After more than a decade of trying my hand at different types of agricultural styles, I’ve finally settled with one- Syntropic Farming. I’ve tried my hand at growing conventionally, organically, using permaculture, and dabbling in biodynamics. None, however, can seem to touch what I’ve been learning about Syntropic Farming/permaculture.
I started having this feeling that our land and gardens could produce more abundantly if they had perennial plants and trees in the system. It was a reoccurring concept that wouldn’t go away. I knew there must have been something to it for the thoughts to not go away. I blame our elder beautiful live oak trees, Elsa and Agatha…they whisper to me their thoughts all the time. So, I can’t really take the credit for perennial plants in the gardens. I only started to have those thoughts after we bought our land.
Anyway, as the plans started to form for creating a perennial market garden, I started searching for something that seemed to be missing from my overall plan. And I found it!
Syntropic Farming and Permadynamics sent me down a rabbit hole…forever!
I’ll never look at gardening and farming the same again.
The concepts are easy to grasp and if you’ve practiced permaculture you’ll get that ah-ha moment.
I used to view how I grew a garden as someone who tended to the system. I was the one who planted, watered, fed, pruned, harvested, cleaned it up, helped to create abundance. But I never considered that I was a vital part of the system like the honey bee. I can get so caught up in doing that I forget about being.
Here is a definition the syntropy:
From Greek syn=together, tropos=tendency. It was first coined by the mathematician Luigi Fantappiè, in 1941, in order to describe the mathematical properties of the advanced waves solution of the Klein-Gordon equation which unites Quantum Mechanics with Special Relativity. As noted by Viterbo, syntropy is “the tendency towards energy concentration, order, organization and life” (http://www.syntropy.org/). In contradistinction to “entropy,” syntropy is a result of retrocausality leading to persistent and more complex organization. This is akin to the concept of dissipative structures developed by Ilya Prigogine, expostulated in Order Out of Chaos, by Prigogine & Stengers (1984). Buckminster Fuller developed a definition in relation to “whole systems” as “A tendency towards order and symmetrical combinations, designs of ever more advantageous and orderly patterns. Evolutionary cooperation. Anti-entropy” (http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Syntropy).
I love that syntropy is described as “the tendency towards energy concentration order, organization, and life.” It is the opposite of entropy.
As I’ve grasped some of the concepts of syntropic permaculture, what stuck out the greatest for me was how the use of grasses and perennials when pruned sends out hormones to other plants to invigorate the growth of those plants around them. Things are planted densely in guilds where each plant helps the next in cooperation. It isn’t about competition in the system.
The next important thing is that the ground is always covered to protect soil organisms and life that are extremely light-sensitive. Even all the walkways are covered in a thick layer of mulch.
Our perennial market garden is ground zero to start making beautiful mistakes. I’ve had to throw out much of what I’ve known about gardening and farming in order to make way for syntropic agriculture. I have to put away my impulse to rip weeds out of the ground and instead chop and drop them so as to not disturb the soil as it comes into balance.
It’s exciting! This weekend we got started with our second market garden bed. Dom and Noah have been working on the perimeter of the market garden for weeks, fortifying the fencing, adding taller posts and stringing wire. When they’re done, there will be 8 foot high posts attached to the existing posts we have and then strung with wire to prevent the deer from jumping in and eating our garden.
A 2′ high chicken wire is then put along the bottom of the fencing to deter bunnies from getting in.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing that can be done about the mutant squirrels that live here. Some are as large as a cat.
You can never trust a squirrel.
The area pictured above is our second market garden row. The first one we created a few weeks earlier.
This second row will be planted with:
Four apricot trees
Five black locust trees
Artichokes between the trees
Hairy Vetch
Dutch Clover
Sudan Grass at the edge
Cabbage
Beans
Dill
Hyssop
Beets
Amazing that so much can be planted in just one row, right? I found a nursery in Silver City and I was finally able to get apricot trees. I searched high and low for apricot trees for months. Most places online are sold out, Home Depot and Lowes didn’t have any, and I thought for sure I would not get any this year and then I found a nursery hiding in plain sight!
There’s a new carwash in Silver City and as Simmi and I were getting our car washed, I noticed a greenhouse and trees and roses. I couldn’t wait to get out of that carwash to see if it was actually a nursery.
It was!
They have apricots, cherries, apples, figs, and more. Not only that but they weren’t little tiny 2′ tall trees.
I purchased three apricot trees to start, and I need one more to complete the row. I would have liked it if they had at least three varieties of apricots, but two varieties will work.
All fruit trees planted become my mother fruit trees to produce more fruit trees from.
The pattern of trees will be black locust, artichoke, apricot, black locust, artichoke, apricot, until the full row is complete.
Currently only three apricots are in. Two Tilton and one Harglow. This week I’ll be getting a second Harglow.
The black locust and artichoke I’ve started from seed a little more than a week ago and they just started poking through the soil this weekend.
Thursday the fourth apricot will be planted and the bed will be seeded, then covered in a layer of straw.
I had to wait on ordering the irrigation lines because Simmi’s birthday is coming up fast and we are getting a pool for her to have a pool party. Once the pool is ordered, I’ll be able to continue ordering supplies for the garden.
To the right, you can see the first bed planted. That bed is right up against the goat pen.
This bed has been planted with three bare root peach trees, three blueberry bushes, catmint, cucumber, Blackeye Susans, and milkweed. I’ve started Sea Kale from seed and when it’s ready it’ll be planted in between the fruit trees and berry bushes.
It has taken a good long while for Dom to fall in love with the wonkiness of nature. As a builder, it was difficult for him to marry straight lines with the curves of nature. Something clicked for him last year and he started re-learning how to build with nature. I’ve loved watching the evolution of his creations. I think this gate is my favorite so far! The only thing purchased to make the gate was the hinges. The welded wire is scrap that was just laying around.
B2 and B1 contain a countless amount of black locust seedlings. I wasn’t sure how many would grow so I planted a shit ton. Haha When they get their true leaves and have doubled their size they’ll be transplanted to their own containers.
Aren’t they so cute! It’s amazing that these little babies will grow to feed all the other plants around it, but it will also create the most beautiful tree that can be pollarded and fed to the poultry or dropped on the garden bed and create a mulch. The bees are crazy for this tree, and when I plant a large area of these trees close together, they’ll grow tall in a few years and we can coppice them are create fence posts, tool handles, and use for firewood as well.
The usefulness of this tree is unbelievable. Just think…I have 5 pounds of black locust seed. Ha!
I’ve started nearly 100 Colorado Star Artichokes from seed. They just woke up this weekend. By the time we’re done installing all the market garden rows, they’ll be ready to transplant.
Ginger! I plan on planting the ginger in a shady spot of the market garden.
Six itty bitty fig trees in three pots. When they’ve doubled in size, they’ll be transplanted into a larger container, and when their garden beds are ready they’ll be planted out in the market garden. I’m shooting to have them in the ground by the first week in July. Right now their just about ready to be moved to a sunny location.
The horseradish box is doing well. I planted the horseradish last year right next to our front door. Interplanted are Chinese garlic chives. I ordered the garlic chives last week and they should start growing this week.
The goats are doing well. We’ll be taking them out on the leash into the market garden to chomp down on all the glorious weeds coming up. They’re going to love it!
The goat pen is shaded by a large tree that is kind of like a willow and kind of like an elm. We’re still not sure exactly what kind of tree it is. It’s delicious to the goats, and the horses when we had them in this area. The tree becomes a reprieve to the goats as well as the full market garden area by 6:30 pm. The sun is blocked by the large tree at that time and it cools down the market garden area giving plants a chance to recover from the long hot day of the high desert sun.
It’s incredible that by the end of September this Syntropic Market Garden will be thriving and producing for us.
This is a view outside the market garden. Along that fence line are asparagus. There are also two fig trees that just leafed out. I expect they’ll grow at least three feet this year.
We’ll update this weekend when we create the next two market garden beds. In bed three, Four cherry trees, five black locust, and eight globe artichoke will occupy that space, and in bed four, four apple trees, five black locust, and eight globe artichoke will do the job. I haven’t decided on the annual fruits and veggies that will also be planted there…yet.
All total so far that we have planted and at various stages of growth:
A few weeks ago we brought home our first Nigerian Dwarf goats. We planned on purchasing a few doelings and at some point to purchase a pregnant doe. A few days prior to picking them up, a very pregnant mama needed a new home so we picked her up on the same day as our doelings.
We got the goats as a way to become more self-sufficient in terms of food production. We’ve honed in on what was most important to us and made concessions I never thought I’d make.
Like getting goats.
I’m really not a goat person. Goats are these larger than life creatures even if compact in size and they’re just always in your business. They’re very affectionate and super sweet, yet demanding and will show displeasure when something is out of place. It’s enough to drain the energy right out of me. It doesn’t really have anything to do with goats…it’s me that’s the problem.
But I love them.
They’re hilarious in small doses. I knew after we got them I would feel that way. I had hoped it would change but I know me and chose a long time ago to not lie to myself about anything.
The goal here is to have milk and even meat from them. I wasn’t interested in the color of their coats, markings, or eye color. I am most interested in having robust animals with good genetics for milking. We don’t plan on having more than five total, but we all know how goat math goes!
So even though I’m not fond of goats, it doesn’t stop me from caring for them properly. Dom absolutely adores them so he’s super excited to get outside every morning to let them out of their little houses and spend time with them.
Currently, we are waiting for our mama, Tuffnut, to kid. She’s due any moment now. Dom set up the heat lamp in her little house and gave her extra straw to make her comfortable. We put together a kidding kit and extra bottles and nipples in case she does have more than three kids.
Tuffnut belonged to my friend Amber. When she told me the goat’s name was Tuffnut, I cracked up laughing at such a quirky name. She said she named her that because she throws three kids.
Yes, so we could easily go from having only three goats, to have six or more by the time Tuffnut kids.
Tuffnut has doubled in size since coming to live here. We have been watching closely for signs that she could be close. I often catch her looking off in the distance and I can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking about.
So how many kids do you think are in that swollen belly of hers?
Every day she gets a little wider.
I think she has at least four littles in there.
The area they’re in isn’t their permanent home. It’s temporary and over this next year we’ll be getting their area ready for them.
We decided to build a larger area for them and our future sheep behind our coffee roastery. We’re putting a commercial kitchen in the roastery, so it made sense to bring our dairy animals there as well.
We’re aiming to get a few Icelandic sheep in 2022 for milk, fibers, and meat. I’m very fond of sheep, especially Icelandics. I love that they just want to be left alone.
Their new area will have a barn, small milking parlor, and very rocky steep hilly terrain. The area they’re in now will become the final destination for our ducks and geese.
Outside the goat pen is the 60’x60′ market garden area. This area was a hot mess! Yesterday Dom and Noah cleared it, leveled it out a bit, and in the next few weeks it’ll be ready to plant.
Another major concession I made (I kind of hate myself for it) was to use landscape fabric in this area.
After observing the area and the kinds of weeds we have here and my time constraints, I realized that I needed a weed barrier. I work full time AND will be farming full time (I’m not sure how that will happen!) so I knew that I would not have the time to be pulling weeds and obsessing over those kinds of time sucks.
Our focus is on establishing perennials and annuals in this space. We’ll be adding 60 fruit trees and 60 berrry bushes, perennial vegetables, and of course your standard fare of fruits and veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, root crops, etc.
We purchased our first six fruit trees a few weeks ago. The largest challenge right now is finding affordable fruit trees. They’re either very expensive or sold out.
I’ve been trying to get my hands on apricot trees and I found only one place online to purchase them.
I remember a time when bare root fruit trees were so plentiful they were practically giving them away. It would seem that is a thing of the past now.
We’ll be building some cold frames for the area and a Post Harvest station for processing fruits and veggies.
Dom and Noah will also be adding tall posts and electric wire to prevent the deer from jumping into the area. We’ll be installing a 3-D fence around the outer perimeter of the market garden as well. This will cause the deer and elk to not be able to negotiate their ability to clear the height of the fence. It’s an effective strategy. Someone said to add peanut butter or some other sticky food they love on the electric wire and it will condition the animals to stay away after they get an unpleasant shock from the hot wire.
We might try it.
For irrigation, we’ll be using drip tape. But before that can happen the irrigation pipe needs to be repaired. Dom believes there is a crack in the pipe because when I watered the garden last year, the water would be brown. This only happened in the garden. It drove me insane because the sediment that was coming out of was clogging the hoses and sprinklers. It took a few months to figure out there was a problem with the irrigation pipes.
I’ll be ordering the landscape fabric, drip tape, and landscape fabric next week.
Here are more photos of our lives in spring…
Simmi name this sweet girl Milkyway.
This one is Honeybun.
Our goats names will be the theme of any offspring born to them. For Milkyway, her babies will be named after star constellations or candy bars. For Honeybun, her babies will be named after sweet dessert treats. And Tuffnut’s babies will be named after some sort of nut.
The year 2020 was an over the top sensational year for us as a family. We kicked ass and took names! While the world was busy being distracted by a disease that was never isolated or identified, we continued to move forward as a family, building, repairing, organizing, and recommitting our lives to becoming more sustainable.
Sustainability is one of those red flag words used by large corporations to greenwash their products. That’s not the sustainability I’m talking about. Some might call it “primitive” living but that’s a red flag word as well! When we think of primitive, our minds conjure images of living on a dirt floor with no electricity or running water.
Is that really what primitive means? How about technologies from the 1700s? Are they primitive? Dom and I have watched one of our favorite youtube channels for years called Townsends and I love how they have been able to reenact and bring to life American History from the 1700-1800s. Now, I’m not a fan of reenacting and trying to recreate anything historic, however, I’m thankful to those who find it thrilling to geek out when they find obscure historic texts hidden in books long forgotten and then POOF! they bring it to life.
Such, I think is the case with the Townsends. I SWOON over the kitchen they created (pictured below). Not because it rejects modern life, but because it is a truly sustainable kitchen. Would we go without a modernish stove? Nope, we plan on utilizing a stove that was built in the era prior to obsolescence. That’s about how modern I wish to remain.
It’s a melding of different ways of doing things to reach our own specific goals and outcomes.
That’s all we can do really in this life. We have no desire to live fully in some romanticized historical past OR future.
We’re moving forward our way and we’re not interested in maintaining the status quo or just going along with the program. The program sucks and just as the “elite” (I call them bottom feeders) want to push for some great Reset, I would caution against thinking that this is a great idea. Remember it is the World Economic Forum (again, bottom feeders) calling for this reset because they FAILED. They are the biggest failure EVER and yet because most worship money, they think the Klaus Schawb holds the key to a new forged future. No. Just no. He, the biggest bottom feeder of them all has failed so much so that he’s crying for a do-over while blaming the little guy for all the problems. Anyway, the World Economic Forum’s plan I don’t consent to.
No thanks.
But I digress!
Back to my Happy New Year…
We managed to thrive in 2020 emotionally, physically, and even financially. We kicked off last new year with a baby skunk getting to our house, our water heater busting, our toilet needing to be repaired, and some pretty wicked colds. That was just January!
Here’s a recap of our year…
This beautiful little spotted skunk mama kicked off our 2020 New Year with sadness and resolve to save her baby that had died in a trap we had set. The baby, no more than maybe 6 inches from nose to tail found his way into the house and died. Dom buried him out back and she found his little body in a burlap bag and refused to leave the dead baby. She wouldn’t eat or drink and died within three days of exposure to the extreme cold. We heard rustling about a month later only to discover that the baby skunk had a sibling. This little guy thought he was a part of the family. He would come in and out of the pallet walls looking for food or just to sit and watch us go about our business.
We finally caught him and released him a few miles away from our land. That ended the skunk saga of 2020. Haha
With our bathroom out of commission because of a busted temporary water heater and a busted toilet line, it became an opportune time to put walls in, sand and finish the floor, install the new tub, and put in a much-needed window. The windows we found under some garbage that was left on the property.
We started collecting more pallets for future projects. With the price of lumber going through the roof we began to reuse pallets rather than pay through the nose for dimensional lumber, only purchasing it when absolutely necessary. Once insulation, drywall, and exterior siding is installed, does it really matter what the inner wall is made of? Sure we look like hobos for awhile while it is all coming together, but in the end we save thousands of dollars and we get an even stronger structure than if it was just a conventional stick-built building.
This year we will be building out of pallets, a storage shed, a greenhouse, and a large office space off the side of my coffee roastery for my second business, Status Select Professional Services.
Dom started carving spoons. It was something he has wanted to do for years. 2020 was The Year of the Spoon for him. 😉
Our son Noah came home to build his own cabin, save money, buy a car, and go to school to become an EMT and Paramedic. So far, he moved into his cabin not too long ago, and now he’s saving for his car. School starts in the spring! He’s doing fantastic.
The beginnings of the chicken coop was built. However, part of the way through building it, we realized that Noah really needed his cabin first. There wasn’t a reason I could imagine where a bunch of chickens should have a home before my son. So we switched gears and Noah and Dom started building his cabin. See photos of the process below:
We got a very small but productive garden going as well. We didn’t start until LATE, but still, it was good to have my hands back in the soil. Farming and caring for animals is a part of my calling, so to finally be able to grow food again felt like a huge return to my values. We were on such a crazy odyssey over the last five years that no matter where we went, farming was on my mind but it broke my heart that I couldn’t spend the time growing food or raising animals.
We can now! When we first started farming ten years ago, we went all in and bought seed, bought trees, bought animals, and we did so without any infrastructure in place. That meant that we spent a huge amount of our valuable time spinning our wheels getting makeshift housing ready for animals, trying to jerry-rig watering systems, and really didn’t have a full plan in place. Even so, we had a very productive CSA with lots of members as well as retail stores purchasing our produce.
I can’t in good conscience do that to us again. We’ll celebrate our second year on the land in April, and even though we are still putting infrastructure in place, it has been worth the wait!
Below was our tiny experimental garden. I wasn’t expecting much since it was really the first time I was really growing anything on this piece of land, but I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer volume of food produced. We plan on making this little garden area the new Blueberry Sancutary.
As fall and winter approached, we began to shift our thinking a bit. We decided to build the fencing for our ducks and geese. The area would not be used right away for ducks, but instead, we would have dairy goats in the area to take down the weeds in the market garden area. Eventually, we would move the goats to their new area located behind the coffee roastery near where the commercial kitchen would be located.
Dom got busy building the fencing for the goats. We located a farm two hours north of us and planned on purchasing goats from them.
The only thing left to put up are the three gates. Their structure is in place. We need to build them a milking stand, although we don’t plan on breeding the new doelings until they are a year old. We will be purchasing a pregnant Nigerian Dwarf so that we will have milk this year.
Below are our new babies. They were just born a few days ago. We will be bringing them home when they are weaned from their mamas.
We purchased our first cow and helped process it. It was an amazing experience! After we build our walk-in refrigerator, we’ll start processing all our animals on the farm.
I love butchery and now I’m excited to harvest other animals as well. We already process ducks, chickens, and turkeys.
Noah got a puppy from the same people we got our goats. Her name is Zelda. She’s a border collie, blue heeler mix.
Simmi also is getting ready to move into her new bedroom.
Today I’m painting her room. Dom will be laying her carpet soon and putting trim up. We’re getting there…little by little.
Every time something new gets completed, we moved one step closer to gutting the rig. Simmi being able to have her own room is that crucial next part of the plan. It will take a bit of detailed planning to gut the rig because that will involve taking out my office equipment for a few days. I might need to set up my office in my bedroom while the rig is being remodeled.
