The Tilsons

Farm Love

Justin and I really enjoyed our stay at OUR Ecovillage.  We spent some time hanging out with the great posse that lives there, and spent some time in the garden transplanting sege.

Great things about OUR Ecovillage:

1. We vibed with the residents. Its rare that you find people who speak the same language as you.  People who get God in the same way you do, and feel the same passion in the same way for the earth and people who desire the same level of communication and co-operation.  This is what we found at OUR, people who were just like us.
2. The ecovillage is old enough to have gone through a lot of the zoning issues.  Sure, the farm is still an infant, but they have moved through a good portion of the zoning challenges, have applied for grants and have dealt with some of the major money issues. (The most stressful parts I think)
3. The ecovillage is small enough for a new family to influence the process. One of the major things that drew us to OUR was their openness and changeability.  There are no homes built on site, except the house that was originally there.  They are just establishing their program, their specialities and are still looking for experienced people to teach courses (and not so experienced people to grow into the roles available).  Justin and I both felt that our energy could make a difference there.

Read the complete Post.

Justin and I have been feeling the weight of life lately.  It is partially the economy, partially the pressure on humanity to evolve consciously, and partially the pain of the earth beneath our heavy footsteps.  Lately though, it feels more intense.  The other night, standing in the kitchen, I let out a childish groan, and then another one, telling Justin that is how I feel inside.  Childish because, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel like there is anyone to make all of “this” normal again.  In fact, every day I understand more clearly that the normal I grew up with will never be again.  It’s Justin and I and whoever else wants to join us, standing there letting the changes pass through us as fluid beings.  Sometimes it gets to be heavy.  Like now.

After the feeling of wanting to remain a child, comes the feeling of wanting to take responsibility and act as stewards for what is given to us.  Part of this action has been happening for a while, collecting supplies and skills. The weight of recent events has made us want to take it further - the veggie oil kit installed in the truck, and touring some ecovillages.

So here we are for the next few days:  OUR Ecovillage. OUR Ecovillage is located about halfway between Nanaimo and Victoria on Vancouver Island, near Shawnagen Lake.  They have been running the 25 acre ecovillage for 10 years and have established a residence, healing sanctuary, some temporary residences, many gardens and animal husbandry. Read the complete Post.

Yogurt is the first step we’ve taken in learning how to make cheese.  Eventually, we plan on making all of our own cheese and butter products to eliminate some more of our garbage, and to be a little more self sustaining.  Yogurt is easy, and it tastes wonderful. Making your own yogurt is a lot cheaper than buying it, and more satisfying too!

Plain Yogurt Ingredients:

4 C Organic whole milk
2 heaping table spoons organic yogurt (at room temperature) Use organic yogurt that is as non-homogenized as you can.

Directions:

1. We usually make a double batch.  In a pot on medium heat, heat milk until it foams up (the milk sugars will stick to the bottom)
2. Turn off heat and allow it to cool.
3. Test with your finger, when it feels lukewarm (about 100 degrees F) then pour milk into a very clean or sterilized bowl.
4. Wisk in the yogurt.
5. Cover bowl and let sit in a warm place where there is no draft (we use our oven with the light on) for 8 -12 hours.
6. They don’t tell you in the book, but pour off the whey for a thick yogurt, leave the whey for a thin yogurt (save some of this yogurt to make the next batch)  A thick yogurt will be almost the same as the yogurt you bought.

**Recipe “Homemade Yogurt” from The Modern Ayurvedic Cookbook p 266.

To make a wonderful lemon desert, add lemon and maple syrup to taste.  Or, for a parfait, try adding fresh, cooked berries alternately with a yogurt and maple syrup mixture, top with nuts and serve.

This banana bread recipe is another delicious way to use your freshly made yogurt. Yogurt makes baking moist and tasty. We love this recipe in particular because there is no white flour, no oil, and no sugar added. Let us know what you think. (modified from the canadian food network recipe)

Ingredients:

1 C (2 or 3) very ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup plain yogurt
2 T apple sauce
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly grated nutmeg, cinnamon to taste
1/4 C of chocolate chips (optional)
1/4 C of walnuts (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Oil 2 bread pan (because we changed the sugar to honey from the original recipe, 2 shallower loaves will rise and cook better than making a single full size loaf.)
2. In a large bowl, mash bananas and add liquid ingredients. Mix well.
3. On top of wet mixture add flour, baking soda (try not to let this touch the wet mixture until you stir it in), salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Gently fold until just combined.
4. Optional: Add the nuts and chips and fold again.
5. Pour batter into baking pans. Bake 40 to 50 minutes, until golden and toothpick comes out clean. Remove from pan.

Over the years I have tried to come up with a good recipe for chili. I like it to be thick, without a lot of visible vegetables, but not completely devoid of them. My chilis in the past have been everything but, so I did my research and came up with this wonderful homemade chili recipe. The funny thing about researching Texas Chili, is that all the recipes are a secret. They tend to stay in the family and are never spoken out loud. (For example, I don’t think they use bay leaves in Texas). I digress.

