Project Homestead

Picnics are magic.

A dreamy early evening picnic on an island off the coast of Maine last weekend reminded me how simple perfection can be. Here's what I learned...

First, let your youngest captains steer the ship. (And name your boat Little Buttercup.)

Take turns—and take your time. 

Make yourselves comfortable.

Collect ample firewood.

Light your campfire in a sheltered spot, with a view. Use driftwood for tables. Grill hot dogs wrapped in bacon (no kidding). Let others explore tide pools.

Celebrate a sweet birthday with a nod to tradition. (Yes, those are wedding rings around the candles).

Take time for yourself.

The Golden Rule applies: Roast marshmallows for others as you would roast them for yourself—charred, to molten perfection. Then share them freely with those you love.

stay in touch.

If you're here, I can't thank you enough for your support. Shepherding aside, we've got plenty of exciting homesteading projects in the hopper. [Apple picking and cider vinegar, wood stacking, and a pickled egg tutorial are coming soon.] Just enter your email address in the box to the right, then press the "subscribe" button. Instant inspiration—and connection! Thanks again for reading; we'll keep you posted...

Fairly full from Common Ground

I just returned from a glorious, enriching day of lapping up organic living and growing in Unity, Maine, home of the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association. The group's annual Common Ground Fair is so full of information, friends and amazing food, I left feeling full to bursting. Here's what I can remember...

• Angora goats are “addictive.”
• Organic, locally grown fair food is VERY expensive.
• The Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association, a.k.a. MOFGA, is magic: Its fair is simultaneously down-home and ethereal.
• Young bulls are called bullocks.
• Who needs roller coasters, when kids can slide down a grassy hill, using only cardboard, for two hours and 17 minutes?

• Top-bar beehives give bees room to build honeycomb in the size they naturally need. Some beekeepers plant lavender and thyme beneath their hives to keep mites at bay.
• If you have a cordless drill, you can whip amendments into worked soil with the nifty Tilther from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. 
• I pine for Johnny’s Six Row Seeder.
• “Chestnut” crab apples are sweet, juicy and bright; the perfect size for little hands or a few big bites.
• Apples are the most interesting fruit I know.
• You can make fire by rubbing two sticks together … after tying a basic bow, carving a peg to rub in a whittled plank, and kneeling very carefully while rubbing furiously. Having a friendly Maine Guide nearby is a big help.

• Sheep are far easier to herd than goats. Sheepdogs have an easier time doing it than kiddos.
• Spinning wool is a quiet art; spinning "in the grease" works wonders on dry winter hands.
• “Fingers look like carrots” to livestock.
• Friendships made in the course of pursuing your passions are lasting and real.
• Forests selectively harvested and replanted with varying species are less stressed than single-species stands of timber.
• Hula hoops whirl around hips longer if you stand with one foot in front of the other, spread apart a bit. If you can manage it, your kids will cheer.
• You can live without cell phone service for an entire day.
• Garlic is easy to grow in fertile soil (6 inches apart on 12-inch rows). Hardneck varieties are easier to peel than softnecks. Curing bulbs in a dry place will help them store them well for months.
• Abundance is all around us.

It's time to harvest just about everywhere. Eat up, and enjoy.

Vote for Goats!

Goat heaven.

There comes a time in a homesteader's life when a dream (of raising friendly livestock) and chance (the possibility of winning a herd of goats!) overlap. That's just what happened when a dear friend forwarded me word of the amazing Goat Giveaway from Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm and its uncommonly generous owner, Susan. Our essay is in—and we can use all the help we can get. In a hurry? VOTE for us here. If you've got a moment, read on...

Here's what I wrote:

When our young family settled in coastal Maine five years ago, we did so with an eye toward planting some deep roots—and tapping into a simple, grounded life we always wanted.

We feel blessed to have found a 7-acre property that flanks a sunny four-acre fresh water pond and a broad hill covered with shrubs, maples and white pines that shelter us long after other trees have turned in for the winter. Our log cabin overlooks our chicken coop, which we built ourselves near the house to make daily visits to our dozen “girls” easy. (Our two boys collect most of the eggs.) We also tend to a productive hillside berry and vegetable garden and small orchard. We plan to welcome our first batch of bees next spring. And I’m sewing a lot of my family’s clothes.

We couldn’t have imagined how quickly we’d take to it all. Now we can’t imagine living any other way.

That’s because we found a clutch of good friends here who build, bake, knit, sew, quilt, felt, grow and raise as much as they can themselves. Luckily, they are happy to share what they know with us. We buy raw milk from dairying friends. We all raise backyard chickens (and a few sheep). A few garden year-round in hoop-houses. And we stitch handmade birthday presents for all of our little ones. When I brought it up, the idea of this contest was so exciting that a handful of friends jumped at the chance to form a “village” that would help raise (shear, feed and pet) this wooly herd.

We’re not sure if it will be a cooperative, a collective, or a CSA like yours, but our goal is the same. We want to share with others the experience of raising and caring for animals that nourish us, our families and our crafts. We have the land and the animal know-how. Others have skills to help us erect the shed that will house the flock. Still others have spun and dyed yarn. Most are knitters, crafters and mothers.

The longer we’ve lived here, the more we feel empowered to see the possibilities of what we can do with what we have—and how rewarding those accomplishments can be. I even started a blog to keep track of it all. It’s called Project Homestead. (Not all of this is new to me, though. I grew up riding and caring for my family’s horses, and rising before the sun to milk our Nubian goats. My sisters and I loved everything about them—from bottle-feeding our first kid, to their velvet-soft ears and their winsome souls.) So when we added chickens to our family last year, we all knew we were onto something. Caring for animals who help care for us is a cycle that feels organic, in the deepest way.

