Mr. Kraft does life

[Music: Bon Iver - Holocene ]

521am.  Rising naturally in my tent, not another soul stirs.  A gull curls over grey Belfast bay, just across the lawn.  The clouds, a homogeneous mist, dense only enough to help me forget there is a sun behind them.  Scattered boats, moored, stir not.  My daily movements  under the park tent and the rain comes down, chattering.  I sit now, the headphones funneling  sweetness to me like it’s intravenous.  Goosebumps erupt, leaving a trail of Braille spelling out messages of overwhelming gratitude.

A current theme.

Excitement.  I can’t contain it!

More longing.

Creativity splashes!  I mean this exclamation point!

The dim, dank, but dry, is scraped away.  The ideas are an ocean.  I sit here and scream and dream of specific activities.  Yet I’m motionless except for a few fingers hitting plastic buttons.  I hear a jackhammer and I am surrounded by teenage Turkish boys playing computer games.

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They say nothing can be enjoyed without someone to share it with, or something like this.  I am not sure that it’s true completely.  In fact I know it is not, but without consciously being completely at ease with whatever is  happening at the present moment, it can feel true.  I wonder what it would be like to do long-term travel with someone else.  Sometimes I am jealous of those people, while I love this freedom, and the wild spontaneity.  There is no better or worse.

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I love house music.  Tycho touches me.  Dijon’s mixes liquefy my chest and hollow me out.  Yet the moods they can bring me into aren’t always positive.  They aren’t negative, either.  But they are most certainly deep.  I keep listening.  Sometimes, I’m afraid to put the tunes on at all.  Bringing the music was the right choice.

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I’m inspired to make all sorts of wonderful foods.  After making food for long enough I’m finally starting to have some ideas to take recipes and concepts I know and love, and push their boundaries.  Again, longing.  I can’t wait to get into a kitchen and start a few new projects.  Holy wowsers, some of these could be really big hits.  Who else dreams about ferments?

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I am changing.

I? am changing?

Could I not change if I tried?

Who is changing anyway?

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Vipassana meditation retreat.  Breathing. Breathing. Monk?

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Do I eat to satisfy my tongue/nose/hunger/eyes/mind?
Do I eat to bring nourishment to this body?

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What matters?  Isn’t what matters subjective anyhow?

Can’t I forget about a mission and listen to what I want, to what feels good?

Will it satisfy me?  Where is satisfaction?

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Nothing lasts.

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The dance of ever-longing continues.  Long here, for there.  When there becomes here, I am longing yet again.

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What do I want?

This, too, shall pass.  Ink?

Be aware and let it be.

Perception is all.

Like clouds drifting by.

Acceptance is the way.

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I deliver our vegetables to Ralph’s Cafe by bicycle.

Mike and I have a casual conversation, as we make the exchanges.

Vegetable grower -> Restauranteur.  Nobody in the middle.  And with no fossil fuels.  It’s so simple!

Joey Glover!  Yo yo!

So, much has taken place since the last post.  We are spending the bulk of the work days working with our vegetable beds and getting annuals out to our CSA members.  There is never a lack of things to do around here.  One might thing that living in Brooks would be a bore, but I think those who are bored are just boring people.

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I had asked Don to go hunting, but he didn’t have the time that weekend.  Wild foods, including meat, intrigue me.   Wild plants have much more nutrition than the vegetables and fruits sold in shops.  Market produce has been bred for generations to have high sugar and water content, and to last in trucks and on shelves.  They aren’t bred to be nutritious.  Similar things happen with meat.  So, wild plants have retained their ability to compete in the woods without fertilizers and so they are heavily nutritious.  And how much healthier do you think an animal in the woods who can go and pick the food they think is best would be, compared to those that are fed industrial products we have chosen for it to eat?

