They can be like a sun, words.

They can do for the heart what light can for a field.

-St. John of the Cross

It's Fall-ing Out.

Textiles Project

Autumn is here for sure. The air is crisp and it smells like a wood stove. The mornings and the nights are chilly, and the mountains have exploded with colors. Everyone has told me about the fall in Vermont, and I've disregarded it in full belief that New Hampshire's fall had to be at least comparable.
It's not. It started a while ago, actually. Some trees got a head start and fooled us all, but we've had the perfect mix of cold nights and quick rain showers and now it's really happening. It's fall-ing out. And it was pretty hard to have to chose which pictures to show you. They all looked great.

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The alpacas are getting more comfortable here. They hum when they're nervous, and the've been humming a lot less. The black one's name is Ori (Or-ee), and the orange-ish brown one is named Imani (EE-man-ee). We have 2 more on the way. One's a baby named Bosco. One's white and as of now, has no name. We need one, he's coming in a week.

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This week in art class, I taught on 'textiles'. Micah and I got some wool straight off the sheep's back and decided to clean it up and dye it for the kids to weave. It turned out to be a painstakingly long process, but the projects look awesome. And it's good to know what kind of work goes into those little balls of fiber that you buy. Especially since we'll be using all of the fiber from our alpacas come spring.
Uncleaned wool... smelly.


Washing & Drying... Smelly.


Furry hands... smelly, and uncomfortable.


Dyed and dry... smells (like Kool-aid), and sticky.


Working


Finished products.

Make-up.

Before I make the post that I intended to make right now, I feel like I should mention some of the things that have happened around here since last time I posted. Here is a random collection of some of summer.
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I moved from the downstairs "guest room" to the upstairs "resident room" making this deal a little more 'official'
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Our gardens were great until a full month of at least one downpour a day. Our little creek became a roaring river, who's banks spilled out over the entire driveway, back yard, fields and lower gardens. Thankfully we had planted some tomatoes in the green house that were salvageable, but all of the tomatoes down below... which was a ton... were pretty much flooded and roots rotted. And we had our veggie stand out by the road for the entire summer.
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I started making chamomile granola. First for fun, and then it got serious. The idea came to me when I realized that chamomile smelled a whole lot like apples. And who doesn't like apples on their cereal? Well, every body BUT me has fallen in love with it. It is being sold at the University of Vermont right now, and as soon as I get my act together, it'll be sold at some pretty big co-ops and local stores. If you want to try some, give me your address.
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Some of my favorite people in the world have come to visit. My mom, dad, sister, Matt, Holli, Kurt... Holli, Micah and I rescued a baby squirrel. Nascarlos, we miss you.

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We have a small dog named Simba living here now. He's the most human-dog I've ever met. And he's starting to get fat.
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Micah and I went to stay at his parents house in Conneautville, PA. We snuck into a huge abandoned house, we saw a red rainbow, we cooked a lot of good food, and we bought a working record player for $2.50.-----------
We got to spend a day kayaking in eastern vermont in the middle of nowhere.
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We have 2 alpacas living in the back yard. More on that...
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I got a job waitressing at a restaurant/cafe/movie theater in town.
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I turned 25.
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Micah and I have been teaching this after school art class, which I've already posted about... We were asked to do it by the school here, and we had 14 kids sign up right off the bat. 14 kids is a lot to handle! It's been so successful that he and I have decided to keep offering the classes right up till Christmas break. It's a hard job, but it's so rewarding. It truly tests your patience.
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So...
I regret not making any posts for 5 months now. I'm realizing that I have an incredible amount of pictures that I'd like to put up, but without the context, it's just not the same. So for now, they'll have to remain a mystery.

Long Time

I don't know how I've gone 5 months without an update. I feel like trying to make up for lost time would actually be a complete waste of time. For now, I'll keep it short and simple. Micah and I have been teaching an art class every monday after school. Our kids range from 1st grade to 6th grade, and they all have the brains of tiny geniuses. So far, we've taught on drawing, painting, and today was sculpture. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera to photograph the painting class. But, here are some pictures from the other two.

