I am so grateful for the last 10 days of my life staying at HeartFire Farm right on the magical lake ~ Lago Atítlan. There is a lot of history here of volcanoes, storms, civil wars, colonization, and the Tzutijil Mayans, who make up the majority of the population here in Santiago, one of the many villages on this lake. Walking down the street, I more often hear people speaking Tzutijil than Spanish.  At the same time, the local alternative school is making an effort to teach the children the Tzutijil language and other aspects of the culture, so they have Tzutijil Fridays for the children because many parents don't speak the language anymore.

It seems to be a fairly simple life here in Santiago, at least from my perspective as a visitor. Yes, there are internet cafes and fast food restaurants, but also, many people get around here by walking, taking the tiny 3-wheeled tuc-tucs, or standing in the back of a pick-up truck with 20 other people. There are women down in the lake washing clothes all day every day, and you see men hauling huge loads of firewood and other heavy items on their backs. They are not immune to the problem of plastic trash here, although many of the villages are starting to ban plastic bags and straws.

All of this is happening around one of the most beautiful places I've been, a lake made famous (at least to me) by the writer Martin Prechtel.  Although not everyone in this town he once called home and wrote about prolifically adores him as much as many adore his books and teachings, I must admit it is quite amazing to be reading passages from his book about the Elbow of the Earth volcano and the Thrones of the Clouds Mountains, and then look up from the book and see exactly what he is talking about in front of my eyes.  Or to be working on the farm, and hear a woman wailing in grief at the cemetery next door, and remember the stories he wrote in his book on grieving, that according to the Mayans here, it is our tears and songs that help those who have died row across to the land of the ancestors.
All of these thoughts fill my head as I immerse myself into life on this farm, in this town. It's only been 10 days, but it feels like forever (in a good way).

Just down the hill and across the road from the cemetery, live a wonderful family ~ mom, dad, and their 9-year-old daughter. And their 4 horses, 10-15 ducks (with ducklings on the way), 2 peacocks, 3 cats, and 8 dogs (two of whom are brand new puppies).  I found this family through Workaway, a website that connects people who need volunteers with travellers looking for this kind of experience.  Volunteers work 5 hours/day, 5 days/week for a place to stay and 2 meals/day, not to mention a one-of-a-kind experience.

Every weekday morning, we shovel the manure out of the horse corral and then get on to any number of needed jobs around the farm, from compost building for their compost-heated outdoor shower, watering the bamboo and gardens, or painting/rust-proofing these metal frames which will be used to hold colored glasses over people lying on top of these meditation beds, the colors associated with your chakras.  All of these meditation beds are surrounding the temple at the top of the property. The temple is a place for ceremonies, and was built on top of an old tomb.

Things take time here on the farm, and while there are so many beautiful buildings, gardens, and animals here, it is only the beginning. There is such a rich vision for this place, and although I won't see a huge effect from my work this week, I am so grateful to be a part in getting just a little closer, and enjoying what has already been accomplished.  There are beautiful super-adobe and ferro-cement buildings, tire sculptures, and a temescal (a traditional sauna).

One of my favorite days was being invited to attend a garden planning meeting at the local cooperative school, just a five minute walk down the road from the farm, where the 9-year-old goes to school.  They are creating school gardens and outdoor play spaces for the children, and we're talking about how to incorporate all of this into the daily school rhythms and curriculum for each of the grades and pre-school. I was honored to be included, and so inspired to see this kind of environmental education happening here.

Most of this meeting was in Spanish, and I found that I understood about 95% of what was being said. And now today, I just travelled a couple hours to the city of Xela to learn Spanish.  So I have left my days of swimming at the lake, getting cocovered in duck sludge and dust, hanging out with my great new friend from England, one of the other volunteers, and looking at the stars every night so I can gain a skill I have been working towards for a while now. I will be studying in class 5 hours/day, and living with a host family. I am very excited!

