We have had a deluge of difficulties lately, with the most recent one being that someone hijacked our blog. I have spent the last two days working to fix the many resulting problems but, as of now, our database is not there. With my wife’s recent onset of severe adrenal fatigue and a host of other problems including many projects that need finishing, a lightning strike that took out our DVD player, computer printer and TV antenna, maintenance around the homestead, a van and truck that need repairs and other financial difficulties, it is likely that we will take a hiatus from our POTF website, blog and YouTube channel for the near future. Hopefully we will at least get the blog posts back up in the next couple days.
Its now been a couple of days and our sever was able to help restore most of the posts. However, there are some more things we have to do to the blog and we just don’t have the time or energy to do them right now. So we are taking an hiatus for awhile while we decide what to do.
All the best,
Paul
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
Our version of Independence Day, Inner Dependence Day, is one of our family’s favorite holidays. I wrote about what Inner Dependence Day means to us and how we celebrate it in some detail last year in A Fresh Approach to July 4th - Inner Dependence Day. Briefly, we celebrate this day by finding some new way to increase our self reliance. That is, we seek to shift at least one ineffective dependence upon prevailing opinions and approaches to life towards a more fruitful inner dependence.
The post ended with this observation:
We experience that shifting attention away from false dependence and on to the true inner dependence brings us into a more natural and flowing state. Building a family in which the adults navigate by their inner dependence on the Self and the children are raised to do the same by model and by precept creates a deeper, sweeter bond between family members and brings family life into a harmony that could not otherwise be enjoyed.
After working very hard, at times even relentlessly, to get some of the infrastructure of this new homestead set up, I think we appreciate the truth of that observation all the more. During this past year each family member has grown in character, skill, knowledge, teamwork, discipline, spiritual understanding and inner dependence. It has been a big year both inside and out.
My husband has outdone himself with the Year in Review 2008 videos linked below. He has put together video clips and commentary from the entire past year and given it all meaning and shape. As a matter of fact, we began celebrating our Inner Dependence Day today by watching it together as a family. What a jolt of perspective it gave! So many projects, so much teamwork, so many accomplishments. But even more than that, such change in the children. What glorious development can be seen in them.
On a practical level today:
I celebrated by making feta cheese entirely from our own creamy goats’ milk. This is the first year I have been able to do that. In the past, we have always had to content ourselves with cow feta. The slight goat flavor adds so much to this family favorite cheese, however, and a lot surely went into getting all that goat milk for the first time here!
My husband showed us the incredible videos he put together which took all kinds of computer problem solving that only people with Vista can truly appreciate. He also put in some more work on the basketball court he is surfacing with a cob/dung/cement mixture.
The children worked hard on their school work and finished up various books. Will put serious time and effort into finishing up Year 1 of the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (MEP), the British math program we are using. This is significant because we only started using this program in March. He went through an entire year quickly by staying focused. Today he powered through about a week and a half worth of lessons just so that he could say that he finished it up on Inner Dependence Day.
We are instituting something new in The Lionsgate School as of today that will support the aspect of Inner Dependence Day that encourages self reliance. Every four or five weeks, we will have Project Week. During these weeks, some regular studies and routine will be maintained but most of the days will be cleared to allow for in-depth projects and pursuits for all of us. Drawing, sewing, gardening, building projects around the homestead, science experiments, house projects, bulk cooking, teaching life skills such as cooking and baking - all will have a special place in our homeschooling schedule now. I am really excited about this and can’t wait to see how it goes. Our first Project Week starts on Monday.
It is wonderful to have a day each year to take stock of these kinds of developments in the light of inner development. It gives us more strength and perspective to undertake whatever this year holds. All in all, we feel such gratitude today after our review. And that is especially appropriate for this day, for an inner dependence truly cultivated surely always brings with it gratitude and a yielding spirit.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
Last week I went out particularly early one morning to get some fresh mountain air and milk Phoebe. As I stepped out the door and looked across our yard to the adjacent field of uncut hay, I saw a sight I have never seen before. The sun, just a little above the horizon, was coming in at an angle that lit up the seed heads of the uncut grass. I gasped and walked closer to thoroughly take in what I was seeing. It looked like a large field of frosted Christmas lights swaying gently in the breeze. Not knowing how long the effect would last, I ran back to the house and tiptoed in to get my camera. I raced back and took some photos. As I had to point the camera at the sun, more or less, they were sort of hard pictures to get but I hope you get the idea. It was much more splendid in person, to tell you the truth.
