Coming back from a long break, and it feels like I owe an explanation.  I don’t have one.  Somehow I just stopped writing, and I don’t really know why.  Lots of things happened to distract me: a giant garden, feeling lousy and then getting better, settling into a new farm and home.  I could have been writing all the way through, but didn’t.  Maybe I needed to nourish my introvert.  Maybe I was feeling “off my game” and didn’t know what to say.  Maybe I took on too much, and I was just pushing through.  Maybe it was a bit of all of these things.  And I don’t know why I suddenly felt like writing this morning.  Maybe it’s because I’ve had a month of down-time.  Maybe it’s because I just started participating in a fabulous writing group.  Maybe it’s because I recently quit Facebook, and I want to stay in contact with you all.  So many "maybes."  Here's what I  know:  I’m happy to be back.

I am enjoying the fruits of the summer, with snow now outside my window.  I love this about farming—the opportunity to preserve and enjoy the harvest the whole year through.  Right now I have a big bag of tomatoes defrosting on my counter, which I’ll turn into sauce or soup.  Most every day I have a bit of homemade sauerkraut from this summer’s bumper crop of cabbage.  Yesterday, I added some roasted sweet peppers to my eggs for breakfast, and then had some green beans with my dinner.  And I’m eyeing that container of Baingan Bhartha (Indian-spiced eggplant), prepared back in September, for tomorrow’s lunch.  Those summer flavors just stretch on and on.

About those frozen tomatoes:  Most people blanch their tomatoes and can them.  Canning is smart, because you can keep that food on your shelf, and use it even when the power goes out.  But canning also destroys about 50% of the nutrients of the vegetable.  Canning also takes up precious time during the height of harvest, and uses a good deal of energy.

When I was bringing in wheelbarrows full of tomatoes this summer, there was no way for me to process them all (i.e. dry them, can them, or make sauce and freeze it).  The garden demanded all my time, and so, after some research, I decided just to freeze them whole. Frozen whole, tomatoes keep their wonderful flavor.  But freezing them whole only works if you’re going to turn them into sauce or soup; freezing ruins their texture, and after thawing they are like canned tomatoes. 

Like everything, there’s pros and cons to freezing tomatoes whole—pro: you don’t have to process them during the great deluge known as “harvest season.”  Pro: once defrosted, you need only use a little energy to cook them.  Con: you have to think ahead when you want sauce, and let the tomatoes defrost overnight. Con: you have to hope and pray that the electricity doesn’t go down, and spoil the contents of your freezer!  But in this very mild winter, we’ve not even lost the electricity once, and all our goods are still happily preserved.

But what I love about freezing them whole is that when they defrost, they lose most of their water, which reduces cooking time immeasurably and conserves energy.  I let them thaw overnight, and when they are completely thawed, they’ll be sitting in a big pool of water.  When I’m making sauce, I toss that water, and then sauté up some onions in butter.  While the onions are turning translucent, I quickly peel the skin off the tomatoes and pinch the stem core out. When the onions are done, I throw the tomatoes in with some salt and ground black pepper, and simmer for about 10 minutes.  This quick sauce tastes heavenly: fresh, light, sweet and just acidic enough.  A bit of summer, in January.  A bit of perspective on the whole year.

And now during these quieter days, I’m thinking again about garden design, crop varieties, seed quantities.  Part of me wants to turn back the clock a month or so, and rest up all over again.  But the part of me that is relishing those summer flavors is also dreaming up next year’s palate…

The challenge will be to dream up a smaller garden, one that’s more manageable for one intern and me.  I took on too much last year—it was doable, but just.  This year I want to integrate more perennial plants into the garden, and use more permacultural techniques for building soil, improving water retention, and controlling pests.  I have a lot of ideas…

But I also have just a few weeks of “dreamtime” left; we begin starting seeds at the end of February.  Then it will be time to prune trees, set up the greenhouse, start sheet mulching.  So while there is still time for napping and sleeping late, and time for reading books in the bath, let me get to it. 

Anyway, the book came out in April, and I've been strangely reluctant to tell people about it.  At first I pretended to myself that I didn't want to spoil the surprise, as I planned on giving a copy to my mom for Mother's Day.  So I kept it hush hush until then.  But now it's been another couple of weeks, and I have to face the fact that I've been avoiding the topic.  Thinking a bit about about it, I suppose it's because the book is about faith, and I'm still so uncomfortable, even nervous about being constrained within a religious framework.  "But I'm not like that," I want to protest...

What is this about?  I've long known that I dread being perceived as belonging to any one group.  I can trace this back to high school, at least, when I would worry a great deal about which hallway I would choose my locker from, because location=identity, and I didn't want to be trapped.  There was "jock hall," and "rat hall" (for the metal-heads), and "band hall," and "honors hall," and "theater hall," and so many others.  I didn't want to be any one thing.  I wanted to be many, many things.  I never wanted to be nailed down, fixed in one place, defined by one group.  This driving desire affected my relationships, as I jumped from social group to social group each year, and even each semester, throughout college.

