Our spiritual Master comments that sometimes when we are feeling sad, the sadness doesn’t really stem from whatever we think is making us sad. Rather deep sadness often comes from our separation from our “Original Home”; it expresses our underlying longing to merge with God as we are intended to do.

Carolyn (16 years old) practiced an aria from Carmen for months for the Bland competition which is a state music competition here in Virginia. She sang it well but without a voice teacher, she felt she couldn’t get it up to where she thought it should be for a competition. A couple of weeks ago, she worked with her choir director after school trying out a Mozart aria and then this Scarlatti arietta entitled “O cessate di piagarmi”. She was searching for something else to sing that she felt could get up to competition level quickly enough. The Mozart was delightful. She is good at Mozart and really enjoys singing his work. However when she sang the Scarlatti, the room was transformed. All of us who were there were stunned, including Carolyn herself. She seemed to step into the ocean of sadness that lies at the core of all those who crave Him and find a way to express that elemental sadness that brought it fully to our conscious attention. It was breathtaking.

What a gift.

So she dressed simply and sang Alessandro Scarlatti’s arietta for the competition yesterday. Even though she is actually a soprano, somehow the deep sadness in an Italian voice of the Scarlatti brought out the contralto in her. It was beautiful and moving. People attending who reportedly don’t even like opera were thrilled by her performance. She placed first and will go on to the next level of competition. She told me, though, that this year she doesn’t really care about winning. Last year she wanted to win but this year she wants to move people.

She succeeded.

The lighting at this venue was really difficult to work with so these photos are dark and the video below isn’t great visually either. A black dress against a black backdrop and black stage just disappears. However, the audio is pretty good. You don’t need to see anything anyway. Just sit quietly and listen. (For those with sensitive ears, the audio is significantly degraded when converted onto You Tube. Many notes are slightly sharp in a way that the actual performance is not and the timbre of the voice is changed. If anyone knows a different way to put up audio files, please let us know!)

May Carolyn go far both musically and spiritually with this gift of hers that keeps unfolding in deeper and more meaningful ways. May many hearts be touched.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

I recently have had an enlightening experience along my “homeschooling mother of many” journey. Has this ever happened to you? You have studied the maps and carefully chosen a route. You are following along your route faithfully. There are problems that come up as you proceed but lots of signposts that insist that this is the right path are also there so you continue to plod along. Then suddenly one day you find your feet taking you onto what appears to be a byway. Huh? You discover that you are walking along this unconsidered route with such gusto that you continue along it just to see what happens. Indeed, you are almost helpless to do otherwise. After some time, you gradually discover that this new way was apparently intended. It is apparently the way you are supposed to go. All kinds of positive developments appear along this new path you never could have anticipated. You find yourself deeply grateful for the nearly inaudible whisper that redirected your steps and silently vow to listen more intently from now on, to watch even more carefully for signs.

This happened to me recently. I was confronted with a serious homeschooling problem I didn’t really understand the root of so it was hard to solve. After quite a bit of time, my feet suddenly took me along an unexpected path that is working beautifully although I don’t fully understand that either. Furthermore, many significant benefits are accruing from this change of direction that I could not have quite anticipated. What was this dramatic change of direction? I switched the math program we are using here at The Lionsgate School. Yup. That’s it. However, there is a lot behind this seemingly simple decision. I am still sorting through the ramifications of it all and would like to share a few thoughts from my experience and from the esteemed Charlotte Mason that I think pertain.

When it comes to guiding our children and homeschooling them, the entire person of the mother must be brought to bear on the project. Her mind, her heart, her hands, her intuition, her character, her self-discipline, her ability to research, her spiritual fervor and obedience… the list goes on and on … all play a vital role. That is one reason why mothering and homeschooling are so good for the mothers engaged in them. So when a mother’s entire person is brought to bear on an aspect of homeschooling, say, then many subtle aspects come into play laying the groundwork and creating a mode of action for even the most seemingly basic decision.

In the Preface to the Fourth Edition of Home Education - Training and Educating Children Under Nine, Charlotte Mason writes:

My attempt in the following volume is to suggest to parents and teachers a method of education resting upon a basis of natural law;

This very line is the basis of my fascination with Charlotte Mason’s insights, by the way, and gives me utter confidence in the methods and approaches she suggests. The “CM approach to education” is not based upon idiosyncrasy, fads peculiar to a specific time or place or the packaged views of someone with an ax to grind or materials to sell. This approach is based upon natural law and, as such, is timeless in its principles. Interestingly I find corroboration for many of her insights and guidelines in the most ancient and scientific literature on the workings of the mind, i.e. raja yoga. I will develop these connections in future posts. For now, let us go back to Miss Mason’s opening comments in her Preface:

and to touch, in this connection, upon a mother’s duties to her children. In venturing to speak on this latter subject, I do so with the sincerest deference to mothers, believing that, in the words of a wise teacher of men, “the woman receives from the Spirit of God Himself the intuitions into the child’s character, the capacity of appreciating its strength and its weakness, the faculty of calling forth the one and sustaining the other, in which lies the mystery of education, apart from which all its rules and measures are utterly vain and ineffectual.” But just in proportion as a mother has this peculiar insight as regards her own children, she will, I think, feel her need of a knowledge of the general principles of education, founded upon the nature and the needs of all children. And this knowledge of the science of education, not the best of mothers will get from above, seeing that we do not often receive as a gift that which we have the means of getting by our own efforts.

In other words, the most effective mother has both a disciplined mind and a loving heart. She draws upon the research of experienced educators as needed in the light of her heart’s intuition to fashion the most effective atmosphere and education for her children.

A while back another Ambleside Online homeschooling mom commented something to the effect that the fact that Charlotte Mason showed such respect for mothers made her even more trusting of her methods. No matter what wonderful method may be in question or how ironclad a general rule of thumb may be about children, in the end the mother is the “mom” and knows what is best for her children. That Charlotte Mason acknowledges this, continued this mom, makes it easier for her to acknowledge “the wisdom that God himself gave Charlotte Mason about children and about the best way to educate them.” She wondered if anyone else was affected the same way by these words of Miss Mason’s?

