Many people have asked me if they can live this kind of life anywhere, not just in rural south of France. Of course. You can stop consuming, using money, absolutely anywhere in the world, especially in your town. I actually am jealous of my friends and readers in big cities like Paris, NYC, Los Angeles… (two of those cities I once lived in for many years completely clueless of all the opportunities at my fingertips).

There is so much opportunity to be a non-consumer in big metropolises and wonderful mass-public transportation to boot. Imagine each store that you see along those miles of boulevards- each one has a trash bin full of clothes, food, bandaids, coffee, houseplants; etc. So many stores, so much waste! Those daily farmers markets with like minded people that would gladly give you free bags of bruised fruit for your “animals”. What a wonderful place to be a dumpster diver and freegan. You could feed a whole apartment building with one day’s worth of one grocerystore’s green bin waste.

Which brings me to community: once we started our slow year, it became obvious that we were not “dropping out” of society and running off to the mountains to live in a cave or off to ten acre ranch with no neighbors for miles. Quite the opposite, we became more involved in our community, we need them for bartering and trading, advice and sharing labors, and for giving away our excess of food and clothes. Keeping the balance of good karma.

We got a house that is locked into a maze of twenty other houses, not a garden in any of them. But somehow we found, or it found us—a community garden across the bridge (it is about kilometer walk away) to share a plot of land. But food can be grown in pots, on terraces (hanging gardens) and squatting on abandoned lots is quite successful with raised beds. Gardening is hard work, farming is even harder and back-breaking though immensly rewarding. It is not for everyone. They are not necessary to living a slow year, we had neither our first slow year.

Not everyone has the wize walking weed woman living next door, but you have massive libraries, and giant bookstores, full of the same knowledge. And the internet with groups that are like minded (blogs like mine for example). Craigs list has free listings, and freecycle, of course and there is even a website in my region called c’est gratiut where people list what they want to give away- for awile there was a Mercedes station wagon! All this information is there for you just waiting to be tapped.

On foraging, much easier than gardening and it involves exercise, walking, getting to know your streets, and neighbors- myabe at first stick to edible flowers, nuts and fruits near the dirty parts of town (ie dog shit littered sidewalks in Paris) but look to the arboretums, nature parks, those green belts that all cities have that are kept clean and green. Central park is a virtual salad bar of wild edibles. Fallenfruit.org in Los Angeles gives you a neighbourhood guide of where you can pick govt property pomegranates, oranges, lemons, plums, walnuts, persimmons.

What about those great big city food co-ops, high end organic grocery stores with prime pickings- often they are cool about trash picking. And CSA’s that ofter free gleaning after they have harvested. All the sources for organic beef, chicken and pork can be found easily through these networks.

Most of all, what happens with a Slow Year, happens inside. In your home. Deciding not to spend money. Opting to forgo a new car or designer wardrobe in place of cutting out that second job that feeds a corporation not your family. It happens in your kitchen making food from scratch, fixing and repairing instead of purchasing, finding alternatives for toilet paper, toothpaste and shampoo and things you would have bought previously. It means making gifts and gift wrap, thinking outside the box.

And really, it all starts deep inside your head. Fighting the demons that have brainwashed us into being slaves for money, keeping up with the Joneses with new cars, clothes and gadgets, falling into consumerism traps and follies. You can do a slow year, in any town, any village, any country in the this world. It all starts with a mindset. The rest will follow, the universe will provide no matter where you live.

Today, I am wearing black. Almost everyone I see is wear a black coat, or a black scarf or gloves or black cashmere sweater that matches the month of December color-wize in my eyes. For each month of the year represents a color for me. It all ends with black, an accumulation of every color- and cumulus of the entire year of thoughts and lessons. Time to reflect on what we have absorbed for the last 11 months.

I’m wearing black, because I found three giant trash bags full of designer casual clothes (for a man just slightly larger than my husband) and we gleefully dug through and chose new duds for each other. I grabbed all the Versace and vondutch longsleeve tees and diesel sweatshirts and my husband doubled his casual wardrobe over night. Lots of Nike sweatpants and nice addidas tees for him, some shorts for summer and some camos that I can sew with. It was a name-whore’s trash, and our Yule tidings. With the pieces that we couldn’t use, not our size or just too many new-to-us clothes- (really how many clothes does a grown adult need to get each year? My answer is none, we haven’t bought clothes in two years and don’t plan on it anytime soon. Don’t we all have it all already? I think so.) we donated them to local charity. Realistically, I could do a year of just wearing clothes that I found in the trash.

Amaya has always worn hand-me-downs and when she grows out them I can refashion them into skirts and patchworks. She told me the other day “maman, je suis habille comme un garçon.” She was wearing navy cords and a red striped shirt and her blue tiger wellies (it was raining), she was dressed like a boy. I told her tomorrow you can wear your flowery shirt with bows and your dress with red and pink flowers and your red pom pom boots. You don’t have to dress like a foo-foo girl everyday. She replied, “je suis PAS une princesse!”. That’s my girl- not a princess at all!

December is black.

That means that there will be black radishes pulled up in my garden, plants falling dead to the ground. Death all around us, endings, end of the year, roll it all up in a ball, it's finished. End of the sun…only to be reborn at the very end of the month. Dark days and cold nights. Dead leaves and black crackling branches beneath my feet. Black soot on my hands from stoking the fireplace. Pine sap turned black on the sides of my hands while weaving a holiday wreath. deep introspection. RELEASE. it's gone. nothing you can do about it. except...indulge!