And now I see this drive again, in this moment, as I uncomfortably announce that some of my writing is in this book.  That should be a cause for celebration, right?!  And yet I watch myself trying to hold back a flood of caveats.  

How about some context, rather than a caveat?  

What I'll say is this:  I have found it difficult to write about my spirituality.  I am hyper-conscious of not wanting to offend people with all my gripes about religion.  I am reluctant to use overtly religious language, but I want to be honest about how such language has moved me.  I am sensitive about the risk of pushing people away by talking about my spirituality, a subject that exposes me as earnest and quiveringly full of hope (there go my witty, ironic friends).

And once I get started talking about my spirituality, which is mostly about being in love with the universe and in awe of life, I betray the fact that I'm not really in line with the vast majority of mainstream religious thought (there go my church-going friends).  My writing in this book was an attempt to speak honestly about my experience of faith, without alienating anyone.  

Today, an old friend posted a link to an essay that finally motivated me to write this blogpost.  The essay was written by a young man, paralyzed from the neck down, whose mother fiercely fought for him to survive his illness and to have every opportunity to achieve success.  The young man wrote that writers need to fight for their ideas in the same way, to bring them fully into being, to breathe life into their words.  I suppose I'm guilty of abandoning my ideas, too afraid to talk much about my conception and experience of faith, fearful of upsetting others, of being simplified and categorized, of being alone.  But it's time to claim the terrain that I'm traveling.

So there you go.  My first published non-academic writing is in a book called Wisdom Found: Stories of Women Transfigured by Faith.  You can take a look at samples of the book here (one of my pieces is the fourth sample down the page), and buy a copy of it online here.  (PLEASE NOTE: I don't receive any money from the sale of the book, FYI.) 

I hope someday to be less discomfited by the whole identity thing.  To care less if people mis-recognize me, to keep my caveats to myself.  Maybe it gets easier in the second forty years?  If I can get quiet enough to feel the thrum of creation, if I can slow down enough to marvel at the unfolding of a fern, I know it doesn't matter in the least.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
Gaze at the moon until I lose my senses...

"Don't Fence Me In," lyrics by Cole Porter 

Freshly prepped garden bed

I'm especially discovering some of my less attractive qualities.  Did you know that I can be surprisingly stubborn?  Well, I can be.  And did you know that I really don't like asking for help?  Well, apparently I don't.  And that I have a hard time letting go of a plan, once it's put in motion?  

If I'm not careful, I can work myself to exhaustion.  

Let me tell you about this past week.

After a few weeks of intermittent rain and cool weather, we finally had a long stretch of sunny, warm days.  I was determined to make the most of it.  Six full days of outdoor work.  That's a lot, after a pretty quiet, sedentary winter, and only a few days really working in the garden since April 1.  I bought and spread amendments, learned how to use a push tractor, tilled up two big patches, hauled many, many wheelbarrows-full of compost around, dug out about 400 row feet of mounded beds, planted 150 brassicas and 72 lettuces, and sheet mulched a 15x15 area around an apple tree.  I had a lot of help, thank goodness!  But for most of the time, it was me and the garden.

What I learned over the course of this week is that I like to set goals--over and over again, I created a benchmark, and then once I reached it, I set a new one.  As each day wore on, the benchmarks grew smaller and smaller, as I ran out of energy, like a top spinning down, slower and slower.  I'd start out by saying, "Ok.  Let's dig out four lettuce beds, plant the lettuces, and then till the onion bed and amend it, and then plant the onions."  By the end of the day, I could be heard to mutter, "Just one more load of compost.  Just get the compost, and spread it on the bed."  

I'm sure I made quite a sight, grunting and growling as I struggled to push an over-full wheelbarrow (it's one of those deep, heavy duty, super-big kinds) up a slight incline through tall grass.  It just didn't want to budge.  And I didn't have any more arm strength to pull it.  So with sheer teeth-gritting determination and a lot of noise, using my hips and my whole body weight like a force of nature, I eventually made it up over the "hill." When Suzi, a friend of the farm, offered to push the tiller out of the garden for me, I was surprised to find just how resistant I was.  Even though I barely had enough energy to direct the tiller, I couldn't let go and let someone else do it for me. 

The downside of this kind of determination and stubbornness is that I wore myself out.  The next day I went to farm down at my friend Leslie's.  I'm spending one day a week working in her garden, gleaning as much as I can from her farming experience.  And I could barely lift a shovel for more than a few minutes before I'd need to rest.  And each time I bent down to plant, my back and my knees creaked.  And my hands were stiff and sore...  I was disappointed that I didn't ration my energy better, so that I could put in a good day's work with Leslie; toward the end of the day, I went off to the greenhouse to do transplanting, where I could sit and still be productive.