I replied as follows:

I also appreciate this statement by CM and would like to expand on it a little. I would draw a distinction between mothers being in a position to know what is best for their children and mothers just automatically knowing what is best because they are the mothers. CM correctly observes that mothers receive (I would say “can receive”) from the Spirit of God intuitions about the characters of their children. This is so true. But how often does it happen? The Spirit of God can only be received by a receptive heart and intuitions are best acted upon through the agency of a disciplined mind and a strong will. Perhaps some of us mothers were more or less born this way, functioned this way as girls and were raised to flourish with this approach to mothering and life. Most of us mothers were not so raised, however, and our culture and educational systems rather vociferously discourage such thoughts and behavior! I am sure you may have noticed this…

What I am trying to say is that going to church, for instance, does not make you know God. Endeavoring to know God is a function of changing yourself into a receptive, disciplined, willing, obedient, heart-based person. It is the same with being a mother. We have to be willing to make ourselves into receptors of wisdom about our children, our husbands and so on. We have to long for it. We have to catch the whispers. We have to act immediately. We have to do all these things or the ability to receive is compromised just as the will weakens every time we do not use it properly.

Knowing what is best for our children does not necessarily come automatically with the job. The privilege, the opportunity, to strive to be a mother who knows what is best for her children does automatically come with the job, however. It goes without saying that not all women choose to wring every drop of possibility out of their God-given role. It also goes without saying that as women choose or not to “become”, then in the same way goes society.

On the first pages of the same Home Education volume, Miss Mason qualifies a mother’s responsibility to her children:

It is a great thing to be a parent: there is no promotion, no dignity, to compare with it. … But then entrusted with such a charge, they are not free to say, “I may do as I will with mine own.” The children are, in truth, to be regarded less as personal property than as public trusts, put into the hands of parents that they may make the very most of them for the good of society. And this responsibility is not equally divided between the parents: it is upon the mothers of the present that the future of the world depends, in even a greater degree than upon the fathers, because it is the mothers who have the sole direction of the children’s early, most impressible years. That is why we hear so frequently of great men who have had good mothers - that is, mothers who brought up their children themselves, and did not make over the gravest duty to indifferent persons.

Mothers owe ‘a thinking love’ to their Children - “The mother is qualified,” says Pestalozzi, “and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; … and what is demanded of her is - a thinking love … God has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided - how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? A question the answer to which involves the futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education.”

We are waking up to our duties, and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children … is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession - that is, with the diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow upon their professional labors.

That the mother may know what she is about, may come thoroughly furnished to her work, she should have something more than a hearsay acquaintance with the theory of education, and with those conditions of the child’s nature upon which such theory rests. Home Education, pages 1 - 3

A thinking love, then, is a vital requirement for mothering and homeschooling. (Indeed I would go so far as to say that it is a vital requirement for every significant relationship.) A thinking love motivates a mother to research the experiences and conclusions of informed others as well as plumb the depths of her own heart in search of the inspiration and intuitions that will bring sparkling life to her children’s education as it prepares them for their future. It is her service to the future. As life’s challenges present themselves, a mother’s thoughtful love provides an array of avenues for her to seek answers, remedies, fresh alternatives, patience and perspective.

Here is my case study:

We have had many challenges to achieving “diligence, regularity and punctuality” in our homeschooling these last few years. To start with I am teaching four young stair step children while two older children attend public school against the better judgment of both them and us. This combination furnishes an astonishing array of special challenges! In addition, we have moved several times during the last few years. This has most particularly involved establishing two homesteads from the ground up which involved very steep learning curves and sometimes punishing work schedules. We are still setting up this homestead but have also now taken on starting The Pockets of the Future Project as well as Bamboo Grove Press. I think I already mentioned steep learning curves and punishing work schedules? Well, ditto here.

In the face of all of this, I seemed unable to stay steady with homeschooling day in and day out. Actually homeschooling day in and day out was often impossible. We would get started and then have to do something like move or build a barn or have a cow unexpectedly calve and have to learn how to process 8 or 9 gallons of milk a day in a hurry. Whew. My husband insisted that I should remain calm as the children were receiving an invaluable education that would serve them and others powerfully in the future. He was right, of course, but still I squirmed. How to meet all needs? How to push myself harder? How to organize better? How to go with even less sleep? Argh.

I was already committed to Ambleside Online and Right Start math. My problem was not bouncing back and forth about curricula, or losing confidence or anything like that. You can’t do any better than AO and Right Start math, right? I never wavered on these two things. It was only that we kept doing them in fits and starts which simply is not good enough.

In early winter when the homesteading projects theoretically slowed down a bit, I started taking time on Sunday afternoons to meditate on the whole homeschooling situation. What did each child need? How many children could I take on something new with at a time? What should I add? What could I save for later? I took notes on what came to me. I gathered materials and tried to implement things slowly in order to increase chances of success. There was some improvement but things still weren’t clicking along as I felt they should. I limped along, all the while keeping the situation and my prayers about it in my mind and heart. What was missing? I waited the best I could for further insight or for something to just happen.

Anyone on the AO lists knows that the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (MEP) math program gets mentioned in glowing terms periodically. I never really paid attention because we were using Right Start which is based on the Asian model and emphasizes place value, uses games and the abacus, involves very little in the way of worksheets, teaches children to do math in their heads and all sorts of other neat things. I had saved and saved money and finally had all the Right Start curricula on the shelf that I needed. This was a significant accomplishment, by the way, as Right Start is not cheap.

I had a hard time keeping up with doing Right Start because in the younger years, at least, it is entirely teacher based. There is really nothing for children to do on their own. I could see how great the program was every time I used it with them but it was hard to make the time for so many young children. It was light years beyond most other math programs and yet I just couldn’t maintain a steady schedule with it. The children were not the problem. They were always eager and willing. So what exactly was the problem? Just insufficient time?