December's palate of black is a heart of dark CHOCOLATE, called chocolat noir in French. I'll make truffles (chocolate ones though it is the season for the fungi also) scented with cardamom. I'll brew a new batch of vanilla extract, I'll bottle all that wonderfully strong vin de noix (it's ready!!) and make some homemade Kalua. Oh the joys and blessings of this time of the year. How about a batch of walnut hair dye for this years new grey hairs and a chocolaty tree trunk cake called buche de noel, and we'll make gingerbread men and eat the last of the charred chestnuts on the open fire.

Black is the new black and it’s back.

The Full COLD moon is tonight. Chaotic mental energy abounds. Composing an email, taking photos, washing laundry and cooking a big broth at the same time.(my computer is so slow it can't keep up with me). The cold, crazy day will end with a hot bubble bath.

Gemini is all about communications, ideas, intellect, flexibility, adaptability, and mutability. A new spiritual fervour and sense of individual worth is growing inside of us. Curiosity is amplified. Write down your dreams this week!

The mood of the day is busy, lively, maybe even a little distracted, could be overblown or boring if we let it. Don't stew, suffer or complain. Get some air. Some time spent in meditation and ritual can settle you down. Go for a walk and listen to the signs, snippets of conversation, it's all in the air right now. Open up your head. It's a good time to not only think outside the box, but chuck the entire box into the dumpster. (look for goodies while you are there). A different approach somehow works better now.

So get it off your chest. Write it, sing it, dance it, drum it, shout it, mail it. Tell them. People will disagree with your ideas, your way, your beliefs. Let them. Forget about it. Better yet – change your focus. Change how you're going to perceive and see something (what other people think of me is none of my business). That is what this full Moon is all about. Then join forces with like minded people, have a party, be festive and merry and change the world.

just finished reading : infinite riches. i felt possessed by something stronger than all of us; i was in awe. i coulnt stop reading about the spirit child and the rewriting of Africa's history. about the forest destruction, our own riches deep inside, from our ancestors. (how is it that i find these books laying around my house??)

last week, I read, the elegance of the hedgehog. i adored it. i am re-reading it with a highligher pen because her words are pure genius. satirical. emotional. philosophical. what is beauty and art. how we view and judge others when we shouldnt.

sometimes in the dark days of winter, the world seems on the verge of collapse. good time to read, a short history of nearly everything before drifting off to sleep tonight. good reminder that our life on earth is short (make the most of it). if all of earth's time was our arms outstretched, the history of humankind could be erased with the quick pass of a nailfile on your right index fingernail.

we have a bathroom upstairs ! amaya christened it first. benji asked me to hang curtains, it's a big unnerving sitting on the throne, looking out the large windows to the bridge and our garden in the foreground. i've looked from the bridge you can't see anything clearly, but i made nice curtains anyhow with really old fabric from my stash.


I am wildly thrilled that we are putting together an old armoire upstairs so i can hide all my arts and crafts and stack of sewing supplies, and neatly fold my fabric stash. i must be pmsing if the thought of folding makes me happy. also craving chocolate.

dinner tonight: milk braised organic pork, baked potatoes (in the cast iron cookstove oven), and roasted ufo- looking squash. dessert is bananas flambéed. i need to gain some weight, it's freezing outside (literally it has been 34F at night).

It's snug and warm infront of the fire, all the laundry drys there as well. reading outloud to snuggled up amaya on the couch: little house in the big woods (thank you two frog home) is a joy. she said that she will protect laura from the wolves. the bookshelves are lined with oldys but goodys. all of Balzac's work is on the second shelf from the top.

Come fast with me. We’ll eat delicious homemade freegan’d from the trash: turnip and parsnip soup, garlic chicken with rosemary and thyme, spinach salad with tomatoes, mushrooms and feta and a pumpkin pie for dessert. I don’t mean a food fast; a credit card/mall fast. Nope, I will not be shopping today. Not a big surprise, because we aren’t shoppers since our slow years started so long ago. With out rules and regulations, we are unharnessed without our strict experiment, but even so, I still will not shop.

I'm not a Puritan, I must confess: I woke up today thinking about shopping; I dreamt of reciepts and Fred Meyers (crazy, I know). I used to work in retail-hell and it's ingrained my system- shop, consume, buy buy buy. Last night, KIva sent me an email to tell me my loans have been paid back in full and I have credit that I can either reloan or have deposited back into my paypal account which is pretty bleak with only 5 dollars in it at the moment. My old self tried to convince me that I should take the money and shop! I seriously considered it. After an internal battle, my new self said that wouldnt it be better, more generous to make more loans to people in very dire straits where 50 bucks might change their entire lives rather than me buying Christmas decorations or frivolous crap? She had a point.

With my time saved, I’ll stitch-up an apron for my mom who told me yesterday she was baking two pies to take to a thanksgiving feast. One for me too, that is how I used to shop, so with handmade, sure- I'll make one for me to then my mom and I will be twin cookers across the globe. Doesnt that connect us in more ways than one?

Then, I’ll box up some "presents" of new/used/found/handmade goodies for my very short list of friends and family who are getting gifts- it’s never to early with the French post to get ahead of the rush. Most relatives will get an original Amaya drawing with a handwritten message of love from us. It will be yet another no-shopping Holiday season. But not bah-humbug by any means, it will be special, spent with friends and family counting our blessings, savoring food thankfully, playing mah-jong, drinking wine and homemade eggnog and keeping warm by the fire.

