Outline

Posted on September 1, 2011 by

I have received quite a bit of feedback regarding the last post, both online and offline. It seems to have resonated with folks who understand that relationships do fail – often painfully and publicly – but their failure is not a sign of future outcomes on similar paths. It is a time and environment specific event, full of particular personalities and details. I can agree to some extent, but that is really damn ambiguous.   The benefit of experience dictates the scope and depth of present relationships and their future, yes, but we should have some idea of how we would like our relationships to work by the time we have the words available to provide the basic outline. From that point we just work on the logistics of filling in that outline. All the specifics already exist. It is just a matter of arrangement.

furniture has no say in life
it was made to be used by people
how many times have you felt like a bookcase
sitting in a living room gathering dust
full of thoughts already written?

Fugazi, “Furniture“

I know that I am not meant to dwell, hoping that the memories are malleable to a point of bittersweet returns. There is no nostalgia for a lost sense of direction, no yearning for a hungry presence among deeply broken individuals. I am intuitive enough to understand a person’s trajectory towards the bottom, introspective enough to see ruins standing tall on the backs of my retinas. I have participated fully in this setback, probably put myself out there too far, now getting ready to do it again in new circumstances with new people within new geography.

I have learned that there is really no other way to go about it – embracing this life of layers we breathe like so much old skin – than just getting right the fuck on with things, albeit with a bit more resilience, learning how to fill out an outline like it is second grade all over again.

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in biographical | 3 Comments

About my disappearance

Posted on August 23, 2011 by

By now, if you are local, you know that Kristin and I left Circle Acres. The reasons are deep and involve many differences in ideology, communication styles and lifestyle choices. My sobriety factors very heavily in this move as does my desire to be less accountable and responsible to an increasingly distant and foreign collective. A strong sense of misplaced entitlement pervades that place, which is something that I cannot support in any way. Living rent free while someone else carries the financial water is not anarchist, not friendly and not nice. The others may argue that this isn’t the case, but all I have to do is read through old emails and bank records to see how things went down,  get a glimpse of what should have been some serious red flags and see that I made many mistakes in making a path for this coddled land project.
 
At this point I have soured on the idea of collective living, understanding that anarchists tend to either thrive in that environment or find it too constrictive. As a very independent but collectively motivated individual, it is very hard for me to see the decision making process leave me behind. So we’ll move on, do our own thing and hope to remain decent with the larger spheres of community that we all populate. We may have wasted our time as part of Circle Acres, but regrets will never make us better people. The bitterness will fade as the freshness of it all moves along with the calendar, as new projects are presented and new people appear in our lives. As you encounter us in real life you may sense a bit of apprehension or distance; please be patient. No one can ever say that the two of us don’t work hard and get shit done.
 
Oh, and we are “city mice” once again…
 


 

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in biographical, circle acres | 5 Comments

Garlic Harvest

Posted on July 5, 2011 by

Early last November, Kristin and I planted out four rows of garlic. Each row was one hundred feet long. Each clove was six inches apart on eight inch rows. For reference and arithmetic, that works out to about six pounds of garlic seed for the whole planting.

We pulled up a few green garlic here and there, took off the scapes, mulched and weeded, but for the most part we left the garlic bed alone.

After watching the leaves die back and change from green to brown, we decided that it was time for the harvest.

We had incorporated leaves and manure into the bed in early October. Our normally dense clay soil was a bit looser at harvest time. The leaf mold and soil fell off the roots fairly easily.

Between the two of us it didn’t take long at all to pull everything up and load the cart.

The longest process was tying up the bunches and hanging them from the barn rafters to dry.

We’ll dry the garlic for a few weeks, trim the stems and roots off then sort through to select the best seed for next year. The rest we’ll eat.

 

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in circle acres, food preservation, food sources | 2 Comments

Sour Cherries

Posted on May 27, 2011 by

The sour cherries are in various stages of ripening, but no matter what color they are they are a bit too sour for me to eat too many at a time.

 

Most of the very ripe (and tastiest) will go to the birds in the next few days, but human hands will grab the ones in reach.

 

The short season is basically defined by the birds’ activity and not so much about how many we pick for our pies and our freezers.

 

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in food sources, foodshed, foraging, photo essays | 1 Comment

Vote 553

Posted on May 24, 2011 by

I have several images up in a show at Rochester Contemporary Art Center in Rochester, NY. They have a prize for the top vote-getter in an online poll. Folks can vote once per day per email address for the piece of art of their choice. I have been asking folks to focus their voting on one of my images in particular - number 553.

Voting continues through July 1st. You only have to confirm your email vote once. After that you can vote daily, which would be awesome!

 

 

This image is one that I shot at an early Crop Mob at Okfuskee Farm in Silk Hope, NC.

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in biographical | Comments Off

Garlic and ginger

Posted on May 17, 2011 by

Taking care of our 100 foot row of garlic has been of the utmost importance for Kristin and I. Garlic – good garlic – is a needed treasure in our lives. Grocery store garlic is for the birds so to speak, usually soft in spots and weak. We had a dearth of home-grown last year, so we decided to buy some seed stock from Frederick at Somerset Farm, one of ECO‘s grower/owners.

 

 

We planted the garlic in November of last year, some six or so pounds of it, enough to get almost to the end of the row. After a couple of mulchings, the garlic is beautiful. And scaping. In order to promote the growth of the underground bulb, the scapes are removed. Scapes can be used in cooking for their light garlic flavor or fermented. We picked all the scapes and handed them over to Adah for fermenting, but not before Kristin grabbed a handful to throw in with some beet greens she was cooking.