Suddenly a couple of months ago, I found my feet not just turning down an unexpected path. My feet were running! The rest of me could hardly keep up! I had taken a 90 degree turn and was tearing pellmell down the MEP path for all I was worth. MEP is a math program implemented in British schools based on the Hungarian approach to math. It is a dynamic spiral program which digs deeply into math concepts and teaches children to approach math problems in creative, thoughtful ways. I know that now. I didn’t know it when I started running down the path, though. I received some encouragement from a couple of moms who are expert at MEP. I began printing out the lesson plan pages and workbook pages and generally acted as if I knew exactly what I was doing.

And that was that.

From the day we started MEP, we were suddenly locked into regular homeschooling at long last. Every morning now the children do their handwriting and copywork and then we all sit at the dining room table and do various levels of MEP together. Every morning! And then we do everything else from the AO schedule that is on deck too. Every day! Something was not right for us about Right Start and it was creating a logjam for the entire homeschooling program that I couldn’t break apart now matter how hard I tried. MEP came along, sent logs flying everywhere and now my children are boating up the river with grace and elegance. Oh, it does my mother’s heart good to see it.

I have puzzled over this. MEP is nearly as time intensive as Right Start is. Plus it is sort of workbook-y and I have always stayed away from anything like that because workbooks aren’t best, right? The thing is that inaudible whisper from above that echoes in your heart doesn’t come from a place that cares about what is cool or other people’s ideas about what is best. It comes from a place of higher inspiration and broader view that is specific to your own life and responsibilities. We may or may not be privileged to ever understand the reasons behind any changes of direction presented so subtly and silently but we can at least always be grateful for direct help from a higher place and continue to hone our ability to hear those messages the first time.

A couple of days ago while we all sat at the dining room table piling through MEP lessons, my 8 year old daughter turned to me and said:

Anna: I really like math. I like to do stuff.

Me: Did you like the other math too or just this MEP?

Anna: I like this one because I like to do stuff, solve problems. With the other program, you showed us things and we realized. With this program, we actually figure things out. The other program you probably would end up figuring things out and doing things too, but with this program, you start out doing things. I really like that better.

And with that she turned back to her work.

I am beginning to see now with the help of my children. I want to study this business of math programs and Charlotte Mason’s recommendations regarding math in more detail and write again. I already have another math discovery I want to share that will add to MEP beautifully, if used in small doses, but I will save all of that for later when I have more experience with it. I am getting some whole new ideas about math now which is really exciting.

I offer this long story as a case study in the interesting twists and turns relationships and projects can take when approached with “a thinking love” expressed within the role naturally assigned to us in life (in this case the roles of “mother” and “teacher”). For anyone who strives heart, mind and soul to fulfill their responsibilities in His name, help is there. We have only to place the question before Him, wait for as long as it takes for a response to come, be receptive to His answer no matter how surprising it may be, and then follow up on that response with all due diligence and good faith. Then though we may imagine the work is ours, the results will surely be His.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

A reader wrote to tell me that they have hooked their kitchen sink up to a gray water system. She wanted to know what kind of dish soap to use in this situation. I have been wanting to post about dish soap anyway, oddly enough, so here goes.

I have generally used biodegradable dish soaps for between 15 and 20 years. Not only have I long been committed to using products that are easier on the environment, I can’t stand the smells associated with regular commercial type soaps and detergents. The scents of biodegradable soaps, on the other hand, tend to be delicious which encourages me to get the dishes or the laundry done in a timely fashion.

I should add here that we have had to use Dawn from time to time due to financial or time pressures. It can be an adjustment going back to more natural soaps again. Natural soaps do not generally have the pizazz of mountains of bubbles and the squeaky clean (read chemically clean) qualities that industrial strength detergents do. You have to kind of ratchet down back to the natural way and understand that the dishes really are clean. Natural things tend to be more subtle. We have to make ourselves more subtle as well.

Anyway, here is my response to her:

You can use soaps that are labeled biodegradable and noted as safe for septic and gray water systems. There are a number of these. Seventh Generation is one I used for years. You can usually buy this at health food stores or at Gaiam (otherwise known as Seventh Generation). I tried Ecover once but didn’t find it effective and never used it again.

We have lately been using Mrs. Myer’s Clean Day Liquid Dish Soap. It comes in Lavender and Geranium scents both of which are uplifting, intoxicating and intense enough to make a difference to your experience of washing dishes! We can get this at our health food store here or I know that Lehman’s sells it. Honestly, using this soap is so therapeutic that even my husband notices it and insists that I use it for my sake. Isn’t that nice? Mrs. Myer’s is kind of expensive but it is very concentrated so a bottle actually lasts a remarkably long time.

This is true of Shaklee dish soap which we have also used. It was very effective, very concentrated and completely biodegradable so suitable for gray water systems. It smelled good too although not at Mrs. Myer’s type levels. We would probably still be using it but we lost track of the Shaklee distributor we were working through. Shaklee is a reputable company with high quality products.

Charlie’s Soap is another option. I started using their laundry soap a while back and find that it works really, really well. It is soap and not detergent. It is economically packaged and the customer service is great. They also make a multi-purpose liquid cleaner that can be diluted down to use as dish soap. I am going to try that next and add my own essential oils. The laundry soap works so well that I have complete confidence that the liquid multi-purpose cleaner will be just as effective for dishes and all of the other ten thousand things it can be used for. I only have to figure out what concentration would be appropriate for dish washing. You can look into their all-purpose cleaner at Charlie’s Soap. I imagine this may end up being the cheapest option. I will have to experiment and see.

So that is my little rundown on dish soaps. When you hand wash as many dishes as we do, your choice of dish soap becomes important. It is your daily companion, as it were, and useful sidekick. Whatever brand you use or whatever you might make yourself, I encourage you to combine effectiveness with biodegradable, safe for the environment kinds of ingredients together with absolutely intoxicating aromas. This is a combination with a little something for everybody including all the children whom you are diligently training to wash dishes!

