Help! I'm Lost in Nature!

The honeymoon phase is over. It's getting real. But we are getting past it. All eight fellows at Allegheny Mountain.  Ok. Let me back up. For those of you that haven't been following, I am living on a mountain with about 11 other people: 8 fellows, a village manager, and a farm manager and his family. It has been an absolutely incredible, fulfilling experience so far and I am working to make the most of each and every second. Through foraging for medicinal herbs to leading children in the school garden, I have been exposed to more nontraditional ways of life than I even know existed in America. With this ongoing learning and working together, we have formed a community of farmers, educators, and students on the mountain. And this has worked really well and is continuing to work really well. But, with all communities and families, there are rough patches. The chanterelles I picked in Idaho. Fingers crossed I find them here too! Yesterday, as part of our perma...

This blogpost is double dipping a little bit. Although it was intended for the Allegheny Mountain Institute blog, I thought it also fits here too as a summary of how I have grown since I was a little 5 year old. My mom says I took some poetic license in writing this one, but in hindsight it all rings pretty true. “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”  -Aldo Leopold, father of environmental ethics and author of A Sand County Almanac Grayson and Mary-Ellen carrying groceries from the well-lit aisles of the garden When I was little, I dreamed of being a cashier at a grocery store. Because, like so many others, I fell trap to the danger of believing food lives in the well-lit aisles of a store. I wanted to do something important. What could be more important than working where the food lives at the grocery store? Though I hail fr...

Shierfolk farm: some chickens grazing freely These past two weeks, we have been focusing on understanding what holistic management is and how to achieve it not only on our farm, but in our lives as well. Here's a snapshot: Permaculture Workshop: After a night camping, we had our second permaculture workshop. We learned how to integrate animals into farms and create food forests. Emilie, our teacher, showed us in real time how she has applied permaculture to her small farm and business, and how mixed the results have been. Definitely planning ahead and thinking holistically, her and her husband invest wisely to reach their five-year goals for themselves, their land, and bettering the local foods movement in general. Chicken Farm: After seeing the horror clips on YouTube about what the meat-rearing industry in America is like, it was tremendously inspiring to see chickens being raised in adequate space, with a brooding place that mimicked how a mother hen would pr...

During orientation for AMI, we wrote "I am" poems about food. I struggled more than I expected with this project. I have had a love-hate relationship food for most of my life: I loved eating and hated how it persisted in love handles. Like your typical teenage girl, I struggled with body image issues. Since I exercised all the time, I knew the culprit of my frustration had to be food. If it is all about calories in and calories out, then I could calorie count to my perfect body type. Right? As I grew past my teenage years, I realized there was a little more to the story. Pressures on how one should eat are constantly around us, some that we are aware of, and some that subconsciously sneak in when we least expect it. This includes anything from advertisements for Dunkin Donuts to the size of your bowl and spoon. I studied Psychology and read Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, and heard about all the sob stories of my mom's bulimic and anorexic pat...

Life on a mountain = VA snow in May Finally, for the first time in two weeks I have the opportunity to write another post! These past two weeks have really flown. We finally started spending more time in the garden. I learned how to direct seed, transplant, weed for long periods of time, thin some lettuce, embed rock steps into a landscape, make a hop cone, and more. I also learned about fixing washing machines, putting up high tunnels (like greenhouses), taking care of chickens, growing mushrooms, and even got to take a peek into the secret life of bees. I think through all of this learning, what has stood out to me is how much of the world I have taken for granted until this point. When learning about cultivating mushrooms, our teacher Charlie told us, "always thank the mushroom." At first I thought this sounded silly. Then I thought, well, why does it sound silly? And it's because I have always considered food as something simply meant for me to eat. Casually...

Allegheny mountain range might be my new favorite Currently I am sitting atop a mountain in Highland County, Virginia watching snow fall into the red and green leaved rolling hills beyond me. So since moving here last week, I'd say life has been pretty good. The main event of the week was probably our Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) class. While I defined permaculture as "an intentional design to support and sustain the interconnectedness of life," its uses and applications in transforming land to edible, efficient landscapes spreads far and wide. So hopefully after a year my primitive definition will become much more inclusive. So stay tuned! Since the designs of permaculture permeate over all parts of life, we did many activities to understand ourselves and people around us. One thing I liked that we did was analyzing what we each give and get from each other, using the lenses of  head, hands, and heart. Now, coming straight from 4-H, where these are 3 of...

Best thing about part-time employment is having time to adventure with friends like Abbie It turns out, finding temporary jobs was actually pretty easy thanks to my awesome support system. Between January and now, I might not have had a job, but I definitely had a lot going on! In each of my 7 jobs/tasks/things to keep me busy, I learned something about what I want and who I am. Job 1: M&J Frank + Family Jobs Once it was official that I was out of a job, my family was there ready to support me. Uncle Andy, who owns a restaurant supply store, found a task for me to do, inputting price data into their database. While that part of the job was pretty dull, it was awesome seeing the contrast of a successful small business model in contrast to everything I had seen thus far. For the first time, I felt like maybe the business world isn't that bad if I can find or start a good one. Job 2: ACT Tutor My W&L family was also there ready to support me. I emailed the amazing...