you are wonderful. it has been a year since i began clacking away at my keyboard newsletter writing every week. Care Ecology has become a community of 583 subscribers. today i write from my friend’s southwest facing balcony overlooking a reverberating stream spanning 600 ft. in both directions.
the water sounds full and lush—ranging in its highs and lows. staying in between homes, this is the first time i haven’t paid rent since i can remember having to pay rent. houselessness grief is deep though bending and flexing into friends’ homes, my truck, the home of my body, and all the other spaces and places i get to call home leaves me existentially fluid. if you are able and feel called, consider paying for your Care Ecology subscription. Add some cushion to my stretch from here to there.
starting a food forest market garden is a multimodal experience. last tuesday, i was on my land collecting water and soil samples. my farming pick and Kamiks are still covered in mud—the forest floor a mirror exploration field. there’s some good top soil in there, the loamy stuff that we really need for planting and growing, and a bit too much silt—will probably remedy that with mulch and livestock grazing nutsedge.
learning to read maps has been gang gang. we’re on the northerly down slope facing south between two pretty massive hills—a forest valley, i’d say. an earth sign doing earthwork….ha, ha… the universe has a bombastic sense of humor. earthwork is no joke guys but i lowkey love earth’s discernment. she’s like, “you won’t lay a finger on me until you can read topographic maps and my water flow patterns.” very much a medicine-is-in-the-sickness kind of girly. the language feels innate and also lost. youtube video after youtube video i gasp—wow—my urge to work and become acquainted, mechanical.
i am overtaken by my reckonings of starting a farm from scratch—bloated though not yet delivered. casting a net as wide as heartsong though hungrier than hibernation’s countdown. if you’ve ever tried to live your biggest, fullest life—clarion called laser waves through dimensions, jaw agape and throat coarse, you get it. i can feel all the ways she needs me to rest now, so i can be energized later.
if you’d like to stay current on our farm happenings, visit our website!
xoxo—care ecologist