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

During one of my ongoing searches for more information and experiences with oil pulling a couple of weeks ago, I came across Joe’s Health Site. This page has stayed in my mind since for two reasons. The first reason is that I read two pieces of information on it that were new to me and the other is the brevity and simplicity of this page.

Researching, learning, changing and eating our way back to some semblance of original health generally seems to be a ridiculously complicated endeavor. Books and web sites devoted to this subject are often fairly complex and contain so much information that the reader can easily become overwhelmed. Not at Joe’s Health Site. It is one page! And not one of those hugely long pages that is really the length of a full length novel. It is one page with a few select links. However, I can say with confidence that if you follow the recommendations on this page, the health of many,many people will dramatically improve. (I say this even though we are vegetarian and Joe clearly is not.)

Topics covered include:

Eating enough quality protein;

Using coconut oil daily;

Getting enough gelatin;

Oil pulling;

Thyroid health;

Information about good fats and the myths about cholesterol;

The Dangers of Microwave Ovens;

and the health benefits possible from Rebounding.

All good stuff simply presented. Now here are the two facts I pulled out of Joe’s Health Site that stuck with me personally:

I started oil pulling on 3//4/07 and I have no intentions of ever stopping it. It has helped my sleep, moods, reduced my anxiety, improved my brain function, and more. Read about it, and then try it! Curezone.com has a forum on it. They say if you do it once daily for 2-4 weeks, you’ll never want to stop it! This is an ancient Ayurvedic Healing Technique that’s very effective.

I have also found that once I started oil pulling, I never wanted to stop. It is funny that something I had never heard of just a few months ago is now something I intend to do always and teach my children and grandchildren to do too! I am not even aware of any big changes in my health from doing it. It just feels right to do and in some subtle way I have to do it! It is soothing and health promoting in a deep, natural way that I can feel but not necessarily pinpoint. By way of contrast, I have had to skip doing it for short periods a couple of times because I didn’t have any sesame oil to use. This didn’t wreck my day or anything but the morning felt incomplete. It’s like not brushing your teeth at a time when you always brush your teeth. It won’t kill you but it doesn’t feel good.

Secondly, I noted this with regard to thyroid function:

Taking the oral temperature is the best way to detect low thyroid. It should be 98 on arising and 98.6 to 99 during the day. If it’s much below this you’re probably hypo-thyroid. Resting pulse should be 85. Much below 80 usually indicates hypothyroidism.

Taking your temperature is pretty much the only way to accurately gauge thyroid function and I have known that for years. There is a bit more to the best way to do this than is mentioned here. However, the point about a low pulse being a sign of hypothyroidism really hit me. I have had a low pulse rate for as long as I can remember. Once I was getting a physical in order to work in Internal Medicine and Urgent Care at an HMO in Boston. The nurse practitioner took my pulse rate and then asked me if I had been jogging for years? I was surprised at the question. I had always been athletic and a dancer but had never found jogging even remotely interesting. I replied with a laugh that I did not jog. She commented that my pulse was so low that she thought that must be what I do.

If only she had had enough clinical experience to realize that a pulse in the high 60’s was a possible warning sign of hypothyroidism. (Most MD type medical people are not too good at this thyroid business, by the way.) Perhaps I could have gotten enough thyroid support at that time that my thyroid wouldn’t have collapsed almost completely after giving birth the first time. Sigh. And here up to now even I thought that my low pulse rate was one of the good things I had going for me healthwise. I was a little blue when I read this, to tell you the truth, but I guess it is better to know.

This is a lot of information from just one little health page. I am going to post this on our Effective Health and Personal Care page under Essential Links on the Pockets of the Future web site for future reference. May we all read it, take action and enjoy improved health.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

I have been thinking lately about how modern day society’s insatiable appetite for man-made variety has superseded our more subtle in-born appetites for natural variety. This desire to eat something trendy or foreign or gourmet or quick or brightly colored has led to a such a breakdown in human health that we can’t even find our way back to what a healthy diet actually is or was.

What is perhaps even worse, our addiction to superficial variety has utterly destroyed the deep, health sustaining variety nature so generously provided us and the Earth. This fact is vividly demonstrated in A Visit to the Doomsday Vault aired on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. Just a few facts mentioned on this compelling segment (paraphrased):

We are on the verge of losing 10,000 years worth of human diet and agriculture.

In the 1800s Americans raised 7100 named varieties of apples. We have since lost 6800 of those varieties. That is an extinction rate of 86%.

Every day 1 crop strain disappears from the world.

Scientists note that we have no way to anticipate the potential value to us of any given bit of genetic material. There are instances where a characteristic from one strain of wheat, when introduced to another strain of wheat, saved a region from likely starvation. We can’t know all the possibilities and potentials Nature has stored up in her many natural varieties. We have no way to estimate the value of what we have already lost. We can’t even assess the value of what we are currently losing.

Seeds used to be passed down through families for generations. This not only preserved countless of varieties of crops and other plants but created strains ideally suited to very specific niches. Now agri-business has dismantled this method of preserving genetic variety and lost for us enormous numbers of strains of crops forever.

The “Doomsday Vault” or Global Seed Vault this segment of 60 Minutes focuses on is a “safe house for humanity” built 700 miles from the North Pole. It is built in an extraordinary way and contains 1.5 billion seeds which are back-ups of all the Earth’s crops. The scientists and financiers that are seeing this project through to completion are committed to protecting humanity against a doomsday unfolding right now. One scientist stated that:

There is a perfect storm poised and ready to hit agriculture within the next one hundred years.

This is above and beyond the extended “perfect storm” we might say has hit the Earth already in the form of human beings endlessly fulfilling their desires for superficial variety and profit.

Watch the 60 Minutes video embedded below. It is extremely informative - fascinating even - and deeply disturbing. We need this perspective. We need to know what we have done. We need to know what we are still doing. We need to get a sense of the magnitude of what our minds and desires have wrought. If our poorly disciplined minds and complex desire driven lives could create this much mayhem and destruction, just think what disciplined minds and elegantly simple, desire free lives could create in terms of a peaceful, green, balanced Earth.