Why this grass is still standing in the field at this point in the summer I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that being greeted by this natural sight every morning is dazzling and shows grass in its true light when you think about it. We modern day humans may find grass to be beneath notice or only use it foolishly to carpet what has come to nowadays be referred to as “lawns“, but Nature knows that ancient grass is life giving and life supporting for the entire planet. Every morning now I am reminded of this - just in case my cows ever let me forget.
Well no matter what this sight might signify to my mind, for my heart it creates a reverential atmosphere for milking our generous cow. What better way to greet and be greeted by a mountain morning?
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
On Father’s Day, Paul decided to put the final layer of clay and dung mixed together on the wood fired earth oven we have been building out back. He didn’t consciously decide to do this on Father’s Day but rather did it spontaneously on Father’s Day because he is such a good father. Isn’t that a wonderfully natural way to celebrate this modern-day holiday - being Father’s Day by being a good father on that day as opposed to celebrating it by settling down into a cushy sofa and opening boxes of ties? In any case, that is how it worked out here and I admired it.
He called me out to share applying this final layer with him. I am glad he did. The dung mixture is lovely to work with. Smooth and easy to shape. Cool on a hot day. A rich color and sort of sweet smelling. Very earthy and grounding and satisfying.
Here he is being all fatherly and creating something useful for his children’s present and future:
Here we are contentedly working together:
Here is a close up of this clay/dung mixture laid onto the oven:
And finally here Paul is smoothing out the surface with a special tool. I just love watching him do this:
As we worked, I chuckled and said to him, “I bet you never would have guessed that one day you would be spending a Father’s Day slinging cow dung and loving it, eh?” He laughingly agreed. I added, “Aaand I bet you never would have thought you would be slinging cow dung so that we can bake delicious breads out of doors for your six children!” He paused and laughed a little more. Then he got right back to the business of being a great father.
All told, it was a very pleasant day.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
How much land you own and the choices you make about how to use and treat that land determine what kind of life you will live upon it. You could build a McMansion on it and spend most of your life elsewhere or, at the other extreme, you could turn a city lot into a high-producing mini-farm and teaching lab like the Path to Freedom Dervais family.
As for us, I guess we are somewhere in between although far towards the Dervais’ end of the spectrum. We have just under four acres to provide the space for house, gardens, livestock, ovens, cooking areas, sitting areas, basketball courts and so on. I don’t know exactly how large the main pasture is but it is something less than three acres. Maybe closer to two acres. I don’t know. In any case, the livestock load of three cows, a heifer and a donkey the pasture was carrying was far too much. We have had to sell some of our animals.
I blogged earlier about selling Pezra, our first cow. She went to a wonderful spot and that made parting with her easier. Now we have sold Bo, our donkey. We appreciated his good looks, his boyish charm and his bone rattling bray but there just wasn’t enough pasture to justify keeping him. Our priority is our cows because they provide us food and dung.
When we first moved here to Floyd County I was told several times that coyotes are a problem around here and that donkeys are good protection. You see them in with cows quite often hereabouts. Plus we thought it would be wonderful to have an animal our children could ride. Bo seemed to fit the bill on both counts as he was a donkey who was at least somewhat trained to ride. My mother heard about this and gave him to us as a gift which was exciting.
It was fun having a new kind of animal and family member about the place and it was fun doing something new like riding. The children did ride him quite a bit but he was balky and obviously still needed a lot of training before the children riding him could be a smooth and regular part of our homestead life. Furthermore, we never saw any coyotes. Never even heard any. I think one advantage to having such a small homestead is that everything is near the house. The animal and plant sections of the homestead basically wrap right around the house/human sections of the homestead. Everything is close to everything else. It is easy for us to keep our minds, our attention, on the whole place and easy for the presence of our dog to be felt everywhere. We have not been bothered by any stray animals of any kind as of yet. We realize that we don’t really seem to need Bo for protection at this point because so far our protection comes through being intimately sized.
We listed Bo on Craigslist for weeks. There was a lot of traffic to the web site looking at him and a few inquiries but nothing solid. One Saturday Paul and I took a trip to The Greens Garage. This is a marvelous local business the size of a large living room that sells practically all of the kinds of foods that we eat, including lots of luscious local produce. What really sets the place apart, however, is the fact that it runs on the honor system. Isn’t that marvelous? What a great atmosphere it has and, therefore, what a great place to buy food.