Anyhow, Bill and Lauren and Bri took me on a walk through the woods with their dog Dakota a few weeks ago.  Our property is over 300 acres, and it abuts on all sides a series of very large private properties that are rumored to be over 1000 acres in total.  Either way, there are a series of gorgeous hiking trails through some of our woods which I was introduced to.  We reached the stream after 25 minutes of hiking, and Dakota caught hold of something.  Eventually Bill pulled him in, and Dakota had mangled a porcupine.  Dakota had a bunch of quills in him, and was reluctant, still, to let go.  Bri and I didn’t want to let the dead animal rot, so we strapped her to a log we found, with my camera strap (hemp comes in handy sometimes).  The walk back was long, especially so as I had forgotten my belt and was juggling the log in one hand, and a basket with wild mushrooms and my camera in the other.

We made it back to the land and proceeded to gut the animal in the woods.  This was the second time I had done this, and Bri’s first.  Anastasia came by with interest and ended up helping out, too.  It was difficult working around the sharp quills, but we were successful and got the internal organs out, cleaned up the carcass, wrapped it up and refrigerated it.

The next day we pulled out a large sum of quills, as Bri wants to make some art with them.  Then, we skinned the porcupine and nailed the skin to a board to dry.  We cut up veggies and Bri put it in a baking dish.  It came out decently.  Porcupine is supposedly a tasty meat – I would agree, although there was not much meat to be had.

I guess the universe heard my intentions after all.

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Vermicomposting.  Check it out on google.  Worms are highly underrated.

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Since that first hike, we have taken a few more, out towards the stream and further.  A part of the land there is low, dank, and covered with hemlock stumps.  The land was all clear cut some time ago.  However, the energy is quite special and many of the stumps are giving life to reishi mushrooms, a healthful variety.  It is highly revered by Japanese, Chinese, and Korean culture, and has been for thousands of years.

We came back with over 15 pounds a few weeks ago.  We are making tea with some, and dehydrating the rest and jarring it for storage.

Wonderful.

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Stinging nettles are a wild plant that help with arthritis and have other healthful qualities.  They are also free and nutritious.  Try steaming them or making them into a tea.  Use caution when picking them as they can sting ya.

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We sheet mulch here in a way that might seem nutty, but it’s very effective, free, and saves the land from soil erosion while providing a moist, weed-free place to grow plants.  In short, we cover the compost and soil-bed with layers of cardboard and newspapers, which we get from the local grocery store.  We then soak them and cover them in woodchips which are free from the power company.  So we are making stacking functions here – taking the waste streams from businesses and turning them into input streams to grow food, while building the mulch, which was our main goal.

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There is a photo of our bulk order up there.  There are a few items not on the table, but you get the point.  We spend less than $4 per person, per day, here.  And we are all big eaters.  No skimping over here.

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Ya momz, kid.

So it’s been decided.  The indecision and weighing and deliberating has finally ceased.

I don’t feel like writing too much right now, so I’ll let the photos do most of the talking.

The main house at Newforest. From the rear.

The kitchen.

Bulk food pantry.

Bulk food pantry.

Cubby bed, upstairs.

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It is difficult to really show you with photos how the growing areas really look.  I will work on this.

Swales and food production.

Chickens.

Where I sleep.

My humble abode.

Outhouse with composting toilets.

Cob oven. Built by hand. For pizza and bread.

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The food forest below is very young.  There are numerous wrire cylinders upheld with spikes.  Each of these is a tree or a shrub.  This land was stripped for timber and topsoil – essentially it was raped.  In 10 years, this will be a massive edible food forest with a wide variety of fruit and nut and perennial species, and hopefully rich topsoil, with wildlife running around, too.  It will take years, but the bulk of the work has been done over the past few, and it will surely pay off.

Young food forest.

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Lunch break!

Salad. Grown right here.

Abbie in the greenhouse.

Delmont's - Our farm stand.

Farmstand produce. All from Newforest.

More of our produce.

Edible flowers.

Lauren grows, dries, and blends her own herbal tea mixes. Amazing.

Mushroom workshop - open to the community.

The Republican Journal: Newforest Institute farm stand and CSA connect land to community.