Instead of browsing rows of shopping centers or e-commerce pages today, I’ll methodically rake out, aisle by aisle, the chicken coop and make a clean sweep of the rabbit cages. And donate their contributions to our gardens and anyone else that wants nutrient rich manure (that is the gift that keeps giving). Then I'll pick baby spinach and cherry tomatoes for that salad that I wish I could share with everyone. Of course there will be some dumpster diving while I walk home to see if I can reuse anyone else’s discards. (found pjs, a bra and socks --those I'll donate to charity--and some Provencal oil cloth fabric)

With the money, I’ll make more Kiva micro-loans, one for a woman farmer in Samoa and another for a mother of three in Cambodia who raises pigs and makes rice wine. (I wish I could have them over for Christmas, but maybe my little jest will make their holiday brighter)

Things that make me happy and thankful this season:

Walking Amaya to school. Her tiny hand in mine, her face up to the sky watching the autumn leaves falling. Her asking me why why why. Why do they fall, why are the dead? Will they go to heaven with mamie and papie and the rabbit? Me telling her about the seasons, the turn of the wheel of the year, how the leaves will come back next spring, new and alive and green.

Slowly walking back home, talking to local villagers who are walking and biking. My eyes light up when I see today’s CSA (curbside scavenged alimentation) which contains: pears, mushrooms, pineapple (a rare treat) and tiny tangerines. Then I pick up two sacks of leaves in front of a restaurant, my arms are now laden. My heart is full and I am gratefully happy.

Then to the chickens, I pour in the bags of leaf litter in their run. I happily spend a half hour raking up our fallen bamboo leaves to fill the rabbit cages. Circular, constantly thinking of ways to reuse and reduce waste, I take the used rabbit litter full of straw, leaves, turds and spilt barely and give it to the chickens for them to scratch and peck intensively looking for jewels. When they are done with it, I’ll rake it all up and put it on our meter high compost pile. (important for when we do composting toilets)

Sipping ginger and rooibos teas, gifts from dear friends. Marvelling at how far our house has come, the living room is nearly done. Bathroom pipes are installed on each floor. DIY magazines full of inspiration grace our night stands. Sweet smelling bamboo (it was heat treated and the sugars caramelized to create the natural dark coloring) flooring has been laid on half of the top floor. The flavor is of Vietnamese coffee. Guests are coming soon.

Our cold not-ours-but-lent-to-us garage is full of produce, kiwis, apples, walnuts, potatoes and food and scavenged building supplies. I grab a bucket full of sand and cement and go upstairs to fill holes. Cashmere socks arrive in the mail. This makes me so happy. To keep my toes warm. I build a big fire in the chimney and put a roast in the oven with rosemary and thyme that we picked while gathering sticks and pinecones. The warm flames, the rich sauce in the making. We are very lucky.

Going to the garden, planting horseradish tubers, picking fresh lettuce, beet greens and spinach for a dinner salad. Digging for sunchokes to make baked chips. It’s glorious. And I am thankful. It is the season.

Once every three months I make my own laundry soap. It takes some time to wait for the soap to melt and then you wait for one more day for it to be ready, but the labor is minimal and the savings is phenomenal. I quite enjoy it because I like to use essential oils to make scents for our washing up. This soap can be used for floors, countertops and your laundry and works best with warm or hot water. It is what I have been using for two years now.

Boil four cups of water, add grated soap flakes into that and mix until it dissolves. I bet that I could use about 1/3 of the block of savon de marseilles and still be fine since other recipes hint at that. You can use any kind of natural soap like Zote, Iovry or homemade soap. I use savon de Marseilles because I found 12 large cubes of it in Grandma’s garage years ago. It was what she used to wash Benji’s cloth diapers, because it is so gentle and nice on your skin.

Then add half a cup of Borax (Borate hydraté de sodium in French and you can find it at pharmacies here, in America it's in the detergent aisle, Mule Team is the well known mark), a natural occurring mineral, and a half a cup of washing soda (sodium carbonate or soda ash—not baking soda!) I found a box of Phoenix brand washing soda that was 78 centimes that has lasted me for a year.

Stir until it all dissolves. In a giant bucket pour in four more cups of hot water, add the soap mixture to the water, stir, then add a gallon of water and let it sit over night. It really does look like Chinese egg drop soup. If you can find a few empty liquid laundry detergent bottles they work great for storing the detergent. Just make a big batch and pour in bottles, cap then use as needed–shake before use. For each load of laundry you use half a cup of this liquid. I also use it to clean out the “chill box” (our tiny cooler in lieu of a fridge), wipe down the counters and cupboards; I have safely used it on wood and it’s excellent for washing the floors. You only need a little.

My total cost is almost nothing for three months of laundry soap. And it works great! If you have really extra dirty clothes try a scrub brush first; I have found that if I brush my dirty clothes off with an old bristle hair brush that I can get most of my clothes clean enough for another wearing. If not, add an extra teaspoon of borax to a grimy wash and some white vinegar in the rinse cycle (I have been using all my apple cider vinegar for this too, why not, it’s a little apple-y but who cares). People with hard water swear by the vinegar and many also add baking soda to the rinse as well. To bleach them, dry your laundry out in the hot sun.

For a powdered version:

2 cups Fels Naptha Soap (finely grated – you could also try the other bar soaps listed at the top- and you should try to find a more natural soap, Fels is made from petro chemicals, but I try to use what ever I have or find for free)
1 cup Washing Soda
1 cup Borax

• Mix well and store in an airtight plastic container.
• Use 2 tablespoons per full load

Here is a man who takes a year off from money.