May it be so.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

We used to make homemade pizza frequently but now that our milk supply is so low, we haven’t had it for a while. This past week, however, we saved up milk so that we could make enough mozzarella for all the pizzas we make at a time. Plus the day before my husband got some kefir sourdough starter going.

Yesterday we checked on the starter and it looked very lively. Now you usually let that starter sit for at least a couple of days before using it but this one was only going to sit and bubble for less than one day because that is all the time we had. I figured I would just let the dough rise extra long and it would probably be fine.

We were unexpectedly called away for much of the day yesterday and Paul and I were very tired when we finally got home. I made the dough but knew there wasn’t going to be much time for it to rise so I added just half the yeast that I usually use to make a batch of pizza dough. I thought that half the yeast plus a jar of starter that was less than one day old would add up to enough dough. I made it all up in the Bosch, rolled it out onto the counter of our hutch, covered it with a towel and left it to rise while I worked on the computer for a while.

Maybe an hour later I heard a commotion in the kitchen and young voices calling me rather urgently. I dashed in there (imagine big movie music playing here now) and saw the hugest spread of pizza dough I have ever seen! It was growing off the counter by about six inches. I pushed it all back up onto the counter and went back to the computer to tidy up what I was doing so that I could get into the kitchen and save us all from the runaway pizza dough. By the time I got back in there just a couple of minutes later, the pizza dough was hanging off of the counter again.

My husband said, “Great, roll the crusts out thick and we will have deep dish pizza. That will be more filling anyway.”

OK, I can do that. I rolled one crust out nice and thick and then baked it on the hot pizza stone for just 4 minutes. When I opened the oven, I laughed. What I pulled out of it was more like a foccacia than a pizza crust. I was two inches thick! While I tried to thin out the next crust a bit, Paul took pictures of the always expanding pizza crust.

Here he put a zebra next to it to give a sense of scale.

I lost count of how many crusts I rolled out. I made each one a bit thinner than the one before but still after six or seven crusts, they were still coming out of the oven plenty thick. So we had deep dish pizza alright. And, yes, everyone was full. They were so full that we had plenty of leftovers for lunch today.

Top left is plain cheese, bottom left is cheese and pineapple, while the lone slices are cheese and shiitake mushroom.

The moral of the story? Never underestimate the power of kefir in baking!

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

Until fairly recently, knowing how to ferment food was considered a time honored and critical skill in homesteads and kitchens all over the world. It was a craft that preserved food, strengthened health, gave a scope for creativity and experimentation and provided an avenue for working symbiotically with nature. More and more people these days are maintaining that the complete absence of real fermented food in our diet has undermined our health dramatically. Some even say that introducing fermented foods into your diet is the first step to take towards improved health even before taking vitamins and so on. Please find here a brief introduction to the benefits of lacto-fermented foods, a simple recipe for making sauerkraut yourself, links for more online information, links to books for really in-depth information and down at the very bottom of this post, links to videos of us making this sauerkraut ourselves.

I think that, therefore, having some ability with the artisanal craft of fermenting food will be a critical skill in tomorrow’s kitchens as well. Here is another instance where past pathways can lead us towards a healthier future more oriented towards relationships:

It may seem strange to us that in earlier times, people knew how to preserve vegetables for long periods without the use of freezers or canning machines. This was done through the process of lacto-fermentation. Lactic acid is a natural preservative which inhibits putrefying bacteria… These lactobacilli are ubiquitous, present on the surface of all living things, and especially numerous on the leaves and roots of plants growing in or near the ground. Man only needs to learn the techniques for controlling and encouraging their proliferation to put them to his own use, just as he has learned to put certain yeasts to use in converting the sugars in grape juice to alcohol in wine. Nourishing Traditions, p. 81

What are some of the advantages of fermenting basic foods?

The ancient Greeks understood that important chemical changes took place during this type of fermentation. Their name for it was “alchemy”. Like the fermentation of dairy products, preservation of vegetables and fruits by the process of lacto-fermentation has numerous advantages beyond those of simple preservation. The proliferation of lactobacilli in fermented vegetables enhances their digestibility and increases vitamin levels. These beneficial organisms produce numerous helpful enzymes as well as antibiotic and anti-carcinogenic substances. Their main by-product, lactic acid, not only keeps vegetables and fruits in a state of perfect preservation, but also promotes the growth of healthy flora throughout the intestine. Other alchemical by-products include hydrogen peroxide, a potent blood and tissue oxygenator, and small amounts of benzoic acid. Nourishing Traditions, p. 81

What is available to us today in grocery stores?

Unfortunately, fermented foods have largely disappeared from the Western diet, much to the detriment of our health and economy. Fermented foods are a powerful aid to digestion and a protection against disease. And because fermentation is, by nature, an artisanal process, the disappearance of fermented foods has hastened the centralization and industrialization of our food supply, to the detriment of small farms and local economies. Wild Fermentation, p. XI

and

Lacto-fermentation is an artisanal craft that does not lend itself to industrialization. Results are not always predictable. For this reason, when the pickling process became industrialized, many changes were made that rendered the final product more uniform and more saleable, but not necessarily more nutritious. Chief among these was the use of vinegar for the brine, resulting in a product that is more acidic and not necessarily beneficial when eaten in large quantities; and of subjecting the final product to pasteurization, thereby effectively killing all the lactic-acid-producing bacteria and robbing consumers of their beneficial effect on the digestion. Nourishing Traditions, p. 82

This is the same industrialization process that has robbed us of real bread and many other once sustaining foods, by the way.

Keeping in mind that kefir and yogurt are very familiar fermented dairy foods, let’s move on to consider sauerkraut as a possible new fermented food we might make in our very own kitchens.