Paul and I went there every Saturday for a while as a sort of date but we had gotten too busy and hadn’t been in months. A few weeks ago, though, Paul thought we should go again and he made sure it happened. It was there that we met a very interesting Floyd County resident whose husband had just decided he wanted a donkey four days prior. Within the week we all met and liked each other, they bought Bo and transported him to their 10 acre place. A win for everybody and hopefully we will go visit both him and them often. This was definitely a charmed Floyd County kind of interaction and connection.
So once again, the right time and place showed up which made parting with one of our animals a bit easier. While seeing the “rightness” of a change isn’t required or guaranteed, having the luxury of seeing it surely does make adjusting to the change easier. We are grateful that the “rightness” here was so obvious. Below is a video with scenes of Bo and the activity involved in getting him ready to go.
May he grow well in his new home and may they enjoy their relationship with him.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
As I have posted before, I keep one gallon containers of grains and beans in the kitchen and five gallon containers of back-up supplies in the basement. Some days ago, I refilled the popcorn container in the kitchen and made a note to buy more of a back-up supply. Then a couple of days ago, I happened to be standing next to the part of the eye level shelf in the kitchen that holds the popcorn container and noticed that there was only about an inch of popcorn in the bottom of the popcorn container.
I thought, “I know I am not losing my mind that much. I definitely filled that popcorn container. What happened?” I searched the entire shelf of ten or twelve containers and finally discovered what I had done. You see, we use red popcorn we get from the local Mennonite store. It is a lovely deep plum color (and pops up very white by the way). In fact, it is the exact same lovely deep plum color as kidney beans. Yes, I had poured the popcorn into the kidney beans and what with popcorn being very small and all, well the popcorn and the kidney beans were thoroughly mixed together in the kidney bean container.
At that moment, I was deep in the throes of trying to work out a suitable kindergarten program for our newly turned 6 year old. I had ransacked my homeschooling library looking for ideas of light, interesting activities he could engage in at the table with us while his brother and sisters were there every morning doing their MEP math. My dismay at my bizarre mistake turned into an atmosphere of education“aha.” “What is a typical early math activity,” I asked myself? “Why sorting, of course!”
I called Andrew to the table and told him I had a special activity for him. I explained to all the children the funny mistake I had made. We wondered together at the probability of a person having bulk kidney beans among many other bulk items on one shelf, another of which was an unusual kind of popcorn (also in bulk) that happens to be the exact same color as kidney beans, and then added in the probability of a kitchen manager dazed enough to confuse the two while filling bins. OK, they are too young to really figure probability but they knew enough to know that this has to be a rare kind of mistake.
I set Andrew up with two bowls and the two containers in question of kidney beans and popcorn. See, they really are the same color.
He picked out the kidney beans and put them in a separate bowl.
Here he is happy with his math-doing brother and sisters.
As a matter of fact, this activity was apparently so compelling that his seven year old sister raced through her math so that she could help. What fun they had finishing up the job and how grateful I was to have all the grains and beans back in their proper containers.
It is within just such a natural home atmosphere of education and gratitude that the possibility always exists that mistakes can be transformed into that which is best for us all.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
I walked into the office the other day and was greeted by this heartwarming sight. And of all the books on that shelf, they picked my favorite ones on goat and cow care by Pat Coleby. It is great having more readers in the house interested in the same subjects that I am. We definitely can use a research team around here.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
Our three Nigerian Dwarf goats came to us about three years ago. We were still living in Louisa, VA and hadn’t developed that property as a homestead at all yet. We had recently brought home our wonderful Border Collie, Lucy, but that was as far as we had gotten in the animal department.
I had known for several years that I wanted to try my hand at Nigerian Dwarf goats. I had learned that they are a rare breed, small and easy to handle. They are the most efficient of all goats at turning inputs into outputs, they are unusual in that they can be bred year round and lactate for long periods of time. Furthermore, Nigerian Dwarf goat milk has the highest butterfat of all goat milk so that some say their milk is the tastiest of all goat milk. They have pleasant personalities and are easy for children to work with. That is a lot of positives for a breed that needs saving anyway!
One day a woman living in Georgia posted on a digest I had been on for years that she had Nigerian Dwarf goats for sale and she could deliver to certain areas. Our area was doable for her so a month later we had a mama Nigerian Dwarf goat and her two two month old doelings delivered to us in what turned out to be the middle of the night. My husband had fixed up what apparently used to be a pen for a pet pig out back and there we put them and there they stayed for some time.