I believe the key reason for so many problems in the world today is the fact we no longer have to see directly the repercussions of our actions. The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that people are completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering involved in the production of the food and other "stuff" we buy. The tool that has enabled this disconnection is money.

If we grew our own food, we wouldn't waste a third of it as we do today. If we made our own tables and chairs, we wouldn't throw them out the moment we changed the interior decor. If we had to clean our own drinking water, we wouldn't waste it so freely.

Then he gets royally flamed by the public. There are so many nasty comments it makes my skin crawl. (one more reason that I have refused newspaper interviews-even a French one last month, and book deals about our slow lives) But, the cool thing about his book deal it that he will use the money to get land to start a free community of people that live without money, where any member of this online community can come and stay and experience moneyless living, get involved in daily life and take away ideas. It will be a community where food, friendship, fun, music, education, dance, art, skillsharing, experience, foraging, scavenging is at the core.

Right on, cashless man! And I love his sources of inspiration.

I don’t make lists. A friend asked how I manage to so much done in one day, if there are 36 hours in my day and do I make lots of to-do lists. The answer is a resounding no, not at all. She was in shock. How is it possible? I just keep busy, going from task to task of what seems important, listening to my inner voice, pulled by the weather, the time I have, and the opportunities-like garbage cans that beckon me. In my old carnation as a retail clothing manager I had an organizer, one of those heavy leather black books that I hefted around with me everywhere. It was filled to the gills with lists and menial tasks and their priorities. I wondered if I was missing something by not making a list so I made one that night and put it on the table.

It is a normal morning: I get up at 7am do my ritual, make coffee and read my emails and maybe post a flickr photo or two. At 8am Benji and Amaya get up and I make them cappuccinos (Amaya gets frothy milk). Then I go and feed the rabbits and chickens, rake their run, and change their bedding and check for orange cats who have been thinking it’s a great place to sleep. The chickens are out of corn I note in my head. I have been weaning them off corn because they get great weeds from the garden, grass, kitchen scraps from four households, and the fruits and vegetables from our twice weekly trash box. But they love their corn. I think to myself, where would I find free corn? Because I believe still that we really don’t need to buy anything, we can find it if we put it out there into the universe. (Like how I miraculously, I found some free non-skid strips so I'll stop skidding on the descent to the garden.)

When I get back home, I kiss Benji goodbye and he leaves for work. I get Amaya dressed and fed. This morning she had half a carrot, ten cherry tomatoes and half a persimmon. At 9am I walk her to school. We take our time and take photos, collect leaves, sometimes go to the garden, we talk to everyone we meet. There in the winery parking lot behind her school was an enormous truck pouring grain into a tractor trailer. Corn. Mounds and mounds of it. I have never seen this amount of corn in France. I went to investigate after I plopped Amaya off at her snazzy pre-school. (I have 8 hours to myself today and only three things to do on my list so I can be leisurely I tell myself). I spied the loser sheepherder who last year let his sheep eat my garden, guess he is feeding them corn instead of my broccoli this winter.

On the way back (this is all walking) I pick up the box of fruit and vegetables from the grocery store (the trash CSA as I call it) and take a photo. Then I cull the loot saving the edible ones for us and neighbors, start food preparations (carrot ginger soup and pear and apple compote made on the hearth). I make the beds, take out the compost, tidy up the kitchen and house, and feed the chickens again with the new goodies. None of these are on the list, just a normal morning routine that makes us all happy.

I looked at my list on the table and guiltily ignored it. I started to slice the pork belly to make bacon (not on the list), I then brine it in sea salt with a dash of maple syrup. At the same time, I pulled the already five day brined bacon out of their Tupperware, rinsed them and patted them dry, then lodged them in the smoky chimney and put on some more grape vines on the fire. I hung up the laundry (not on the list) that I had turned on before (washed in my homemade soap) on our outside clothes line and saw the wise walking weed woman who mentioned what a glorious brisk sunny day would you like to go and forage walnuts and mushrooms. "Of course," I said as I hung the last peg on a pair of pants. Secretly the list on the table was taunting me "you should do what is written here!" Lists stress me out, they make me feel like a failure if I don't do them. And they never end.

Three hours later, we come back gleeful and exhausted with a five kilos of kiwis, two big sacks of walnuts, a basket of cèpes mushrooms, loads of olives, 20 artichoke plants, two lilies, a winter cold frame, one Satsuma tangerine tree, and a black cashmere coat for me. All free (and not on the list). Life is full of happy interruptions.

I started preparing the mushrooms in butter and garlic, re-lit the fire, spread the walnuts on the guestbed where we are drying them, put the kiwis in a crate with an apple to help them ripen, put the olives in a salt brine. I look at my list and feel stressed that I haven’t done anything on it and it’s already 2pm. The artichokes are wilting and have to go into the garden right now, so I do that while the WWW plants the Satsuma, we fill up the water basin with river water with her pump, I weed the spinach, plant violets, pick swiss chard and marvel at the fava beans who apparently love rabbit poo. The clock tower rings 4:30pm (I don’t wear a watch, haven’t for years) and I run home to change out of caked-on dirty clothes, and walk briskly to pick Amaya up from school. I give her teacher some artichoke plants for the children’s garden and invite the school to come and see our little farmette under the bridge some day. And oh, yes, they have spilt some of the corn outside, as I thought they would, so we spend a fun half hour filling sacks full of corn and bits of gravel (great for chickens gizzards). We feed the rabbits and chickens together, gather eggs (9 today!) and pick tomatoes who are having a second wind. When I get home I see the list. The fucking list. I crumple it up and throw it into the fire.