It reminds me of an experience I had on an Outward Bound trip, when I was about 20.  I spent three weeks hiking in Colorado mountains with a group of about 10 other young people, and it was hard work, but amazing.  About half-way through the trip, I developed an uncomfortable twinge in my knee, and when we stopped to re-stock our (60lb!) backpacks with food and supplies, the doctor there cautioned me to take it easy.  I wanted so much to participate in all the activities, and I didn't want to be seen as weak . . . so I kept pushing myself, asserting that I could do more, willing it to be so.  Well, the trip guides asked me the night before we made our ascent up to the highest peak of the trip if I was really prepared to go all the way, and I should have backed out.  But I didn't, stubbornly refusing to listen to my body and wanting to be just as strong as everyone else.  The morning of our ascent, we woke at 4, packed up and began moving at first light, but after just an hour or so, I could see that the terrain was going to be too difficult.  And so I had to turn around, and someone, I can't remember who, had to accompany me back to base camp, forfeiting their own climb.  Not being satisfied with good enough, I overstepped, and that had repercussions for the people surrounding me.

Good enough.  This is the key phrase I need to remember.  I have to learn to be satisfied, when I know I've done as much as I can do.  Maybe it's the case that I'd like to be stronger, more fit, able to do more, be more experienced and able to plan my time better.  (I didn't account for having to weed out quack-grass for 2 hours, and that threw EVERYTHING off!)  But given all those wishes, I have to learn to be satisfied with the results when I know that I honestly have done my best.  I couldn't have done any more.  And so it must be good enough.

I have to remember that farming, like many things, is really about the long haul.  It doesn't do me any good to work myself so hard one day that I can't get out of bed the next.  The garden is teaching me to recognize my less-attractive tendencies: bullheadedness, compulsive overwork, not recognizing limits, lack of groundedness in my own body's wisdom.  

It's been a huge week for the garden, and a pretty big week for me, too.

I’m going to write for two hours every day.  Preparing that garden bed will take me three hours.  I’m just going to read for 20 minutes then go to sleep.  This will be a quiet week.  I have five full days free for garden work. Let me just look online for a few minutes to compare prices.  I can write that letter this afternoon. I’m going to walk in the woods every day.  And meditate.  And get up early.  And . . . 

I have a running list of expectations for myself.  Some are big resolutions, and others are just little hopes for how the day is going to go.  Looking at this list, it seems they have a lot to do with the idea of “managing time.”  But I can’t really manage time.  Or, at least, if I’m trying to manage time, I end up projecting myself into the future and critiquing my handling of the past, and I’m not really experiencing the present moment.  I have recently learned that I walk around with a furrowed brow, looking angry (I’ve seen pictures!), without even knowing it.  And all because I’ve set myself up by making expectations about how things are going to be, or how they should be, instead of just accepting how things are.

I am struggling a lot with this problem right now.  Every new beginning offers a chance to make a change, whether it’s a big move, a brand new job, or just an annual New Year’s resolution or Lenten observance.  I tend to put a whole bunch of great expectations on my plate all at once, and then--surprise!--I get stressed out.  That doesn’t really help me in making the changes I seek.  Instead, I turn inward, blaming myself, wondering why I can’t make good on my intentions.  That starts a vicious cycle, because then I end up promising myself that I really will make good, that I really can keep my resolutions, that this plan for the day really should work . . . More promises, more good intentions, and more blaming and criticizing myself later.

Who’s with me on this?  I want to grab a pitchfork and go marching right up to myself and say “Stop it!  You’ve been trying this method for 40 years, and it doesn’t work!”  This constant seeking to do better, do more, make a better plan--it’s all just so much stress.  And as one of Anne’s friends once wisely remarked, “What good is stress?  You can’t eat it.”  

A friend recently lent me a thin volume by a Buddhist author, Cheri Huber, entitled There Is Nothing Wrong with You.  It’s a great book.  The basic idea is that in our society, we’ve been taught that we always need to better ourselves, and this has resulted in a constant stream of internal criticism and attempts at self-discipline.  That negative barrage blocks out our deeper voice, our true impulses, which are inherently good--and if we could only get out of our own way, we would end up acting in ways that are caring to ourselves and others.  I imagine there would be a giant, global sigh of relief if we all could surrender to the idea that, at heart, we are essentially good.  That we didn’t have to try so hard to fix ourselves, to do better, all the time.

I have moments, from time to time, when I can shut off the flow of “shoulds” and just get in the flow of present-moment-life.  When I do that, things are simply easier.  The tasks get done, relations are warm, difficulties unwind themselves like a knot loosening and simply sliding apart, falling to the ground.  And I wonder, “why did I think this was going to be so hard?”  But most of the time I forget this wisdom, and sit there battering myself with unkind commands and judgements, as if straining and struggling and pushing harder will loosen the knot. (Pssst:  it doesn’t.)

So here I am, another morning, looking out upon the rolling hills, and faced with a choice: I can be peaceful and grateful and accept the day as it comes, or I can berate myself for not getting up earlier, for having coffee instead of doing yoga, for all the things on my to-do list I thought I’d get done yesterday, or the day before... Giving up all those great expectations means letting go of so many things--the idea that I’m really in control of whatever happens (I’m not!), the belief that I need to always do more and better, the notion that life as it is, in this moment, isn’t already just fine.  Engaging the present moment as it is means letting go of any expectation that it should be different.  The great Zen poet Gertrude Stein* said it best, “It is what it is what it is.”  And my long-time favorite Ani DiFranco has a lovely lyric about this very thing, in her song “As Is”:  

When I look around, I think this, this is good enough.  