I’ve learned more in the year 2020 than all my 52 years of life combined. Growing up, I was taught to put other’s needs ahead of my own. To push aside my own feelings in deference to those around me. To be soft and unopinionated. To be less of who I am…to not be too “much.”
This is abnegation at its core. In religious circles, it’s perceived piety or the martyr’s selfless act of relinquishing life for a greater good. In conservative and antiquated norms, it means denying our natural desires for uptight societal norms and views.
That all ended for me in 2020.
In exploring the deeper parts of myself, I discovered some truths that cut straight to the seat of my soul…
I conspired to bring abnegation to my own soul. I cut myself to the quick many years ago.
I allowed it.
It’s not a badge of honor, but instead, to me it was the veil of mourning. My soul was grieved for so many years and I could not for the life of me understand why.
Why was it that the same people would come into my life year after year causing grief, pain, and distress? To take advantage of my kindness and love?
What did I do to make these things happen?
The answer became clear to me and when it did, 2020 became the year of 20/20 vision. It was beautiful in haunting and menacing ways.
I went back in my mind to key times in my life growing up. Back to when I was abandoned by my mother, sexually abused by my father, emotionally abused by my paternal grandmother. These were areas of my life as a young child where abnegation was expected and developed a life of its own.
I was expected to put my feelings away about being abandoned by my mother. To not have feelings about it because my father “saved me” from a life of abandonment only to be hemmed into incest and shame.
Abnegation is the word I use for such things. And rightly so.
Over time, it was me who chose the people I allowed into my life. By allowing them in and loving them fully and knowing they might hurt me, I was fulfilling the deepest untrue belief that abnegation instills in vulnerable children…that I am unworthy of love, time, joy, or anything of value.
Do you see how that works?
I kept choosing people who would do those things to me over and over again, vowing never to allow it to happen again.
And then the conspiracy of abnegation would move swiftly to reaffirm it’s lifelong death song within my soul, to make me feel helpless, uneasy, and grieved deeply.
Then one day I realized I had to actually ask forgiveness to my soul for the conspiracy of abnegation. It was me all along. I had to stop pushing my own feelings aside. I had to protect my own beautiful and timeless being from the onslaught of others needs above my own.
I was born anew in 2020.
When I made agreements with my own soul to protect her and love her deeply as she deserved, she no longer cried out in the night. She no longer writhed in anguish. She is free.
I love her.
If anyone keeps having issues with people harming them emotionally and even physically, it’s time to look inward and make a new agreement with your soul.
Agree to protect, honor, love, and cherish him or her at all costs. If you make agreements with your soul…a contract of sorts, you won’t want to break it. It becomes a marriage covenant between your thinking self and your eternal soul.
You might get flack from those who were so used to you giving yourself until you are empty, but that’s a good thing. Smile at the distinction that has been made and that the displeasure another is expressing means that you are not conspiring to abnegate yourself any longer.
Honor all timelines of yourself. The timeline of your childhood, when you were helpless and vulnerable. Grieve with your younger self and acknowledge the pain you might have felt fully. This isn’t about what an adult might have done to you. It’s about what you have been through. When we are vulnerable and don’t know we’ve been trained to abnegate ourselves, we do it unconsciously…sometimes for the rest of our lives if we don’t catch on!
Another timeline to honor is that of your teen years when you were afraid to speak your mind. Acknowledge the pain you felt when fear sealed your mouth shut and you couldn’t express your feelings properly.
Honor your young adult timeline when you knew better but thought you were going to lose out on something so you denied your own beautiful wisdom only to lead you down the path of conflict and self-interest. Self-interest is not the same as honoring yourself.
To honor ourselves means we no longer deceive, push away, or suppress our feelings anymore. We honor all parts of ourselves- even the dark corners that we don’t want to look at. Even those need our love.
To have the courage to pierce the veil of mourning in the dark corners we don’t want to see, is to no longer need abnegation or the constructs that others may have expected us to live in.
Freedom can be yours, but it takes courage to do the work and end the conspiracy of abnegation.
It feels like only yesterday that I wrote about compassion, and yet, here I am more than two months later wondering where the time has gone? I’ve written infrequently on my blog because my dance card is quite full these days. I have several projects I’m working on that are a labor of love (I cannot disclose them at this time), homeschooling Simmi has started again, I’ve been working on the backend of this website to create an updated version that will be a magazine-style layout, and we’re moving into the fall/winter mode which means working on the interior of our rig again.
Work continues on Noah’s cabin, and as he gets closer to being able to move in, I can’t help but think of finally getting Simmi into her own room. That in turn leads to us gutting the rig to make it more functional for us to be in. Which then allows us to create a proper living room and dining room space. It has to happen in that sequence. Patience is key to making the transition go smoothly.
Below are photos of progress on Noah’s cabin. He has financed everything himself and he will have a debt-free cabin when everything is finished. Having no debts for his cabin will allow him to buy a newer vehicle without a car loan, pay for school without a school loan, and provide him with greater cash flow. Why pay rent throwing money away when you can own your own home free and clear? Eventually, if he wants to remain here, he will have the opportunity to build a larger home where ever he chooses on the 14 acres. All my children will have that opportunity as well.
Dom and Noah are shooting for the end of October for him to move into his cabin. The cabin won’t be completed until probably the spring, but before then, he’ll have the exterior board and batten, insulation in the floor, walls, and ceiling, drywall up, and flooring down. Trim and finish work will come later. The goal was to get him in his own private space. He can continue to work on the interior through the winter after the walls have been mud and taped, and his loft has been stained. In the spring a covered porch will be added.
The next project after that will be to insulate and put drywall up in Simmi’s room. Currently, Noah is sleeping in Simmi’s room. We’ll be able to fix her space, move her in, and get her comfortable. Right now she’s sleeping in the main part of the rig.
We had a highly productive tiny garden this past summer. I was very surprised and delighted at all that I was able to harvest. I didn’t weigh anything this year, since it was all an experiment to see what would grow well and what would languish or not grow at all.
We’re excited to start planning for next year’s garden. I learned a lot about my region and the ebb and flow of our microclimate. It’s been a great learning experience.
Another thing we’ve been working on is the temporary goat area. I reluctantly decided to finally warm up to the idea of getting dairy goats. I’m more of a sheep person. I could probably write a whole blog post on why I prefer sheep over goats, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with the animals themselves…it’s all because of my personality. Anyway, after careful thought and consideration, I made the decision to go ahead and start planning on having dairy goats.
We’ll be getting Nigerian dwarfs, mainly because that’s all I am emotionally equipped to deal with at this time in my life. Sounds weird, right? They will have a permanent home near our commercial kitchen, however, until that kitchen is completed, they will be living in the area that will eventually become the duck yard.
Dom, being very motivated by my decision to finally acquiesce to having goats, went to work straight away getting the goat area ready. He still needs to build the three gates for the different entrances, but for the most part, it’s nearly ready. We chose this area because we want the goats to eat the weeds in the market garden. They will have access to it throughout the winter months into spring before we start planting.
The fencing for this area was created using felled trees on the property and fencing from other areas. The wood planks were donated last year from a lady in our town who was getting rid of old wood fencing.
I love watching him work and execute plans that I’ve created. It’s always an unexpected treat watching him put everything together shirtless. Haha
That just about wraps up my update. Autumn came quickly and, just like that, it will be spring before I even blink! One thing is for sure, I’m looking forward to finally getting our rig gutted! I’ll try and make a more concerted effort to blog more than I have.
“True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.” -Joseph Addison
There seem to be three distinct camps of people in the year 2020. The first camp is those who feel it’s important to mask up and do the right thing to help keep others safe. The second camp is those who think they’re awake because they refuse to wear a mask and keep ridiculing and shaming those who do wear a mask. The third are those who are indifferent and don’t care either way as long as they can continue to do what they want to do.
Then there are people like me. I don’t fit into any of those camps. I can’t wear a mask because of my lungs and my daughter can’t because of her neurological disorder.
I’m stuck between camps. Almost alone.
We go into stores and we are quite literally the only ones (Simmi and I) not wearing a mask. No one has been rude to us or even looked at us funny as we pass by them. I’m glad for that. But I do have to keep Simmi close to me at all times when we are out and about because inevitably someone will try to approach her and ask HER why she isn’t wearing a mask.
As someone who is not on either side of the political spectrum, and who has very carefully looked at the facts concerning the COVID fiction (not coronavirus, to be clear) I have the unique perspective that what this socially engineered illness has done is to irradicate compassion.
You might believe that those who are wearing a mask are being compassionate to those who might die. You would be absolutely right. But what about compassion towards your own person?
Do we have the courage to have compassion for ourselves? To ask the question, “Is it okay that I have way less oxygen in my lungs and may do great harm to myself and put my family in distress by wearing a mask even though I’m completely healthy?”
Do we have the courage to have compassion for those who need to wear a mask? There are those who may be directed to wear a mask in order to save their own lives. Do you have the courage to ask for help and stay at home during this time so that your immune system isn’t assaulted? Can you ask for help? Or do you feel unsafe asking for help?
Those who believe they are “awake” yet harshly deride those in masks as brainwashed sheep who are still asleep…I have a message for you, YOU are not awake. You are aware. If you were awake, you would have compassion for those in masks who may be living in fear, actually need a mask, or feel empowered by it because they genuinely feel they are helping their fellow human family.
Our compassion as humans is waning. We have been found wanting. We wander around the stores in a sea of faceless people.
Our compassion cannot just be for those who might die from coronavirus. Our compassion must extend to:
The mother and father who don’t have the money to feed their children and can’t work or find childcare for their children
The single person who is terribly lonely, isolated, and who after they go out must mask, and in doing so cannot see the smile of another human soul. They’re hurting deeply. And it’s not just the single person, it’s married couples, children, whole families who feel lonely.
Those who are suicidal because they lost their job because of government interference, feel scared and alone so why bother staying in this harsh world. They matter too!
The children and young adults who are forced to endure emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of those closest to them, and they have no one to defend them.
The victims of domestic abuse locked in their homes 24/7 with no way out. Add insult to injury by putting a mask on a victim and now they are fully dehumanized.
Doctors, nurses, and those who work in medical facilities who have to endure hours upon hours of being in a mask. This is not normal and can be damaging to them.
Those who have lost their jobs and are now facing homelessness or eviction. Who have had their utilities shut off even though the “pandemic” seems to be still blazing on.
Children, who are the LEAST likely to die from coronavirus are being told to mask up cutting off their oxygen to their developing brains and are being told they must stay away from others. This is a lack of compassion for the nature of a child with a strong immune system. To me, it’s akin to child abuse to put a child in a mask when their own immune systems can handle it. If a child has lung problems or knows the child could die, by all means, please put a mask on them or better yet, keep them home.
The huge burden put on “essential workers” in big box stores and other places. There seems to be a lack of compassion for them as well. I’ve watched people get short with them, yell at them for taking too long, etc. These people wear masks from when they start work to when they get off of work. The time it takes for them to complete an order slows considerably when there is less oxygen to the brain.
Pregnant women wearing a mask. This should NOT abide unless she herself feels its important to the health and wellbeing of her unborn child. Otherwise, she should be breathing as much oxygen as she needs to oxygenate her blood for her unborn child.
I’ve heard it said that it’s selfish to NOT wear a mask. Then I’ve heard that flipped on its head and it stated that anyone who requires you to wear a mask is the selfish one.
Both are the same. Both shame. Both blame. Both think they know what’s best. Those who are indifferent don’t care either way.
Some believe that the democrats are doing this to get Trump out of office. Others believe that conservatives are trying to kill people by downplaying the virus. Some believe that the medical team, namely Fauci and Birx are here to help and make us better. Others believe that they are evil incarnate. Some think Bill Gates is the answer with his vaccines, others believe that he’s Satan himself.
Here’s what I believe…
We dropped the ball.
I have no idea what is going on on either side of the political spectrum. I cannot know the minds of corrupt politicians on either side of the aisle. What I have seen is politicians using people as pawns and overreaching their power. That much is clear.
I have no idea what Bill Gates or Dr. Fauci are actually thinking. I can follow the money though. And I do see all our human family being used as pawns to further their own agenda. This concerns me greatly.
It doesn’t matter what they are doing. I could care less about them. What I care about are our people. The real people I mentioned. The ones suffering right now as we speak, living in fear.
Do you identify with the fear?
Fear of dying
Fear of loneliness
Fear of not belonging
Fear of being different
Fear of judgment
Fear of illness
Fear of change
Fear of ridicule
Fear of confrontation
Fear of government
Fear of neighbors
Fear of rejection
Fear of being arrested
Fear of the police
Fear of breathing fresh air
Fear of others
Fear of job loss
Fear of homelessness
Fear of poverty
Fear of having your children taken away
Fear of government overreach
Fear of vaccines
Fear of those who won’t take a vaccine
Fear of those who refuse to wear a mask
Fear of those who do wear a mask
No matter what you decide…wearing a mask, not wearing a mask, know that I see you and care for you. Know that there is someone in this world that genuinely cares about your wellbeing.
We need to have compassion for one another. We need to see past what we think is the truth and once again humanize others. If you dehumanize your neighbor, friends, family because you think you know the truth and believe they are “asleep” you never bothered to reach out and love them where they were.
I have compassion for that type of aware person too. My hope is that awareness wakes you up to the real suffering that is happening. If not, then you’re no different than the bully in the store screaming at someone for not wearing a mask.
It’s not about the mask. It’s about how we relate to each other. If we choose to relate to those who are different than us regardless of their beliefs it’s the first steps to recapturing our own compassion and breaking down the walls of dehumanization.
This video was BANNED on many social media platforms. You can see it here because you have the right to know what is really happening with COVID 19. What they have to say is NOT misleading or false, or even dangerous. The only time it fits into those categories is when it challenges the official plandemic narrative and threatens the billions being made on masks, face coverings, loans from the government, vaccine manufacturers, surveillance companies making money hand over fist to track and trace you, tech companies, and all the large retailers that were deemed “essential.” That is who this is damaging to. Not you. Not me. We stand to lose everything, and most precious to all of us…our freedom.
COVID 19 is a fiction. Period. Do coronaviruses exist? Absolutely! I can tell you that having a coronavirus put me in the hospital for weeks because they thought I had regular bacterial pneumonia. They finally figured out that I had viral pneumonia and put me on an antiviral and I was better in three days. However, COVID 19, this word they throw around has never been properly identified with gold standard testing the way ALL other diseases are discovered. There is no test! Let me repeat that…there is no test to confirm the presence of COVID 19. Here is a link to that article. CLICK HERE.
Below the video is a link to Brighteon so you can share it with others.
A group of American doctors calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” held a press conference on COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine, and more outside the Supreme Court of the United States. Read the transcript of their press conference here.
Warning: This press conference has been flagged & taken down by multiple social media platforms for containing “misleading” or “false” information. Rev does not condone the use of any COVID-19 treatments outlined in this press conference.
Congressman Norman: (00:00)
… I’ll turn it over.
Simone Gold: (00:01)
Thank you. Thank you so much congressmen. So we’re here because we feel as though the American people have not heard from all the expertise that’s out there all across our country. We do have some experts speaking, but there’s lots and lots of experts across the country. So some of us decided to get together. We’re America’s Frontline Doctors. We’re here only to help American patients and the American nation heal. We have a lot of information to share. Americans are riveted and captured by fear at the moment. We are not held down by the virus as much as we’re being held down by the spider web of fear. That spiderweb is all around us and it’s constricting us and it’s draining the lifeblood of the American people, American society, and American economy.
Simone Gold: (00:53)
This does not make sense. COVID-19 is a virus that exists in essentially two phases. There’s the early phase disease, and there’s the late phase disease. In the early phase either before you get the virus or early, when you’ve gotten the virus, if you’ve gotten the virus, there’s treatment. That’s what we’re here to tell you. We’re going to talk about that this afternoon. You can find it on America’s Frontline Doctors, there’s many other sites that are streaming it live on Facebook. But we implore you to hear this because this message has been silenced. There are many thousands of physicians who have been silenced for telling the American people the good news about the situation, that we can manage the virus carefully and intelligently, but we cannot live with this spider web of fear that’s constricting our country.
Simone Gold: (01:45)
So we’re going to hear now from various positions. Some are going to talk to you about what the lockdown has done to young, to older, to businesses, to the economy, and how we can get ourselves out of the cycle of fear. Dr. Hamilton.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (02:03)
Thank you, Simone. And thank you all for being here today. I’m Dr. Bob Hamilton. I’m a pediatrician from Santa Monica, California. I’ve been in private practice there for 36 years. And today I have good news for you. The good news is the children as a general rule are taking this virus very, very well. Few are getting infected. Those who are getting infected are being hospitalized in low numbers. And fortunately the mortality rate of children is about one fifth of 1%. So kids are tolerating the infection very frequently, but are actually asymptomatic.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (02:38)
I also want to say that children are not the drivers of this pandemic. People were worried about, initially, if children were going to actually be the ones to push the infection along. The very opposite is happening. Kids are tolerating it very well, they’re not passing it on to their parents, they’re not passing it onto their teachers. Dr. Mark Woolhouse from Scotland, who is a pediatric infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist said the following. He said, “There has not been one documented case of COVID being transferred from a student to a teacher in the world.” In the world.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (03:19)
I think that is important that all of us who are here today realize that our kids are not really the ones who are driving the infection. It is being driven by older individuals. And yes, we can send the kids back to school I think without fear. And this is the big issue right now, as Congressman Norman alluded to, this is the really important thing we need to do. We need to normalize the lives of our children. How do we do that? We do that by getting them back in the classroom. And the good news is they’re not driving this infection at all. Yes, we can use security measures. Yes, we can be careful. I’m all for that. We all are. But I think the important thing is we need to not act out of fear. We need to act out of science. We need to do it. We need to get it done.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (04:07)
Finally, the barrier, and I hate to say this, but the barrier to getting our kids back in school is not going to be the science, it’s going to be the national unions, the teachers union, the National Education Association, other groups who are going to demand money. And listen, I think that it’s fine to give people money for PPE and different things in the classroom. But some of their demands are really ridiculous. They’re talking about, where I’m from in California, the UTLA, which is United Teachers Union of Los Angeles, is demanding that we defund the police. What does that have to do with education? They’re demanding that they stop or they shut all private charter schools, privately funded charter schools. These are the schools that are actually getting the kids educated.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (04:59)
So clearly there are going to be barriers. The barriers will not be science. There will not be barriers for the sake of the children. That’s going to be for the sake of the adults, the teachers, and everybody else, and for the union. So that’s where we need to focus our efforts and fight back. So thank you all for being here and let’s get our kids back in school.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (05:27)
Hello, I’m Dr. Stella Immanuel. I’m a primary care physician in Houston, Texas. I actually went to medical school in West Africa, Nigeria, where I took care of malaria patients, treated them with hydroxychloroquine and stuff like that. So I’m actually used to these medications. I’m here because I have personally treated over 350 patients with COVID. Patients that have diabetes, patients that have high blood pressure, patients that have asthma, old people … I think my oldest patient is 92 … 87 year olds. And the result has been the same. I put them on hydroxychloroquine, I put them on zinc, I put them on Zithromax, and they’re all well.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (06:12)
For the past few months, after taking care of over 350 patients, we’ve not lost one. Not a diabetic, not a somebody with high blood pressure, not somebody who asthma, not an old person. We’ve not lost one patient. And on top of that, I’ve put myself, my staff, and many doctors that I know on hydroxychloroquine for prevention, because by the very mechanism of action, it works early and as a prophylaxis. We see patients, 10 to 15 COVID patients, everyday. We give them breathing treatments. We only wear surgical mask. None of us has gotten sick. It works.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (06:46)
So right now, I came here to Washington DC to say, America, nobody needs to die. The study that made me start using hydroxychloroquine was a study that they did under the NIH in 2005 that say it works. Recently, I was doing some research about a patient that had hiccups and I found out that they even did a recent study in the NIH, which is our National Institute … that is the National … NIH, what? National Institute of Health. They actually had a study and go look it up. Type hiccups and COVID, you will see it. They treated a patient that had hiccups with hydroxychloroquine and it proved that hiccups is a symptom of COVID. So if the NIH knows that treating the patient would hydroxychloroquine proves that hiccup is a symptom of COVID, then they definitely know the hydroxychloroquine works.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (07:42)
I’m upset. Why I’m upset is that I see people that cannot breathe. I see parents walk in, I see diabetic sit in my office knowing that this is a death sentence and they can’t breathe. And I hug them and I tell them, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to live.” And we treat them and they leave. None has died. So if some fake science, some person sponsored by all these fake pharma companies comes out say, “We’ve done studies and they found out that it doesn’t work.” I can tell you categorically it’s fixed science. I want to know who is sponsoring that study. I want to know who is behind it because there is no way I can treat 350 patients and counting and nobody is dead and they all did better.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (08:21)
I know you’re going to tell me that you treated 20 people, 40 people, and it didn’t work. I’m a true testimony. So I came here to Washington DC to tell America nobody needs to get sick. This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax. I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need mask. There is a cure. I know they don’t want to open schools. No, you don’t need people to be locked down. There is prevention and there is a cure.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (08:48)
And let me tell you something, all you fake doctors out there that tell me, “Yeah. I want a double blinded study.” I just tell you, quit sounding like a computer, double blinded, double blinded. I don’t know whether your chips are malfunctioning, but I’m a real doctor. I have radiologists, we have plastic surgeons, we have neurosurgeons, like Sanjay Gupta saying, “Yeah, it doesn’t work and it causes heart disease.” Let me ask you Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Hear me. Have you ever seen a COVID patient? Have you ever treated anybody with hydroxychloroquine and they died from heart disease? When you do, come and talk to me because I sit down in my clinic every day and I see these patients walk in everyday scared to death. I see people driving two, three hours to my clinic because some ER doctor is scared of the Texas board or they’re scared of something, and they will not prescribe medication to these people.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (09:35)
I tell all of you doctors that are sitting down and watching Americans die. You’re like the good Nazi … the good one, the good Germans that watched Jews get killed and you did not speak up. If they come after me, they threaten me. They’ve threatened to … I mean, I’ve gotten all kinds of threats. Or they’re going to report me to the bots. I say, you know what? I don’t care. I’m not going to let Americans die. And if this is the hill where I get nailed on, I will get nailed on it. I don’t care. You can report me to the bots, you can kill me, you can do whatever, but I’m not going to let Americans die.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (10:09)
And today I’m here to say it, that America, there is a cure for COVID. All this foolishness does not need to happen. There is a cure for COVID. There is a cure for COVID is called hydroxychloroquine. It’s called zinc. It’s called Zithromax. And it is time for the grassroots to wake up and say, “No, we’re not going to take this any longer. We’re not going to die.” Because let me tell you something, when somebody is dead, they are dead. They’re not coming back tomorrow to have an argument. They are not come back tomorrow to discuss the double blinded study and the data. All of you doctors that are waiting for data, if six months down the line you actually found out that this data shows that this medication works, how about your patients that have died? You want a double blinded study where people are dying? It’s unethical. So guys, we don’t need to die. There is a cure for COVID.