When the next day dawned, we all piled outside to meet the new goats. They were rather less interested in meeting us than we were them. As a matter of fact, we gradually realized that these goats really hadn’t been socialized at all and that the mama, Maggie, tended to be on the stubborn side to boot.
As Maggie was still nursing her doelings, I went ahead and purchased all the equipment we needed to milk her. We tried milking her a bit here and there but she had never been milked before and was resistant to the whole thing. We were busy at the time and didn’t press her. Eventually we got our first Dutch Belted cow who needed to be milked immediately upon arrival so we got into the swing of milking and training dairy animals right quick. After milking our cow for a while, we then finally settled down to milking Maggie consistently. This is odd when you think about it. You wouldn’t normally be broken into milking a little goat by milking a giant cow first but that is how it went for us.
A few months later, Maggie was producing so little milk and I was so busy that it became no longer worthwhile to milk her. Interestingly, the doelings who were well over a year old by now continued to nurse on her from time to time. This raises the subject of how long mammals naturally nurse their young but we will save that for another post.
From time to time we considered selling these goats. We were pressed for space - not only on our land but in our minds and in our schedules. They weren’t getting as much attention as we wanted to give them and we were doing nothing but feeding them without getting anything back. We eventually cleared out a large wooded area and put them in there to keep the brush down. That was very effective. These dwarf goats could clear out an acre amazingly quickly. At one point my husband was particularly intent on selling them. We mulled over the idea for a while but somehow I just couldn’t let them go. I had no idea why but I felt strongly about it nevertheless. My husband heard my heart on this and decided that we probably didn’t really have to sell them after all. We tried to get them bred for a while with a local Nigerian Dwarf breeder I discovered just before we moved but somehow it didn’t happen.
We moved the goats here to Floyd along with everything and everybody else. Even here in Floyd we went back and forth about keeping them because we are so pressed for space. But one day last fall we happened upon a wonderful registered buck who made us all laugh and clearly belonged with us. We did the obvious thing and brought him home. Finally we had a way to breed our goats. The results of that are on video on our video blog and five months later we are enjoying the kids and the milk every day.
There was such a transformation in these does once they kidded and, consequently, such a transformation in the way we viewed them. They went from being creatures we had to manage to full fledged partners on the homestead. In short, they were mothers. The sounds they made changed, their behavior changed and the way they spent their time changed. In short, they had become mothers. We could see aspects of their individual personalities and strengths and weaknesses of their individual physical constitutions in ways that we couldn’t before. In short, the natural transformation they had undergone brought out their possibilities in a way that just hanging around never could.
I recently learned that goat milk is higher in minerals than cow milk. That is why they are browsers rather than grazers. Trees, bushes and so-called weeds all have much deeper roots than grass which enables them to bring minerals up from deep down. Goats find these extra minerals in leaves and bark and then we drink down these extra minerals in goat milk.
I also recently learned that I have a health issue that has worsened so much that I really have to slow down and deal with it. Minerals, minerals and more minerals is one helpful remedy as is fresh milk with all of its enzymes and immune system boosting properties. Where I have been happily drinking kefir all this time made with our Dutch Belted milk, I am now craving the fresh goat milk and drinking it down daily. Every time I milk the goats with my children (who of course also have an elevated need for minerals), I feel so grateful to these creatures we barely knew for so long. There is a balance and a goal in our relationship now. We finally have a give and take relationship where each serves the other in a balanced way. We have stepped into a right livelihood with each other, I guess you could say. It makes all the difference in the world in how we view each other.
The natural process is like that. If we simply step fully into the roles available to us, we are guaranteed a marvelous transformation. As Nature is set up that way, we always have this deepening process available to us. We can always become more. And as Nature unfolds around us, we always have much to be grateful for and that gratitude, more than anything else, supports our health.
In the below videos, you can see our goat mamas, watch them being milked and take a peek at our children bottle feeding the kids in the kids’ pen.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
After we bottle fed the kids yesterday evening and had tended to the mama goats, I happened to wander back over to the kid pen and saw Anna playing with the kids. Luckily I happened to have my camera in hand.
There are just all kinds of possibilities for spontaneous bits of fun on the homestead if you have enough young ones of enough species thrown together!