And I try to laugh at whatever life brings.  

‘Cause when I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. 

And when I look up, I just trip over things.

*Just kidding.

I haven't been able to dive into setting up my space, getting subsumed with unpacking, rearranging, and putting everything in its place. The ground here has been too wet for working the soil, which has prevented me from diving into farming, and exhausting myself with outdoor work.  And this farm has a somewhat slow internet connection, making it difficult to stream TV or movies.  I'm left with watching myself in transition, and learning what I can in the process.

In addition to taking care of the animals and carpool duties, I've been cooking up a storm, which is like meditating in a way.  I get so much pleasure out of making good food!  We've used up some of the farm's stores of meat for Shepherd's Pie, meatloaf, breakfast lamb chops, Hoppin' John with ham, and spicy sausage ragout.  And creamed kale, roasted root veggies, and lots of butternut squash everything.

And it's while I'm standing there, chopping vegetables, pots simmering away, that I mull over what happens each day, my reactions and hesitations, my enthusiasms and doubts.  It's a challenge to pick yourself up and start again with a new group of people.  But it's also an opportunity, a chance to peel back another layer or two of the onion, to try to be the best self you believe you can be.  I think, in my heart, that I can be more easygoing than I have been in the past, that I can learn to let things go, that I can live well with uncertainty and things in disarray.  I think that I can learn new things without a lot of guidance, that I can figure out how to fix things, use tools, find my way around, see what's needed and respond.  And that I can finally stop trying to win people's approval, and just be.  I've watched myself, in the last two weeks, bump up against life-long patterns--my desires to control things, to make sure people like me, to make everything good and safe.  And I've watched myself deal with long hesitancies, the holding back, feeling insecure, not wanting to make a mistake.  In this liminal space, I can see that getting beyond these things is the key to my opening up creatively.

Being in limbo has given me just the right amount of discomfort, and the quiet hours, to bump into all these feelings and take a good look at them.  Walking in the woods, in the slippery snow, I see my fear of falling down and "looking stupid," and how much that actually stiffens my gait, makes me totter.  Standing in a well-used kitchen, with jackets and homework and hay on the floor, I sense my desire to create order, and I can feel how that desire can actually distance me from what's happening with the people right there in the room with me.  Getting a lesson in pruning trees, my need to "do it right" nearly gets in the way of being able to make any cuts at all.  Seeing the pile of winter squash in the back room, I can feel a compulsion to pack it up and freeze it, in the hopes that doing so will "win me points" somehow, from someone, I don't know who. Being in limbo makes me see that I'm having a whole conversation in my head about falling, cleaning, pruning, the squash--and that it's all just projections, phantoms, the same old demons.  

Rather than trying to be the good girl, the neat girl, the one who doesn't make mistakes or look foolish, I'm working on letting go, just being me, and remembering that the more interesting my life has grown, the more I've fallen down and the messier things have become.  So here I am on the waning of this liminal phase, seeing glimpses of my better self, and feeling ready to start.  I'm going to grow these gardens, build some things, get confident with the animals and the tractor, and make some art.  

I’ve been struggling for a few weeks to come up with words.  This is not a typical problem for me, as my friends and family can well attest.  But here I am, trying for the third week in a row to gracefully express the fact that I’m leaving Bluestone Farm, and that I am sad and excited and grateful and nostalgic, all at once.  I’ve been combing through poems and song lyrics, pondering the precise image, aiming to find the most eloquent, most perfect thing to capture the happy melancholy that I’m feeling, but it looks like I’m going to have to just speak for myself. 

So here I am, making a change again.  I’ve been invited to participate in the work of a small farm and learning center in western Massachusetts, called Open View Farm Educational Center.  The farm is dedicated to fostering inclusivity, peace and justice, and creativity, and it has a special focus on GLBTQ issues.  With a flock of sheep, a llama named Lily, and pastured hens, the farm creates opportunities for people to enter into a deeper relationship with nature, to slow down, and to interact with some of our fellow creatures.  

My role will be to design and create teaching gardens, to help build farm infrastructure including a pole barn and an earthen oven, to be an woodshop apprentice to the farm's owner, Emmy, and to help out with the household, including Emmy's two teenage daughters and a young-adult friend of the family.  I’m thrilled about these new learning opportunities, which will challenge me to build on the experience I've gained at Bluestone Farm.  To top it all off, one of my best friends from high school, Leslie, lives with her family just a quarter mile down the road.  I’ve long loved western Mass, ever since I lived there after college.  It’s where my partner Anne and I met and started dating, way back in 1994.  Returning there feels in many ways like a kind of homecoming, though, ironically, Anne will still be in New York, where her job is located. Being apart during the week will be difficult, but we’ve lived semi-apart before, and we know that not only will we make the most of our time together, but we’ll also learn and grow as individuals in our time apart.