That cycle is what grounds us and our boys to this place we love to call home. And we think your beautiful goats would feel happy and at home here, too. In fact, our young would-be shepherds have a few ideas of their own.

“I would like to give our goats leaves and carrots and peanut butter crackers,” explained three-year-old Caleb, who often upends his bike and pretends it’s a spinning wheel. After hearing this, Owen, who is 6, agreed (what’s not to love about peanut butter crackers?). He continued: “I’d like to have goats because they would be fun to be with. I would like to help take care of them. And feed them. And give them love.”

We all would, more than anything.

Thanks so much for considering us for your unbelievably generous gift.

Fondly,

Victoria, Michael, Owen and Caleb Stefanakos

Freeport, Maine

Of course, there are DOZENS of other knitters, spinners and animal lovers who also entered the contest. To help them choose, the grassroots Fiber Farm has asked its devoted readers and supporters to vote for their favorite essay. We'd love it if you'd take a minute to support us, The Stefanakos Family shepherds, by clicking on the star at the bottom of our essay. Please vote only ONCE, as folks clogging the works get disqualified.

Thanks SO much for your support. I'll keep you posted.

eelgrass + blackberries = one perfect day

Here's how it went:

1. Wake up. Make cappuccino. Eat yogurt and homemade granola. (Dream of sending boys out to fetch fresh berries.)
2. Dig errant roses and sumac suckers and rake dried flower stalks from beloved patch of wild blackberries. (I suppose all of this human tending might make them a little less "wild." On the other hand, they were here long before we were, so I'm sticking with it.)
3. Drive five minutes to our town's best tidal beach. Take black garbage bags and children to water's edge. Children frolic. Michael and I use our hands to loosen piles of well-weathered eelgrass from along the top edge of the beach, where soft sand and beach roses meet.
4. Stuff eelgrass into bags. (This is so easy.)
5. Strip children of freezing, wet clothes. Ask youngest to stop burying perfect stranger with sand. Wrap boys in blankets in the car.
6. Load sandy, grassy bags into the back of our friend's truck. (Thank you, Lex.)
7. With warm spring sunshine on our shoulders, spread fluffy eelgrass on thinned, pruned blackberry patch. Envision its minerals slowly strengthening the soil. Watch boys discover nodules, and smile as they tell me that sitting in the soft, dry mulch is like a trip to the beach—salty and fresh and deeply alive—all over again.

Here's what I learned:

Even though eelgrass grows in the sea, it's not seaweed at all. Instead, it's a flowering plant that forms meadows in the sands and muddy beds of shallow, sheltered waters. It grows in patches ever since the 1930s, when a wasting disease wiped out populations everywhere. Waves and weather help ours pile up on beaches to dry into papery ribbons. We and other coastal gardeners are lucky to have it.

A University of British Columbia's Botanical Garden forum reminded me: Live seaweed is critical to a host of marine life. (Ours marked the top end of a storm surge, when the water was higher than it will be for some time, so I sleep at night knowing it wasn't ocean-bound.) Even so, collecting grass from the length of the beach—while leaving some behind—will shelter and protect any animals left behind.

In my nascent study of permaculture, I also understand that using local materials to heal land (that can then grow food to feed healthy families and communities) is the definition of sustainable. Lex spreads his eelgrass thinly around his broccoli seedlings, which grow up into tender blooms his kids can't refuse. And just one fine day of foraging has enriched our best crop, already.

I can only imagine what it will do for our blackberries.

snow day

It's the first week of March, and the snow is still coming. And coming. And coming here in Maine. It's spectacular—in the forest, on the marsh, on the boys' eyelashes. It's a heavy blanket, protecting roots from Spring's fickle freezes and thaws. And it's a burden, for trees like this one on the edge of the marsh. It must have given way under the stress of one gust too many. Now, it's a bittersweet sight to behold, frosted with an even coat of powdered sugar. When the weather warms, it will be a living bridge over a thin stream. Later, a fine found stack of hardwood, perhaps. 

Until then, we'll just enjoy the views. This stream winds its way through the marsh, reminding us that the ground is rustling under the covers, after all. Spring is coming, I swear.

common ground or bust

I'm going to bed early tonight to rest up for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca: MOFGA celebrates its 32nd Common Ground Country Fair, beginning tomorrow through Sunday (Sept. 19, 20 and 21) in a town called Unity. The first time we ventured through the rolling hills near Waterville, to this folksy festival of organic farming, back-to-the-land know-how, local food, heirloom breeds, handcrafts and sustainable living, a friend warned us that the food inside was like no other fair food we'd tried.

The seriously good split pea soup and cheesecake and blooming onions aren't just organic. They must be made from at least half Maine-grown ingredients (by weight). That means that everything is fresh, local, and delish. It also means you can't find a cup of coffee inside the fairgrounds to save your life. (Luckily, a shunned organic java stand is parked near the parking fields.)

I drink my espresso en route and head straight to the Kids Area, where Owen and Caleb still talk about the "wall of sound" and the Vegetable Parade. We often run into friends there, too; this is a state full of small towns, and we live and send our kids to a Waldorf school in one of them. Next come visits to wool spinning, timber framing, green building and sheep-herding. Then gyros. And ice cream. Then chickens. And honey.

For burgeoning back-to-the-landers like us, there are few events we anticipate more ... except for maybe Fedco's Annual Tree Sale each spring. Or receiving the Fedco catalog in the mail each fall, for that matter. Connecting with other folks with dirt under their fingernails, who are familiar with the challenges and rewards of growing things in our short season, through cold winters, because we want to, is Common Ground. You feel like part of something growing and good and very much alive. And a bit drunk on patchouli.