A partial list of lacto-fermented vegetables from around the world is sufficient to prove the universality of this practice. In Europe, the principle lacto-fermented food is sauerkraut. Described in Roman texts, it has been prized for its delicious taste as well as medicinal properties for many centuries. Nourishing Traditions, p. 81

Sandor Katz in his Wild Fermentation - The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods has an interesting section on the history of sauerkraut through various cultures, research on sauerkraut’s anti-carcinogenic qualities, the science of the microbial process that takes cabbage from garden to immune system booster and a range of recipes and approaches for making sauerkraut. I am still at the beginning stages of exploring the artisanal craft of fermentation myself, so I have yet to fully explore Sandor’s methods and recipes. Sally Fallon’s fermentation recipes were specially chosen to be simple and her approach to sauerkraut is certainly that. Hers is the basic recipe I used in the kefir sauerkraut videos (posted below) and the one I will detail for you here.

Simple Sauerkraut

Ingredients

4 cups shredded organic cabbage, loosely packed

1 tsp. juniper berries

1/2 tsp. cumin seeds

1/4 tsp. mustard seeds

2 tsp. sea salt

2 Tbl. whey (if you don’t have whey, then add an extra 1 tsp. of sea salt)

1 cup pure water

Procedure

In a large bowl, mix together the shredded cabbage with the juniper berries, mustard seeds and cumin seeds. Mash or pound everything in the bowl with a wooden pounder for several minutes to release water/juice from the cabbage. Into a clean quart-sized wide mouthed mason jar, put the pounded cabbage mixture a handful at a time. Pack everything down with the pounder.

In a glass measuring cup, mix the salt and whey into the water. Pour into the jar. Continue adding pure water to the jar until the liquid in the jar comes up to the top of the cabbage. There should be about an inch of space between the top of the cabbage and the top of the jar.

Cover the jar tightly and keep at room temperature for 3 to 5 days, depending upon the temperature of your kitchen. Transfer to your refrigerator.

The sauerkraut can be eaten immediately but it does become more flavorful the longer it ages in the refrigerator.

Notes

1. No matter how little food money I may have at any given time, I only make sauerkraut with organic cabbage. If I can’t get my hands on an organic cabbage, then I just don’t make sauerkraut. As Sally Fallon explains:

It is important to use the best quality organic vegetables, sea salt and filtered or pure water for lacto-fermentation. Lactobacilli need plenty of nutrients to do their work and if the vegetables are deficient, the process of fermentation will not proceed. Likewise if your salt or water contains impurities, the quality of the final product will be jeopardized. Nourishing Traditions, p. 82

I figure I don’t want to be drawing more out of a chemically raised cabbage through pounding and fermentation, then would already be “available”. I don’t want to add to the chemical burden we already have to deal with from living in this world. Luckily, even organic cabbages are not all that expensive and sauerkraut does go a long way.

2. You can make sauerkraut with just water and salt which is good. You can inoculate the brine with whey which is better. You can inoculate the brine with kefir whey which is best. It doesn’t take much whey. You could probably get enough from a container of yogurt. You can get lots of whey from making very simple cheese in a pot on top of the stove. You can get kefir whey simply by draining some kefir through butter muslin or several layers of cheese cloth and catching the whey in a bowl underneath. Kefir whey is the most biologically complex and active, followed by various other sources of whey, followed by water and salt.

3. I use well water to make our sauerkraut and have had no problems. I would definitely not use municipal water, however, as that is guaranteed to be chemically contaminated. If you are on city water, then I would suggest buying a bottle of good quality water. I don’t think fermented fluoride and chlorine and who knows what else is what the ancients had in mind with fermentation!

4. You don’t have to use mustard seeds, if you don’t want to or don’t have them. I use very little as my husband doesn’t like too many of them in his sauerkraut. According to Sandor Katz, you might also consider caraway seeds, dill seeds, celery seeds and keep with the juniper berries. These various seeds also help keep the cabbage crisp while it ferments (as does the salt, by the way).

5. As you become familiar with making and eating sauerkraut, you can also experiment with adding other vegetables such as carrots, turnips, beets or burdock root. Sandor notes that you can even add fruits such as apples either whole or sliced. (Wild Fermentation, p. 41)

For more information about the benefits and how to’s of fermenting foods, look into the books at the bottom of this post and also these web sites. Wild Fermentation, Weston A. Price Foundation, Traditional Cook, Through the Cooking Glass, and read the free file on making your own lacto-fermenated veggies found on LoveLandLocal.

A final thought -

Making sauerkraut is another one of those accomplishments that feels great. It turns out to be fairly simple at its most basic, but gives plenty of room for growth in knowledge and play of creativity. It is another way to become more self reliant. It is another skill and taste best introduced to our children while they are young. It builds future health by leading in and out of the garden. It draws upon the past to meet a critical need in the present you almost cannot meet otherwise due to the vagaries of modern day laws and industrialization. Finding real fermented food in the stores is not easy. Sometimes you can find real sauerkraut but it is very expensive and for some reason, around here anyway, the stores are not carrying it any more. This is similar to real milk in that almost the only way you can feed your family with it is by doing it yourself.

There is one more aspect I would like to touch upon, however. I think Americans, in this age of enforced vaccines, powerful drugs and anti-bacterial soaps, hold very deeply the idea that the invisible world is a threatening one that must be strenuously guarded against, tightly controlled and preferably stamped out altogether. As human beings are designed to live in relationship with nature, this attitude and the actions that flow from it will eventually kill us if left unchecked. We can already see evidence of this everywhere. There are many articles now about children growing up with asthma and food allergies and all sorts of things because they now live in sanitized environments which can’t develop the human immune system as it was designed to be developed. Sally Fallon noted over 10 years ago that:

Scientists and doctors today are mystified by the proliferation of new viruses - not only the deadly AIDS virus but the whole gamut of human viruses that seem to be associated with everything from chronic fatigue to cancer to arthritis. They are equally mystified by recent increases in the incidence of intestinal parasites and pathogenic yeasts, even among those whose sanitary practices are faultless. Could it be that in abandoning the ancient practice of lacto-fermentation, and in our insistence on a diet in which everything has been pasteurized, we have compromised the health of our intestinal flora and made ourselves vulnerable to legions of pathogenic microorganisms? If so, the cure for these diseases will be found not in inoculations, drugs or antibiotics, but in a restored partnership with the many varieties of lactobacilli, our symbionts of the microscopic world. Nourishing Traditions, p. 83

Intelligent, informed, creative relationships with the natural world around us - both visible and invisible - are an important key to human health on all planes of existence. Learning how to ferment foods is a wonderful way to change our deeply held attitudes about the invisible world of “microbes”, all the while putting healthy, flavorful, food on the table.