But I am also sad to leave this life at Bluestone Farm.  The community here has supported me through an amazing period of transition, from leaving academia to embracing my full range of passions: food, farming, spirituality, building, Earth, and writing.  I’ve had the space here to deeply engage with my struggles with religion, to wrestle down those desires and discomforts, and to see what lies underneath.  And I’ve discerned that, in the end, at least for now, organized religion still is not home to me.  I had hoped that my time here would prove otherwise, would allow me to dive with abandon into tradition, community, and ritual. Although the Sisters weave the new cosmology, with all its wonder and appreciation of the universe into their theology, and although I can now interpret more traditional liturgy in the framework of unitive consciousness, and although the Sisters have, with great love and compassion, invited me wholeheartedly to share in their worship, I somehow still find myself on the outside.  In the end, it’s time to go.

And with what a debt of gratitude!  I have learned so much in the two years since I first visited the farm in mid-March, 2009.  I was in crisis, needing to be connected to nature, needing a new vocational direction, and Anne said, “Why don’t we visit these nuns I know, on this farm nearby, to get you out of the city for a day.”  It was just after St. Patrick’s Day, and we ate Reuben pizzas, with leftover corned beef, homemade sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on rye-dough pizza crust.  And we stayed the night. On the train home, we marveled that we laughed like we hadn’t laughed in a long, long time.  After that visit, I returned nearly every weekend, my center of gravity shifting from the cubicle and the treadmill in all that concrete to the soil and the sky.  The farm, and the community here, created a space for me to dig deep into myself, to learn to listen again to my own inner wisdom, to reconnect.  

And then there’s all that other stuff I learned!  How to sow seeds, transplant seedlings, harvest and preserve food, make yogurt and cheese, collect maple sap, make compost tea, cook with whatever’s on hand.  And all the subjects and practices to which I’ve been introduced--the new cosmology, permaculture and edible forest gardening, peak oil, transition towns, the gnostic gospels, nutrient dense farming, silent retreats, natural building, humanure, tenebrae, plainchant, meditation.  It’s been more than an education, it’s been a whole new perspective on being human. I will miss this place, and these people, more than I can even anticipate. 

So here I am, like Ouroboros, a snake eating my own tail, cycling back again.  Jung wrote that Ourobouros slays itself and then gives birth to itself again, and in some ways, that’s what this feels like.  Time to die, time to be born.  

I am so grateful for all the midwives in my life . . . 

I first really gave the album a listen while I was at Yestermorrow taking my natural building class, and I've been playing it over and over and over again every since; it's been a continuing, intense experience.  The orchestral, thrumming sound, and the lyrics of anomie and longing...it's like being transported back to being 15 years old.  I feel myself writing furiously in my journal, spending hours and hours in the art rooms after school, feeling trapped, arching toward elsewhere.  

There's something about being 15 in the suburbs.  It felt like there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, like I might explode.  I imagine all that pent-up feeling is part and parcel of one's emerging independence, the growing separation from parents.  But it's then complicated and exacerbated by a sense of total dependency, because you need a freaking car to go just about anywhere.  You can't just go hide out in a field, because they've all been developed and are "property," and you can't just hang out on the end of the street, sitting on the curb, without the police coming and telling you to move along.  If I had been more rebellious, I would have found ways to get away, but mostly I was a good kid, abiding curfew, getting good grades, seething quietly.  

Anyway, the beauty of the Arcade Fire album is that they capture the whole stinking cauldron of white, suburban middle-classness, serving it up as if they had walked every step with you.  That is the affirmation I am feeling: my younger self is recognized.

And the truth is that I love this album because it makes me remember, viscerally, that I wanted to be an artist, a painter, a writer.  I knew that truth when I was young, but I beat it down over the years.  I justified: Oh, I'm not good enough to make it.  Oh, I'll be an organizer, I'll help make change.  I'll be an elementary school teacher, a noble profession, that's how I'll contribute to society. I'll be an anthropologist, I'll help us understand each other....Oh, and I'll study street art...

But now I think that, starting back in 2007 when I began taking ceramics classes, taking photos, delving into cooking, learning to farm, and now learning to build, I've been spending the last few years winding and wending my way back, coming closer to full circle.  I want to make things.  I need to create.  This is the piece that was missing for me in academia, in education, in activism...in all those earlier professional incarnations, I tried to wiggle my way toward creativity, to find opportunities to design websites, to create posters and flyers, to rearrange, even to tweak text in terms of language and layout... 

So it seems fitting that I traveled down to Philly last weekend to learn about natural paints and finishes, as an addendum to my natural building class.  Taught by two of my instructors from Yestermorrow, Ace and Deva, the class was a hands-on opportunity to learn how to make earth- and lime/casein-based paints, to create tinted paints with mineral pigments, to practice "color studies," and to apply what we'd learned by painting a small hallway in the church basement where the class was held.  It was a great class, organized by the ReVerse Foundation--if you're in Philly, do check them out, they are doing great things with natural building and community!  