The only things inevitable in life are taxes and death. As humans, we are the only animals consciously aware of these grim dilemmas and therefore able to spiritually reflect on our purpose on this earth. The beavers built their houses for winter during this moon, so the Native Americans called it the Beaver moon. It is also known as the frosty full moon of November (we had our first frost already)and it is the time to think about ominous future events, for final preparations to hibernate inside of ourselves, to hunker down and stay warm and go over inventory: what do you owe, what can you give, what can you spare, what is necessary and what is not. The planets this year at this time are telling us that we are all going to need to play by the rules and be scrupulously honest in all our dealings. Any and all negotiations or mediations that fail to meet these strict standards may result in unpleasant legal consequences– and we are just getting started in this phase.

The days grow cold and blustery, we shiver with death’s hand on our shoulder as a reminder from Halloween and All Saints Day. Our relatives and gaurdian spirits can cross over at this time to give you some scraps of knowledge. Meditate and listen, be still, be very still. Go with in. Perhaps there is a hungry wolf clawing at the door, feed him and feed his family. That is Thanksgiving, make bird feeders, donate blankets to shelters against the frosty night. Make hearty soups and share them. The nights are long and dark and the haggley Crone beckons with a crackling voice and twisted, gnarly fingers: "Come into the darkness, explore what lies within." Follow her, do not be scared. The Crone is a wize woman, she has many secrets to explain to you. It is all in our subconscious, so you must go deep.

During the Full moon tonight, plan a ritual to work on ridding yourself of negative thoughts and vibrations. Amaya and I went from room to room baning negativity, for her it was crocodiles that she is very afraid of. "Be gone, be gone crocodiles" we chanted together. As I said, this moon, the Moon of Descent, gives us the opportunity to descend within ourselves easily and find the inner realm where your treasures lay. It is a mood of reverence and awe of nature’s natural rhythms as we watch the dead leaves fall to the wet ground. The earthly Taurus moon draws us in, it takes root in us and asks us slowly but surely to bring our ideas into form, finding the compassionate compromise to smooth troubled waters. Tensions are flared, impatience is high with the Bull. It may be better to write your inspirations and solutions down at this time and implement them when the fog lifts and people are in a better mood.

This Full Moon joins with four planets in fixed signs to form a grand cross. It generates tension and sparks, which is momentum for your growth if you can see it that way. The fixed signs are deeply entrenched, so this square will involve excavating your riches (the non taxable kinds) and bringing them to the surface. The fixed grand cross is a deeply static pattern, and if we cling to a certain way of thinking and being, seeing it as the “only way,” we run the risk of drowning. In order to be rescued from ourselves, learning flexibility and staying open to other options may be required.

The grand cross teaches us that we need to share our good fortune and putting those thoughts of giving and service into action, rather than empty words that do nothing. There is a push for change, rebirth, regeneration, and the need to see things, both new and old, in a new light.

We have been having the most enjoyable vacation at home ever. benji gets 9 days off for All Saints Day. On Friday night we took amaya to a biker bar to see her favorite singer, our neighbor Kenny, sing. He sang her Elvis songs and 50's and 60's rock and she danced, swayed, clapped her hands and loved the attention. the bar man kept her supplied with Oranginas and a whole glass full of ice cubes since she was the youngest groupie there. we only stayed out until 9pm but it was a great outing for all of us. benji and i drank beers and danced with our friends and i took videos of Kenny for his demo disc. He was fabulous and rocked the house.

Saturday we collected firewood and walnuts and began work on our house and amaya played with her friends. benji is building a floor on the top level and i am constructing yet another rock wall and facing the fireplace with stones and mud. we all go to bed exhausted at night but fat and happy.

Sunday we took amaya to a village art-walk where you could visit artist's ateliers and do some hands on learning. she pounded earth pigments and painted a picture with extracts of flowers and i was deeply inspired by the wool dying (going to clean and card the wool i have and dye it with walnut husks and poke berries). on the way home, we stopped and picked luqcues olives which I am salt brining. some friends drove by while we were picking and snapped a shot of the gleaning family.


Monday we worked on the house while amaya went to preschool and the plumbers started to dig holes and lay pipes. they have been fabulous and show up to work each day with a smile. i feed them and Kenny has donated some bits and pieces left over from his bathrooms. the house is the mess, i am typing right now with a toilet next to me. we found it in a closet when we moved in, but it has never been used. it will go upstairs with the bathtub for our big third floor bathroom. i marinated three jars of eggplants, made pear-apple butter and there were a million tomatoes in the trash bin so i cooked a giant pot of red wine pasta sauce and then passed out jars of it to the old guys in the escargot.

This morning we went to the farmers market and saw the rabbit lady and she said she would give us another female bunny to replace the one that died so quickly. amaya spied a basket of raspberries and begged for them and ate the entire basket herself, saying each time just one more, just one more. we came home and let the rabbits mate (the female went in the male's cage), he chased her around for a minute and then tried to hump her face and then he got it figured out correctly. amaya munched on a carrot and watched.