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
Many participants or abhyasis of the Sahaj Marg system of raja yoga are in the middle of a three day gathering in Ohio right now honoring the birthday of the second Master of the system, Shri Ram Chandra of Shahjahanpur. Venues for these events are always simple in nature with minimal comforts and simple yet nourishing food provided. The schedule includes group meditations, talks and a variety of other Mission related activities. Externally that is what one might experience at these gatherings but internally they offer a unique opportunity to go within and connect with the divinity that resides in all of us. Although the associated travel and the gatherings themselves are often tumultuous with the emotional up’s and down’s we refer to as “cleaning,†the condition one experiences after the gathering is one of such deep love, reaffirmation of one’s path and wellbeing that the craving to attend another gathering and be in the presence of the living Master of the system develops almost immediately.
For the first time, all of the abhyasis in America received a handwritten invitation from the Master to attend this particular gathering in Ohio. Up to that point of receiving the invitation, it had been unthinkable for us that we could make the trip given our financial situation, our large family and the daily responsibilities on our homestead. However, the invitation seemed to have a life of its own. It carried with it a sense that any abhyasi with craving in their heart to attend would be able to attend. Many abhyasis have experienced the phenomenon of thinking that they can’t attend a gathering only to discover that the pull from the inner Master and their own will to go somehow created the circumstances necessary for the journey to happen after all.
This handwritten invitation was radiating this principle. We even went so far as to frame it and hang it expectantly in the dining room. Leslie and I came up with a plan for how we might be able to manage to attend and for a little while things looked promising. However, after some time our plan fell apart and the trip to Ohio again appeared impossible. This caused great pain in our hearts for all of us, including the children. Leslie often wept over the thought about not being able to attend. As it turned out, it was as it had to be. After weeks of hard work and preparation on our part, our three does kidded a week before the gathering. Both the does and the kids required daily care and training. It would have been very tough gearing up for a long trip with six children in a 15 passenger van that needed work done on it after all of that. The weather in Ohio was cold and we were worn out. Even with all of that, we were very disappointed about not being able to attend and as the gathering is now entering its final day, we still are.
But something great, a revitalized commitment, has come out of our disappointment. Since starting our homestead, Leslie and I have known that we were no longer going to be able to travel great distances as a family to Sahaj Marg spiritual functions. The homestead and our “large†family flowed from our spiritual practice and yet those are the two things that make traveling to these spiritually uplifting gatherings difficult, if not impossible for us. At the same time, Leslie and I knew that since our family and homestead both developed out of our Sahaj Marg process and were directed by what we call “the inner Master,†Nature and the Master must have another way for us to continue to participate in these gatherings that are so essential to our wellbeing as abhyasis.
What we realize is that our new path towards gatherings involves the completion of our own meditation building right here on our homestead. Over the past few weeks the disappointment and craving have fueled a new sense of urgency and commitment for us to complete this building so that we can host gatherings at our home. The final pieces for its design and construction are coming together. We have recently decided to use cob construction for the walls and a living roof to complete the building. (To give some idea of what we are planning, here is a studio a pair of cob designer/builders constructed that has many similarities to what we plan to build.)We have already been given an excellent set of windows to use and the front doors are already installed. Now we only have to get our truck fixed and get the money together for the posts and roof materials and we can complete the building. Below are two new videos of our progress so far.
Three years ago, this same April birthday celebration was combined with a Diamond Jubilee Anniversary of the inauguration of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission. That gathering in Tiruppur, India was attended by over 30,000 abhyasis who saw the current Master of the system name his successor and release the book Whispers from the Brighter World. Unfortunately, my family and I were not in attendance. The gathering was perhaps the most significant one in the 60 year history of the Mission. Leslie and I would have moved heaven and earth to be there but we simply had no way to go. But we did do something significant instead while celebrating the gathering at home. We held our first official family gathering which included a schedule, activities, and assigned jobs and responsibilities. Our children even put on a great presentation which I videoed. Overall, we did an effective job of turning our house into an ashram for those several days. We learned that it takes considerable effort during a home-based gathering to resist falling back into random daily routines and habits. It took discipline and focused work to transform our home into a gathering venue but we did our best all the way down to making the garlands that adorned the picture of the Master. That gathering was so meaningful for us as a family that we still remember it vividly today.
Now three years later this same opportunity to have a home gathering has revisited us. With the receipt of the invitation and then the subsequent disappointment fueling the fire, we have a renewed sense of purpose about creating our meditation building and hosting gatherings at our homestead. Our first act after completing the building will be to place our special invitation on the wall. For us, his handwritten invitation was not just about attending one gathering now but rather was for the possibility of hosting many gatherings in the future as a new era begins for our family.
All the best,
Paul
These Videos are for the afore mention 2005 home gathering.
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