Art Review

Drawing their favorite objects

Free Sculpture with recycled materials

Clay head project

And, on another note... we now have two 1 year old male alpacas living in our backyard. But that deserves an entire other post.
More later...

Every seed must die before it grows.

A pretty good summary of everything.

I've completely lost track of time and dates. I can guess at times pretty well by the location of the sun in the sky and how hungry I am. And I know when it's a weekday and when it's a weekend judging by what work I do, who 's around the community, and what dinner is like. But other than that I have pretty much no internal calendar or clock. And I love it.

Last weekend I had my first trip to Pittsburgh for confirmation weekend. The "motherhouse" aka- main hub of our community is in Pittsburgh. It was started there and thrives there. It was incredible to finally meet all of the people that I've heard so much about. And it was definitely awesome to be able to experience the feelings that come with being in such a powerful place as that is. It was a 11 hour drive each way. The first 5 hours leaving Vermont was maybe one of the most beautiful car rides I've ever been on. It felt like we were driving in circles because we were weaving our way along rivers and through mountains and tiny towns. But somehow, we ended up in upstate New York after all.

The gardens are coming along beautifully. There are 4 of us that really dedicate a lot of our time out there, and it seems like we're all starting to be on the same page. It's hard when the 3 other people involved don't live here on the property and are rarely all together working at the same time. Needless to say, everyone has their own ideas of what should get done and where things should go. By tomorrow, all of the lettuce, kale, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, eggplants, onions (and probably a handful of other things I'm forgetting) will be in the ground and look awesome. Tomorrow is the first farmers market of the summer and I can't wait to run around and see what it's like. I'm positive it'll be totally different than the ones I've been to in Boston. The greenhouse is over flowing. I spent many hours out there the other night trying to organize like things with like things and even after all those hours, it's still a flowering, overgrown maze. But we did learn that we are doubling the size of the greenhouse before next growing season.

The job at Yestermorrow is pretty much the same every time I go. I'm too shy to really stop and get to know any of the interns or teachers that I see regularly, so I'll shyly say hi and sneak around with a vacuum. Today Eurosia (who is the head chef there, who comes to the community here for church and to cook) offered me work in the kitchen as well. It's hard to say whether or not I should take the hours because I want to work as much as I can with Faustina doing gardening. Speaking of which, I finally worked a few days last week in the gardens with her and Brian. I can't imagine a more beautiful place to be gardening. One location was on a rocky cliff overlooking a waterfall. Not bad.

And finally, Micah is here! Josh and I took a road trip down to the border of NH and got him off the bus yesterday. Last night we walked down to the swimming hole here and picked asparagus from the gardens to eat for dinner. It was amazing. He's only been here for a day and I already feel like we've gone on a lot of adventures. And... he brought the X-files

Hanging out with the kids in the garden really never gets old. And neither does driving them around in the back of my truck.

Most of these sold for mother's day! I painted a bunch of pots and repotted some of our flowers
Every wednesday afternoon/evening we have a work night here. This is what it usually looks like:
Dymphna and Alex working.......

Aiden and Toby working.......

And Graham actually working.

I finally had time to make myself some herbal rinse for my hair. The whole house smelled like rosemary for hours.

Dymphna weeding the asparagus.

The back side of Yestermorrow.

This is the treehouse that was built by a treehouse design class. It is behind the school in the woods. People usually go up there to meditate and eat.

Josh and I went swining a lot last week. He likes to sit on my lap.

Across the street.

Crab apple tree at one of the gardens.

This is Faustina! In a garden in Warren.

A swimming hole at the base of the garden we were working at.

Alex making her farmous apple pies for friday night take out.

Josh at the river by the house.

Micah and I went on t walk.

The swimming hole down the river from here.

Madeline on her porch last night.