A week travelling so far... I sit in the Central Park of Antigua in Guatemala. The cool air is refreshing and I am surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, trying to avoid the tiny blessings from the pigeons in the trees above. A little boy with a t-shirt that says "Monster Rally" drives his remote control truck into the flocks of pigeons and yells at them. Really, this could be anywhere, but Mayan women walk by with baskets on their head, selling many beautiful things for tourists or just little bags of seeds to feed the pigeons. Bells ringing, and little wooden flutes are played to entice us tourists into buying them. Some guys are taking Christmas lights down from the trees. Backpackers meet up, and locals and tourists alike sit on the park benches eating, resting, meeting friends, and I sit and write in my journal.

Thinking back over the last week. Qué viaje! What a journey.  From the very first minutes at the Cancún airport losing my little folder of very important papers, putting my spotty Spanish to the test in a stressful moment, reminded of the challenges of travelling.  Even when you plan ahead, you buy your bus ticket to make your arrival smooth and easy, things happen and you lose the ticket, so you have to wing it. It's fine though, as long as you are flexible. And this is something I am quite practiced in. So I got to my hostel a little later than planned, hot and sweaty, knowing what true gratitude feels like, gratitude for a simple bed and safe shelter.

Arriving in Tulúm in the peak of peak tourist season was a bit overwhelming at first, but I got the hang of it. The first day walking a couple miles to the ancient Mayan ruins, sometimes in the pouring rain which was welcome on such a hot day...walking back along the beach, beautiful but full of hotels and their guests. 

The next day, after renting a bike, I found myself on side streets, where the locals live, where everything does not exist solely for tourists. The bicycle gave my feet a rest, and rode out to a cenote to do some swimming. This part of the country is full of these cenotes, limestone sinkholes filled with cold fresh water where you can swim into caves, bats flying around you. I'd say this was my favorite part of my time in Tulúm.

After 4 days and nights, I ventured to Belize with a long, but comfortable, bus ride. Crossing the border took a little longer than expected, and I got off the bus at a town called Orange Walk, so I wouldn't have to backtrack from Belize City. My next stop was Crooked Tree Village. I caught a local bus to the road to Crooked Tree, which is a small island surrounded by lagoons and rivers, reminding me so much of my island home, except that instead of berries, pumpkins, and corn, cashews and mangoes were the main crops here (although sadly not in season).  And instead of sandhill cranes and geese, there were ibises, egrets, jacanas, and the elusive jabiru storks, which can be 5ft tall with a wingspan of 7ft! I did not see these storks, but saw many other beautiful birds, butterflies, and turtles... Even those lizards that run on their hind legs. The museum here taught me that Belize is the birthplace of Creole culture, as well as some of the history of the Mayan people, as well as the people living there before the Mayans, and European colonization.

After one full day here, I was already off to Guatemala. Another long bus ride, but this time my bus driver dropped me off right in front of my guesthouse, when we weren't even supposed to stop in that town.  While I never expect people to go out of their way like this, I have learned not to be surprised by these acts of kindness, especially when travelling. It had not even been a week, and this was the second time someone had helped me get where I was going without even being asked. (I can't tell you all the stories here😉 I have to leave some for when I get home.)

So this first stop in Guatemala - El Remate - was my home base for visiting Tikal, which I believe is one of the biggest sites of Mayan ruins. What an amazing place with huge stone temples and buildings hiding in the jungle, with spider monkeys and howler monkeys and toucans in the trees, knowing the jaguars were sleeping somewhere nearby too. I imagined a Humming Hive in Tikal as I walked through the jungle, with the howler monkeys screaming - it sounded like dinosaurs or some other large and dangerous creatures calling back and forth to each other.

 The view from the top of the tallest temple:

Another short stay, followed by the longest bus ride yet, all the way down through tiny rural villages, through Guatemala City, a giant city where we sat in the worst traffic I've ever experienced, and finally arriving here in Antigua. Today is my only day here, but I'm so glad I stopped here, colorful cobblestone streets with the volcano towering overhead.