Simone Gold: (11:02)
My gosh. Dr. Immanuelle also known as warrior. Before I introduce the next guest, I just want to say that I wish all doctors that are listening to this bring that kind of passion to their patients. And the study that Dr. Immanuel was referring to is in Virology, which talks about a SARS viral epidemic that affects the lungs that came from China. And they didn’t know what would work. The study showed that chloroquine would work. It sounds exactly like it could have been written three months ago, but in fact, that’s study in Virology, which was published by the NIH, the National Institute of Health when Dr. Anthony Fauci was the director. Again, the official publication of the NIH, Virology, 15 years ago showed that chloroquine … we use hydroxychloroquine, it’s the same … little safer … works. They proved this 15 years ago when we got this novel coronavirus, which is not that novel, it’s 78% similar to the prior-
Simone Gold: (12:03)
… coronavirus, which is not that novel. It’s 78% similar to the prior version. The COV-1, not surprisingly. It works. I’m now going to introduce our next speaker. Sorry. I forgot to say your name. Sorry.
Dr. Dan Erickson: (12:12)
That’s all right. Dr. Dan Erickson, Dr. Gold asked me to talk about the lockdown, how effective they were and do that cause anything nonfinancial? They always talk about the financial, but you have to realize that lockdown, we haven’t taken a $21 trillion economy and locked it down. So when you lock it down, it causes public health issues. Our suicide hotlines are up 600%, our spousal abuse. Different areas of alcoholism are all on the rise. These are public health problems from a financial lockdown. So we have to be clear on that fact that there is, it’s not like you just lock it down and have consequences to people’s jobs. They also have consequences, health consequences at home. So we’re talking about having a little more of a measured approach, a consistent approach. If we have another spike coming in cold and flu season, let’s do something that’s sustainable.
Dr. Dan Erickson: (13:13)
What’s sustainable. Well we can socially distance and wear some masks, but we can also open the schools and open businesses. So this measured approach I’m talking about, isn’t made up, it’s going on in Sweden and their deaths are about 564 per million. UK, full lockdown, 600 deaths per million. So we’re seeing that the lockdown aren’t decreasing significantly, the amount of deaths per million. Some of their Nordic neighbors have less deaths for a variety of reasons, I don’t have time to go into today. So what, my quick message here in a minute or two is just that we need to take an approach that’s sustainable. A sustainable approach is slowing things down, opening up schools, opening up businesses. And then we can allow the people to have their independence and their personal responsibility to choose to wear masks and socially distance, as opposed to putting edicts on them, kind of controlling them. Let’s empower them with data and let them study what other countries have done and make their own decision. That’s what I’d like to share. Thank you.
Speaker 1: (14:28)
Are there any questions?
Simone Gold: (14:29)
Are there any questions?
Speaker 2: (14:32)
You guys, we’re so excited I’m from South Dakota? You might have heard.
Simone Gold: (14:36)
Yes.
Speaker 2: (14:38)
I’m so glad you guys are preaching this message.
Simone Gold: (14:39)
You know, South Dakota did something interesting. It’s interesting that you’re from there. So the governor did not restrict access to hydroxychloroquine.
Speaker 2: (14:46)
We know. [crosstalk 00:02:48].
Simone Gold: (14:49)
Right. And you were, I believe you were the only state in the union that did that. And there’s been studies out there that attempt to show that it doesn’t work. They’re inaccurate because they’re given at the time, the wrong dose, the wrong patient either too much or a long time. So South Dakota did better because it had access to hydroxychloroquine. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: (15:06)
Okay. So if someone we love does get sick with COVID and you said the word hydro, or however you say it, it’s restricted. How do we get access to that?
Simone Gold: (15:16)
Yeah. That’s the number one question we’re all asked every day. I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’ve had many congressmen ask me, how can I get it? So the congressmen can’t get it, it’s tough luck for the average American Joe getting it. It’s very difficult. You have to overcome a few hurdles. Your doctor has to have read the science with a critical eye and have eliminated the junk science. Many studies have been retracted as you know, and number two, the pharmacist has to not restrict it. Many states have empowered their pharmacists to not honor physician prescription. That’s never happened before. That interferes with the doctor patient relationship where the patient talks to the doctor, honestly, and the doctor answers the patient honestly has been violated.
Simone Gold: (15:55)
So you have a very difficult time as the average American. Some of the information we’ll share later this afternoon is to show the mortality rates in countries where it’s not restricted and the mortality rates where it is restricted. So I have friends all over the world now because of this. And in Indonesia, you can just buy it over the counter. It’s in the vitamin section. And I’m here to tell the American people that you could buy it over the counter in Iran. Because the leaders in Iran, the mullahs in Iran, think that they should have more freedom than Americans. I have a problem with that. My colleagues have problems with that. We don’t like to watch patients die.
Julie: (16:26)
So when people have problems, they should be picking up the phone, they should be calling their state and their federal representatives and senators and say, we are the American people.
Speaker 1: (16:42)
Let me say one thing [crosstalk 00:16:46].
Julie: (16:45)
You guys, we need the public to be.
Speaker 1: (16:49)
Thank you. Thank you, Julie. That is exactly right. If you hear what you’re, when you hear this, if you’re concerned and wondering why you may not be able to get access to it, we need to make four calls, call your governor, call both of your senators and call your Congressman and tell them that you want to know why you’re not able to get access to a drug that doctors are telling you will help end this and help us reduce the number of hospitalizations and reduce the number of deaths. Urge them to read Dr. Harvey Rich’s study from Yale. He’s a Yale professor of epidemiology. And from there you’ll find other studies.
Speaker 4: (17:31)
Yes. I wanted to ask how do people trust the data that they are looking at every day? The numbers are so variable when you go to Johns Hopkins, CDC, which divides COVID deaths in different categories related to pneumonia, other things where we get the right information to make sense?
Simone Gold: (17:52)
So the only number that I think is worth paying any attention to, and even that number is not so helpful is mortality because that’s a hard and fast number. So the case number is almost irrelevant. And that’s because there’s a lot of inaccuracies with the testing. And also even if the test is accurate, most people are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. So it’s not that important to know. So the case number, which you see rising all the time in the news is basically irrelevant. And if you had told us a few months ago, that that was the number that the media was going to go crazy over, we all would have just laughed at that. I mean, that’s essentially herd immunity. There’s lots of people out there who have tested positive without symptoms or with very mild symptoms. So the only number that’s worth paying attention to is mortality.
Simone Gold: (18:33)
When you look at the mortality, this is a disease that takes, that unfortunately kills our most frail members of society. People with multiple comorbid conditions, specifically diabetes, obesity is a big one. We don’t talk about that, but it is. It’s a fact. Coronary artery disease, severe coronary artery disease, people like that. And also if you’re older, it’s a risk factor. But the biggest risk factor is if you have comorbid conditions. If you’re young and healthy, this is not … You’re going to recover. If you’re under 60 with no comorbid conditions, it’s less deadly than influenza. This seems to come as great news to Americans because this is not what you’re being told. I would say the answer is it’s very difficult to get accurate numbers.
Speaker 5: (19:13)
This is [inaudible 00:19:13] of Breitbart News, if you had a message to Dr. Anthony Fauci, what would you say to him?
Speaker 1: (19:18)
Listen to the doctors. [inaudible 00:19:21] the frontline doctors. Have a meeting with the frontline doctors, and maybe I need to say that into the microphone. My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is to have a meeting with these frontline doctors who are seeing real patients. They’re touching human skin. They’re looking people in the eye, they’re diagnosing them and they’re helping them beat the virus. They’re the ones who are talking to the patients, have meetings with them and do it every single day and find out what they are learning about the virus firsthand. And this is, and it’s important to understand, we have doctors here who are not emergency room doctors. They’re preventing patients from even hitting the emergency room. So if they’re only listening to emergency room or ICU at the very tragic end of a person’s life they’re not getting the full story. They need to come back in here the earlier portion. And they also need to understand what the lockdown and the fears are doing to patients around this country, because there are a lot of unintended consequences, which the doctors can speak about.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (20:30)
Can I say something. My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is when is the last time you put a stethoscope on a patient? That when you start seeing patients like we see on a daily basis, you will understand the frustration that we feel. You need to start feeling for American people like we, the frontline doctors, feel. I need to start realizing that. They are listening to you. And if they are going to you, you got to give them a message of hope. Got to give them a message that goes with what you already know that hydroxychloroquine works.
Speaker 6: (21:06)
I have a question for Dr. Warrior.
Simone Gold: (21:09)
Dr. Immanuel.
Speaker 6: (21:10)
Dr. Immanuel, okay. You mentioned before some remarkable results that you’ve had treating your own patients. She said, I believe she said 300 patients.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (21:17)
Yes. Yes.
Speaker 6: (21:19)
Have you been able to publish your findings and results [inaudible 00:00:21:22].
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (21:22)
We’re working on publishing it right now. We’re working on that, but this is what I’ll say. People like Dr. Samuel [inaudible 00:21:29] published the data. And my question is, and? That will make you see patients. There’s no data around the world. Yes. My data will come out. When that comes out. That’s great. But right now people are dying. So my data is not important for you to see patients. I’m saying that to my colleagues out there that talk about data, data, data.
Speaker 6: (21:44)
If I can ask just one more question.
Simone Gold: (21:46)
May I just interject. There is a lot of [crosstalk 00:21:49] data on this. Not every clinician needs to publish their data to be taken seriously. The media has not covered it. There is a ton. I’ve got a compendium on americasfrontlinedoctors.com, there is a compendium of all the studies that work with hydroxychloroquine. The mortality rate was published in Detroit, less than a … It was July 4th weekend. They published it. Mortality by half in the critically ill patients, the patients who are get it early, it’s been estimated that one half to three quarters of those patients, wouldn’t be dead. We’re talking 70,000 to 105 … 70 to 100,000 patients would still be alive if we followed this policy. There’s plenty of published data. [crosstalk 00:22:27].
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (22:26)
Even with Dr. Rich. Dr. Rich published data recently. So there’s a lot of data out there. They don’t need mine to make those decisions.
Speaker 6: (22:34)
If I can ask one more question. There was a little girl who just a few days ago [inaudible 00:22:37] otherwise healthy and it was concluded that she died of COVID-19 so I was curious from your perspective, you feel that this little girl possibly died from some other condition and it was attributed to COVID-19 or is there some other reason why she [crosstalk 00:00:22:52].
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (22:52)
I will not. I will not be able to say that till I look at the little girl’s history and whatever happened. I know I’ve taken care of a lot of family members and I see a lot of children and they usually get mild symptoms, but I cannot talk about kids that I have not looked at.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (23:07)
What was the age of the child again?
Speaker 6: (23:10)
She was nine years old.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (23:10)
Okay. So listen, there are children who are dying of this infection. And the reality is that when they do die, they seem to have comorbidities. Really, you have to kind of look at each individual case. Uniquely there have been a little over 30 patients in the entire country, in the age category of 15 and below who have died of COVID. Frequently they do have comorbidities like heart disease. They have asthma, they have other pulmonary issues. So I don’t know, we don’t know the answer to this nine year old girl, tragically. She passed, and she’s no longer with us, but there’s probably, if you dig into it, there’s probably a story behind it.
Speaker 1: (23:48)
Dr. Hamilton, have you seen any patients who are having adverse side effects because schools have been closed, who have depression or suicide?
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (23:54)
I mean, I think that it is common knowledge that with the schools not being open, when you think about what your experience in junior high and high school-
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (24:03)
… not being open. When you think about your experience in junior high and high school, what do you think about? You think about parties and you think about football games, socializing. Those are the things we think about. Those are all being shut down, folks. Nobody is having fun anymore. And I will tell you that these are critical years of life to be out mixing with other kids, other people, and that has been shut down. So yes, there are lots of comorbidities that go along with shutting down. We’re talking about anxiety, we’re talking about depression, loneliness, abuse is happening, and kids who have particular… Children who have special needs, kids are not doing well either. So, there is a long list of complications that occur when you quarantine and lockdown people.
Speaker 7: (24:48)
So an extension to what you were just talking about, we hear all these studies and all this polling that moms are afraid to go back to work because of letting their children go to school, they shouldn’t go to school because then they’re exposed, and if the moms go back to school, then the elderly grandparents, they’re [crosstalk 00:25:04].
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (25:04)
Right, well, this is the big [crosstalk 00:25:05].
Speaker 7: (25:06)
Can you speak to that please?
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (25:07)
Sure. Yeah, this is a big issue because people are afraid not that their children are going to get particularly ill, because I think they’re learning the truth is that this infection is being tolerated well by children. But certainly, they look at their environment, their particular unique family, and I think in some situations that may be an appropriate fear. However, I do think that as a general comment, a general rule through the country, kids can go back to school. Maybe a few kids here and there, their living situation, who they’re being cared for, that can be a potential problem. But again, for younger children in particular, they’re not the ones passing on the disease to the adults.
Speaker 7: (25:52)
Wouldn’t the hydroxychloroquine be…
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (25:52)
I’ll talk about that.
Speaker 7: (25:52)
Maybe Dr. Immanuel can speak to that, or somebody else.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (25:53)
Well hydroxychloroquine, yeah. [crosstalk 00:25:56].
Speaker 7: (25:53)
In terms of as a prophylaxis.
Dr. Bob Hamilton: (25:53)
That can be done. Yes, that can be used. [crosstalk 00:26:06]
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (26:06)
We’re talking about, we can’t open our businesses. We can’t go to school and parents are scared to get treated. And I personally, have put over a hundred people on hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis. Doctors, teachers, people who are health care workers, my staff, me, I see over 15 to 20, sometimes 20, 15, 10 patients a day. I use a surgical mask. I’ve not been infected. Nobody I know has been infected that’s around me. So this is the answer to this question. You want to open schools, everybody get on hydroxychloroquine. That is the prevention for COVID. One tablet every other week is good enough. And that is what we need to get across to the American people. There’s prevention and there is cure. We don’t have to lock down schools. We don’t have to lockdown our businesses. There’s prevention, and there is cure. So instead of talking about a mask, instead of talking about lockdowns, instead of talking about all these things, put our teachers on hydroxychloroquine.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (26:59)
Put those that are high risk on hydroxychloroquine. Those that want it. If you want to catch COVID, that’s cool, but you should be given the right to take it and be prevented. So that’s the message. All this stuff that we’re putting together, it’s not necessary because hydroxychloroquine has a prevention. Hydroxychloroquine is a prevention for COVID.
Speaker 8: (27:17)
Earlier I heard you say that…
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (27:18)
Hydroxychloroquine.
Speaker 8: (27:21)
… hydroxychloroquine, that that drug was the cure.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (27:22)
Cure, mm-hm (affirmative).
Speaker 8: (27:25)
But you also said measured with zinc and other things.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (27:27)
Yes.
Speaker 8: (27:27)
And you guys also said that previous doctors have used it, but they’ve used it in the wrong dosage. So I keep hearing the drug, but then what is the right dosage. What is the right mixture?
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (27:39)
That you’re going to discuss with your doctor, but let [inaudible 00:03:43] take that.
Speaker 9: (27:45)
Yeah, that’s a great question. Because the whole political situation has driven the fear towards this drug. So let’s address that. This drug is super safe. It’s safer than aspirin, Motrin, Tylenol. It’s super safe. All right. So what the problem is in a lot of those studies, they did very, very high doses, massive doses all through the country. They did the remaps study, the solidarity trial. That was the world health organization trial, and also the recovery trial. They use 2,400 milligrams in the first day. All you need is 200 twice a week for prophylaxis. They used massive toxic doses. And guess what they found out? When you use massive toxic doses, you get toxic results. The drug doesn’t work when you give toxic doses. It’s a very safe drug. It concentrates in the lungs, 200 to 700 times higher in the lungs.
Speaker 9: (28:38)
It’s an amazing drug because in the bloodstream, you’re not going to get high levels, but you get massive levels in the lungs. So you’re going to find yourself, if you prophylax, that as soon as the virus gets there, it’s going to have a hard time getting through because the hydroxychloroquine blocks it from getting in. And then once it gets in, it won’t let the virus actually replicate. Bring in zinc and zinc will mess up the copy machine called the RDRP. So with the combination of drugs, it’s incredibly effective in the early disease. By itself, it’s incredibly effective as a prophylaxis. Does that answer to the question?