Do try this simple sauerkraut. It is fun to make, pretty to look at, tasty to eat and satisfying to share with loved ones.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

Can you only call yourself self reliant if you are producing most of your necessities yourself? I would say not. Self reliance means that you can creatively and effectively respond to changing conditions. Combining self reliance with homesteading means that you adapt to changing conditions in ways that bring labor, skills and necessities home.

A friend writes:

Okay, I am the first to admit that prices here on things I need are sky high now. They have now actually been confirmed in several news articles. Namely staples have gone up almost 30% in the last two years while processed foods/non staples have risen about 7.5%. So if one is just buying staples, it seems like they are going through the roof.

In a recent newsletter I read:

American families, which spend 9.9% of their disposable income on food, are facing the fastest rising food prices in 17 years. The consumer’s cost for everything from yogurt and popcorn to breakfast cereal and fast-food french fries is climbing. In US cities last month, the average retail price of a pound loaf of whole wheat bread was up 24% from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Whole milk hit $3.807 a gallon, up 26%.

I would note here that milk prices have probably inched up a bit more since this report and that us Americans who live on less than government averaged incomes spend a good deal more than 9.9% of our incomes on food. In fact, even with as much of our food as we grow we probably spend one third to one half of our income on food (and that does not include the expenses of hay and so on for our livestock). In fact, a report just printed in the New York Times gives a better perspective:

Government figures released Friday showed that grocery costs had jumped 5.1 percent in 12 months, the latest in a string of increases. In fact, the nation is undergoing its worst grocery inflation since the early 1990s.

With a few exceptions, nearly every grocery category measured by the Labor Department, which compiles the official inflation numbers, has increased in the last year. Milk is up 17 percent, as are dried beans, peas and lentils. Cheese is up 15 percent, rice and pasta 13 percent, and bread 12 percent.

No food product has gone up as much as eggs, jumping 25 percent since February 2007 and 62 percent in the last two years. US Economy Beset by Problems

This is all compounded by the fact that gas prices are rising rapidly. High gas prices hit those of us who live in the country particularly hard. Even if food prices were even, driving frequently to town to purchase necessities has become out of the question. The combination of rapidly rising gas prices with rapidly rising food prices is painful - especially to those of us living off the beaten path and still learning and adapting to growing our own food and being generally self reliant.

What to do?

One very important thing to do is to buy food in bulk and store it at home. There are several benefits to buying in bulk:

* Unit price of the food or item goes down when you buy by the bag or case;

* You don’t have to drive to go shopping. Eventually you can go shopping in your pantry;

* You learn to live with what you have and create meals and menus from what is on hand;

* You are not tempted to spend money on extras when you shop in your pantry rather than a grocery store. Even “shopping” while you are hungry no longer presents a challenge!

* Stocking up in the present is a hedge against inflation. You will continue to eat food at the old prices for as long as your supply holds out;

* You learn to cook from basic ingredients;

* You can send your children shopping for you without a care in the world as they are only going to your pantry or basement or other food storage area;

* If you don’t live in the country now but intend to, you will develop a habit that will serve you well once you get there;

* You are protected a bit from the vagaries of weather, weakening memory (what was I supposed to pick up at the store?), income fluctuations, job loss, injury, price increases and so on;

* You are taking a big step towards living more simply at a time when you can chose to rather than having it imposed upon you.

There are probably more reasons and benefits to stocking up on food and necessities than I have even listed here. People write entire books on this subject after all. But these are the main benefits I have discovered so far.

I have been buying food in bulk and storing what I can for years. In our house in Louisa and in the one here, I have a corner of the basement dedicated to storing food, toiletries, water and so on. Grains, beans and other dry goods such as sugars and salt are stored in plastic pails set up on pallets. It is important to keep your plastic pails off the cement floor as moisture can wick up from the floor through the plastic into the food inside. In general, anything you can do to increase air circulation is a good thing and setting pails up on pallets helps in that way. Furthermore, this basement seems to get flooded on a regular basis so having pails of stored foods up off the floor is all the more important.

Here is a view of some of our food storage pails.

Most of the pails have come from the painting section at Lowes. According to my research, these are made of food grade plastic. Each pail is outfitted with “gamma lids”. These things are wonderful. The lids that come on plastic pails are really, really hard to get on and off. Gamma lids solve this problem and are an invaluable homesteading tool. You snap a neck onto the top of the pail and then the lid screws on and off. So easy. Easy enough for children even. And they come in colors, as you can see above. I do take advantage of the color coding. I put beans in pails with red lids, grains in pails with yellow lids and sugars and sea salt in pails in blue lids.

I also have made labels on the computer for each pail. This helps out a lot when you have quite a few. Here are a couple of bean pails:

You can get gamma lids in a number of places but the cheapest place I have found is USA Emergency Supply. Great company. I have found very useful books through them also.

In the basement Paul has also set shelves up for me to hold cases of canned tomatoes or Indian food supplies or molasses or whatever. I use plastic dish tubs to hold packets of herbs and citric acid and so on. (Bulk sized packages of herbs go in the freezer.) I also have shampoo, hydrogen peroxide and other such necessities on shelves there. The shelves are pretty sparse right now which I find makes me squirm a bit. I hope I can get more on them sometime soon.

Most of my grain pails I keep in the kitchen because I use them so much. Also I use such a large amount of grain at a time that it wouldn’t be worth it to keep filling smaller containers in the kitchen from food pails in the basement like I do with beans and lentils.