I am looking forward to my next stop being longer - 10 days on a family's permaculture farm next to Lago Atitlan, and then a month in Xela at a language school.

Thank you for reading. Everyone always asks if I am travelling alone. Yes, I am. But even when I am not connecting with people on my travels, I feel my friends and family are with me in spirit.

A long time coming

I'm starting up my blog again, the one I began when I went to Europe for about 8 months, back in 2006, which I continued while working on a farm in Western Virginia, and into my first year living in Portland, Oregon.

After this, I got a little distracted opening and running Humming Hive for over 7 years.

 That was quite the journey itself, and I am so grateful for the experience, the community that grew out of it, and all of the memories shared in the forest with the children, their families, and other teachers.

Well, I've made a big loop, or a spiral of some kind and now I've decided to head down a trail that I passed by a long time ago. In fact, I was contemplating, planning even, choosing this trail when all of a sudden the option came along of free airfare to Europe and a lovely invitation for a bus tour through Germany with family. If you want to know how that trip turned out, go back to the first post. If you're just here for current events, follow along from here.

So I've been dreaming about this Southern journey for almost 15 years. The full vision is visiting all countries in Central and South America, beginning with Mexico. I loved to imagine myself taking years to complete this journey.  Well, it seems that this is a hard vision to get started on, perhaps a bit overwhelming.  So I'm taking baby steps. 3 months in Southern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. Will this inspire me to continue farther? Or will I wait a few years for the next leg of the journey? Or will this fully satisfy my wanderlust? (Ha! That one is doubtful!)

I'll be documenting my journey here with pictures and stories. Thank you for reading! Please enjoy!

Duckling Update

They are huge! and only 7 weeks old! What if they never stop growing??!! I had a dream that they grew to be 6 feet tall! They have a lot of feathers, and they have learned how to quack, almost. I guess you could say they are nearing the end of their adolescent phase.

Harold and Zula have said goodbye to their cardboard box in my room, thankfully. They now live outside all day, and have a coop for sleeping in at night, safe and warm. If only it were easier to catch those little runners to get them in there.
Ducks are very talkative and stick together, at least these two ducks. They are always talking to each other, and if they get separated, they call out to the other one until they are reunited.

They share a space during the day with the chickens, and they all get along, more or less: more when they stay away from each other, less if they are close together.


Sebastian seems to get along with the ducks in the same way. There is no desire to hunt them, as far as I can see. They are too big and unpredictable for him to want to get anywhere near them.



Another fun difference between the chickens and the ducks, which you might have been able to guess, is that the ducks love getting wet. Yes, we know that ducks swim and chickens don't.... and when it rains, the chickens all run for cover, but the ducks will sit out in the rain all day. Also, when the chickens are being naughty (eating the duck's food or getting into the garden and eating our food), I can spray them a little with the hose, and they run for dear life. With the ducks, if I didn't care about saving water, or making a big mudpit in their space, I could shower them with water all the time, and they would be the happiest little ducks in Portland. They run into the water I spray with the hose.

So, our little farm is coming along quite nicely. Let's just hope we don't get kicked out of our house we're renting anytime soon. Let's see.... cats, fish tank, last year chickens, this year ducks, next year?...little potbellied pigs? or rabbits? We probably don't have enough room for goats.

Ducklings get so big so fast!!! They are 2 1/2 weeks old now. They eat so much food, and are quickly growing out of their box in Thimble's closet.... So I built them a little playpen out in the backyard, made of bamboo and chicken wire.
They love to splash around in the water and be out in the sun. But they still have to come inside at night, or if no one's around to check on them every once in a while. We have at least one very curious cat at our house.



Don't you wish you had baby ducks? You can raise ducks too. I guess you would need to be able to make a pond, but a kiddie pool works just as well. Here are some websites about ducks and raising them. www.holderreadfarm.com
and Feathersite.com (the poultry pages). Or you could just come visit mine.

Newest Members of the Rainbow Love Sherbert House

Harold and Zula(pronounced Soo-la)
They are both girl ducks. About a week old now. The cutest things ever!
They live in a box under a bright, warm light
We got them because they are cute
but they will also lay eggs.
We are building them a pond out back
and they will share a daytime space with the chickens
but sleep in their own little coop at night

Thank you Huckleberry!

Huckleberry Porkchop
This chicken is not a rooster
Okay?
She's just a little bossy
and really aggressive
and she pecked me in the eye
and she runs across the yard to peck our toes
and when all the chickens escaped
she's the one who crossed the road
and was found
surrounded by 3 cats
clucking up a storm

But she hasn't made any sort of noise
that sounds like
cock-a-doodle-doo

I will continue to refer to her as she
until she proves herself to really be a he

Oh, Huckleberry!
Won't you please please please
lay me some green eggs?

Well, it's been 2 months of spring since i last wrote about our backyard, and that is way too long because so much happens in april and may. It's so different now!

I started....
and finally finished...

building the chicken coop!


and now the chickens live there, not in a box in my room anymore.

They hang out mostly in the bottom section when they're awake, and sometimes we let them out to roam, supervised. Then, at night, they climb up their little ladder to go upstairs where they have a perch for roosting on. That's how chickens like to sleep. I put that turtle curtain over the window, so the streetlight doesn't disturb them while they're sleeping. I don't know if the light actually bothers them, but they're my babies.

So it's amazing how big chicks get in two months. They keep getting bigger...
and bigger...




and bigger....





and they aren't done growing yet. They are 3 months old now. In a month or two, hopefully they'll start laying eggs. Then we'll have 4 eggs/day every day!


So not only did i build a chicken coop in the past two months, with the help of some very good friends and power tools, but i built an herb spiral. Herb spirals are a common technique for maximizing space and creating multiple mini-climates in a small area. As it spirals in, the elevation goes up, so on the outside, it is lower, and therefore wetter, while on the inside, it is high and dry. Also, the plants on the south side can get plenty of sun, while the plants on the top provide shade for the plants on the north side.
We have a surplus of these gray stones that made up the driveway, which we reclaimed, so i built the wall with those. This took me quite a while. But here, you can see how it ended up:


And of course, we've been doing tons of gardening: starting, transplanting, and now actually harvesting tons of veggies and fruits and herbs and flowers.

Now, there are strawberries, peas, and lots of kale and arugula. We are also eating tat soi and turnip greens from the garden. The spinach is going slow, but i've eaten a little, and i got some lettuce today too. There are also nasturtiums everywhere, and some borage flowers, both of which i like to put in salads, yes eat the flowers!
The fava plants are starting to form little pods, and the broccoli plants are starting to form little heads, if only the cabbage worms and the ants don't kill them first. We're also growing carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, leeks, garlic, onions, chard, kohlrabi, collard greens, chicory, lentils, runner beans, mung beans, mustard greens, sunflowers, jerusalem artichokes, artichokes, so much i can't even remember them all!! There are also a ton of herbs in the herb spiral. Oh, and soon we'll be transplanting tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, squash, melons, and green beans. And we're trying out growing quinoa!


So, between our garden, me working at the farmer's markets and bringing home free and cheap veggies from there, and other friend's gardens, and our chickens, i can't see how we'll ever have to go grocery shopping again. Okay, i guess we'll have to get our grains and beans, and condiments, and milk. For milk, I just found some people who have goats, only 10 blocks away from where i work, and they sell the milk, so we can get local, fresh, raw goat milk! It's amazing!

Oh, and i did finally get that bush out

I love growing food!

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might know about my dream to have some land in the country, some forest, a stream, hand-built shelters, lots of food growing, and animals, and a community of groovy people. i've been meeting a lot of people who have this dream, and i'm not giving up on it. but in the meantime, i'm trying to make as much of it a reality as i can now, living in the city. It is possible, but renting a house is hard when you're trying to homestead, when you're trying to live self-sufficiently. So here's our house. But not really. We're lucky to have a pretty nice landlord. It's not that he particularly cares about what we're doing, or that he's excited about what we're doing...but that he doesn't really care what we do, as long as he doesn't have to do any work, or pay for anything, and that it looks "good" in the end.