There is something deeply satisfying about DIY (do-it-yourself) projects.  Making your own paint is not only empowering, but also creative--mixing and testing and swirling and playing with texture and color.  And then there's the added bonus that the paint is safe on your skin, and that there are no fumes!  Imagine that.  

I think this that love of "making things" is part of our long human experience.  For tens of thousands of years we have been playing with earth and clay, with pigment, being expressive, making meaning, creating beauty.  It's in our blood, in our bones.  

And somehow this journey of the last few years has helped me find my way back to the art room, after school.  I've opened the door, and I see my 15 year old self is still there, sketching, painting away, composing poems, singing like crazy about The Suburbs, and I think I'm ready to join her.  To the canvas, the lumberyard, the garden...

"First they built the road, then they built the town, that's why we're still driving around and around; and all we see is kids on buses, longing to be free..."  --Wasted Hours, Arcade Fire

Ace demonstrates how to create an angled strawbale

Strawbales have a super high insulation value, being so densely packed and thick (18"). The walls are strengthened by installing the strawbales like bricks, called a "running bond," where the end of a bale in one layer rests on the middle of the bale beneath it. Once all the bales are up, plaster is applied to the inner and outer surfaces, to keep the straw airtight and prevent bugs from finding a home. 

But getting the walls up is harder than you might imagine. To make plastering smooth, the bales need to be plumb and level, otherwise you might be applying 6" of plaster in one spot and 1" in another. Not only would that be a waste of plaster but plaster is very heavy, and it's likely that applying a coat of plaster that's two inches or thicker will end up sagging. 

When installing the bales, you want them to be as well aligned as possible. And, at the same time, you want to get them in as close next to each other and the frame as possible, compressing them tightly into every nook. 

But the fact is that strawbales are unruly. They are not uniform in dimension, and they can be more or less densely packed. And, to make things just a bit more complex, you sometimes have to resize bales to fit into certain corners or gaps. But turns out that's pretty easy, once you do it a couple times.  The harder part is re-shaping them into angles, or cutting notches into them to make them nuzzle up close to wall studs. That's when the chainsaw comes in.

I'd never used a chainsaw before, and I was pretty nervous. Everyone tells you how dangerous they are. Well, I don't know if anyone actually ever told me that directly, but it seems like I must have heard that a thousand times.  Not only are they considered dangerous, but as a girl, and then as a woman, I had never been encouraged to try using one. Recently, we have had a wonderful permacultural designer named Andrew Faust doing some improvements to the farm, including cutting down some trees to increase the sunlight to the main garden. One day at lunch, he and Bill, another resident companion at the farm, were talking equipment, using numbers. Something like, "What are you using, an 18, or a 20?"  

I realized at that moment, which took place just after I signed up for the Yestermorrow course, that I was going to have to get comfortable asking a lot of basic questions, because even though I could make an educated guess that they might be talking about the length of the blade (or maybe the size of the engine?), I really wasn't sure at all.  I was going to have to get used to asking questions like "What does that mean?" "What do you call that?" and "Can you show me how?"  The Yestermorrow course gave me lots of opportunities to get comfortable asking all my "newbie" questions.

And I got to try out using a chainsaw.  I have to say, it was really fun.  Assessing where and how much you want to cut is one thing, but then, at some point, you have to just dive in and start cutting.  Ace and Deva showed us how easy it was to re-strap a bale, so when someone accidentally cut through the strap, it was no big deal ("low-stakes" exercises, in learning/educational jargon).  But even though I knew that the bale could be easily fixed, I dreaded the possibility of cutting the strap.  All my "good girl" training came out in full force; I didn't want to "do it wrong."  

As I sat there wrestling with that particular little demon, I realized that I was never going to learn to shape a bale if I didn't start actually cutting.  So I took a deep breath, got into a balanced stance, and began.  It was so cool to see all the straw go flying, and to feel the resistance of the bale against the blade.  I learned that you had to apply some pressure in some spots as well, or the straw would just sort of yield to the blade, bending, and thereby avoiding being cut.  Ace was a great mentor, going beyond just telling me how, but staying with me and guiding me until I got my sea legs.

I learned that I had to be decisive, even if that meant that I might not do it perfectly.  And as I practiced on my second and third bale, I got better at seeing the negative space of the angle I wanted to create (geometry!), and at leaning into the cut.  Like a lot of things in life, there are precautions to be taken, and you have to cultivate a certain awareness, but in the end, you have to take action.

I plan on getting comfortable with power tools; there are courses at Yestermorrow designed especially for women to learn how to use power tools, and to learn carpentry skills.  It's incredibly empowering to pick up a skill that you were probably never really encouraged to even want to have.  My last carpentry experiment was in 7th grade, I believe, when I made a tiny little bookstand, maybe about a foot long.  I remember that class, and wanting to fit in, and wanting to learn how to use a saw, and wanting to please the teacher, and not wanting to make a fool of myself, and wanting the boys to like me.  All these desires were like a storm within me.  I'm so thankful to be an adult now, to be able to recognize my internal conflicting voices and desires, and (usually) to not let them paralyze me.  I can quiet my mind, and simply ask myself, "What do I really want to do?" And I can be decisive in pursuing the answer.

Since I've returned from my Natural Design/Build class at Yestermorrow, this question has been asked of me a number of times.  Let me tell you about "The Cube."

I knew that the class would be partly lecture/discussion, partly drafting and designing, and partly hands-on building, but I really didn't know how we'd go about building in Vermont, in the middle of winter.  The solution: a practice building! 

The Cube was a 10'x10' skeleton of a structure with an array of problems to solve.  There were three different framing set-ups (stud, double-stud, and timber-frame), a window, a door, and a roof eave, all of which provided us with the opportunity to make and install different insulating walls (strawbale, light straw clay, and woodchip clay), to figure out how to achieve airtight seals around windows and doors, to try plastering over different substrates, and to figure out the detailing of roof eaves, window trim, and bottom wall flashing.  

Tacking back and forth between lectures/discussions and hours of hands-on work in The Cube created a fantastic learning environment.  Each day we saw our learning become manifest in The Cube, and we would review and discuss our work as a whole class after each new skill was practiced.  The vitality of this experiential style of education reminded me of the work of James Gee, one of my favorite critics of our conventional educational system.  I've discussed his work before on this blog, and he's definitely worth reading if you're interested in what we know about learning.  His basic argument is that our educational environments should be designed to be as compelling and engaging as video games--that teachers have a lot to learn from video game designers.  In a video game, players "level up," or gain mastery over a set of skills and are then a presented with a greater degree of challenge.  Leveling up builds confidence, but more importantly, keeps the player interested because as soon as they gain skills, the game gets harder.  Learning is engaging and fun when you can gauge your own improvement, and when, just as you get comfortable with one thing, there's a new problem to solve.  Video games also encourage trial-and-error exploration, because they have low-stakes consequences for failure (you can just choose to play again!).  Exploration in this manner promotes creative approaches to problem-solving; high-stakes tests, in contrast, stimulate students to figure out what the teacher wants, to take the safe route, to memorize and regurgitate. 

Reviewing the lath and plaster wallGetting to play with The Cube was akin to the learning environments created in good video games.  The consequences were fairly low, so we felt free to experiment--in one of the walls, we varied the proportion of straw to clay, to see how that would affect the strength and mass of the wall.  And our learning was "scaffolded"--we learned one thing, practiced it in The Cube, and then were introduced to a more complicated aspect of it.  By "leveling up," we gained familiarity with the basic workings of the structure, and were not overwhelmed by the more complex problems.  Greater complexity was presented to us, but only after we'd grown in skill and confidence, and had the tools to begin to think about the new challenge.  I think if I'd been presented early on with the three types of roof eave/wall transitions, I might have wondered if I was really up to the task.  But by the time we got there, I'd already accomplished a number of new and challenging things, and was learning to say to myself: "Well, let me see...how can I figure this out..."

And this brings me to what I loved most about this introduction to natural design/building: the realization that it's all about problem-solving.  Well, perhaps that's a stretch--it's also about beauty, and social justice, and the creative impulse, and community, and being in tune with Earth.  But the primary cognitive and creative activity of designing and building, I realized, was that of problem-solving, or puzzling.  Design/building means understanding a situation, having a vision, and then figuring out how to realize that vision as fully as possible.  Sometimes the questions seemed mundane--how can you make a flat plane when you have an uneven substrate?  How can you make an unruly substance fit into an angular, tight space?  Can you create a clean angle in a strawbale without breaking the bands?  But then other puzzles were complex and multi-faceted: what are the pros and cons of building with this material in this particular situation?  If we construct a wall in this way, what kind of transitions are possible between the roof and the wall, and what does that mean for insulation, sunlight, or rain splash?  The design portion of the class gave us an embodied understanding of the value of iteration--of drafting, solving problems, discovering problems, and starting again, refining and refining until the various, interconnected, sometimes invisible problems or puzzles have all been solved.  I suppose you could say that there was a kind of learning iteration, that went between the discussion table and The Cube, because a problem that seemed intractable in theory would become clear in practice, and vice versa.  

The embodied learning that took place in The Cube was valuable to me in multiple ways: it gave me a better understanding of the physical puzzles to be solved, an appreciation of the complexity and art and history of structures, and it also enabled me see myself as a builder.  James Gee, and many others, talk about the importance of embodied learning--that learning is most likely to occur when the subject matter is not abstract, divorced from concrete experience, or outside of what a person can imagine him or herself doing.  In The Cube, I learned about how plaster sticks to straw, and how it can fall off hanging metal lath, how it can easily fall to the floor, or be marred by the trowel if you turn suddenly...And I learned the pleasure of making a smooth plane, of trial and error and the discovery of solutions, and the wonderful ache of my arms.  

And I know that it's the happy ache of my arms and the satisfaction of making a beautiful surface that I'll carry with me and remember, not the ratio for mixing plaster ingredients.  I mean, I can always refer to my notebook for facts.  But what will inspire me to build is the learning that I can still feel in my skin, and that I can imagine in my mind's eye...

Strawbale cabin and sheds at Genesis Farm

At some point in the last year, I began to be interested in building.  I imagined a little bit of land somewhere, and dreamt of taking the time to build something by hand.  One of the workshops I attended last year at NOFA-NY (Northeastern Organic Farming Association of NY) was given by a young man, maybe 30, who was totally inspiring.  Without previous building experience, he went about rejuvenating an old farmstead, renovating the house, adding on a new wrap-around porch, and constructing some out-buildings including a new pole barn.  I left that session with my heart racing, his words jangling around within me: "If I can learn to build, so can you.  I mean it."  

In my experience, it is precisely that which is exhilarating that also proves to be the most easily, and quietly, pushed aside.  The doubts come in, those old voices that confidently shoot you down.  Mine said: "Come on, you haven't used a saw since middle-school shop class.  You can't really learn all this now.  It's too much.  You're too old."  The exhilaration that I felt at that NOFA workshop lasted all of about a week, before the "voice of reason" (i.e., insecurity) won out.

But some ember of desire persisted, and I kept hearing more about "natural building"--a method of using earthen (cob and adobe) and strawbale materials.  I visited Genesis Farm in the fall, and got to see a strawbale building close up, and it was simply beautiful.  I started looking at a few natural building books, and reading about it on the web.  Because of my love for making pottery, I was drawn in particular to cob, a mixture of clayey soil, sand, and straw--I could see myself sculpting my own little house.  And I could actually even feel it, in my body's imagination.

And all that while, I kept encountering the word "Yestermorrow."  Yestermorrow is a design/build school in Waitsfield, VT, where you can take classes in timberframing, drafting, plastering, home design, solar energy systems, earthen ovens, carpentry, and natural building, among others.  I had stumbled upon its website when I first started searching for natural building courses.  Then I met someone who was wearing a Yestermorrow t-shirt, and we got to talking about it; he was an instructor there, and could vouch that it was a fantastic place. And then, while at Genesis Farm, I met someone who was planning on taking a class there in January; he told me that he was a total newbie, like me, which assured me that at least I wouldn't be alone.

I have the sense to notice, most of the time, when the Universe is trying to tell me something.  And I was pretty sure that Yestermorrow was emerging in my line of vision for a reason.  So I came home and looked at the course list, and got totally excited . . . and then had to wrestle with those inner voices some more.  ("What makes you think you can build? Do you really think you're fit enough? What if you're not good at it? Shouldn't you be saving money, not spending it?"  You get the idea.)

But even as the inner doubts persisted, I kept dreaming about building.  I thought about it as I harvested, while I rode the train, during the three-day silent retreat I took for my 40th birthday.  At the end of that retreat, I had made a decision: I would go ahead and sign up for a class, I would spend the money, I would take a chance.  What did I have to lose?

Well, one thing I wish I had lost was all that insecurity.  I arrived at Yestermorrow a bundle of nerves, and entered a new group of people, some of whom had substantial building experience.  It took me 10 days to finally relax and fully be myself.  Just in time for the class to end.

But I did it.  I jumped in with both feet, carved strawbales with a chainsaw, swung a sledgehammer,  used a hammertack, got my hands in some plaster, asked a million questions, and even did some basic drafting of floorplans, sections, and elevations.  

The ten-person class was energetic, enthusiastic, and hungry for knowledge and experience.  They were also patient, generous, and helpful with one another.  I am so deeply grateful to have been a part of that particular constellation of people, and to have had the amazing teachers that we did.  Ace, Deva, and Jose were incredibly encouraging and challenging at the same time, and I learned so much about teaching from them.  I couldn't recommend them highly enough.

This evolution has been building in me for some months, and has contributed to the recent quietness of this blog. But now I'm back, energized, and ready to share what I have learned.  I'll be writing more about natural building in the coming weeks, but for now, I want to close with a few words about the larger meaning of building.

Just as our mainstream culture has become largely distanced from the growing of food, so much so that kids  and tweens can't recognize common fruits and vegetables like tomatoes and potatoes, I would stipulate that most of us have little familiarity with the making of our very own dwellings.  Our food and our homes have become something outside of our own bodily imagination--outside our physical sensibility of what we are capable of growing or making.  And with that comes a lack of understanding of what it takes, both in terms of labor and materials--to make a home.  My Yestermorrow class taught me that natural building is seriously hard work.  If you're not going to rely on pre-fabricated materials, you and whoever joins you will have to expend a lot more energy.  But that labor can be meaningful, an investment of intention and creativity, and the product can be a cherished embodiment of human effort.  Imagine looking at your home, and saying, "I made this."  Imagine what the experience of building can teach you about appreciating the true costs of materials, of labor, of maintenance.  I think we just might opt for somewhat smaller, simpler buildings if we were going to build them ourselves.  

There's too much to say right now about gender and building, so let me just say this: learning to build is empowering. My ability to imagine what I can contribute to the world has increased.  And as someone once said to me--if I can learn to build, so can you.  I mean it . . .