Simone Gold: (29:15)
Yeah. I want to emphasize on something that Dr. [inaudible 00:29:20] just said, because I love the question. This is a treatment regimen that’s very simple, and it should be in the hands of the American people. The difficult aspect of this is that at the moment, because of politics, it’s being blocked from doctors prescribing it, and it’s being blocked from pharmacists releasing it. They’ve been empowered to overrule the doctor’s opinion. Why is this not over the counter? As you can get it in much of the world and almost all of Latin America, in Iran, in Indonesia, in Subsaharan Africa, you can just go and buy it yourself. And the dose, my friends is 200 milligrams twice in a week and zinc daily. That’s the dose. I’m in favor of it being over the counter. Give it to the people. Give it to the people.
Moderator: (30:06)
We have two more, who can answer this question and they know this information.
Dr. James Todaro: (30:12)
Hi, Dr. James Todaro [inaudible 00:30:13]. I just want to add a couple of comments to what Dr. Gold was saying. If it seems like there is an orchestrated attack that’s going on against hydroxychloroquine it’s because there is. When have you ever heard of a medication generating this degree of controversy? A 65 year old medication that has been on the World Health Organization’s safe, essential list of medications for years. It’s over the counter in many countries. And what we’re seeing is a lot of misinformation. So I coauthored the first document on hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus. This is back in March and that kind of kicked off a whole series of a storm on it. And since then, there’s been a tremendous amount of censorship on doctors like us and what we’re saying. And a number of us have already been censored. That Google document that I coauthored was actually pulled down by Google. And this is after now, many studies have shown that it is effective and it is safe. You still can’t read that article. And there’s also this misinformation out there. And unfortunately, this has reached the highest orders of medicine. In May there was an article published in The Lancet. This is one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals in the world. The World Health Organization stopped all their clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine because of this study. And it was independent researchers like us who care about patients, who care about the truth that dug into this study and determined that it was actually fabricated data. The data was not real. And we did this so convincingly that this study was retracted by The Lancet less than two weeks after it was published. This is almost unheard of, especially for study of this magnitude.
Dr. James Todaro: (31:44)
So I apologize to everyone for the fact that there is so much misinformation out there, and it’s so hard to find the truth. And unfortunately, it’s going to take looking at other places for the truth. That’s why we formed frontline doctors here to try to help get the real information out there.
Speaker 10: (32:00)
What did you say your name was?
Dr. James Todaro: (32:01)
I’m James Todaro.
Moderator: (32:02)
Give your website.
Dr. James Todaro: (32:05)
Most of my thoughts, I actually publish on Twitter. Twitter has been great lately. So, James Todaro, M D. T-O-D-A-R-O M-D but I also have a website medicineuncensored.com, which contains kind of a lot of the information about hydroxychloroquine I think is much more objective than what’s going on in other media channels.
Speaker 10: (32:28)
One point, in terms of Twitter. That’s important because as I understand not only from doctors, but from other people in the media, that YouTube has blocked information specifically about hydroxychloroquine.
Dr. James Todaro: (32:42)
I’ll go ahead and address that real quickly. I would say Facebook and YouTube have taken the most draconian measures to silence and censorship people. And this is coming from the CEO of YouTube, as well as Mark Zuckerberg saying anything that goes against what the World Health Organization has said is subject to censorship. And we all know the World Health Organization has made a number of mistakes during this pandemic. They have not been perfect by any means. Twitter, although they have some flaws and faults and flag certain content and stuff, they really still remain one of the freest platforms to share dialogue, intelligent discussion regarding this information. And many of us here today actually connected on social platform mediums like that.
Speaker 11: (33:21)
Could you talk about what you mentioned earlier about the medication and how long it’s been around?
Dr. Joe Ladapo: (33:27)
Sure thing. I’m Dr. Joe. Ladapo. I’m a physician at UCLA and I’m a clinical researcher also. And I’m speaking for myself and not on behalf of UCLA. So I want to say that I’m thinking of the people who are behind the screens that are watching what you guys were broadcasting. And I want to share with you because there’s so much controversy and the atmosphere is so full of conflict right now that what this group of doctors is trying to do fundamentally, is really to bring more light to this conversation about how we manage COVID-19 and the huge challenge. And that’s what this is ultimately about. And bringing light to something means thinking more about trade offs, about one of my colleagues said on unintended consequences. And I actually think that’s not even the right word, the right word is unanticipated consequences. Really thinking about the implications of the decisions we’re making in this really, really extraordinary time that we’re in.
Dr. Joe Ladapo: (34:45)
So, I’m sure people are listening to some of the discussion about hydroxychloroquine and wondering, what are these doctors talking about? And, these are doctors that take care of patients, board certified, med school, great med schools, all of that. How could they possibly be saying this? I watch CNN and NBC, and they don’t say anything about this. And that’s actually, that’s the point. There are issues that are moral issues, that really there should be a singular voice. So for me, issues related to whether people are treated differently based on their sex or race, or their sexual orientation. I personally think those are moral issues and there’s only one position on those. But COVID-19 is not a moral issue. COVID-19 is a challenging, complex issue that we benefit from having multiple perspectives on. So it’s not good for the American people when everyone is hearing one perspective on the main stations. There’s no way that’s going to service. So, the perspective most people have been hearing is that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work. That’s the perspective that most people have been hearing on the mainstream television.
Dr. Joe Ladapo: (36:03)
That’s the perspective that most people have been hearing on the mainstream television, and I believe that perspective too, until I started talking to doctors who would look more closely than some of the physicians behind me here, who would look more closely at the data and at the studies.
Dr. Joe Ladapo: (36:17)
So it is a fact that several randomized trials have come out so far, that’s our highest level of evidence, and have shown that hydroxychloroquine… Their findings have generally been that there’s no significant effect on health benefit. So, that’s a fact, that the randomized control trials have come out… So far that have come out. In fact, there were two or three big ones that came out over the last two weeks, [inaudible 00:36:44] Internal Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, and I think one other journal.
Dr. Joe Ladapo: (36:49)
It is also a fact that there have been several observational studies. These are just not randomized controlled trials, but patients who are getting treated with this medication that have found that hydroxychloroquine improves outcomes. So both of those things are true. There’s evidence against it and there’s evidence for it. It is also a fact that we are in an extraordinarily challenging time. Given those considerations, how can the right answer be to limit physician’s use of the medication? That can’t possibly be the right answer. And when you consider that this medication before COVID-19 had been used for decades, by patients with rheumatoid arthritis, by patients with lupus, by patients with other conditions, by patients who were traveling to West Africa and needed malaria prophylaxis, we’ve been using it for a long time, but all of a sudden it’s elevated to this area of looking like some poisonous drug. That just doesn’t make sense.
Dr. Joe Ladapo: (37:59)
Then when you add onto that the fact that we’ve had two of the biggest journals in the world, New England Journal of Medicine, and Lancet, as my colleagues say, retract studies that found, interestingly, that hydroxychloroquine harmed patients. Both of these studies. They had to retract these studies, which really is unheard of. That should raise everyone’s concern about what is going on. At the very least, we can live in a world where there are differences of opinion about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, but still allow more data to come, still allow physicians who feel like they have expertise with it use that medication, and still talk, and learn, and get better at helping people with COVID-19.
Dr. Joe Ladapo: (38:50)
So why we’re not there is not good. It doesn’t make sense, and we need to get out of there.
Dr. Stella Immanuel: (38:58)
Listen, let me just put a little bit of that. I have seen 350 patients and counting. Put them on hydroxychloroquine. They all got better. This is what I would say to all those studies, they had high doses, they were given to wrong patients. I will call them fake science. Any study that says hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, is fake science and I want them to show me how it doesn’t work. How is it going to work for 350 patients for me and they’re all alive, and then somebody say it doesn’t work? Guys, all them studies, fake science.
Simone Gold: (39:30)
What was your question? Thank you.
Speaker 14: (39:31)
Last question.
Simone Gold: (39:31)
Yeah, last question.
Speaker 13: (39:35)
I’ve heard there’s an increase in anxiety, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, and various mental health issues as a result of school closures and shutdowns. Is it your recommendation that [inaudible 00:39:48] federal funding for programs will help deal with those issues?
Simone Gold: (39:54)
Yeah, I don’t understand how you would go to that conclusion. If the problem was that the schools are shut down, and it’s causing it, then we need to open up the schools.
Simone Gold: (40:06)
Yeah. I would go to the school. I would open up the schools, because the most important thing for children is to socialize, and to be with other kids, and to learn. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:40:14] Yeah. Let’s get kids back in school.
Speaker 14: (40:17)
You don’t believe that?
Simone Gold: (40:20)
Kids back in school. We’re in favor of kids back in school.
Speaker 15: (40:22)
Thank you everyone. [crosstalk 00:04:24]. Thank you very much. And we are going to be going back live continuing our summit, so you can continue watching. Once we get back, we may be running.
Speaker 16: (40:35)
Thank you so much. [inaudible 00:40:45].
Simone Gold: (40:50)
That’s right. I believe you. I believe you. [crosstalk 00:40:52].
Doctor 1: (40:54)
It’s more specialized, so I have to defer.
Speaker 18: (40:55)
You said that depression-
Doctor 1: (40:56)
That depression is caused by low zinc levels. When you go into a hospital nowadays, they don’t test for those zinc levels. Low zinc levels are manifested by loss of sense of smell, loss of taste. Why are these also symptoms of COVID, right? COVID, loss of sense of smell, loss of taste, right? And the reason is because zinc is the natural thing that used to fight the COVID. What happens is the zinc stops RNA polymerase, and the hydroxy chloroquine allows the zinc to go into the cells.
Speaker 18: (41:33)
I’m wondering-
Doctor 1: (41:33)
To stop the RNA polymerase-
Speaker 18: (41:35)
Because there was a-
Doctor 1: (41:36)
Hang on, hang on.
Speaker 18: (41:36)
It was implied that-
Doctor 1: (41:37)
Let me give you the science behind it. So if your lab is [crosstalk 00:41:41]… I understand.
Speaker 18: (41:43)
Yeah.
Doctor 1: (41:43)
Let me explain it a little bit better. The zinc stops RNA polymerase, and it’s used up by your cells in the normal fighting of COVID. So if you never took hydroxychloroquine, you’d still be zinc depleted. We’re in a natural state of zinc depletion in the United States, but the COVID decreases your zinc even more, and you need it to fight off any virus. That’s why your mom always said, “Take your zinc,” right?
Speaker 18: (42:04)
Is the problem with children on psych units that they have low zinc levels?
Doctor 1: (42:11)
No, no, no. We’re talking about the COVID and how that… [inaudible 00:06:13].
Speaker 18: (42:15)
Okay. My question was about if federal funds should be diverted to helping therapists, social workers and other frontline workers to deal with the psychological issues that were mentioned by your colleague, that shut downs in the government and school closures cause an increase in suicidal ideation, and substance abuse, and anxiety. So those environmental factors are what caused those mental health issues. Doesn’t it stand to reason that then funds to help those institutions deal with the problem should be receiving more funding?
Doctor 1: (42:47)
I’m going to defer to my psychiatrist colleague.
Speaker 18: (42:50)
He didn’t hear me ask the question. [crosstalk 00:42:51].
Doctor 1: (42:51)
First, we need to take care of the biological basis, which is the zinc, which is the vitamin D, lack of vitamin D. We’re dumping our milk.
Speaker 18: (43:03)
Yeah, I don’t know about that.
Doctor 1: (43:04)
We’re dumping our milk [crosstalk 00:07:05]. We’re dumping our milk in the manure pits right now. If we would get together-
Doctor 2: (43:09)
Yeah, that’s hard to believe.
Doctor 1: (43:10)
If we would get that to the kids out of school, that will be very helpful.
Speaker 18: (43:14)
Okay.
Doctor 1: (43:14)
So I’ll defer to my colleague.
Speaker 18: (43:17)
So my question, I still haven’t gotten a clear answer on it-
Doctor 2: (43:19)
I’ll try to answer. Public policy is not my expertise, but I can try.
Speaker 18: (43:23)
Oh no, it’s not really about… It’s not my expertise either, actually. But I was wondering since your colleague said that as a result of school closures and government shutdowns, which caused an increase in suicidal ideation, anxiety, substance abuse, and a variety of other issues, I’m wondering if federal funding should be diverted to frontline workers, social workers, mental health therapists?
Doctor 2: (43:45)
The answer your question is this, I see it this way, harm has already come is what we’re saying. So the answer to the question is, harm has already come. What should we do about that harm? I don’t know the inner workings of the government, but to say that harm has already come, and to say that we’re going to do something about it, it makes sense. To me as a doctor, I think if we know harm is coming, if you and I know we already got run over by a car, I think it makes sense to let me go ahead and go to the hospital to get my-
Speaker 18: (44:10)
There’s a real lack of funding for people in my profession to be able to help those kids and those adults.
Doctor 2: (44:12)
Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. So I’m going to just say, to me, it makes sense, and I think it’s fair.
Speaker 18: (44:20)
I appreciate the well-rounded concern. It just kind of stops with concern and it doesn’t continue into action. Congress might not, I’m not sure who he was, maybe you could actually give [crosstalk 00:08:31].
Summer is in full swing and so much is happening all at once. Back in the beginning of June our son came home to save money and go to school to become an EMT with aspirations of becoming a paramedic. Our first goal was to get him set up with his own cabin. Our space is WAY too small for yet another living being. Currently, it’s three adults, one young adult, and three finches all trying to live and let live in the rig. It’s cramped for sure!
Our plans always seem to morph when least expected. I’m cool with it though. We stopped construction on the large chicken coop because we needed to turn all our attention to getting Noah in his own place. He was in the last remaining tent for a while, but it’s ready to collapse and with the monsoons upon us it’s currently flooded with water, scorpions, vinegaroons, ants, and other creepies wanting to stay on a nice warm bed. The photo on the right is of a vinegaroon aka whip scorpion. They’re pretty harmless but look badass, right?!
We brought his bed inside and he’s doing his best to deal with the lack of privacy.
Over the last three weeks, Noah and Dom were able to dig the post holes for the foundation, pour the concrete, set the piers, and get the floor framed out on Noah’s cabin. We’re playing it by ear this weekend. One of Noah’s friends died yesterday and we’re waiting to see when the funeral will be.
If the funeral is this weekend, cabin construction will most likely be put off until next weekend. Trying to work on the cabin during the week when they work all day on other construction projects is a recipe for burnout.
A good portion of our land is a steep slope. It feels more like we’re on the side of a mountain! As I’ve pondered where we want to build our house (we’ve thought of many locations) we settled on using the sloped portions instead of regular flat ground. Noah’s cabin is located about 100 feet from where we will be building our home. The slope is the perfect location for a step up kind of home that moves with the steep incline of the landscape.
They started working on the chicken coop before the cabin. Here are a few photos of that process…
Noah getting sand brought over to the site to make soil-crete.
Dom selecting which trees would be used for the chicken coop structure. There are no straight parts of this coop. Everything is wonky and natural.
Setting posts.
Adding welded wire to the outer walls. The walls will be created with a modified straw light clay infill. We’ll get this coop finished. It will only be a matter of time before we have 175 or more chicks peeping in this area!
The cactus blooms were spectacular this year. I love seeing them right before they open.
In the back of the rig is a large cholla cactus. A Curved-Bill Thrasher came and decided to build her nest. We’ve been watching her and can’t wait to see if her babies make it. They are up against some odds with crows and hawks eyeing up the nest just waiting for the mama to leave so they can steal her eggs. She’s been great at protecting them and by the end of this month, we should have three baby thrasher hatchlings.
It’s not the best photo, but there she is sitting on her eggs. I had to take the photo from pretty far away. Any closer and she would have left her nest.
There is a group of trees that we were planning on using to build Simmi’s treehouse. At the beginning of the month one of the main tree trunks that would have been a support for the treehouse snapped and fell down. Simmi was devastated. But as we become more bonded to the land, I have found that they subtly tell us things if we listen carefully. We had intentions of using the tree as the foundation of a treehouse, the tree told us it wasn’t safe and bent down to explain why.
My girl turned 13 at the beginning of June. She’s been enjoying the summer, listening to music, watching tv, and helping out whenever we’ve asked. She’s pretty motivated these days. We told her that after we get our roastery finished she could have a teacup Yorkie, and so she’s been saving her money and helping out to make even more money. Yorkies, Bichons, and Maltese are dogs she’s not allergic to. We’ll start looking for a breeder next spring. She fell in love with one of Dom’s client’s teacup Yorkie and she was smitten.
In the photo, Simmi is prepping horehound for Dom. He’s making a wildcrafted beer that uses a little horehound in place of hops.
This is Princess Bitchslap. Remember how I said trees tend to speak to us as we become more bonded to the land? Well, this girl right here is no different! She is located in the back of the rig near the roastery. Her branches reached all the way down to the ground and you couldn’t see how beautifully wonky she really was. I want her to grow upwards, not to the ground, so I trimmed her lower branches and gave her a bit of a hair cut.
She didn’t appreciate it very much. With every branch I cut off, I was welcomed with a whack to the back of my head, or my butt. At no time was I not in a battle with this tree. If I was taking care of an upper branch, an adjacent branch would whip me in the face. If I was dragging away a large branch, it felt like the branch was hanging on kicking and screaming like she was being murdered. It was like she had claws digging into the earth refusing to leave the spot.
By the time I was finished pruning her, I had twisted my ankle, received multiple facial scratches, my ass was literally kicked and bruised, and my arms were covered in scratches and bruises.
This is why I call her Princess Bitchslap. She’s lively and gave me a run for my money.
I love her. I think she’s warming up to me too.
We decided that even though we’re passed the time when you can plant potatoes, we would take a bash at it anyway! We ordered some of the best potatoes we’ve ever eaten from Wood Prairie Family Farm. We grew their potatoes when we were farming up in Maine. The potatoes I chose are early potatoes so they only take about 90 days to harvest. We’ve built a potato tower made from welded wire to grow them in. They are just starting to come up now. Once it gets too cold, we’ll wrap the tower in heavy clear plastic to extend the season a bit.
I love how the animals and insects that choose to be here find ways of complementing the landscape. If this dragonfly never moved, I wouldn’t have even seen him! His clear wings are amazing.
In the garden, we have radishes, cilantro, parsley, tomatoes, carrots, arugula, snow peas, beans, mint, basil, dill, and cucumbers growing. Well, maybe not cucumbers! Something came and ate them all. But we did get a bunch of mystery squash come up! The one in the photo above showed up and won’t stop growing. I had to remove this particular one because it was right in the way of the sprinkler. However, we have about four other mystery squash plants coming. I never planted them so we’ll see what they are as they set fruit.
Green beans and mint. They don’t seem to mind each other.
Basil, borage, cilantro, and radishes. Also some weeds and grasses all growing together. I took this photo last week, and it’s just about time for me to do the first pruning of the basil. I have about three different kinds of basil coming up. I’ll be harvesting and drying it today.
It’s hard to believe that in just a few short months this tiny fig tree will be at least four feet tall and wide. It took a while to figure out where the little Chicago figs would be planted. Plants, as I’m discovering have a will and spirit all their own. And if we are patient, they might just reveal to us where they want to be planted. It’s a cooperative act…a trust between two living beings.
I didn’t use to think that way. I just thought plants were plants, without an agenda or will of its own. But I was wrong.
I posed the question in my mind while picturing the figs in my mind, “Where do you want to be planted?” and of course I didn’t get any kind of real answer in an auditory way and didn’t think I would get any answer at all. But I felt this pressing to get them into the ground.
The next morning while waking up a picture came into my mind of where and HOW they wanted to be planted. It felt right too.
They are planted in a ten-foot diameter basin. Small stones covering the base going out, and eventually larger stones as we reach the perimeter. Each fig is to be planted in this way.
I told Dom that the figs explained how they wanted to be planted, thinking he was going to laugh at me. But he didn’t. He smiled wildly and said, “Did you know that if we plant the trees with the stones that way it will create a paramagnetic field that will create fertility in the soil?!” How did he know that? He had just finished reading a book about rock dusts and cosmic energy.
I haven’t read the book. I don’t think the figs read the book either, but to me, that was a confirmation that they know how they want to be planted.
In the same area where the figs are growing, rue will be planted. Behind the figs is a trench where we planted tomatoes last year. That area we populated with asparagus crowns this past spring, but the ground squirrels decided it was like a buffet for them. Every crown was gone! So in its place, behind the trench against the fence, I’ll be planting apricot foxglove, milkweed, and hollyhocks. In the trench itself, cardoon will be planted.
Dom built some wooden flats for me and I’ll be starting all the new perennial flowers and plants today.
This morning in the garden, lots of things are growing. Volunteers like squash and sunflowers, grasses, and weeds. With all the delicate cilantro still coming up, I won’t be pulling the grasses out. They can all grow happily together. Our compost is so jampacked full of goodies that there’s more than enough to go around. This morning I got more radishes and basil harvested.
I’m not sure what squash decided to show up here, but I’ll take it! I guess we’ll see once her fruit shows up what kind of squash she is.
The rain has been glorious and very much appreciated. We went through a blazing hot spell where the average daily temperature for around two weeks was 104 degrees. That’s unusual for this area. Once the monsoon arrived, our temperatures went back to their normal 80 degree days with the highs sometimes in the 90’s. We’re almost to the end of July already but this is when we get our rains so it’s one of the most anticipated times of the year.
The rest of this month I’ll be dreading my hair, getting a new septum piercing, and possibly a chin tattoo. Yep, I’m going full-on feral. I’ve been wanting to get a chin line done for about a year now. I ordered my new septum ring from Norway and it should be here in a few weeks. I am trying to honor my authentic self, and at times that becomes drowned out by my own inner voice saying, “What?! Are you nuts? Why would you want to do that?” They’re passing thoughts that have been a part of my life for as long as I’ve known myself. “What?” That one is the word most used by my inner dialogue, even though I already know the answer.
I’ve spent so much time not paying attention to the things I want for myself that I nearly lost the sound of my own soul crying out. In January 2020 I started seriously listening and doing some very intense soul work, to heal the deeper parts of myself that I allowed to become damaged. We can always blame others, but I’ve found that I’m responsible for how my soul is treated, and because I’ve allowed past abuses to take place, I alone can make it right within me.
So I listen careful to her; my inner beautiful soul’s voice. I respond with gentleness and protection making sure she is always heard and always loved by me. It has become my greatest accomplishment within myself.
Things are changing. I’m glad to see the old fade away and the new get embraced with passion and excitement. Life is so damn good!
That’s about all I have to report for this month. If you’d like to follow me daily I post regularly on Instagram. Click here to follow.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
It takes courage to be vulnerable and trust. It takes more courage still to trust again after it’s been broken. How do we learn the lessons in life that move us forward to a new and greater reality? How do we continue to have faith in humans who have let us down?
We learn it’s not personal, that’s how.
I’ve heard the saying, “You attract what you are” and I have to say that it’s a faulty sentiment. We don’t attract what we are, we level up when we are willing to tap the unknown and discover new parts of ourselves, revealed when we are emotionally ready for that next phase.
On our insane odyssey over the last five years, we learned a lot about ourselves. We learned that things are never what they seem, and while on the outside things may look promising and encouraging if you don’t pay attention to the words coming out of people’s mouths and the actions that contradict what they are professing, you can get hurt.
Boy, did we get hurt.
These inhuman people who lie out both sides of their mouths are our teachers and prophets. They aren’t prophets in that they tell you the future of your life, but they tell you who they are in very revealing ways. If you end up having to cut ties with these types of people, know that the teaching will continue because it has to. In their books, you are forever the villain, the one that caused so much displacement and discomfort in their lives. They are so disconnected from reality they believe their own story of loss when they did it to themselves. In order to maintain their perceived *reputation,* which, in real life, they don’t have, they must continue to deceive others and so the lessons continue for those new “students” who need to learn what the face of a bottom feeding parasite looks like. They need to learn what it feels like to be prevailed upon.
Some walk away embittered and bewildered, wondering how they could be deceived. The answer is very simple…
Deception is a cooperative act. We need to come to that place where we no longer are willing to be lied to. Only then will we finally move forward in our lives. Self-deception leads to blaming and shaming others. Self-deception is quick to tell you why your life is so miserable. Why you can’t seem to get a break in life. Self-deception tells a wonderous story of intrigue and loss of respect. Its narrative is destruction, but never at the victim’s hand. It’s always that dastardly villain’s fault.
It’s called “Blame and Shame.” They will blame you for things that they refused to be responsible for in their own lives, and then shame you to others to gain sympathy. How do I know this? Because they will always seem to be in good company with others who may also be guilty of the “blame and shame” game.
They can’t help it.
They are our greatest and most wonderous teachers. They teach us each day the following:
-We are responsible for taking care of our children, our families, our animals, not others.
-We are responsible for taking care of our bills and financial obligations, not others.
-We are responsible for our own feelings and actions, not others.
-We are responsible for holding offenders accountable no matter how much they cry and stomp their feet expressing their victim mentality.
-We are responsible for making sure that we do NOT mingle with those who embrace these subhuman parasitic bottom feeders. Yes, they are subhuman because they feed off the goodwill, resources, and innocence of others.
Don’t be dismayed when they come into your life. Just learn the lesson early and bless them to be on their way. You’ll always know them by what they do and some of them are legends in the community if you listen carefully to what might at first be perceived as “gossip.”
Sometimes it’s not gossip. Sometimes it’s a warning! Especially if you have heard MANY such accounts happen to others in your community.
These are the ones who believe they have had the most to sacrifice in service to their communities. They believe they are operating for the greater good all while defrauding others of what is rightfully theirs.
They stink to the high heavens and you can see them coming from a decade away. They make big claims for animals and earth they say they care for, people they say they love, causes for the oppressed, yet not one single thing in their lives shows these things to be true. They profess such things on social media but they are nothing more than whitewashed tombs filled with dead man’s bones.
Bottom feeders. I’m not even talking about grifters and conmen. I’m talking about the restless soul who feeds off the living and in their darkest hours of dread, then pull the “I love all the animals and people of the earth” and smile obscenely as though no one can see their deceptions.
I see you.
I see it with politicians, those in the medical community, some in my own community, those in the world, those in religion. I see what the bottom feeders have done in programing people with fear.
They have consumed many people in this world and turned them to ash.
Will we rise from these ashes? Will we take off the masks and not allow the bottom feeders access to our energy? Will we decide to start thinking critically?
The teachers are at the door. They are knocking. They are blaming and shaming. They are waiting to see if you have more faith in their victimhood than in your God.
Many believe they have “woken up” or “are awake and trying to wake others” but this isn’t true. Knowledge doesn’t wake people up and once you are awake for real, the moral obligation isn’t to wake others up, but to unlearn a lifetime of bad choices and decisions. Waking up isn’t a matter of “I told you so! I’ve been saying it for years…now do you believe me?” This type of thinking is self-serving at best and many who succumb to this type of attitude are among the ranks of those who blame and shame.
I would much rather be the student than the teacher. My education never ends. I will never arrive and I will never attain all there is to know simply because the more we wake up, the more we need to search for the right answers.
Conspiracies happen all the time. The worst conspiracy of all is the one where we conspire to block our ears, cover our eyes, and gag our own voices in an attempt to self deceive and feed off of others instead of feeding ourselves. Blame and shame are always the fruit of such actions.
We are men and women of the living soil. It’s time we start acting like it. If you feel the pangs of being a bottom feeder, there is yet a way forward for you. It’s truth and reconciliation. It happens when we look in the mirror and refuse to be self-deceived. It takes place when we open our eyes and see how beautiful we are. It springs to life when we allow our true voices to be heard not only to others but also to ourselves. It burns like an all-consuming fire when we open our hearts to the understanding that we are all connected and inclusiveness is the key to our humanity.
Will we become human again? To discover the beauty of vulnerability? To wish our teachers the best of luck and then move on? We don’t need to maintain contact with those who may have taught us a hard lesson. But we can love ourselves enough to live in our humanity and arise anew.
We owe it to ourselves to level up. It’s the only way to stop the blame and shame game for good.
In this mixed up Babylonian world (and make no mistake we live in modern Babylonia…it never left or faded from this world), there are voices of reason, of truth, and of life. The fiction that is COVID-19 has run its confusing yet fraudulent reality show and it is time to move forward and chart a new course that is bold, free, and one that supports our sovereignty as men and women of the living soil. There is no new normal, only one that dictators and despots have dreamed up for you. It includes not having the basic right to breathe fresh air. That is NOT the new normal unless you choose to push the snooze button on life for just a bit longer.
I am against this plandemmic and have been from the very first whisper of what it was back in February. This has been an all-out assault on our freedoms. The huge red flags were the fact that they threw out all medical protocols and started proclaiming things that have no basis in the scientific or medical fields. They have lied, lied again, and lied some more. They continue to lie. They keep changing the story. There is no science behind what they are saying OR what they are doing. Wearing a mask is not keeping you or me safe, it is preventing us from relating, from communication, from human contact. It is lowering the rates of oxygen we need to live. Even according to OSHA guidelines (look it up for yourself) no employer should be making anyone wear a mask that causes oxygen levels to fall below 19.5. If you put a mask, cloth covering, or anything else that obstructs the free flow of oxygen, you are putting your life in danger. What’s more, and far more ironic, is that you are putting everyone around you in danger as well if you shame them or bully them into wearing a mask because some unelected official said to do so.
When I see masks on people in stores, and worse, on children, it is tantamount to abuse. Abuse perpetrated by the Health Departments, the Governers, Mayors, and anyone else who has passed down unlawful ordinances and decrees asking everyone to cut off the oxygen flow to their bodies, causing everyone (especially those very active) to become hypoxic.
Breathing is a fundamental basic human right. To cover your face and prevent oxygen from entering our lungs and bloodstream has untold consequences.
The video below is a labor of love, put together by some of the most gifted and passionate men and women out there. They have their hands on the pulse of what is really happening. The video is nearly four hours long, but you can watch and pause it when you need to and come back for more. I’m very proud to be a part of The New Earth Project, and I would encourage everyone to go to their site and sign up. You can join NewEarth University and learn all about the things that you might not find elsewhere. It’s really quite extraordinary.
I’ve also included the white paper report, NewEarth University COVID-19 Intelligence Brief by Thomas J Brown of NewEarth University which is comprehensive and gives all the links to his research on where we REALLY are at this time. If you are done being deceived and lied to and you want the real truth of what’s happening, then watch the video presentation and read the 47-page report.
Lying and deception is a cooperative act. When we choose to no longer be lied to, we open ourselves up to begin to walk in truth and follow through with right action. They’ve done the heavy lifting for you AND provided all the links necessary to do the research as well. These are my kinsmen, my family, my brothers and sisters and I love them all. I’m so blessed that they are in this world, the real world, bringing forth the knowledge that we need at this time in our lives. For many of us, this awakening happened as far back as 2006. At least, for Dom and I, it was that way.
Since that time we have been thrilled to watch others begin to awaken from this dark Babylonian dream state. The best is yet to come!
There is a quote, and I’m not really sure who said it first, but it goes something like this…
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
I’ve always believed this. As a person who is always learning and forever curious, I am drawn to those who are mind-blowingly more intelligent than myself. They’re impressive. Of late, my favorites are Dr. David Martin, Sacha Stone, and a number of others like them in their circle of influence. These two are my favorite dudes. I resonate with them on a very deep level and look forward to their discussions and get-togethers.
Dom and I had been waiting for Dr. Martin to discuss the filing made in April 2020 about the fiction that is COVID19. You can scroll down beyond the video to read what has been filed. In this video, however, he’s discussing a filing to the State of Massachusetts. This is only the beginning!
I’ll post a quote from the video just published on June 23, 2020, by Dr. Martin because it’s important to know the truth…the REAL truth, and then you must decide to stand up for the truth or hideaway as more of our freedoms are snatched under false pretenses.
We have been lied to by the media, by the health organizations, by politicians, by unelected technocrats, who have terrorized not only the American people but people all over the world.
From Dr. David Martin on June 22, 2020:
“COVID19 the branded disease is not a disease. It’s a set of clinical presentations of symptoms. And there is not a shred of evidence that anyone can even manufacture to suggest that they can confidently state that SARS-CoV2 is the causative agent of anything at all.
Now, be careful how you interpret what I just said. I did not say there is not a SARS Coronavirus family of mutations. I did not say that. I said, no one can clinically verify that a single clinical presentation is unique to this particular classification of the beta coronavirus, SARS-CoV2.
And that’s extremely important because if that statement is recited by governors to justify their police powers and because it is cited by governors to recite their police powers, and because the statement is false, every single state, every single governor, has violated their core oath of office, their fundamental moral and legal obligation, and they have lied to the public to perpetuate an act of domestic terror on their population.
No governor, no mayor, no politician, who has endorsed this entire scam is exonerated from, “I didn’t know.” There’s no justification by just saying, “Well, I was doing my best, I was following instructions.”
You had no evidence, you had no basis, for what you declared and as a result, not only what you declared as a State of Emergency but every derivative therefrom.
Every face mask, every social distance, every stay at home order, is hung on the cross of the failure of any single person in leadership ever validating the opening assumption that there was a novel virus and that there was in fact, a novel disease.
Neither one of them was the case, both of them are fallacies and as a result, every derivative from each of those statements is also wrong and should be immediately vacated.”
Below is from his blog:
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
COVID-19 Anti-Trust Argument
Some of this information was submitted to the Office of the Inspector General for the United States Department of Health and Human Services on April 22, 2020
Request for Investigation – Possible Sherman Act Violation
Citizens of the United States of America
v.
United States Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Robert R Redfield, et al.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Anthony Stephen Fauci, et al.
Governors of All States Issuing Executive Orders abridging the 1st Amendment of the Constitution
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Professor Ralph Baric, et al.
And unknown Parties
On April 25, 2003, the United States Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (hereinafter, “CDC”) filed an application for a United States (Application Number US46592703P, subsequently issued as U.S. Patent 7,776,521) entitled “Coronavirus isolated from humans”. Claim 3 –A method of detecting a severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in a sample…; and, Claim 4 – A kit for detecting a severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in a sample…, provided the CDC with a statutory market exclusion right the detection of and sampling for severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV). Securing this right afforded the CDC exclusive right to research, commercially exploit, or block others from conducting activities involving SARS-CoV. On September 24, 2018, the CDC failed to pay the required maintenance fees on this patent and their rights expired.
From April 2003 until September 2018, the CDC owned SARS-CoV, its ability to be detected and the ability to manufacture kits for its assessment. During this 15-year period, the effect of the grant of this right – ruled unconstitutional in 2013 by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Association for Molecular Pathology et al. v. Myriad Genetics – meant that the commercial exploitation of any research or commercial activity in the United States involving SARS-CoV would constitute an infringement of CDC’s illegal patent.
It appears that, during the period of patent enforcement and after the Supreme Court ruling confirming that patents on genetic material was illegal, the CDC and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases led by Anthony Fauci (hereinafter “NIAID” and “Dr Fauci”, respectively) entered into trade among States (including, but not limited to working with Ecohealth Alliance Inc.) and with foreign nations (specifically, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences) through the 2014 et seq National Institutes of Health Grant R01AI110964 to exploit their patent rights.
It further appears that, during the period of patent enforcement and after the Supreme Court ruling confirming that patents on genetic material were illegal, the CDC and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (hereinafter “NIAID”) entered into trade among States (including, but not limited to working with University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and with foreign nations (specifically, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences represented by Zheng-Li Shi) through U19AI109761 (Ralph S. Baric), U19AI107810 (Ralph S. Baric), and National Natural Science Foundation of China Award 81290341 (Zheng-Li Shi) et al.
It further appears that, during the period of patent enforcement and after the Supreme Court ruling confirming that patents on genetic material was illegal, the CDC and NIAID entered into trade among States (including, but not limited to working with University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and with foreign nations to conduct chimeric construction of novel coronavirus material with specific virulence properties prior to, during, and following the determination made by the National Institutes for Health in October 17, 2014 that this work was not sufficiently understood for its biosecurity and safety standards.
In this inquiry, it is presumed that the CDC and its associates were: a) fully aware of the work being performed using their patented technology; b) entered into explicit or implicit agreements including licensing, or other consideration; and, c) willfully engaged one or more foreign interests to carry forward the exploitation of their proprietary technology when the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that such patents were illegal and when the National Institutes of Health issued a moratorium on such research.
The aforementioned items appear to constitute, “contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy,” as defined under 15 US Code § 1.
Under 15 U.S. Code § 1 (the Sherman Antitrust Act) “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.”
Reportedly, in January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in China sent investigators to Wuhan Institute of Virology and found that, “During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.” The Washington Post reported that this information was contained in a cable dated 19 January 2018. Over a year later, in June 2019, the CDC conducted an inspection of Fort Detrick’s U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (hereinafter “USAMRIID”) and ordered it closed after alleging that their inspection found biosafety hazards. A report in the journal Nature in 2003 (423(6936): 103) reported cooperation between CDC and USAMRIID on coronavirus research followed by considerable subsequent collaboration. The CDC, for what appear to be the same type of concern identified in Wuhan, elected to continue work with the Chinese government while closing the U.S. Army facility.
Reportedly, on December 31, 2019, the Chinese government informed the World Health Organization (WHO) that a number of cases of suspected coronavirus-associated SARS cases were being treated in the area of Wuhan. The CDC reported the first case of SARS-CoV like illness in the United States in January 2020 with the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service reporting 650 clinical cases and 210 tests. Given that the suspected pathogen was first implicated in official reports on December 31, 2019, one can only conclude that CDC: a) had the mechanism and wherewithal to conduct tests to confirm the existence of a “novel coronavirus”; or, b) did not have said mechanism and falsely reported the information in January. It tests credulity to suggest that the WHO or the CDC could manufacture and distribute tests for a “novel” pathogen when their own subsequent record on development and deployment of tests has been shown to be without reliability.
Notwithstanding, the CDC and WHO elected to commit to a narrative of a novel coronavirus – exhibiting properties that were anticipated in the U.S. Patent 7,618,802 issued to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Ralph Baric – and, in the absence of testing protocols, elected to insist that SARS-CoV-2 was the pathogen responsible for conditions that were consistent with moderate to severe acute respiratory syndrome.
On March 4, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsome appears to have violated the law of the State of California by issuing Executive Order N-33-20 based on the “threat of COVID-19” with no evidence that such threat existed as confirmed by serology or confirmed immunologic evidence. The Government Code sections cited in the Order (Government Code sections 8567, 8627, and 8665) require that criteria be met which do not include the “threat” of any condition but evidence of said condition. At that time, neither the CDC nor the WHO had sufficient testing in place to: a) confirm and isolate “a novel coronavirus” from other coronaviruses; b) California did not have pathology data to suggest that an epidemic was imminent; and, c) the rest of the United States was equally incapable of making any such assessment as a result of the aforementioned conspiring parties actions. Governor Newsome’s Executive Order, followed by numerous other similar orders, all are based on the threat of a thing that may or may not exist.
Around March 12, 2020, in an effort to enrich their own economic interests by way of securing additional funding from both Federal and Foundation actors, the CDC and NIAID’s Dr Fauci elected to suspend testing and classify COVID-19 by capricious symptom presentation alone. Not surprisingly, this was necessitated by the apparent fall in cases that constituted Dr. Fauci’s and others’ criteria for depriving citizens of their 1st Amendment rights. At present, the standard according to the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists Interim-20-ID-01 for COVID-19 classification is:
In outpatient or telehealth settings at least two of the following symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s)
OR
at least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing OR Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following:
Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, or
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
AND No alternative more likely diagnosis
Laboratory Criteria for Reporting
Detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a clinical specimen using a molecular amplification detection test.
Detection of specific antigen in a clinical specimen.
Detection of specific antibody in serum, plasma, or whole blood indicative of a new or recent infection.* *serologic methods for diagnosis are currently being defined
After inflicting grave harm to the citizens of the United States of America in economic hardships resulting from their allegation of an “epidemic” or “pandemic”, the CDC and the NIAID set forth, and the President of the United States and various Governors in the respective States promulgated, standards for lifting conditions in violation of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution that serve exclusively to enrich them. Both the presence of a vaccine or treatment and, or, the development of testing – both that solely benefit the possible conspiring parties and their co-conspirators – are set as a condition for re-opening the country. This appears to be an unambiguous violation of the Sherman Act and, if so, should be prosecuted immediately to the full extent of the law.
Additional information is available upon request.
Submitted this 22nd of April, 2020
Dr. David E. Martin – all Whistleblower Rights and Protections Reserved
Over the last month, we’ve empowered and incorporated a few very important words. These words are “Opt-out” or “Opting Out.” They are powerful, full of intention, and carry both intended and unintended consequences.
Opting out doesn’t imply anything nor is it ambiguous. It is making a statement and a choice. We have to reach within ourselves to find our vulnerable voice, add to it our integrity, and make a promise, vow, or contract. Opting Out is like Opting In. It carries with it a set of actions that are just as intentional and complete.
If you Opt-In to a particular cause, you set your intentions to support that thing you are opting into. If you Opt-Out, you are stating you will not be involved with a cause, program, or contract.
I opted to remove myself from Facebook not too long ago after I was censored for saying something that wasn’t against any community standards or guidelines. I’m still on Instagram, which is owned by FB, but because they haven’t censored me I have remained on that platform. I don’t have a problem with social media platforms as long as they don’t muzzle free speech, especially when nothing was said that was violent, malicious, or against the law. However, when youtube and FB start censoring those who may have alternate opinions on social justice, information on coronaviruses, COVID-19, vaccines, 5G, I have to draw the line.
What does drawing a line look like? We say it all the time, don’t we? “I draw the line at being forced to obey.”
Okay, so now what? How are you going to maintain your rights? Will you protest? March at a rally? We see the unrest happening. Much of it is a distraction used as a bait and switch. Look over here at what’s happening on the streets with violence so you can’t enter the courthouse and state your objections to forced mandated vaccinations. Yes, that’s happening right now as I write this.
Business is being conducted in these courthouses. Laws are being passed while the rubber bullets, police brutality, and naked aggression take place against the very people they have said they would protect. There are these dichotomies of speech happening. For or Against. Black vs White. Muslim vs Christian. Police vs civilians. Yet in very sneaky ways laws are being passed while all this continues.
It seems like I just went on some sort of diatribe, right?
It’s all interconnected. I hear often “the world is waking up.” Are they really? Are they waking up to what is really going on?
Let me tell you something about waking up. Waking up and becoming conscious causes something visceral to occur inside us. It starts a mourning process. A depression that grips the soul and asks, “what else have I allowed to deceive me?”
A deception is a cooperative act. It requires both parties. To be deceived or lied to requires our consent.
Will I consent to being lied to anymore? Nope. We stopped that bullshit last year. We chose not to engage or invest in anyone who would knowingly try to deceive or lie to us in order to get something or to use us. It was the best decision we ever made.
We opted out of being lied to by those we know.
Here is a list of things we’ve opted out of so far. We have only just begun the opt-out process and it will continue for years to come. One side note before I start listing things…We are not extremists. It isn’t a “for or against” scenario when we discuss opting out. One option for us to be able to walk away from weekly shopping is to purchase items in bulk, cutting down on the amount of packaging involved. That might involve ordering a 50 lb sack of rice and other grains for grinding our own gluten-free flours when we need them. This, for us, would be a better outcome in terms of packaging. Purchasing 2 pounds of rice in a plastic bag, 1 pound of gluten-free flour mix, and other things just add to the garbage we’re trying to reduce.
Here are a few of the things so far we’ve Opted out of:
1. Using a washer and dryer or going to the laundromat- Opted out of buying machines and spending money on the electricity and gas to run the machines at home or at the laundromat. We reached inward to realize we could do a better job washing our clothes by hand and line drying them, saving both electricity and gas every week/month. We allowed ourselves to be lied to that we “needed” a washing machine and a dryer to get our clothes clean. We allowed ourselves to be deceived that our clothes wouldn’t be clean if we did it ourselves. We lied to ourselves by stating that we couldn’t physically do it on a regular basis because it’s too hard. We opted out of lying to ourselves about the laundry we do. We now use a laundry bar soap for our laundry which cuts down on the chemicals that would go into our septic system and eventually leach out into our environment.
2. Buying store-bought drinks- We no longer buy anything bottled at the store, with the exception of Simmi’s apple juice. No more soda, mineral water, bottled water, alcohol, and other adult beverages, drinks on the go. We just started doing this on June 7, 2020. We have been preparing to opt-out of all store-bought beverages for about two weeks now. Reaching inward, Dom has been brewing up lots of fermented drinks for us so when we do want to have a beer, wine, or hard cider, it’s available to us. We have collected all the glass bottles for bottling up our own fermented drinks for about two years now. Reaching inward we knew it was time to let go of consuming things that weren’t necessary to our health or lives. In doing so we will be saving even more money, which can be used for purchasing a pressure canner and fruit press. When we have those items, we will be able to make Simmi’s apple juice and can it for later use. When that is complete, we will be fully opted out of buying beverages from stores. We’ve opted-out of lying to ourselves about how much we need mineral water, bubbly water, soda, wine, alcohol, and traveling drinks. We don’t need them, we like having them. Is there anything wrong with them? Not necessarily, but for our lives, in opting out of plastic products means that we are not participating in the making of the supplies that go into making plastic bottles and producing waste for landfills, or involved in the health implications that those who work around these chemicals are exposed to every day.
In the end, purchasing things in bottles and containers doesn’t move us forward in our own lives.
3. Eating out at restaurants and other food establishments- We rarely go to any food establishment. If we do, it’s usually Japanese food. We opted out of eating in restaurants 12 years ago after Simmi was diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies. We can name the number of times we’ve eaten out over the last 12 years, however we feel we can do even better! Reaching inward we realized we can make Sushi at home and we do a damn good job of it. No need to go to a Japanese restaurant. We have an excellent cookbook we haven’t even used yet! It was gifted to us by our son two years ago. Now is the time to reach for that book and start enjoying Japanese food more than once every 6 months. We opted-out of lying to ourselves about how we deserve to go out to eat and be served by others.
4. Owning a cell phone, wifi, wireless streaming devices, Bluetooth devices, cordless phones, and anything else that emits microwave radiation. We opted out of wireless technology four years ago and we never looked back. After I discovered I am extremely sensitive to microwave radiation and removed all devices as well as moving to a wilderness area with very little cell signal (cell tower more than 5 miles from our property) we discovered a peace like we never had before. It wasn’t long after we discovered my sensitivity that we observed Simmi was also very sensitive to it. Removing all devices resulted in a miracle…Simmi no longer had violent meltdowns that would last for hours. She was unable to learn, unable to reason, unable to problem-solve, unable to calm down. She was always either laughing and getting into trouble or screaming and physically violent. We thought we were going to need to get her medications for the psychotic episodes she was having. Children are often put on antipsychotics and medication for ADHD if they have frequent violent outbursts, no attention span, and are hyperactive. It only took a month for her to be completely calm and peaceful without any kind of meltdown and that is without the assistance of pharmaceuticals. I am happy to report that we’re now going on our fourth year without a single violent meltdown or meltdown in general. Reaching inward we discovered that we could hardwire our computer to a regular modem. No wifi needed. That’s what we did and continue to do every day. We opted-out of lying to ourselves about how much we needed our cell phones for communication and life. We stopped lying to ourselves about how cool wifi and wireless devices are and how much they enhance our lives. They don’t. They actually do the opposite by damaging DNA and causing autoimmunity, neurological disorders, metabolic syndrome, and even cancer. Beyond opting out for our own personal safety, we are opting out also
Half of the workforce of the artisanal mining sector is comprised of children. Without viable economic alternatives, most children must join their parents in rudimentary mining pits. Children as young as two years transport, wash, and crush minerals to earn half a dollar a day.
because the mining done to extract the rare metals needed for different technology components are causing damage to the earth. The conditions for mining as well as those who are forced to work in inhumane slave conditions is our other reason for opting out. When workers in other countries have netted the bottom of their buildings so that those working can’t commit suicide due to horrific work environments, and when children are forced to work long hours we need to ask ourselves if having wireless technology is helping us or hurting others. There may even come a time when we no longer use any technology and unplug completely. Every time we purchase a cell phone or other wireless device, we are opting into human suffering on an unimaginable scale.
STORY ABOUT MINES IN THE Democratic Republic of Congo. MORE CAPTION INFO TO COME Pic by Daniel Pepper [mailto daniel.pepper@gmail.com] SMH NEWS REVIEW 060802
The movement to Opt-Out of cell phone and wireless technology to raise awareness of the conflicts, human rights violations, human trafficking, can be done simply by not participating any longer in the lives being oppressed while mining rare metals for cell phones, the Congo, in India and also in Asia where similar conditions exist. Black Lives Matter not only in America, but also around the world. Let us not oppress others so we can use a cell phone. Make a difference and opt-out.
I’m considering starting a blog series about Opting Out. I want to provide a space for keeping track of what we opt-out of, why we’ve made the choice, and the steps we’re taking along the way. I feel it could be helpful for those who are also considering opting out of the current system. We’re in a system that has enslaved us to consumerism and enslaved others, many at gunpoint around the world so that we can consume these goods without understanding the consequences or the harm that has come to those who are forced to work in inhumane conditions. We are not free and our other human family members are not free either. So, how do we loosen the bonds and free ourselves? It takes time, careful thought and consideration of our needs, our family’s needs, and even the community around us.
They say it takes three weeks to form a habit but it takes two or more months for that habit to become automatic. We’ve given ourselves three weeks for each new Opt-Out. Doing laundry every day or every other day by hand has become a habit. Our next break with consumerism is with prepared snacks. That will involve potato chips, corn chips etc. That’s three weeks from now.
Opting Out by Reaching In is a new concept for me. It’s about reaching into my heart to see what really matters in life. To reach in and find out how the things I might purchase may impact others negatively. Sometimes it feels like being an accomplice to a crime against humanity, and for me, such a burden is too great for me to bear alone.
We’ve been quite busy over the last three and a half months. I had hoped to blog more but with the country’s response (for good and bad) to the current events, we felt the need to speed up our plans and reprioritize what we were doing. It’s amazing how clear we can become if we’re motivated enough.
Dom and I have always been on the path to being more sustainable and self-reliant. Not in the sense, however, of us being an island unto ourselves and living like hermits somewhere out in the wilderness. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have chosen the area we’re living in as a place to set down roots.
We believe in community and helping where we can. We want to be productive and provide products and services that can help stabilize our local economy. As we’ve watched our nation and the world go through extremes, we’ve seen the impact it has on us personally.
Having taken care of animals and grown our food in the past, it has become crystal clear that we need to get our asses in gear now. I believe that hyperinflation is inching closer and that things are about to get extremely ugly (they are already ugly) with regards to food security. One thing is appallingly clear…we are NOT prepared!
I hate to sound like a cliche, but I thought we would have more time. We knew this was going to happen. Well, not that there would be a lockdown and all our rights being taken over 38,000 deaths in the United States, but we knew there was going to be a great shaking. It’s one of the reasons we began growing food and caring for animals in the first place.
It feels surreal to watch everything unfold in the world. Worse yet, we are feeling somewhat powerless, marginalized, and unable to help those who are suffering in any meaningful way.
Our goals were to start getting animals and have a little extra to sell. To have a few large gardens and have some produce to sell. But in this season of change, I’m setting my sights much larger.
It’ll start with the chickens…
Originally we planned on having about 75 chickens which would include Brahmas and Croad Langshans as our meat birds, and Cream Legars, Welsummers, Marans, Faverolles, and a few other egg layers. But I’ve chosen to increase the number to between 175-200 birds. The area we’ve been preparing for them is large enough to handle such a large number of birds.
I will also start a breeding program for each kind of bird. I’ll be crossing the Brahma and Langshans eventually to create a new table meat bird.
Our birds will be raised on organic feed and have one of the most important jobs on the farm…making compost for us. No one can turn a compost pile faster and with more efficiency than a mob of chickens.
This system of animal production will be intensive and highly productive. Each section will be multifaceted. For example, the chicken composting yard will have fruit trees, meat rabbit housing (yellow rectangle) and under the meat rabbits will be worm bins. Behind the rabbit row will be an enclosed area for berry bushes.
The fenced-in chicken composting yard will also have an enclosed turkey run with more berry bushes on three sides, and a round turkey coop (green circle). Why a round turkey coop? Because turkeys LOVE round things. They are fascinated by round objects and love round spaces. At least that’s what we’ve observed in keeping turkeys in the past.
There will be an area for ducks. We won’t have as many ducks as we do chickens, but we’ll have at least 30 for egg production as well as meat. Even though I really wanted to get Dutch Hookbills for this area, we have so much land that I decided that I’ll have them in another area. In the duck area we’ll be adding Cayugas, Silver Apple Yards, Pekins, and a few geese.
In the market garden, there is an overlap between the duck area and the garden. This overlap is because of where the large trees are. We won’t be removing the trees. Instead, the duck housing will be on the market garden side. There is an old large water trough that was for cattle. It will be turned into their pond. A spigot will be added to it, and the duck poop water will be used to water the market garden.
The market garden…
Currently, we have rows dug. They can be seen in the plot below. We don’t have the greatest water pressure coming from our well, and in order to save water, we decided to completely rework the market garden.
We’ll be creating inground wicking beds. The wicking beds will allow us to drain the duck pond water directly under each garden row. Think of it like bottom watering your plants. Freshwater will be used once a week to topwater, but the duck pond water is the real workhorse, nourishing all the plants and fruit trees that will be planted there.
Around the perimeter of the market garden we’ll be adding tall posts and electric to keep out the deer.
Last year we started building our little chicken composting run in the market garden. It’s the little green rectangle. This is intended to be our Silkie chicken nursery. Silkies are good mothers and will happily hatch out eggs. They can also be bullied by other chickens, so they get their very own area. We won’t have more than 10 Silkies. They’ll also be making compost in their area.
The outdoor kitchen and meat processing area (turquoise square)…
Last year we had an overgrown HUGE patch of wild grapevines. I cleared it out and burned the area so that they wouldn’t grow back. We have so many wild grapes on the property, that it wasn’t a big sacrifice. Now that the patch is gone, we can build our outdoor kitchen. We will harvest our small animals in the outdoor kitchen. It will also serve as the farm kitchen when we start holding events.
I told you we were busy! Haha
As our plans continue to morph, I will be tucking things into each system. Two things that aren’t on the plans are the post-harvest washing station and the greenhouse. The post-harvest station will be located on the north side of the market garden. In the upper right-hand corner above the market garden is where our tents used to be. That will be the location of our greenhouse.
Everything will be in close proximity to each other. This creates fewer steps. At the center of everything is the water supply. Farms should be run efficiently with as few steps as needed. We’ve worked on farms that weren’t planned out very well. Water that would need to be hauled great distances, needing to walk 10 minutes to a field way out in the middle of nowhere to harvest lettuce, only to turn around and walk another 10 minutes in the opposite direction to collect eggs and yet another 20 minutes to go feed pigs. This is extremely time-consuming. Our systems will not be done that way. There’s no need for it.
To the right of the market garden is the entrance to the pasture. We will be keeping dairy sheep and horses there. More on that another day!
Here are some photos of things that were accomplished from the end of January until this week:
Our little teeny tiny bathroom is nearing completion. Pallet walls are an ingenious way to rooms but if they aren’t sealed up with walls and insulation, animals feel free to make themselves at home in our spaces. That is a big fat NOPE! The walls were finished with drywall and an opening for windows was put in. We found the windows under one of the rigs on the property. They were partially buried in the dirt. I cleaned them up, painted, and reglazed them.
The toilet and bathtub were installed, and we got the cutest little antique Italian Florentine chest of drawers to convert into a sink. We need to purchase a wall-mounted faucet and hopefully, in the next few weeks, the sink will be functional.
We still have shelves, a mirror, and a few other things to add, but it is looking great! It feels glorious to take a long hot bath too.
I love watching him work and get creative. I love how he makes our lives so much better every day!
My girl continues to grow into this stunningly beautiful young woman. She turns 13 next month.
Some cedars and pine were taken out of the chicken compost yard. When completely cleared of dead or dying trees (we had both in that area) fruit trees will be added. The straight branches that were still in good condition will be used to build the chicken coop.
Our supply area is filling up fast. The pallets will be used to build a storage shed for all our things that are currently being stored in the roastery. We have many projects going on all at once. Behind the pallets are a LOT of glass panels. Those are for the greenhouse.
This is the next section of the chicken yard that needs to be cleared. This whole area is one large tree that fell but never died. It is connected at the root by about two feet of tree. It must have fallen at least 5 years ago but refused to die. This is the area where the large chicken coop will go.
We have two entrances to our property. One is on Mineral Creek seen in the photo above, and the other is on a back road when the creek is flowing.
This year we had so much rain that we couldn’t get across. The creek cuts into the banks creating a steep drop off. We need to have heavy equipment come in to fix this each year. What we really need is a bridge!
Once the water subsides the creek bed is a hot mess! We had it leveled on Friday and we can finally cross again.
Much better! There’s only a small amount of water flowing now, and within the next few months, it should be dried up completely until next winter.
The other project I’m currently working on is updating and changing our website. Firelight Farm will still have the blog, but it will be a magazine-style layout and include lots of different sections. Instead of having one blog where I write everything, there will be categories like animal shelters, animal husbandry, growing a garden, building structures, how to lacto-ferment, and more. We want our website to be more informative. I also want to start producing videos again. We started to a few years back, but when we sold our last farm, there was no reason to continue making videos.
My aim is to have the new site launched by the end of May. It’s pretty exciting and it’s all coming together.
January has been a jam-packed and an incredibly busy month for our coffee company. Last weekend we picked up the supplies we need to finish the roastery. I can’t believe I just said that! We’re moving forward and making headway. It feels great.
Our roastery insulation for the pallet walls will be finished using air-crete, drywall, and some good washable paint.
The air-crete was important to me because of its insulative value as well as being fireproof. We live in a wilderness area and I would never want to be the source of a major fire outbreak with our coffee roaster.
Originally we had planned on using straw light clay for the insulation and then plaster the interior with earthen and lime plaster, but when we found air-crete, we knew that would be less energy and time intensive.
It takes a few weeks to get everything, but it was ordered and should be here by the third week in February.
Dom and I (and some help) will be working on the roastery in February and March.
The large open bay door area will be framed out for large double glass doors that we’ve been carting around with us since we lived in West Virginia. The doors were salvaged from Snowshoe Ski Resort where Dom used to work. They are steel, 8-foot high matching exterior doors.
He has been wanting to use these doors for over three years now. The entrance door is a project I’ll be working on in mid-February. I’m pretty excited about it!
Below is a photo of the door at the entrance of the rig. I will be using that door for the entrance to the roastery. The area outlined in red at the center of the door will be filled with a thin layer of roasted coffee beans. Basically inlaying the door with beans and then pouring epoxy on top to keep the coffee beans protected. I haven’t decided if the wood on the door will be stained or left weathered. It will all depend on how the coffee beans look contrasted in the door.
There are a lot of things that need to be shifted around to make working on the roastery possible. We cleaned the roastery out during the summer, removing things that were being stored in there but couldn’t be used. Then we had major stormy weather in October and our storage tent that had all our things began to leak with water so Dom moved everything into the roastery.
Our on-demand tankless hot water heater busted about a month ago, and we’ve been without hot water ever since. We have a larger on-demand tankless water heater to install, but we decided to wait until after we finished our bathroom to install it. I was frantically searching for a proper bathtub and it was elusive for a while. It’s not that there were no tubs around for sale, it’s just that Dom had a particular need for a claw ball tub and not a regular bathtub. Tubs tend to be on the shallow and short side, and because he’s tall, he can’t enjoy a bath unless it’s a claw ball tub. We had one when we lived in Vermont, and it was the only one he truly enjoyed.
So I was looking and looking, and finally, I found one that didn’t break the bank AND the person was willing to accept payment and hold onto it until we could come and get it. Craigslist and FB Marketplace are filled with people who flake out and don’t end up coming to get things, and I needed to assure the people with the tub and our stove that we will come when we say we would.
That has worked out well for us because of our busy schedule and the fact that we only have one vehicle. I could do more and free Dom up if I had my own SUV. Instead, we have to make appointments to pick things up on the weekends when he’s not working which takes away time to work on our home projects. It’s a catch 22, and so frustrating!
Anyway, the bathroom was gutted and the floor was sanded. Yesterday the first of three coats of urethane went on the bathroom floor. Sunday we’re shooting to have the windows and drywall installed. I’m hoping that we’ll have a functional bathroom in a few weeks.
Once the bathroom is finished, the air-crete will be here and the pallet walls and the ceiling in the bathroom will be filled. However, before we can work on gutting the rig, we need to build a storage shed to put all our things. They are being stored in the roastery and we can’t work on the roastery to finish it until all the stuff is out.
When the shed is completed, the next project will be gutting the main part of the rig. The kitchen and RV bathroom will be removed. The new bathroom is a pallet addition off the back of the RV. Our daughter Hannah has converted her own small city bus into her own tiny home, and the RV shower, stove, and sinks will go to her so she can finish her tiny home.
It’s all a big juggling act. We’re positioned finally to start all the work. There were things we needed to purchase new, but the majority of our supplies are salvaged from old buildings, donated from great neighbors, or saved from demolition. It’s been sitting in piles and it is starting to look like a salvage yard, not a place we live.
I started looking for a coffee roaster that can roast more than 12 pounds per hour so that we could scale up production. I found one that will roast 45 pounds per hour and he sold it to us so inexpensively that I couldn’t say no! It will be our in-between roaster that will allow us to roast a larger amount while we’re building our hearth wood-fired coffee roaster.
Our hearth roaster will be a 15-pound roaster that is the prototype for a 30-pound roaster which would produce about 90 pounds of coffee per hour. The 30-pound hearth roaster will go into the new facility that we’re hoping to build in the next five years. The new facility will have not only the large hearth coffee roaster, but also a bottling line and large commercial kitchen for making cold brew.
We’ll be building a GeoBarn here and we’re bursting at the seams thinking about it! GeoBarns are amazing. When we lived in Vermont, Dom worked as a subcontractor building these barns from the ground up, for both residential and commercial applications. When we were trying to figure out what kind of building we wanted for our main facility, he said he wanted a GeoBarn and nothing else would do! That’s how much he loves these barns. Not just that, but everyone at GeoBarns is amazing, caring, and incredible humans. From inception to execution, the elegant and timelessness of a GeoBarn speaks for itself.
Our days seem to fly by! We’ve accomplished a lot since we moved here in April 2019. Our goal is to have the rig and the roastery completed by our one year anniversary of moving here. I think we might be on track to make that happen.
I’ve always been intrigued by living fences and using trees and hedges to create a barrier that animals would be hardpressed to make it through. In the past, farmers often used plants that had thorns to keep livestock in or out of different areas, as well as keeping some wildlife at bay.
We have 14 acres here. When we lived in Los Lunas, we only had about 1 1/2 acres. I find that one acre is far more manageable than 14. Even five acres is a bit daunting to me. Not because of the size of the land, but because of how I plant and grow things. I take small spaces and pack them full of different types of plants, both edible and ornamental. If I am planning a 60’x60′ garden, I can pretty much guarantee you there will be more than 500 different species living and thriving in that space.
Our land has many steep hills that are more like a mountain. There are areas that go straight up to Mineral Creek (a seasonal creek). We’ll be getting a surveyor to give us the official boundaries of our land so we can properly plant our living fence.
I’ll most likely be using black locust to create the living fences as well as finding an area to grow them to harvest wood via coppicing. I chose the black locust because I can get over 25,000 seeds (about a pound) for under $10.00. I know I’ll need more than that, but it’s a good start.
This tree, which has often been given a bad name for its opportunistic rapid growth and robust thorns, is said to be native originally to the Appalachian Mountain range, though it has become naturalized throughout the United States, southern Canada, and even parts of Europe and Asia. The species is incredibly adaptive, growing in many elevations, microclimates, and soil types.
While some have named it an “invasive” tree given its rapid growth and willingness to spread by seed and root suckering, others see these characteristics as advantageous, if only populations are properly managed to harness these qualities. Make no mistake, locust is not a tree to plant and walk away from. It is best when incorporated into managed activities on the farm, of which there are a remarkable array of options and benefits, including:
Because it fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere, the trees grow incredibly fast (3 – 4 feet in a season) and can quickly become windbreaks, shelterbelts, and shade and shelter for animals in silvopasture grazing systems.
The nutritional value of the leaves is similar to alfalfa, making it a valuable feed for ruminant livestock. Some sources claim excessive consumption can lead to toxicity, but many farmers have found their animals naturally limit their intake. (horses excepted)
The tree has been used to support nutrition in other crops, from grains to other trees. Research has shown increases in nitrogen in barley grain crops interplanted with locust, and black walnuts interplanted with locust as “nurse” trees were shown to rapidly increase their growth.
The flowers are important sources of food for honeybees. In Hungary, Black Locust is the basis of commercial honey production.
The high-density wood is the most rot-resistant wood we can grow in our climate, making it an ideal material for fenceposts, hope poles, outdoor furniture, decks, and other projects that require weatherproof materials.
It’s BTU rating is among the highest, making it an excellent firewood in both heat value and coaling ability. At our last house, we actually ruined a woodstove by burning too much locust, which gets extremely hot.
If anything, Black locust is almost too good at what it does. All these attributes have resulted in extraordinarily high demand; both sellers of locust poles and lumber, as well as those in the nursery trade at the meeting, reported not even coming close to meeting the demand for their products. There is a lot of room in the market for more farmers to grow, harvest, and sell black locust products in many parts of the region.
We plan on using not only black locust but also honey locust, Siberian pea shrub, hawthorn, willow, dogwood, sea buckthorn, more sycamores, cottonwood, poplars, aspen, and I’m even thinking of trying my hand at sugar maple. I’m confident we could grow sugar maple here. Our day time temperatures are above 32 degrees and our evening temps fall below freezing most of the time.
It would be an interesting experiment, that’s for sure!
Anyway, knowing that black locust is a pretty rugged pioneer tree, I chose it to be our gatekeepers.
In the future, we plan on also terracing our steep mountain-like hills and planting berries. To do so, we need our living fences in place and doing their job at keeping out bears, deer, and other wildlife that would be hellbent on eating the buffet of delicious goodies we’ll be growing. Trying to fence the perimeter of our property with deer fencing is cost-prohibitive. But two pounds of black locust seeds planted and a few years growth will yield not only the fence we need for almost free, but will also provide us with wood, the bees with food, and a prolific source of new seeds which we can sell in our upcoming online store for Firelight Farm.
It’s coming. We’ve been working on what we’ll be selling in our store as well as on Etsy. I’ve been working on our branding for the last few months and I can’t wait to launch! It won’t be until the end of the summer, however. I have way too many things on my plate right now.
Between scaling up our coffee company, and repairing the rig we’re living in, I’ll go nuts trying to also take on our farm’s products.
This weekend we’ll be ordering the black locust tree seeds, ornamental grass seed for the duck yard, and asparagus crowns. The crowns will go in the ground way before we ever plant the black locust.
It’s an exciting time for me. I only planted a few things last year and spun my wheels doing so. We had chickens and roosters run amuck, big dogs to contend with (they come rambling through the property often with their dog gangs), deer and bear browsing our oaks and juniper berries, skunks invading our personal space, and coati chasing away feral cats and kittens.
But still, it’s amazing to start planning how everything will work together and then taking action and watching things take on a life of their own.
Dom and I have always believed in trying to reduce our use of plastic and things that end up in a landfill. But belief and actions aren’t mutually exclusive. After not really paying attention to how much waste we personally produce, I started looking for ideas of how to transition to a life with less plastic. I knew for sure what I was going to do for my coffee company which took a few weeks to figure out the steps I needed to take to transition. It happened towards the end of the holiday season when we had over 50 orders a day going out. Every time I opened a new tin tie coffee bag that is lined in plastic, or put a label on the front and back of the coffee bag, and then throwing out the label backing, I thought about it.
I thought about how I was missing out on building soil for our farm. None of those label backs can be used. They’re all plastic bound to paper.
I devised a plan for transitioning, and the shipments of new plastic free, compostable packaging have already arrived.
I’ve even started reorganizing and making changes in how I set up my workflow, the materials I’ll be using while working and how I’ll use any leftover materials.
That was fairly easy.
Then I discovered a lifestyle movement called Zero Waste.
I think it broke my brain. I agree with a lot that this lifestyle is hoping to achieve, but I’m unsure if we’ll ever be a zero waste farm and family.
Our biggest concern is Simmi. She has severe life-threatening food allergies to peanuts, most tree nuts, dairy (cow, sheep, and goat), eggs (duck and chicken), soy, and wheat. Simmi was diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies when she was only nine months old. We cannot shop for bulk items from a bin…ever. Everything we purchase for her must be sealed.
Here’s the scenario:
We’re at Sprouts or Whole Foods in the bulk food section. About an hour before we get to the store, someone who was casually walking around the store eating nuts (you’ll see them if you look) decides to get foods from the bulk section. Without first washing their hands which have nut oils and salts from eating, they get a bag and start putting basmati rice into the bag. Then the scooper slips out of their hands, and they pick it up NOT from the handle but from the scoop end and put it back into the bin. We use it next, and the tiny particles and oil residue still on the scooper contaminates rice we cook for her. We thought everything was okay until she goes into anaphylaxis and we need to administer epinephrine.
Scenario two:
The bins are being refilled by the clerk who first decides to fill the soy flour, peanut bin, nuts, granola bins, and then without changing his/her gloves, opens the rice and pours it into the bin. With contaminated gloves, they put their hands into the rice to help it along into the bin. The air is still filled with particulates from the other products that went in, and he just contaminated the rice as well.
These are things that happen every day.
When we lived in Vermont, our favorite place to go was the co-op in the town we lived in. One day Simmi started sneezing and couldn’t stop. We were walking past the backroom where they happened to be filling smaller bags with something she was allergic to. It was in the air and she was breathing it in. We had to leave the store immediately. Then it happened in another store we went to. This time she broke out in hives, had a hard time breathing and we needed to leave. We were at an indoor farmer’s market and they were making fresh pies from scratch.
So we cannot under any circumstances use bulk bins for Simmi. I’m a Celiac, so bulk bins are out of the question for me too.
I’ve started to pick apart what we purchase each week. The first item up is Simmi’s pasta. Because her diet is already restricted, I’m not up for removing pasta just because it is packaged in plastic. However, I have found a recipe for making her pasta and a manual pasta machine to cut it into strips.
We can make her pasta and forego the cost of ready-made pasta. This would be a good solution for us, and it would be something she can learn to make for herself.
The cost of bulk flours for her is way cheaper than buying one or two pounds at a time. Bulk flour can be put into a large container and save on garbage.
We can do the same with bulk rice.
I don’t think there will ever be a time when we could consider ourselves a zero waste household, but we can greatly reduce how we purchase products and be mindful of the garbage being produced while making sensible choices.
I also see that people in zero waste are carting their glass jars and cotton bags to the stores in order to not use plastic bags or plastic containers. While this is admirable, I think it is a little bit too much with all the separate cotton bags for produce. Tomatoes won’t mind being intermingled with the other softer veggies, and I don’t think celery and carrots would have a problem being lumped together either. After all, they are often mates when put into a hardy stew.
These are just a few of the things that feel unnecessarily cumbersome. I understand putting bread into a cotton bag, but most things won’t mind being next to each other for a few hours between shopping and home.
The next thing I have a hard time wrapping my head around is all the justifications. We live in this weird world of absolute extremes. I’ve seen it with homesteaders, where one will bicker with another if they choose to work outside the home. Everyone seems to have rules about the proper way of living a lifestyle.
Zero Waste seems to have the same issues. One person will tell someone else they’re doing it wrong. If you’re into eating a keto diet, one will tell you that you can’t eat this or that and be truly keto.
I’ve seen it with those who live off-off grid too. That’s where you choose to live without generating any electricity or regular propane and fuels and basically live in a pre-industrial lifestyle. Then someone will come along and point a finger at the off-off grid person and claim they can’t use a computer.
It’s really sad.
I don’t want that for our family. We don’t fit the mold of an environmental family. I don’t do things to “save the planet.” I do things because I care about the planet, especially how it impacts my family and my community. My desire to be plastic free has to do with the love I have for my community as well as my land. I’m not trying to change other people or how they choose to live.
My desire to farm organically doesn’t lead me to condemn or shame those who don’t.
My need to have compostable coffee packaging is very selfish. It is if we want to call a spade a spade! I want to be able to create soil for our farm. I can’t do it with what I’m using now. If it doesn’t have a past life purpose, I don’t want it, nor do I want others to be burdened with not knowing what to do with the packaging either. I want to put empowering tools into my consumer’s hands that allow them to recycle the packaging or even compost it. If they don’t, it’s okay, but at least I empowered them to make a new choice.
Some people will try and reuse plastic in order to save it from a landfill. I can’t do that either. I HATE seeing plastic containers around. I even despise plastic 5-gallon buckets, but I’ll use them until something better comes along for storing things. I don’t find it attractive to use old Folgers plastic containers to store things either.
But that’s me. Not you. And just because I feel that way about plastic doesn’t mean I would condemn or shame you for using it the way you want.
We’re going to do our best moving forward to be accountable for the waste we produce. That’s about where it ends. I’m not planning on making others accountable for their waste products. We all need to follow our own convictions.
Guess what is going into the landfill that we can’t avoid? The rig we are living in right now. At some point, we will be taking it apart, and it will be put into a dumpster and hauled off along with all the things that couldn’t be recycled.
However, by 2022, our hope is that we no longer will need to bring anything to the dump. At least, that’s the plan.
Are you living a zero waste lifestyle or looking to move in that direction? What are some of the changes you made to keep yourself accountable?
Plastic has become the foundation of our modern life. From simple things like straws and food containers to life-saving devices and commercial packaging, it is here to stay. You would be hardpressed today to find real clothing. Most clothes today are made from plastic or a combination of a poly-cotton blend. People cook with it, store things in it, and find it difficult to live without.
We are no different from everyone else. Sometimes I think we’re worse because we know better! By ‘we’ I mean Dom and me. Back in 2011, we started the process of getting rid of plastic products from our home. Toys, storage and food containers, even clothes. We purchased glass jars and bowls for storing food and made the effort to shop for only cotton, wool, silk and natural fibers for our clothes.
Then we sold our house and moved 10 times over the course of 4 years. When our lives were constantly in flux, it made it difficult to make being plastic-free a priority.
Always in the back of my mind is that gnawing feeling of guilt that we have not kept our commitment to being plastic-free.
Dom and I recommitted to phasing out plastic as much as possible starting in 2020. I was very grieved by the lack of reusable materials I was creating for our coffee company, especially during the holiday rush. Everything from packing peanuts from companies shipping me supplies to my own use of lots of plastic products that are cheap and readily available has made me pause and decide to be accountable for my part in our plastic problem.
This year we’ll be transitioning our coffee company to more sustainable and compostable materials used in the creation and distribution of our products. From coffee bags with tin ties to glassine inner bags and paper bag outer packaging that is still tied with twine. I was embossing every bag I put coffee in which created a very unique packaging with texture and layers. I will be keeping the texture, just not with my own embossing. You see, the embossing powders I use are plastic, which gets melted onto each bag I emboss. I’ve embossed a few thousand bags in the last year and not a single one of them could be taken from the kitchen and put into a compost pile and turned into soil.
I know that not everyone composts. But we do. I don’t want to burden the garbage dump with our garbage because I couldn’t figure out a more clever way to have sustainable packaging. While not everyone composts and farms or gardens, many use recycling. Unfortunately in our rural county, we don’t have a recycling program. Garbage is either sent to the dump or it’s burned. We’ve done both. We’ve also separated plastic, glass, metal and brought it to Silver City where it could be recycled, however, Silver City no longer recycles glass (from what I was told) and we would need to drive our glass recyclables all the way to Las Cruces to dispose of them. I’m sorry, but there is nothing sustainable about spending over $50 in gas to take our glass containers to a place three hours away from us just to get rid of glass.
Sometimes things feel insane to my brain.
I’ve been looking at alternatives for our coffee company, as well as future farm products and things for our personal use. We don’t see how we can be 100% plastic free and maybe its because I’ve been in plastic for so long that I see no way out completely.
As an example, write now as I write this sentence, I’m sitting on a chair that has a plastic foam cushion. My old raggedy gray sweater is acrylic (plastic) and not wool, the keyboard I tap my fingers on…plastic. The modem, plastic. The paint that coats my desk holding my computer? Plastic. The little area rug under me? Plastic. My printers, mostly plastic.
There are so many things that we have that are made from this ubiquitous material. Cutting down and replacing where possible is the only solution we see as being responsible.
So what do we do with the things we are phasing out? If it’s a product that still has years of use, we’ll give it to those who need/want it. If its something that can no longer be used, we’ll recycle it. And that’s where it ends. I don’t want to a part of this problem any longer.
Animals are dying, people are dying. They don’t realize how many chemicals are in the plastic and they’re cooking or warming up food in it. And let’s not get started with the fact that all these products are petroleum-based and polluting our planet while they are being manufactured. Polluting the earth while the petroleum is being extracted.
Here are some of the things we’re looking to incorporate into our lives from now on. We’re not buying everything all at once, but instead, budget it in over the course of a few years. Slow and simple works best for us.
We regularly use Ball jars for storing foods, and we also have flip-top jars for storage, but we’ll be migrating over to jars with a wood top. Mostly because I love the way they look. We would put gluten-free pasta, rice, dried and other non-perishables in them.
