A huge motivation for moving and being part of this project is that I felt like I could only go so far with my activism in Wilmington. There just wasn’t a strong enough support network where projects could thrive. We chose our new home because we knew that there was a strong community for sustainable agriculture and local food, another for indie and punk rock, another for local biofuels, and another for radical activism – and many times these communities overlap in really awesome ways.

I’ve connected with a slew of people who are nothing but inspiring and have dabbled in their projects. Though, I find myself disorientated by the unfamiliarity of the rural landscape after having lived in urban/suburban areas my whole life. The transition has not been as graceful as I had imagined, and I feel like I’m starting from scratch not only with my personal projects, but with building new relationships, navigating new territories, and forming new habits.

I have hope since I’m rooted in DIY culture and I have four amazing friends who are committed to making new paths toward the lives we want to live. Circle Acres is not just a farm, it’s a whole project in radical living and community building. We will always be our own heroes – and I’m anxious to connect with more people who share this vision.

all photos by Trace, cricketbread.com

Extended Crop Mob at Circle Acres

We’ve been conspiring on ways to make this werk weekend a fun time full of skillshares, food and music. We hope you join us!

photo by Trace Ramsey

Who: Crop Mob
What: a million things, eating good food, building community
Where: Circle Acres farm
160 A W Buckner Rd (1964 Jessie Bridges Rd) – Silk Hope, NC
Why: why not
When: 10am-3:30pm Sunday May 24th

We (Danielle, Gray, Kristin, Noel and Trace) at Circle Acres farm are planning a work weekend for May 22nd-24th.  We are also calling out for a Crop Mob on Sunday the 24th from 10-3.

We have plenty of camping space available for both Friday and Saturday nights.  Parking at the farm is interesting, so please fill vehicles to the max…

Here are some of the things we might get into -

- sheet mulching “lumps” for the pumpkin patch
- removal of privet and bio-char demonstration
- building sheet mulch beds
- prepping land for a living fence
- untangling and testing used drip tape
- plugging mushroom logs
- pulling new electrical wire in the house
- ripping out plumbing
- digging a gray water trench
- building a solar shower
- playing around with cob mixtures

For food, please bring snacks, drinks and whatever you think you might want to have on hand for the weekend.  We will cook for the Saturday dinner and Sunday Crop Mob lunch; we’ll do our best to provide for other meals, but any help is appreciated.

Please RSVP as soon as you can and let us know what days you will be at the farm.  Also let us know if you have any special needs, dietary or otherwise. Email khenry@workingfilms.org, or RSVP on Facebook.

One last note – please leave your dogs at home.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Gray is my hero.

He moved to Circle Acres in February to help Noel start the farm, and in exchange he lives in the wolf den, gets just about all the food he can eat (which we sometimes like to test for fun), and he doesn’t have to pay our mortgage or bills.

For the longest time I didn’t quite understand why he would want to come here and give so much but get so little back monetarily – why not work on a farm like Noel did and make cash to buy  land? Why come here and start from scratch and do some of the most challenging work without pay?

Over time he’s explained: Since we’re just starting, I can see the progress we make everyday.

His perspective is slowly sinking in.

Seize opportunities to do what you want with you life.
Have faith that things will work out.
Be confident in your efforts and you will be truly rewarded.

It’s inspiring to have Gray at the farm. His energy is contagious. He’s usually getting into something whether it’s building Floretta’s milk stand, making a square foot garden, or starting new beds.

The farm chores are starting to balance out my office chores, and I find it surprising how the work doesn’t feel like work at all.

goats, fences and danger at circle acres

Starting a farm isn’t all that glamorous, but it’s rewarding. Here Trace and Gray are safely and cautiously putting up a fence for floretta… it’s low res ’cause it’s shot on a cell phone.

Croparrazi

The cold rain that started a few days ago held steady on Sunday morning, but I felt energized because I was on my way to the Crop Mob – a gathering for an unstoppable group of new farmers who meet at a farm once a month to tackle projects, share skills, have fun and build community.

The croparazzi was in full effect. My friend Logan, who is a photojournalist, had come to town the night before – he’s become interested in people who are moving from urban areas to rural areas to create a new life. John had been visiting our farm for the past week, continuing his project on our land-partners’ Noel and Danielle. The filmmakers of The Greenhorns, a documentary and project on new farmers in the United States, had made it in as well during their tour in the Southeast.

My worlds of food activism and media activism collided, here, in Chatham County, and it felt awesome.

I called the cook-team position long before I knew that it was going to be cold and rain relentlessly. Since Trace and I have moved, we haven’t had a complete kitchen, so I jump at any opportunity to cook for a large group of people. Although, my eagerness for being part of the Crop Mob cook-team was based in something larger than fulfilling an appliance and cookware void.

I’m done with hierarchy; I’m done with wasting my time fighting the machine. I’ve seen so many anti-capitalist, anti-globalization, anti-war, and (name your issue) activists burn the fuck out from working tirelessly against “the machine.”

I’ve always been a scavenger, D.I.Y., and live for building radical communities. I am going to spend my abundance of energy on creating tangible differences in my life and in my community.

I am taking my food activism to a different level. I am a new farmer. I am no longer just a farmer’s market groupie. I’m taking another piece of my life back – resisting and challenging the current industrialized system – and I’m not looking back.

Farming is being done beautifully, creatively, and successfully outside of the industrial model. We will continue to resist. We will continue to rise up. We will continue to make it happen. And we will tell our own stories.

Welcome Madi

Madeline (Madi) was born around 9:00 am – meaning that we now have two really happy goats, and that I won the bet – Floretta was preggers!

Solar Shower

The solar shower was awesome, with the exception of the breeze blowing through the thatched wall.