So the major thing we've done is take down the fence and are in the process of putting it up in a different place, so we can have a way bigger yard. There was a driveway on the other side of the fence that the landlord doesn't need anymore. So now we have more room for bigger garden beds, a chicken coop, and a little pond. The pond is not for ducks even though i wish it were.
Most people are used to letting other people grow all their food, and going to the grocery store and buying it. That's just what we do. But these days, it's hard to ignore the inefficiency of this system. Such a waste of energy. I've worked on farms and seen how much work it is to grow just enough food to go to farmers markets. In order to supply food to the whole world in this way, it takes turning farms into factories, even organic agriculture gets turned into this giant, mechanized monoculture.
I won't philosophize too much more. It just doesn't make sense that we should use so much energy in the form of fossil fuels to grow and transport and process the food that everyone needs everyday. I ride my bike or the bus around town, and i see so many big empty lots just sitting there. And i hear about all the people who are unemployed, and see hungry, homeless people looking for work. I wonder why other people aren't making this connection. Not to mention so many lawns that could be turned into gardens and food forests. Let's start growing food a little closer to home. It would create work for people to do, and local food for people to eat. Ultimately, more sustainable.
Here in Portland, there are tons of community gardens. But they are expensive and there are at least year-long waiting lists to get a plot. So in the meantime, while i'm trying to figure out how to get everybody else to realize these things, that we have plenty of space to grow our food locally, i'm doing my best to grow as much food on the land that i have access to, and documenting it so that people can be inspired and get ideas for things they might be able to do.

Moving the fence: what it takes: a hammer to take down the fence boards... a shovel to dig out the fence posts and the new holes for where you'll move the fence posts... a couple good friends to help out... concrete from the store, water to mix it, and a wheelbarrow to mix it in. (the wheelbarrow you see in the picture, bought for $10 from a nice man i found on craigslist).... and just a little know-how (Ian's got some construction experience -- that's him kneeling)
Gardening can seem hard just because there's so many different philosophies about gardening, and people make it seem like there is a best way, a right way and lots of wrong ways. But the truth is, plants want to grow. They just need the right amount of water, light, and nutrients. If you've never done any gardening, even if you have done some gardening, it just takes a little reading, talking to other gardeners in your neighborhood, and willingness to experiment. And it's not like your garden is your livelihood (yet), so if some of your plants don't make it, you can still go to the grocery store and buy some food. And if you are not too easily defeated, you can learn a lot from your mistakes/failures.

I made those cold frames you see in the picture, with some old windows and wood from the Rebuilding Center, a great place close to my house that sells used lumber, windows, doors, cabinets, bathtubs, lamps, hinges, tiles, everything really cheap. Cold frames are a way to start seeds early that can take it a little cold, but can't be outside with no protection. I learned how to use an electric saw to make these.
There are some things that just take a lot of hard labor. Like when you want to put a path leading to your new gate where there are some big nasty bushes. So you just gotta go out there with your shovel and start digging, and keep digging and digging and digging. We'll get those bushes out, even if we have to take a chainsaw to them, or burn them out. We'll get 'em!
Here's a garden bed that's actually already been planted, mostly fava beans, a couple arugula plants, that actually survived the winter, and some tatsoi starts that we got at the farmers market.



And of course, the chicks are still cute. Their feathers are coming in, so i can see what they're going to look like when they grow up. Here's a funny picture of Huckleberry (her new name, the only one who really has a name that's gonna stick), checking out Babar doing yoga. They really want to jump up to higher spots, reminding me that they are birds, and birds fly and like to be high. Still hoping none of them are roosters. I guess i won't really know for a couple months.
Tomorrow i'll be going to ChickenFest at a nursery nearby, where i'll learn more about taking care of chickens and building a coop. Then next week, i'm gonna start building the coop.