One more week of vacation to finish our details around the house. Tomorrow is a big lunch with the priest (many drinks will be had he said and he is making enormous amounts of cassoulet), Friday is a chestnut festival in our little town and the celebration for all the new wines (we have three wineries for 776 residents), Saturday amaya is trick-or-treating (yes, in France! Halloween is here now) with her friends and Sunday is a birthday celebration for the wise walking weed woman and we will go to the cemetery to offer flowers to our relatives and clean the family crypt.

it's been two years of "a slow year" already. the first year we vowed not to buy anything except for food from local, healthy sources and the following year we didnt even buy food at all. i would have thought that was the ultimate challenge for us and that it would be difficult. but it's not. i feel flooded with food everyday. we eat 50 percent or more from our garden and local foraging and the rest is from being freegans. i'm pretty sure we wont ever have to buy food again. such a bold statement.

of course, there are our basics, always the exceptions (which eventually we can solve by bartering, trading and getting goats for milk): raw milk, cream, butter, flour, oil, baking soda, white vinegar, fair-trade coffee and the occasional french cheese, there isnt much that we need that inst provided. this morning on my doorstep was three bags of groceries from neighbors that left for a few months. i had given them eggs and firewood. this kindness happens often (and i try to pay it forward) and is part of the reason that our lives are so blessed. we used to spend 125 euros a week at the grocery store and now it's down to 85 per month for a family of three, if we had goats for milk that would sliced in half. the figures are amazing now that i can reflect on them and see the results. i dont ever want to go back to the supermarket aisles and probably wont except to get benji a jar of nutella.

if we are craving pot stickers or pork carnitas we just have to make them. we found that great holiday gifts are morsels of meat. once a year we can get half a local pastured lamb, twice a year some organic beef including all the delicious innards (I usually use birthday or noel cash from relatives)and twice a year some organic pork and leaf lard from the pig ladies who we love. we have chickens for eggs and meat though we dont eat that much meat anylonger (2/3rds less of what we did before). but it's great to make a rack of lamb for guests for a big feast. no more black sweaters for gifts, we have all those, chocolate and food gifts that we have been jonsing for are a big hit and that makes everyone happy, the giver and the receiver. oh, and our fishermen neighbors are always happy to trade a fresh caught conger eel or trout for eggs or one of my homemade jams or tasty relishes. such abundance abounds.

so what is my goal for this year? it's pretty hard, but what i want to do is actually eat up all the good food in our pantry that i have been preserving all summer long. sounds easy, but it is hard when three times a week we get a crate full of fresh food from the green bin (most of it i give away to four families now and feed our 13 animals). that is my winter goal. sure, we will get some good smelly french cheeses once in awhile when we pick up our milk but hopefully it will be served with this summer's wild cherry and rose petal jam made by moi.

“Your daughter loves Roquefort!” the childminder at Amaya’s preschool told me. Then I saw it in the local newspaper. Her school participated in France’s 'semaine du gout' a week long country wide event where kids get hands on with their food, flavors, tastes and textures, salty, sweet, sour, and spicy. Even Amaya's little preschool had a taste testing of cow, sheep, and goat cheeses for the wee ones. Amaya devoured the strong blue cheese and offered to eat everyone else's. Earlier they did crafty pictures with cinnamon, curry powder, turmeric and cumin which they tasted all along. Amaya brought home her spice art and takes a lick everyone once in awhile. Our neighbor brought over the newspaper with Amaya's school pictured, all the little ones around a mini table tasting cheeses, Amaya was the one with her hand in her mouth. she didnt bother to say "cheese" for the camera.

October 18th our first frost, just two months early this year. last year was December 15th. the river this early morning had crusted ice along its shores and the car windows were white and fuzzy. you can smell snow in the air drifting down from the Pyrenees and near by Black Mountains. benji and his friend have been building a fireplace for months now in our living room. one of benji's dreams was to have a big fireplace and to only heat our house with recuperated wood, pulled up grape vines, and scrap wood that we find. it's coming along, but isn't finished yet (but we can burn wood in it safely just in the nick of time).

this weekend i cemented and plastered the tubes that go into the other rooms to heat them from the fireplace warm air fan, next i will rock the side wall and around the bottom. then comes the clay mud again (we kept some spare buckets of clay in the garage for this day) to cover up the white firebrick mantel (the wood is an old oak beam that we recuperated). lots of finishing touches to do and then benji will build a matching bookcase for the other half of the room, and do the flooring on the mezzanine during halloween vacation. i'm making carameled apples with grape vine sticks for dessert tonight in anticipation of the end of this month.

while rubbing our hands together we go from room to room all day long trying to start and finish a task or two. cutting firewood, stacking it inside the cave, removing a buffet from the cave, fixing its broken foot, hefting it upstairs to our bedroom, unpacking the closet (that is destined to become a walk in shower), donating a box of clothes, washing all the wool sweaters (benji's are all black and brown and mine are all fuschia and orange) while the sun is still shining to dry them, sewing duvet covers for our winter beds, hanging bed curtains against drafts, reading about composting toilets, cooking over the woodstove in the kitchen, and making the most of our time together.

we'll roast some foraged chestnuts again over the open fire tonight and dine on baked garden chard in bechamel sauce made in the cast iron wood stove's tiny oven. our noses and lips are chapped from the cold, strong winds and wood burning stoves. perfect time to pan dry those loads of dumpster dived bananas and peaches while boiling a kettle for another hot hot tea or one of my favorites, grapes crushed and boiled into a lush hot juice.

Plums stewing in their own juices simmered away while I trudged up two flights of stairs to fetch a cup of lime. My job of cook, cleaner, gleaner, gardener, farmer, feeder is also that of undertaker, grave digger all in one day.

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” I told my husband as coincidentally the death bells tolled ominously right outside our house for an elderly lady that had passed away. We live across the street from a church with its 12th century pillars that make our village a historical landmark. Meanwhile I was digging up fresh earth of my own, doing a bunny burial just 50 steps down from the church doors and its carved stone arches. People looked down from the bridge with curiosity. I grunted, shooed them away, I wanted privacy for this sacred matter.