In one corner, I have tucked away corn, rye and kamut.

Under the table that holds the grain grinder, I have Prairie Gold wheat (this is a light wheat), Bronze Chief wheat (this is a darker, more flavorful wheat) and spelt.

Here my husband is obliging me by pouring a 50 pound bag of wheat into a pail for me.

You can buy bulk food in a number of places. Health food stores will place bulk orders for you and give you a discount, for instance. Check around your community and see if any families have gotten together to form a food buying coop. They usually order from a catalog and a truck delivers to a designated drop off location once a month. This is a wonderful option because you can also meet like minded people in your community. As a matter of fact, through the food buying coop in Louisa we ended up with our first cow. You never know where one good step will lead next!

Having enough money to buy in bulk can be an issue also for many families. One suggestion is to save just enough each month to buy one thing in bulk. Or when you see something on sale at the grocery store that you use a lot, buy at least a few extra. Gradually, gradually your stores will add up. If you get a chunk of money, for some reason, like a tax return decide ahead of time that you will dedicate some of that money to buying supplies in bulk.

Arranging your finances and your living environment in ways that permit you to store up some of what other people grow and produce is an opportunity to deepen self-discipline, exercise creativity and strengthen planning, researching, networking and frugality related skills. The end result is more wiggle room in your budget, an increased sense of self reliance and much greater peace of mind.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

As I posted elsewhere:

All signs point to the fact that we have entered a dark period in terms of human liberties and how people treat each other in general. Things have to either move forward or go backward as they can never just stay the same. It certainly appears now that humanity is choosing the option of going backwards. Some of this comes from the profit-seeking force of the powers that be. Some comes from the environmental consequences of our petroleum-based system and rapacious use of resources. The finite nature of petroleum, water, top soil and other resources is catching up to us all. In many ways things look bleak for our children and grandchildren.

However I can report that after almost three years of homesteading based on solid spiritual principles, my family and I have felt a great sense of wellbeing coming from our collective efforts at leaving behind a dying system by returning to a more natural state of being. Our work has centered on learning some of the many skills required for homesteading and discovering through experience that a personal connection to one’s food brings deep benefits. We started our first homestead by converting our small 3.7 acre property in central VA into a small dairy. After completing that, we moved to a more rural mountain community where we have worked hard to rebuild an old farmhouse with just under four acres into a homestead that suits us.

Now finally emerging out of a rough homesteading winter, I came across some of our pictures from our old homestead and made a slideshow of homesteading pictures past and present with Joseph Arthur’s “In the Sun” providing the music. It has really given us a boost to see the best of our homesteading ventures strung together to music that means something to us.

For anyone who is suffering from despair or depression due to the current state of our Union - and the current state of the earth for that matter - one remedy is to make some progress in freeing yourself of our dying system by taking steps towards a more sustainable system. In that spirit, then, please enjoy pictures of cows, dogs, cats, happy children and a view of the future.

Here is the description I wrote to go with the video on You Tube:

 

Our family’s difficult homesteading winter is summed up in Joseph Arthur’s song “In The Sun” which we discovered in late January and have listened to frequently since then.

Lately pictures of Patrick, the first calf born on our old homestead, have been coming up on our screensaver a lot. I decided to make a slide show combining “In the Sun” with pictures of Patrick and our old homestead. Patrick was a surprise for us as no one knew that his mother, Pezra, was pregnant. One Sat. morning I went out to feed the cows hay and discovered his feet sticking out of his mother. Patrick was unique in many ways. His partial white belt (he was half Dutch Belted and half Red Angus) looked like a large “L” on one side while on the other side was a silhouette of a cat.

Patrick was really affectionate with people. Our family really enjoyed him but with his cousin being born 3 weeks later and 3 other cows on a small lot, reality set in. He was a beef bull on a 4 acre vegetarian homestead so as much as we liked him, we had to sell him. Fortunately, the Read Angus farm family we purchased Pezra from and where she was bred wanted to buy him. We bottle fed Patrick for 3 months and they came to take him away. He ended up being more like a pet for this family who owned 20 or so other beef cows. Patrick even gave their 5 year old rides on his back. When they moved him away from the house and into a large pasture with the other cows, Patrick mooed incessantly until they relented and moved him back. He was much like Ferdinand the reluctant bull of the famous children’s story.

However a few months later Patrick suddenly became sick and died, leaving his new family deeply saddened. I think we were all very happy to have known him. His affectionate nature left a big impression on us all as he had such a positive effect on the environments and people he came across during his short life.

It turns out there weren’t enough pictures of Patrick to complete the slide show. However as I combed through all the pictures from our old homestead and added photos here and there, the slide show became about much more than Patrick. It became about our entire family moving from the past to the future. Viewing this slide show lifts our spirits and prepares us for the coming spring that is going to open up many new possibilities for deepening our homesteading experience.

Other pictures in the video include the painting at the beginning entitled “Passing Clouds” by George Inness and Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari, a Raja Yogic Master, celebrating the Pongal festival in southern India. The waterfall, bamboo grove and pond are located in Maymont Park in Richmond, VA.

The future is there waiting to be stepped into.

All the best,

Paul

I have been behind on posting to the blog this past week. Every single person in the family got sick with each person getting a bit sicker than the one before. That can really add up when there are eight people involved! Even though I was the last to fall, I didn’t get too awfully sick. I threw my neck out instead and couldn’t turn my head or lift my arm for a while there. Everyone else is gradually getting better and I am a bit better now too so I will try to get back into the swing of things this week.

One thing I want to do right away is thank our loyal readers and to thank one in particular who recently gave us a donation. There is so much new work for us to do and so much we want to share with you and others. We definitely need help and support so that we can continue investigating, experimenting, researching and sharing our discoveries as well as lend a hand in whatever way we can. So donations mean a great deal to us and the timing of this particular donation really meant something to us. So thank you, dear one.

May we all come together to form an umbrella of protection over our precious children as we strive now to live as all will live in the future.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie