Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #3285: Return
I am fully back in my schedule after one year of being out of it, and at least partly working away from home. No matter anything else, it feels good to be in this routine again – the early morning work start and mid-afternoon finish, the being at home to get things done in and around the work schedule. I have spent the last two days utterly inside my own life for the first time in what feels like months. Early morning meditation, lifting weights, household chores, and ocean swims (followed by the sauna) surround my working day and I am fully returned to September energy after the heat wave of last week well and truly broke.
I still need to get down to writing again, but at the very least I am breathing, along with the wind that has been sweeping our island for the last couple of days. I am determined, even inside the windstorm to get into the ocean every day (testing to see how late in the season I can go) – and yesterday I went down to the beach and wobbled my way into the crashing waves. I had no intention of swimming in such rough water but I went in up to my chest and bobbed around a bit, soaking in the frenzy of the swells and pulls. Our beach is surrounded by a reef, which cut the waves somewhat, but walls of water still came down from above me as I stood in the energy of it all (the calmer water in the photo above is from last week).
An update from the summer: my residency project/bid on the bigger property came to naught in early August, though I still feel very much like it’s what I want to be doing with my life going forward. I don’t know what to do with that feeling other than wait it out and see what happens next.
But for this fall I am on a path of return to a quieter place, to the meditation cushion, and from a long year away from the routine that works best for me. I am canning, making herbal concoctions, and cleaning the house. I am planning fall meals and house concerts. I am home again, in the place where I co-create love and security with my partner and community. I feel very lucky that I could go out and try some different things on the work front, but now I am tired from that effort and look forward to cooler days spent in nourishment of the self.
Post #3284: Getting through August
I feel stupid whenever I tell people that from mid-to-late August is my worst time of year. Summer is supposed to be happy time and all that. But for whatever reason in the seasonal cycle August brings on depression and anxiety. I get stomachaches and arthritis – physical manifestations of the mental health spiral – and I spend much of the last two weeks after the full moon in a fog of exhaustion. I do not know why this is so, but it has been this way for most of my life and no matter what I do (holidays, time off, self-care) it comes on just the same. I am hostage to this part of my cycle and I do not like it one bit.
Earlier this week I turned to my Tarot deck in search of three reminders three reminders to help carry me through the next two weeks. The cards I pulled are above and in short serve as an excellent narrative to dig into over the next couple of weeks. In essence – I have everything I need to get through this time (The World) and I carry an abundance of inner strength, though I should beware of carrying unnecessary burdens (10 of Wands). Following my own intuitive path instead of bowing down to hierarchies and traditions is the way through right now, which includes freeing myself of creative constraints (reversed Hierophant).
When I was younger, I believed (at least partly) in magic and the power of tarot as a method of divination. Though having long ago abandoned both those beliefs and the tarot cards I learned to read in my teens, I have started using tarot again in the past year as a tool for intuitive work and self-care. Given the impenetrability of my internal emotional space at times, not to mention my rigidity of self-imposed rules, I find the tarot helpful in illuminating my subconscious motives and desires as I feel my way through the self in all its drives and depressions.
One thing I have learned in my low periods is to listen to my body and take it easy, rather than trying to force myself to maintain the same levels of energy. Instead of pushing to adhere to my regular schedule of creative and work output, August has become a time where I take my foot off the gas, often breaking from my workout schedule and allowing myself to play a bit more in the studio. I make time to check-in with myself around what might be missing, or what schedules and routines I can amend in the fall to better align with other shifts in my life. This year, these last weeks of August coincide with the transition back to my old job (the one I took leave from a year ago), as well as a trip to a remote location in the Broughton Archipelago where I plan to do some writing and work on a talk I’ll give at my Zendo in mid-September. I look forward to some days spent reading and writing before coming home to my old work team.
An arena in which I’m making some space this fall is in my creative practice. I’ve signed up for an online workshop via Maiwa titled Printing and Painting with Natural Dyes and am looking forward to returning to some textile experimentation since I’ve spent almost no time in the studio since May. I also want to fit in a bit of collage and art journaling to complement some writing I am doing related to creative practice and spirituality. And finally, I plan to return to my newsletter as a way of turning out regular written content. Now that I’m not travelling half the week for work, and I’m out of the super-consuming managerial position I took on last fall – I plan to reorient my life to my creative and spiritual dimensions as much as possible.
By using self-care tools and looking ahead to the next season, I am getting through this month where everything just feels a bit harder than normal. Somewhere on Instagram last week I saw a meme that said “Nothing in nature blooms all year. Be patient with yourself.” I’m working with that in the knowledge that September will soon be here and I’ll be ready for the change in my mental health season when it comes.
Post #3283: Seasonal Food Storage
Earlier this week I wrote a rather long-winded email to a friend on the subject of seasonal food storage, which I’ve adapted some of here. It’s canning season after all, the time of year when many of us think about filling our larder.
I really think about food storage on an annual basis, with some key times in the cycle. August and September are canning months, I order meat in quantity from the local farm in October around the same time that we are butchering a deer or two from hunting season, and dry goods have a quarterly cycle depending on what’s been used. This past weekend I did my annual “inventory” of the canned goods situation, and so I’ve got my list of everything that needs putting up before this time of fresh (and less expensive) produce is over.
I have a few general principles that guide my pantry stock-up:
1) Eat and replenish your supply on the regular. Canned items and dry goods may have a long shelf life, but they aren’t particularly *good* if they sit too long in jars and bins. While it’s true that you can eat a ten-year-old quart of tomatoes to no ill effect, they will be pretty unappealing (and don’t get me started on grey peaches – no one wants to eat those). Similarly, grains like to be rotated through as they can grow stale over years even in tightly sealed buckets.
2) Only put by food you and your family will actually eat. This second principle flows from the first. I used to put up a lot of canned fruit, but then after several years realized that it never got eaten (hence, grey peaches). Ergo, I stopped wasting my time and pantry space on canned fruit (except applesauce).
3) Always be canning/dehydrating: We tend to think about canning as a summer activity, but I look for produce deals at the grocery year-round and do small batches of canning or dehydrating as it makes sense. I do small batches of stock whenever we have leftover bones or enough veggie trimmings collected in the freezer, January is marmalade season, red cabbage is always available at the grocery for pickling. This approach spreads the work out over time, and allows you to take advantage of deals that come up over the year.
Now – onto the specifics of my pantry – which I hope helps in you are thinking about your own food storage and security needs and desires:
Dry & Canned Goods
Throughout the year I purchase dry goods in bulk through a distributor on Gabriola Island. I used to purchase them through a co-op in East Vancouver when I lived there. If you don’t have a bulk distribution service where you live, I understand that many grocery stores will do special orders, and your local grain mill likely also has 10kg and larger bags of oats/wheat/barley for sale. Point being, there are sources for bulk goods but sometimes you have to hunt around for them.
I purchase my dry goods in bulk for two reasons 1) It’s much cheaper than buying smaller quanties and 2) I like to have a six-month food supply on hand at any given time. Purchasing dry goods in bulk requires a place to store them, and sufficient (rodent and insect proof) containers to store them in. I use the opaque-white 5-gallon food safe buckets with Gamma Seal lids which allow for easy access to contents. (A 10 kg bag of something fits into a 5-gallon bucket.)
I’m lucky to have a pantry which accommodates twelve of these buckets in which I keep:
- White flour
- Multigrain flour
- Rye kernels
- Whole white wheat kernels
- Oats
- Quinoa
- White rice
- Whole-grain barley
- Chickpeas
- Black beans
- Navy beans
- White sugar
Why these particular dry goods? These are all ingredients I cook/bake with regularly; some have been specifically selected for longevity (whole grains store indefinitely), and some for ease of nutrient availability (oats and barley can be soaked in water to become edible if there is a fuel/electricity shortage for cooking). Foods that are both a protein and carb source (legumes and quinoa) offer full-spectrum nutrition in the event of food shortages.
In addition to the large quantity dry goods, I purchase smaller (1-2 pound) quantities of nuts and seeds, dried fruits such as apricots and dates, pastas and other grains which I store in sealed glass jars. Nuts, seeds and dried fruits all have a shelf life of six months or less, so you only want to buy what you can use in that time period. They key to all of this storage is containers (plastic or glass) that have gaskets which keep out insects and pantry moths. Check jars and buckets every couple of months to ensure you haven’t brought any critters in with your grains as that is often where the problem starts.
Seasonal Preserving
Seasonal canning begins for me in May when I make my first batch of rhubarb ketchup. Then throughout the season I attempt to get canning quantities of veggies and tomatoes to fill the larder with the following staple recipes:
- Field tomatoes with basil and lemon juice
- Tomato sauce (pressure canned)
- Roasted roma tomatoes
- Roasted tomato salsa (pressure canned)
- Black bean and corn salsa (makes a great addition to chili and ground beef hash – pressure canned)
- Corn (pressure canned)
- Pickled red cabbage
- Dill pickles (if I can get my hands on enough pickling cukes)
(Pressure canning is for low-acid foods such as legumes and low-sugar veggies, tomato sauce with additional ingredients such as onions and garlic, meats and fish. Everything else on that list is done in a steam-canner which uses the same processing times as a boiling water canner.)
In addition to the canning, I do a lot of dehydrating in a productive year as well. Tomato skins from the canning process become a powdered add-in ingredient akin to using tomato paste in a recipe. Apples get turned into rings, and plums halved to become year-round snacks. In the winter we do citrus slices in the dehydrator for easy cocktail and sparkling water add-ins.
And there is always at least one fermentation project – usually sauerkraut which gets stored in the fridge after fermenting for a few weeks in a crock. It can also be canned, but my preference is to keep the active good bacteria alive through cool storage.
Meals in Jars
In the summer and throughout the year, I pressure can a lot of “meals in jars”. Everything from soups to chicken pot pie base and curried chickpeas. Meals in jars are handy when you don’t feel like cooking or when the power goes out (which it does here frequently and sometimes for several days) – they also make legumes readily available for weeknight dinners. What follows is a list of safe pressure canning recipes that I like to have on hand:
- Pinto beans with spices (I add 1/2 tsp of cumin an a clove of garlic to each jar)
- Chicken pot pie filling (to be thickened with a roux or clear-jel before use)
- Navy bean and pork soup
- Black bean and ham soup
- Baked beans
- Beef stew (this is a beef in wine-sauce recipe that works nicely)
- Carrot and fennel soup
- Chicken soup (add the noodles after you open the jar)
- Roasted tomatillo and chickpea curry (recipe to come on this site)
- Chicken (or veggie, or beef) stock
When choosing pressure canning recipes, it is important to follow instructions from a safe canning website. As home food preservation has become more popular, there are an increasing number of recipe books and youtube channels promoting unsafe canning practices. Food safety is extremely important when canning meat and low-acid veggies. Read more about botulism here if you don’t believe me.
Both Bernardin Home Canning and Healthy Canning are reliable online resources for canning tips and recipes. The USDA also offers a complete guide to canning in PDF form and recipes found on US Extension Offices websites are also tested and safe. Stay away from any Facebook canning groups unless they promote stringent food safety – not only are they full of dangerous advice, the individuals promoting that advice are often less than pleasant when challenged on it.
A few more tips on storage and supplies
Storage basics: Only purchase what you can safely store and keep free of rodents and insects. Do not bulk-order food you don’t have a solid storage plan for or you will find it quickly over-run with critters. Similarly, do not store canned goods in unheated sheds or crawl spaces; freeze/thaw cycles lead to burst cans, broken jars, and bad rodent infestations (leading to hazmat level clean-outs). Food should be stored in easy-to access containers that are in range of your kitchen; cycling through your stored supplies is key to keeping them renewed over the long term.
Supplies: Use only tested canning supplies from reputable companies. Having the appropriate equipment really does make a difference! Some items, like pressure canners, are best purchased new (unless you know enough about them to restore and test old ones). A reputable Canadian company selling goods that support survival and food security without too much super-fringey messaging attached is the Good 2 Go Co. They carry food safe storage buckets, reusable canning lids (Tattler lids), silica packets, water filtration systems and pretty much everything else you can think of. From time to time they have decent markdown sales as well – which is a good time to stock up on the pricier stuff.
Long-term food planning and storage isn’t just a summertime activity by a long shot – it’s something I build into my annual cycle. But it wasn’t always this way! I started out wanting to make jam for Christmas presents when I was 22, and my practices have evolved from that point over the intervening (27) years. Your own food storage and security practices will rely on your own needs, experience, and access to space and resources. While I try to maintain six months of whole foods supply for myself (and a few friends), someone else might just put a few flats of canned tuna and lentil soups under the bed and call it a day.
During the pandemic, we had our first real taste of supply-chain issues which were compounded by the hoarding behaviours of a few. Being food secure and putting stores away over time really cuts down on the impulse to overshop when the supply-system is stressed, and leaves food on the shelves for those who really need it (and can’t do storage for any number of reasons). But ultimately I don’t kid myself about our level of survivability. The truth is, if food systems are knocked out for more than six months and we haven’t come together on a local level to figure out how to provide for ourselves collectively – then I’m not sure that’s a world worth surviving in. Mostly the preserving and storing of food fits a different kind of practical-aesthetic in my life: the ability to feed lots of people on a moment’s notice; the security of never running out of necessary items; the ability to control the amount of sugar, salt and preservatives in my food; the lessened environmental footprint in terms of packaging and water use. A wave of self-reliant feeling washes over me when I put another batch of jars on the shelf, my world feels a little less frail when I know I can always feed someone at my door.
Post #3282: You can’t always get what you want
So far it’s been a summer of not getting what I want. Or what I think I want. First of all – the sellers turned away from our offer on the lodge we want to buy for an artist residency project and then, the job with my union I’ve been on contract to for the last three months was offered to someone else past the summer (an internal candidate) which means I’ll be returning to my old job in September.
On the plus side, August will be a much more chill month than it would have been if either of these thing came to pass – and I’m taking advantage of that with a couple of unscheduled weekends and then a couple of shows/parties and a mini-vacation on the horizon. I do have to work most of the month, but given that my job isn’t continuing past the 23rd, I don’t have to work all that hard.
I am a bit sad the lodge deal hasn’t come together yet, but I won’t count that possibility as dead until the end of October because I think it’s entirely plausible that we could still end up with that or another property to base a residency and arts center out of. But if not, then we’ll move onto projects on our home that we need (a new roof) and want (a house length greenhouse on the south side) – continuing to make this our home to love and host people in.
I feel a lot of possibility right now, coming out of the weird few months since having Covid and leaving the “really good job” that was supposed to define my career back in April. There has been a lot of shift and bump in my life of late, but rather than derailing me, it’s helped me investigate my core drivers with a lot more attention to the details.
Over the last few years I’ve become increasingly confused about the difference between “meaningful life” and “importance in career”. As though the former relies on the latter. Consciously I know that’s not so, but I’ve been nagged by the feeling that because my work doesn’t speak directly to my core purpose, I’ve been doing something wrong. The rise of the gig economy over the course of my adult life hasn’t helped. The mantra “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is tricky. Even as I recognize it as a craven message of a system advantaged by people moving around trying to find the job they “love” while never staying long enough to demand a pension plan or unionize their workplace, it also makes me feel deeply insecure about the fact I don’t “love” my work.
But the fact is, there is tons of work that I do and love – it’s just not the stuff I get paid to do! And that’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately – how I can continue to dial into my core needs and drivers to make a meaningful life within the context of the workaday – at least for the next five and a half years until I get to retire and pursue my interests fulltime. The pursuit of Hummingbird Lodge and the union gig this summer have revealed to me that at my root I am inspired by projects that convene community, and am endlessly curious about the human condition (and problem-solving it). This last year has also shown me that all-consuming paid work is not for me (and ultimately is bad for my health), because I have so much of the rest of life I want to explore.
I feel really excited to have remembered these things about myself because it means that I’m ready for the next opportunity – whether it be another location for the artist residency, or a collaborative fibre arts project with some friends on the island. I don’t really know where things are leading at the moment, but I have a lot more tools to evaluate my life direction when the next fork in the path appears. That feels like more self-knowledge than I’ve had in a long time, and for the first time in forever I don’t feel dictated to by what I “should” do or driven by another’s definition of success. So you know, we don’t always get what we want but if we try sometimes……
We get what we need.
Post #3281: Big Things
I’m attempting to manifest a big thing right now and I’m not sure if we can make it happen or not. But I’m going to let you in on it anyway because the more I talk about this big thing, the more real it becomes (it’s a long shot, but there is a slim chance of pulling it off). Perhaps you have an idea that can help make this a reality, or you can just send good vibes our way.
The big thing we are working on is purchasing a property that could be used to expand the Birdsong vision Brian and I have been working on for the last six years. In our current location we have done that by building a welcoming space for musicians and the community to come together for concerts and gatherings, as well as offering a small-scale residency program in our home for songwriters. The vision for the residency was limited a bit by Covid, but we are preparing to welcome our second “resident” this fall and hoping to offer a more structured program in the near future.
Folks who have come to Birdsong for our shows know what we are doing is important and culture-sustaining work. In a time when musicians have few outlets for concerts, and streaming services rob them of their cultural production, we provide a no-cost venue and have built a community around our shows that ensures a decent-sized audience limited only by the space we have available. We put our performing musicians up overnight and feed them at least two meals (sometimes more), and residents at Birdsong get a room and a songwriting studio all to themselves during the time they stay here (also for free). We see ourselves as providing a community service for both musicians and our neighbours who get to see award-winning musicians in an intimate setting. We have the privilege of good jobs which allows us to fund these activities out of our own pockets.
Anyhow – back to the property for sale. It’s just down the road from us and has been on the market for over a year now. It’s ideally outfitted to expand Birdsong into a functional non-profit residency for creatives of all kinds. Purpose-built as a B&B, it has 3 large guest rooms with lots of space for working in, as well as 2 large living spaces ideal for hosting concerts, dinners, community events, and workshops. There is even a perfect lawn area for an outdoor stage for summer shows, and another spot where a garden could go in to help feed our household and residents.
There is a history to why we haven’t previously offered on this property – though we considered it once – it was snapped up far out of our price range (and has since sat empty the current owners decided not to move in after all). Its status of “out of our price range” still holds unfortunately, which is why this really big thing is somewhat daunting to me at the moment as the possibility isn’t clearly in view just yet. We have a potential partner in this project, and even if we sell his place and ours, we will still be half a million short of the current asking price. While a small mortgage is possible, anything onerous will negate the vision of being able to offer low-cost and free residencies to artists. And so it goes – as I said, this isn’t clearly in view yet.
There is a part of me that feels foolish for reaching in such a way, for wanting to move from the comfort of my current life to the next big project that will surely be stressful and require a great deal of work on my part. But the felt sense of this is persistent and steady, the project I have dreamed of (on and off) all of my adult life going back to my twenties when I schemed for a ranch in the Interior of BC to which all my East Van community could move to and get out of the confines in which we lived. It’s never been enough that I get out or provide for myself (something Brian and I have done well together), I want to create something that helps sustain others as well – and nearing fifty this feels urgent. To dig my shovel into the ground now before the time for grand visions has truly passed from my life.
But even as I feel foolish (and anxious), I also am certain the world needs our shining lanterns to burn brighter against the darkness right now. By which I mean we need to find ways to become beacons to one another, to climb up out of the despair and offer a hand to the next person struggling to do so. That is really the vision for Birdsong now, and for the way we would like it to evolve in our community over the next few years – whether we get this property or simply continue what we are doing at the home we have now.
Whatever happens, I will post about it here, for I am aware that things unfold as they should, and this may only be the first thought in a long line that comes to fruition in a totally unexpected way down the line. In the meantime, I am working out ideas for structure and governance, and re-writing the vision until I can very clearly articulate what I can already see unfolding.
Red Cedar 
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