"Didn’t you read your sister’s book?" my husband said, "there is a lot of death on farms. Even when it’s your own backyard menagerie. Papie sometimes had to kill 9-10 rabbits from his breeding stock because of Rabbit Haemorrhagic virus* which is highly contagious." But that is not what our doe died from within 3 days of coming home from the organic farm (the other female and male are fine). She probably already had coccidiosis and we found out on Sunday when the Vet was closed which is the only place to get medicated pellets. So much for trying to be organic and not using chemicals or antibiotics. I see it in my garden all the time. Crops cleared out from bugs or diseases or blight, mildew because we don’t use chemicals. So what if I lose some broccoli, I had lost an animal. One that I wanted to give a good life to, to feed it with awesome hand picked herbs and vegetables, to let her breed, to run freely in the bamboo garden and play with almond branches.

Afterwards- I went to our allotment garden and dug furiously with both of hands instead of a spade. I planted lettuces, mache, spinach and fava beans and cried. The rain came down. I kept on digging adamantly and planted new life until I could longer smell rabbit death on me. Later, I looked at my tea and thought it is the same color as her furry feet. It has happened, it is me who is trapped. I am attached to our animals but I want to know where my meat comes from. One time I went hunting with friends and I shot five birds, they later cooked them for dinner. I couldn’t take a bite knowing I had killed them. When my sister (who is so brave) showed my neighbour and I how to harvest and field dress a rabbit, I also had a hard time eating him, in fact I had a horrible nightmare that night. Somehow, it just can’t be by my hands. That is why supermarket meat wrapped in plastic is so appealing to the masses. Knowing that an animal died for your meal, makes it a lot harder to swallow.

My parents spent a lot of time in France, perhaps that is where they established a taste for rabbit. Or because we were dirt poor and rabbits are the cheapest source of nutritional meat. My father also hunted elk, deer and pheasants for our food which was scarce especially when we were snowed in. Rabbits will produce 6 pounds of meat (even in the dead of winter, they have fur coats) on the same feed and water as a cow will produce 1 pound of meat and without hormones or toxic gases or degradation of land. Here in France it is commonly eaten weekly by 55 million people. (Italy, by the way is the largest world consumer of rabbit meat. During WWII all households in Italy that had room and were able were required to raise rabbits for meat to feed their troops, it was their civic duty.)

Riana and Novella on the farm

My husband refuses to hunt (I don’t have a license to hunt or a gun for that matter) nor does he want to do the dirty work of butchering animals. Good that he knows his limits and it seems I am finding mine. Where that leaves us is at an obvious choice. When I grabbed the garden hoe to dig her grave there was a giant cépes mushroom standing next to it. A big "hello eat me instead" sign to go with the 12 kilos of vegetables on my kitchen table that I got freeganing from the trash earlier that morning: tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, bananas and oranges that I didn’t want to waste. We don’t need that much meat for our nutritional needs, we already consume a third of the average. I just don’t think it is for me to raise and kill meat for myself. Trading with my already established organic beef, pork and lamb farmers and bartering with hunters seems to be the easier option for us. Amaya gets to keep her bunnies, even if they might just be pets and we will be eating our fruits and vegetables with the meat we already have, not killed by me.

*RHD is endemic throughout most of Europe. The virus started out in China and was imported as a biochemical weapon into Australia in 1991 in an attempt to control rabbit infestations. It got out of control, RHD can spread through the wind, and infected all of Europe and some parts of America.

During the five short days that my sister was here I called her Amaya at least ten times and vice versa. When I look into Amaya’s eyes I see my little sister when we were young playing on the farm, riding bikes, reading books, making up stories and our own imaginary characters. We chased chickens, caught frogs, picked weeds, and made forts out of hay bales and not much has changed. She is just as much fun and my favorite playmate and truly a best friend.

Having her here pulled at my heart strings; she lives so far away; I didn’t want to let her go. But she has her farm animals that love her and need her and now she is off doing a country wide book tour of her own making. Quick jaunts to cities by her own bootstraps; through her gumption and determination to spread urban farming ideas. She’ll be camping out on couches, sleeping on guest beds around the nation perhaps in your backyard! In places like Detroit, Madison, (click on the link to read an awesome write-up) Austin, Providence, Portland (Maine), and Moscow, Idaho to talk about urban farming, give classes on beekeeping and chicken raising and do readings from her book.

When I see my sister I see Amaya in her. That intelligence and wonder, that ‘the universe will provide’ optimism. That satisfaction of learning each day from every person that she meets, the inquisitive mind and gentle heart. Amaya told me that Novella is going to send a plane to come and pick her up. I laughed at her sweetness and determination. Yes, anything you want can and will happen. Aunt Novella told me long ago that she wants to set up a flight fund for Amaya (instead of a college fund since University is free in France) and I had forgotten about that, but somehow Amaya figured it out. Someday she’ll get to spend time on Novella’s farm in the city, no matter what city that is.

In all the excitement, food preparation, farm visits and clam digging I forgot to have my sister sign the extra copy (sent to me by a lovely blog reader in England) of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. But I still want to offer the book up to any of my readers (Amaya and I will sign it instead) that would like to read her book. It's like being part of our family, a peek into our childhood and I do a lot of cooking in the book as usual. Leave a comment below and I'll have Amaya choose a random winner to receive Aunt Novella's book (slightly used, read by three people now and I split a little French red wine on it).