 

Basically all you have to do is pull on the scape to remove it from the plant. Most just break off where they emerge from the stalk. Others come all the way out leaving you with a nice piece of tender goodness.

The harvest went quickly, the two of us filling a five gallon bucket in about ten minutes.

 

 

 

After the scape harvest, it was on to planting ginger. In early March I went to a ginger workshop put on by East Branch Ginger and Debbie Roos of the Chatham County Cooperative Extension. At the end of the workshop everyone received a few pounds of seed ginger. After pre-sprouting the ginger behind our woodstove and in the greenhouse, it was finally ready to plant. The pre-sprouting gives the ginger a head start.

 

In order to control fertility (ginger is a heavy feeder) and water, we are growing the ginger in our old chicken feed bags from Reedy Fork Farm. The bags provide great drainage as well as easy hilling. Ginger is hilled three times – once when the base of the shoots turns from bright white to bright pink, a second time four to six weeks later and a third time four to six weeks after that.

Our soil mix consists of Sunshine potting mix, feathermeal, leaf mold, worm castings and mycorhizzal granules. We get the potting mix and feathermeal from Chatham Farm and Home Supply. They have bulk feathermeal from North Carolina sources, making it cheaper and more local for us. The fungus comes from Mushroom Mountain in South Carolina and the worm castings come from Carolina Worm Castings who make their compost in the building next door to ECO.

We hope to harvest eight to sixteen pounds of ginger this fall. This is a big experiment, but I can easily see myself getting sucked into this big time.

 

 

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in 100 mile diet, circle acres, food sources | Comments Off

Manure

Posted on May 3, 2011 by

Adah and Kathryn have made friends with all the neighbors and have struck deals with many of them on various projects. Up in Jerry’s orchard they are planting popcorn and meal corn. I went up to help them spread manure this weekend only to find that their first planting (from two weeks ago) had been eaten by crows and blackbirds. So that part of the field received a fresh drench of manure.

In the above photo you can see Jerry on his tractor discing in some overwintered red clover. It was starting to go to seed, the bees were finished with it and it was time to incorporate the organic matter.

The manure came from an auction stockyard to the west of Siler City. Apparently there are livestock auctions there frequently with all flavors of beasts present. The manure was a mixture of pig, goat, horse and cow as well as plastic bottles, beer caps and empty match packets. Kind of like the leaves we get from the Siler City street cleaners but with more of an ammonia bite to it.

Hopefully this round of planting is able to sprout and grow. Adah and Kat are putting row cover over the seeds and installing some scarecrows. I guess we’ll know in a week or two whether those two methods get the seeds through the first phase and into the next battle – deer.

 

 

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in circle acres, food sources, foodshed | Comments Off

The bowling ball

Posted on April 27, 2011 by

Things are sometimes difficult at Circle Acres. Just the fact that there are ten different people going in ten different directions at ten different times of the day is enough to make things a bit of a mess. Add two or three WWOOFers, dogs, cats, chickens, and various other components and you have yourself a pretty good stew.

I am the first to admit that I am sometimes very cranky to deal with especially if I get woken up. A few weeks ago, Brother was analyzing his bowling ball fetish at 11:30 at night. The backstory is that Gray found a blue bowling ball in the dumpster, brought it home and gave it a roll across the grass. Brother immediately took a fancy to it and began making a very strange sort of noise that no one had heard him make before. The strange thing is that he does not make the noise with any other type of ball or stick or animal. Only the bowling ball provokes this response.

So back to a few weeks ago. The sound of Brother’s yipping echoed through the trees, through the grass and through the tarp that covers the area behind my pillow. I calmly put on my head lamp and rubber boots, walked down the path and past the trampoline where Gray and Adah were giggling, found Brother’s glowing eyes and squeals of joy, took his bowling ball from him, threw it into a ditch full of water and quietly went back to bed.

Now the bowling ball lives in the ditch full of water, waiting for the summer drought. Brother also awaits the return of the romance.

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in animalia, biographical, circle acres | 2 Comments

We Who Are Not As Others

Posted on April 12, 2011 by

Not sure where this photo project is going…

We Who Are Not As Others (or The Untitled)

 


 


 

 

 

 

DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in photo essays, WWANAO | Comments Off

Quitter #6 – “Two Stories” available now

Posted on March 30, 2011 by


It has been a few years since I did something under the Quitter name, but those wild hairs just come out of nowhere sometimes and get me to put something together. The text for Quitter #6 has been sitting in a document on my computer for a long time just waiting for me to do all of thirty minutes of formatting and another thirty of printing. It is procrastination at its finest and simplest. The shorter the amount of time it takes for me to do something, the longer it will take to happen. Just ask Kristin about the piles of books, cameras and bullshit on my side of the bed.

So yeah, Quitter #6 is ready to go. As usual, the cost is $2 or whatever. An additional 80 cents covers the postage and PayPal fees. Here is a taste -

I distinctly remember second grade. It was somewhat of a turning point in my life, as much of a turning point as you can get when half your life is measured in years instead of decades.  That year I got my first and only pair of cowboy boots, a sharp toed brown and gold stitched outfit with heels and zero traction.  That year I also shoplifted a candy bar from a nearby gas station, smoked my first few puffs of a cigarette and, most importantly, got into my first real fist fight with someone who wasn’t my brother.


DeliciousEmailFacebookShare
Posted in biographical, Quitter | Comments Off