Some tips for a great Texas Chili:

• The secret ingredient is coffee, it adds a smoky flavour and doesn’t dilute the taste.
• Apparently tomatoes ruin chili (funny because that was my main ingredient when working with recipe books) Tomato paste is okay, but definitely no tomato chunks. Resist the urge if it comes up - the recipe is built to be tomato free.
• The corn flour is better than white because it supports the flavour of corn bread - an essential for eating chili (or use tortilla chips instead of a spoon)
• If you want a more authentic heat experience, get those hot red chilis from the store and cook them in a cast iron skillet till they are blackened. (Remove the seeds for medium) Add them to the chili and then pick them out as you eat them (SLIGHTLY LESS HOT), or chop em up and leave them in there (HOT)

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We just put our garlic in the ground. I started two years ago with a couple bulbs - about 10 plants in total. The experiment worked quite well except I didn’t plant nearly enough! We ran out in a month. To remedy this I scaled up last year and planted about 500 cloves (1 clove planted in October = 1 plant = 1 bulb of garlic next July). The bulbs grew so well the first season I figured there wasn’t much to do except put them in the ground around Canadian Thanksgiving and take them out the following July - with perhaps a couple waterings in May and June. It turns out that if you desire a reliable crop year after year, there is a little more preparation required to ensure your success. The soil was rather poor and the net result was a a large number small plants. We still have considerably more garlic than our family needs, but overall the experiment was disappointing because organic seed garlic is pricey and we didn’t get the yield we expected.

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The legend of my mother’s turkey soup pervaded conversation in our house every time we had turkey.  A jeering comment from my dad - “I even tried Ketchup - nothing could make that soup edible.”  He said it in a loving way, like he really was trying to do anything to make his new wifes soup edible. After years of this, my brother or I would even chime in “You aren’t going to make Turkey soup are you?”

The story was that in the first years of their marriage, my mom found a turkey soup recipe, but neglected to follow the recipe entirely.  She made the whole thing, including simmering the carcass, adding all the vegetables and spices in two hours.  Apparently she also forgot to taste it.  She and my dad sat down to eat and nothing could bring it to life - not even ketchup.  Needless to say, she never, ever tried again.

For some reason, I have always felt the same fear of making turkey soup, it was like a curse.  I suppose it came down to the fact my mother couldn’t make it taste good, and I felt that if she couldn’t, then I wouldn’t be able to either!

Turkey is an interesting broth.  It is much lighter than chicken, but has its own special flavour.  There is a certain savoryness about it, less fatty than chicken I think.  This does make it harder to make a good tasting soup, I have found.  One year, during the first months of my engagement to Justin, my mom and I decided to through the carcass in some water for later soup making projects.  Then, a couple of months later, Justin was sick and all I had was the turkey broth to make him a soup.  (Can you hear the foreboding music?)  Read the complete Post.

Well. Here it is, the back of the sweater…

Remember how I said that I was going to take the sides of the sweater in, and do real tapering for the waist on the front of the sweater?  Well, I had my brother come by for a fitting (I know, a luxury we don’t all have for christmas presents) and realized that the sweater was 36 STITCHES too big at the waist.  18!  That would be a lot of bulk to have dangling off of the inside of your sweater.  That would be a visible representation of my laziness that would be forever glaring me in the face - not laziness in making my own yarn, or knitting my own fabric, but laziness of pretending that after all that work, 36 stitches of fabric dongling around inside of a sweater is no big deal. Then deciding that no one would notice, even myself.  Its not even a complicated pattern for crying in the mud.

So, last night, I frogged it.  Justin’s opinion “You can’t hide that much fabric, you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself!” pushed me over the edge.  So, I frogged not just the back, but the little bit of front too, because I had already gone past the point of tapering.  Frogging the whole thing took about 10 minutes.  That is roughly 1/10th of the time it took to knit it. Remarkable. Read the complete Post.

Wow. I love knitting my own handspun yarn. If you don’t have a wheel, and you are a knitter, I highly recommend learning so that you can knit with something you made! First off, it is so fulfilling to see yarn hanging and drying that is becoming plump and soft. Then, when you touch it, and roll it between your fingers, it is neat to say “I made this”, then when you knit the whole back of a sweater and hold it up poking your finger at the centre of it to check and see that it really is a solid piece of fabric, it is a little like giving birth (minus the pain). You say “I can’t believe you came from me!”

So the sweater. Retrofit is really simple, being stockinette stitch. It has given me a chance to listen to some great audiobooks, and speed up my knitting and thus has moved along quite quickly.
A couple of other recommendations: Read the complete Post.

Here it is, in all its bountiful, abundant and colour saturated glory.

In total there are approximately 1000 lbs of fruit dangling off of the wall in our appartment pantry. Since our big stock arrived, Justin and I (and mom) have canned the beets from the garden (about 60 lbs). Then of course there are the 30 or so lbs of Green Beans and the Apple Jelly. I love that the shelves are so full that I can’t squeeze it all inside the viewfinder of the camera.

I wish we could have had more photos, I wish we had the energy to blog while the whole thing was in motion.

Now that I got that out, I wouldn’t go back and change a thing! We all learned so much about community, stamina, patience, food, canning, love and happiness. Thank you my love - Justin, Matt, Larry, Josh, Byron and Alanna - our neighbors, Deb - for her charitable work with food, Hart - The Camera Guy for discovering the meaning of teamwork with us and Galeet, his wife, for her patience with the underpaid film industry, my Mom for teaching us how to can and finishing the last of it with me. Thank you to the folks who find us on the web and comment or even just watch from the shadows. (I have stats, I know just how many people are out there!) Your comments keep us writing.

We’ll let you know when we are up and live on YouTube with our short.

Infinite love and blessings,

The Tilsons