Make like an autumn leaf and FALL. The Blood moon, also called the Hunter’s Moon is upon us. Has it lit your fire? Are you being tenacious at bringing in the harvest? Take action. Make sure that we all survive for the winter. Change is coming, how will you meet it? Whether it’s literally or symbolically we need all the Aries (Ram) energy and enthusiasm to harvest our thoughts, decisions and ideas.

With a list a mile long of to-do’s: build rabbit hutches and runs, get breeding stock, bring down winter clothes from the attic and air them in our gusty winds and sunny skies, stack firewood in the cave and tarp the rest, find kindling and stock up. I keep thinking about those apples in that feral orchard near my garden and that I must go and get them. October’s full Moon would be the perfect time. Especially under the big full moon’s light and power.

Traditionally, it was a feast day in parts of western Europe and among some Native American tribes, called the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon, though the celebration had largely died out by the 1700s. We will be relighting that fire and having a community BBQ on Sunday. Everyone is invited, even the mean lady. I’ll make apple pie and roasted squash and the wild hare hunter is hoping to have his bounty to share à la moutarde on the grill.

self-assertion, self-expression, launching new endeavours, taking the lead

The Moon in Aries gives us the confidence to be ourselves, to trust our own intuitions and be bold enough to try something new, to figure out what we need in a situation. The Sun in Libra encourages us to be more balanced (The Scales) because the more calm and centered you the more you can help people who are all a jitter, who are panicked, afraid, angry, even down right mean. Effort which has its ultimate fruits in a better world and in happier relationships. This is the Full moons gift this month. Her contribution to the pot-luck.

The Sabian Symbol for the Full Moon at 12* Aries is: A flock of white geese flies overhead across clear skies. (Coincidently I just started reading Mother Goose to Amaya last night.) Geese have a rich in myths and fables, symbolizing the soul. When we see the geese heading off on their autumn migrations, we imagine their travels and trials and extreme hard work. The skies may look clear and balmy but winter is coming. This flock flying through clear skies urges us to lift our eyes to the heavens and read the signs in nature that indicate change is coming. And to soar as high and fast as we can.

All good things must come to an end. My family has left. My sister was here for only a short week. We filled it to the brim with a typical French farmers market visit to taste cheeses, olives and salumi (which she took home the boar salami and porcini mushroom salami wrapped in her socks in her checked bag). There was a tour of the local honey hive with tastings and questions answered and then to the bee keepers co-op for advice trading with its owner/partner. Then to our local water source to fill up, a dip in the river, a tour of the garden, and to a goat farm to get goat cheese and goat poop for my garden- sorry didn’t get a photo of Novella and I pitch forking free well rotted shit into black bags. Novella and Mom build a rabbit hutch for us and we picked out rabbits at a free range Carla Emery-esque farm.

Each day I had a blast cooking and serving tasty dishes in our new to us dining room. My mom said it was like a gourmet restaurant. But that is how we normally eat- just not so much meat. I was excited to share our bounty of dumpster delights and our local grass fed leg of lamb that I roasted with herbs and garlic, and tender potatoes from our garden. Benji carved an Iberia jambon at the table and we ate homemade kim chee. I baked squash with blue cheese and topped with pine nuts that Benji, Amaya and my mom cracked open. Benji and Novella waded out into the chilly Mediterranean Sea to scoop up baby clams which I steamed in white wine with garlic and cream. I baked a quiche, coconut flan, pistachio baklava and made sage sausage stuffing. There was a caramelized almond tarte and rich chocolate mousse too. We ate corn, squash, tomatoes, basil and zucchinis from our garden. Amaya would run upstairs to wake up Novella with fresh picked green beans in her hands for breakfast. We foraged fennel, almonds and syrah grapes together. Benji kept the cappuccinos flowing and a few bottles of local wine were consumed. Cheeses were tasted and delighted upon, Amaya ate the entire blue cheese from Spain that Novella brought.

But now they have gone home bellies full of good French food, bags jam-packed with contraband goodies and minds filled with wonderful memories. Novella taught me how to kill a rabbit instantly. In fact, she taught three of us how to do it humanely and how to skin a rabbit. (I am tanning the hide, its gorgeous but the old-timers told me that you should tan hides in January when the moon is new). It’ s good thing she taught me a valuable skill because yesterday, I had a deathly sick chicken and had to put it out of its misery. I was able to do it in three seconds and it didn’t suffer. I was sad already and it added to my melancholy of loss as I dug a grave and burned sage hoping its spirit would find its way to the chicken castle in the sky as my mom and sister flew in that same sky to their respective homes.

September marks the time when I move out of the garden more often and turn to nature yet again to forage like a squirrel for winter. At night my dreams are of foraging. perched high up in trees as the wild winds blow, I hear messages. A dream of a bounty of dark mushrooms that popped up after our heavy rain storms of late.

Don't get me wrong, I still have been spending time in the dirt, planting hearty winter lettuces with dark red to purple ruffles, sweet purple onions and France's famous purple garlic for next year. The garlic takes 9 months until it will reach our plates.

We harvested the last of the purple green beans from our garden and on the fire is a batch of grape juice reducing. Some friends did the wine harvest and each day they have been bringing me large bunches of grapes telling me, this is to make Syrah, this is Grenache, this is Muscat. I lumped them all together in the same slurry to drink fresh and sweet by nature. We arent wine drinkers so grape juice is just fine with us.

I picked our last eggplants. Summer is over. The last of the dark elderberries are cooked and in jars of honey for this winter. Like the end of the rainbow, the highest color in auras, deep dark purple is September and very spiritual for me. Nature's reminder to look into the trees and find pine nuts, almonds, big purple figs, the treasure at the end of the rainbow.