We’ll be transitioning away from Ball jars for canning to Weck jars. One of the problems with regular mason or ball jars is that you need new jar lids each time you can something and the lining of the jar has a plastic coating on it. While I’m not condemning those who can using Ball, Kerr, or Mason jars, I’m just saying that we don’t want to use them for our family, or for future farm products that we will be offering. The lids on Weck jars are glass and do not contain any type of poly coating. This summer I canned up peach preserves and thought of giving them as gifts this Christmas to our family, but I changed my mind and decided to wait until after we own Weck jars to give food as gifts for the holiday season.
Plus, I love the way they look. 🙂
Another step we’ll be making to reduce waste is to purchase in bulk or to take our containers to the co-op to fill our jars with what we need. I wouldn’t be bringing jars, but instead cotton or linen sacks so that the clerk can tare the sack before weighing. This can be done with most dried goods. We can also utilize the store’s meat department to have our meat wrapped with paper instead of plastic-lined butcher paper.
For clothing and shoes, I think this is the most difficult for us. Real clothing is expensive. And that’s the rub for us. Organic cotton, 100% wool, real silk, flax linen…all very costly. Especially when you have a man that can wear out a pair of pants in a matter of just a few weeks. He uses everything to its bitter end! Holes in the knees in just under a month, worn thin because he works harder than any man I know.
A daughter who is growing faster than I care to admit! She’s on the fast track to being as tall as Dom in the next few years. She’s tall with these supermodel legs that just won’t stop growing! Her feet? She’s already wearing my size shoes and she hasn’t turned 13 yet. It’s difficult finding clothes that she will wear because she only likes POLYESTER clothing. Yes, that wasn’t a typo. This kid loves all the fuzzy poly clothes. I’ve purchased her merino wool sweaters in the past, and she even thinks those are itchy. I gulp on the thought of buying her leather $75 shoes that she will outgrow in a matter of two months. And that’s just shoes! Boots and play shoes she’s pretty rough on as well.
Simmi sleeps with about 10 blankets. That is not an exaggeration. From greatest to least, every time she gets a new blanket, she adds it to her collection. She even sleeps with all of them in the summer. There is only one fully cotton blanket in the bunch, and that is the quilt I made for her back in 2013.
She’s also not fond of my quilt, although she’s begging for me to make her a new one. When I do, it will be of organic cotton with a real wool batting. I have enough raw wool to last a few years. A friend of ours calls us to pick up the wool when she has her sheep sheared each year. So far I’ve collected about 5 large bags full of wool, just waiting to be processed.
I’m not sure how to get Simmi onboard with our transition. I’ll be purchasing new merino wool blankets next month, and my hope is that she’ll see how much better it is than the acrylic blankets she’s hoarding right now. My goal is to have her (and us) outfitted for the fall and winter of 2020 with organic cotton sheets, merino wool blanket, and a goose down blanket. I’ll also be making pillows for us to sleep on with the wool we have.
I’m taking it slow with Simmi. She’s been through a lot in the last four years and only now has started to understand that we are finally home. No more moving! No more needing to worry about if I am going to get sick again, or watching me suffer losing my hair and not being able to breathe. It’s a lot for a little kid to go through. My older children went through it too.
Personal products such as toothbrushes can easily be replaced with a bamboo toothbrush with natural bristles.
There are so many personal care products we can get relatively inexpensive instead of using plastic products. We’ll get there, and my hope is that by this time next year our family will be a little more plastic-free. It’s a great goal for our lives.
Dom and I haven’t sat down to officially write down our goals and intentions for the new year, but as usual, they are pretty big and exciting. First, I’d love to recap 2019 and touch on our future plans because it was a pretty incredible year for us.
Our initial plans prior to moving here included others who are no longer living on the land. They’ve moved on to new and exciting adventures. As things shifted, for some strange reason, my thinking did not. I still went about working on the land as though the others were still present. It took a good six months for me to plan out how the land would best function with others also living here, which mainly had to do with our planned gardens.
Since everyone has moved on, we’ve finally changed the direction of our plans for farming and living.
Our Camp:
Our camping came to an end at the beginning of November. We were hit with a cold snap that went right through Dom and he was unable to handle the cold during the evening. Simmi and I were fine, but since he was feeling it in his bones, we made the transition from our tents to the rig where we have woodstoves to keep warm. We’ve been updating the rig for us to live in since we had only planned on the rig being used for Buffalo Mountain.
It was a good thing that Dom changed his mind about tent living because the tents were old when we purchased them and sun-worn in our high desert climate. About two weeks after we moved into the rig, we had a few very strong storms that ripped the tents to shreds. We had already moved all our things out of the tents, and if we had stayed the course it could have been disastrous.
I think often to what could have happened if we installed our woodstoves and decided to stay put. The tents ripped wide open in the middle of the night. All our belongings would have been ruined, including our mattresses. It would have been a financial nightmare.
Buffalo Mountain Coffee:
Our coffee company has been going through quite a bit of growing pains and I have felt the squeeze. Since we moved into the rig, we needed to move everything for Buffalo Mountain to another section of the rig, separate from our living space. Doing this reduced greatly the amount of room I had to work with. I had three areas originally for work which included an office, an art studio, and the coffee room, but Simmi will be moving into my office, Dom and I are in my art studio, and all our equipment and inventory is in one small space.
In the coffee room (as I call it) I have to work in stages, which really drags out the hours I work. We’ve made it as efficient as possible, however, my workflow suffers quite a bit. The roastery is our top priority but it needs to be balanced with what we need for our family.
From November up to me writing this blog post, we had so many orders come in for the holiday season that there were many nights I never even went to sleep. Dom works in construction and we’re not at a place financially yet where he can work full time at Buffalo Mountain, so I designed the space to be only used by me, and made it impossible for us to hire outside help for the season. This set great limitations on what he could do to help get orders out the door. Buffalo Mountain was severely short-staffed! The fact that we still only have one car adds insult to injury because it would mean that after being up all night filling orders, I had to take him to work each day.
I was exhausted! I still am. However, financially we were able to move Buffalo Mountain forward significantly. I don’t take an income from our company yet because everything is always reinvested back to the company to move us forward. We bootstrapped our coffee company so we wouldn’t have a huge debt load or burden. While it is difficult at times bootstrapping, I’m glad we chose to do it that way.
We have the supplies necessary to finish the roastery and some of the other projects we’re working on. There are some very wonderful people in our community who have donated lumber, windows, and other materials and we will have everything we need to get our plans accomplished in the new year. We chose to use recycled materials because it helps others in the community to get rid of what they don’t need, and it helps us to utilize actual money on things we can’t get recycled, like inventory, supplies, and assets vital to Buffalo Mountain.
In the wake of the holiday rush, I was flabbergasted by the amount of waste that is produced by Buffalo Mountain. There is very little about our company that is environmentally friendly, and that is a problem for us. In building our company, I didn’t really consider using products that were environmentally friendly because they were cost-prohibitive. However, with the mountain of waste products in the form of label backing, plastic tape, and other things that can’t be composted here on the farm, we’ve decided to change our packaging moving forward.
We’ll be phasing out what we use now, by using it up and slowly transitioning to an environmentally friendly packaging. We won’t be using sticky labels any more. I have found a company that sells labels that can be compostable, but they are still quite cost-prohibitive, and I don’t want to pass that cost onto our customers.
2020 is looking amazing for Buffalo Mountain. In 2019 we made three times the amount we did in 2018. It’s great to watch the growth, year over year.
Housing:
As I mentioned, we are currently living in the rig. For those who don’t know what the rig is, it’s an RV with four additions built onto it prior to us buying the land. It was used mainly for Buffalo Mountain before we moved in. Now that we’re in the rig, we’ve turned our attention to making it more liveable for us over the next year. We want our space to be comfortable, but not too comfortable that we don’t move forward with our house plans.
The addition/rooms put onto the rig were built with pallets. They didn’t have insulation so insulation was added to the office space and where we sleep.
There were places in the rig where wild animals could get in, and we had a very interesting thing happen one night about three weeks ago.
Simmi came into our room saying there was a skunk in the rig in the middle of the night. I didn’t believe her because it just sounded absurd to my sleeping brain. But it was true. It was a baby skunk not more than about 5 inches from nose to tail.
He came up under the rig and found a small hole to climb into. Then he made his way down to our room and got snapped in a trap we had set for mice. He started jumping and trying to free himself and started spraying his little stinky scent everywhere. Dom was able to get him out of the house and by the time he got him outside, the little guy died. Dom buried him in a burlap sack out in our ash pit.
I had a reaction to the smell of that tiny little cutie pie. He didn’t have a full skunk smell, just the smell of onions and garlic. Within about an hour, I passed out for six hours. My body couldn’t handle his scent.
Not everyone was as repelled as I was by his scent…his mother found his scent and tried to dig him up. He was already dead, but she refused to leave the sack. She stayed on the ash pile for three days and died. It was quite heartbreaking. Simmi cried, I was upset, and Dom was disturbed. We have never witnessed such dedication as that of a mother skunk. We brought her food and tried to help, but if we got close to her she would have sprayed us.
Dom found any holes where an animal could climb into the rig and closed them up.
The mama skunk was such a beautiful little creature. I think she was still young herself because she hadn’t reached the full size of a mature skunk.
Anyway, sealing up any small holes in the rig will prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
Rehabbing the rig is going slow, but soon we’ll pick up the pace. For the last six weeks, it has been nonstop work for me with Buffalo Mountain as well as homeschooling Simmi. Not an easy task to do both fulltime. But I made it work!
Our lumber keeps arriving from neighbors and people in our county, and we’re confident we have what we need to now gut the main part of the rig and redo it.
The kitchen will be refinished. All the cabinets and the RV bathroom will be removed and in its place, we’ll have bottom and top open shelves.
We have a full-sized Kohler sink and a white Chambers Stove to install. The stove we will be picking up the end of January when things settle down with Buffalo Mountain. Orders are still coming, so it’s difficult to get away for the day.
I’m so excited about getting this stove. I’ve known about Chambers Stoves for a long time, just didn’t think we’d ever have the money to afford one…especially one that has the pots and pans that go with it! I’m geeking out just thinking about it.
The Chambers Stove we’ll be installing is a model A from the year 1936-1939. It has all the bells and whistles of a classic Chambers Stove, AND the backsplash folds down to create more counter space when not in use. That comes in handy when you’re in close quarters on the rig. We also needed something that was thin enough to fit through the RV door, and the Chambers is just a little slimmer than the RV door opening.
It took a long time to find this model. When I found the seller, we struck up not only a conversation about coming to buy it, but became friends and may even partner on future projects between our coffee company and her catering company. The above photos are not of our stove, but ones I grabbed off the internet. Ours needs a bit of work to clean her up and shine again, but they can be restored beautifully. I’m so excited!
We currently are using the RV stove and oven that was in the rig. While I LOVE cooking on it, it just doesn’t provide the space we need to roast things. It has served its purpose so far, but if we plan on living in here for the next year or so, we need the space to be as accommodating as possible. I know me, and if things don’t start to flow the way we need them to as a family, depression and apathy will set in and Dom and I will start feeling sorry for ourselves. Haha That is NOT a pretty sight!
We’ve learned that when our surroundings aren’t what we need them to be, we become complacent, tired, and even depressed. It happened to us early on in our marriage when we would have to move into a new place that wasn’t optimal for us. Over the years, we’ve learned that we need to make something home before we start feeling homesick. It sounds like an oxymoron, but truly, homesick isn’t just for those who miss being home after being away. It’s also being sick mentally and physically while living in your home.
Neither of us wants to be homesick. No thanks!
As soon as we get our rig completely rehabbed (I’ll do a blog post about it), we’ll turn our attention to the roastery. After the roastery is finished, we’ll turn our attention to working in phases on our new house. We had planned on building a cabin, but since we moved into the rig, we won’t need to build a cabin until we’re ready to get rid of the rig. The new cabin will be designed as a guest cabin and we’ll stay in that after the rig is removed and until our house is built.
A few ideas I’ve grabbed from pinterest for inspiration in how we’ll redesign the main part of the rig. We don’t have a lot of height/headroom so we wouldn’t have as many upper shelves, but painting everything white and opening up the space will help it become more functional for us.
I’m debating whether to use our live edge shelving for the rig. I love the look, but I want to use what we have for our future permanent kitchen space. I’m on the fence about. Nothing is set in stone though.
I love the open shelves and open bottom shelf design. We have what we need to do a new floor as well as all the countertops and shelves.
Between the countertop and the first shelf, I’ve chosen long subway tiles that are a bit wonky. I love the texture and movement in them. They’re a bit expensive, but because the area we’ll be using them is small, we’re willing to invest in my sanity and create a backsplash that will make me smile every day. Investing in my sanity is a real thing, by the way!
We’re unsure of the style we’ll use for shelf brackets. I love the black angle iron but it’s costly. However, because they can be removed when we’re ready to remove the rig, I may want to invest in these, knowing they would be put into our final kitchen.
We purchased a full year of workshops and tutorials for building a cob home as a Christmas gift for each other. Our goal is to build our cob home where the rig currently is. Because of my issues with electricity, this house will not have any electricity or plumbing. The plumbing part has to do with my severe allergy to molds. Our main bathroom will be located on the exterior of the house inside an attached greenhouse. Technically it will be in the house, but the greenhouse makes the bathroom separate. Water damaged buildings create mold that is difficult to get rid of. Having any running water inside a house is inviting disaster to my health.
Our cob house will have bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, an apothecary, and a music room, but the kitchen will be separate and completely outdoors, connected by a porch/overhang. This will not be a ragtag kitchen. Instead, it will be designed with rustic elegance and equipped to handle the winter weather. I’ll share more on that as we finish up our final designs.
Farm Infrastructure:
We’re redesigning the infrastructure. My plans had to be scrapped when Dom wanted to build a cob home. He wants to play in the mud and sculpt our house. Who am I to deny him such a winsome desire? Building a cob house will require a huge amount of earth for not only the walls but also the plasterwork. I created a plan (it took a long time to design) for our potager garden which is a 60’x60′ patch of earth located right next to the market garden. It was the area the horses were in when we first moved here.
Well, my need for having a pond and Dom’s need to play with mud caused me to change my mind about the location of the potager. We’ll be digging out that area to make cob and the hole it creates will make our pond/living swimming pool.
A living swimming pool is a deep pond with a buffer zone where aquaculture is cultivated. No chemicals are used and the buffer zone filled with plants cleans the water. I’ve seen them done complex as well as simple. We’re going for simple.
I want this pond to be passive with only a solar aerator to keep the water moving. I have seen them done very similar to a pool, where a bog is created and water is pumped from the bottom of the pond to the bog where it flows down back into the pond, but it would drive me up a wall to hear the pump going night and day. It would also create an unpleasant electrical field that I would start avoiding since electrical fields cause hives and heart palpitations in me. I want a system that can clean the water passively while creating habitat and a new microclimate for the area.
Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it would be located about 60+ feet from our house. A pond in front of the house? Yes, please! One that Simmi and our family and friends can swim in? Hell yeah.
We haven’t decided on the shape of the pond yet. We just know we want to start digging it in the next year.
By the way, none of these things will be done quickly. But they will be done! My timeline doesn’t work according to everyone else’s beliefs of when a project should start and finish. We have a lot going on in our lives, and I won’t allow myself or Dom to rush through things just to check them off of some list. We want these things and we are willing to wait in order to do them properly and without killing ourselves in the process.
There are so many things that need to happen before we can even start digging a pond. The pond is a part of the new farm infrastructure.
We have the materials we need to start building our duck yards. We’ll be building fencing, a mini pond with its own bog, and a few duck houses. There will be two areas of the duck yard. On one side, there will be housing, food, and water. On the other side, their pond will be finished. The pond is an old water trough from cows that used to graze on the land a long time ago. It’s hooked up to the well. The two areas are separated because anyone who has ducks knows, these little cute quirky birds love to party all night and spend lots of time mating.
They will be trained to stay in the area where there is food, water, and housing at night, and at mid-morning be allowed access to their pond area. Ducks aren’t like chickens where they go into a coop and lay eggs. No, they walk along and boop! one falls out. From my experience, they also lay at night or very early morning. If they are given access to a large piece of land every morning would become an easter egg hunt. Some ducks will try to hide their eggs, and keeping ducks in a smaller area makes it easier to find them.
Galeno is standing in the water trough in the photo on the right. Half of the trough will be made into a bog, the rest of it will be water. It’ll be lined with a rubber membrane and then rocks will be added. We’ll also have a spigot attached so that we can take the duck poop water and use it on plants that aren’t root vegetables. Plants love duck poop water and it won’t burn them.
In the background, you can see the area that will be turned into a living swimming pond. The ducks will not have access to the pond and will only be in their duck yard. They would put too much stress on the pond.
We’ll be finishing our chicken composting run as well. We’re nearly there, but it came to a screeching halt when we kept putting all our attention on things that kept redirecting us personally. I’ll leave it at that because we had to deal with some pretty disturbing things in 2019.
We won’t be getting animals until after our trip to California. We are planning to take a trip sometime between March and June. We thought we’d go for our 16 year anniversary, but then thought it would be nice to go a little later and celebrate Simmi’s 13th birthday. She’s never been to the pacific ocean, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World or any other place. Her life-threatening food allergies always kept us from traveling by plane. But since we live only about 14 hours from California, we can drive there. We want to do so before we get animals because we don’t want to worry about feeding schedules and things like that.
It will be our first trip ever going on a vacation. It will most likely be the only one we ever take. I don’t like traveling to different places. It stresses me out. I love being at home or taking day trips. That’s about it!
We will start with chickens, ducks, and turkeys in early summer. We would love to plant this year, but I’m not sure yet what that looks like since I have no idea where I’m putting the potager garden. In the market garden, we can get that ready, but again, with our upcoming trip to California, it would be better to wait until after we return home to start planting.
Health:
I’ve been recovering very well, but I want to speed up my process. Back in November, I started an elimination diet to see what foods were causing lingering inflammation and autoimmune problems. I have a very high pain threshold, so pain for me is different than pain for others. What causes me to ache might be crippling for others. My body has always been that way. Anyway, there is an underlying discomfort that I’ve had for years that I want to be gone.
I’ve tweaked my health over the last few years since returning to New Mexico. If I were still living on the east coast…I would be near death if not already dead. The mold in buildings triggers an autoimmune response and horrible stuff starts happening to me.
My last big flareup was in August 2018 and it lasted through Christmas. I don’t feel 100% and if I think about it, I haven’t felt 100% in years. So I’ve jumped on the carnivore meat wagon. It’s the ultimate elimination diet. I’ve tried to just eat only animal products like eggs, cheese, dairy, butter, pork, fish and shellfish, poultry, lamb and beef, however, I still had issues that wouldn’t clear up. After seeing many of my fellow autoimmune warriors switch to ruminant meat, salt, and water diet and completely send their disorder into remission, I knew I should try it for at least six months. I will also be mostly consuming my beef raw, which I already have been doing since last year.
It’s not a big deal in that I already eat that way, I’m just removing some of the tasty things I have always loved. That will be the difficult part. I’m committed though to figuring out what foods are affecting my body. I’ll revisit reintroducing other foods into my diet in six months unless I’m feeling fantastic and don’t want to jinx it.
It’s been a while since I’ve done an update on what we’re up to, so I think I’ll stop there. I’m hoping to write more this year. I tend to go quiet during busy times or disturbing times. Long pauses in my posts happen, but I want to make the effort this year to put at least two posts per week out. I don’t know if I can make that happen, but I’m willing to try.
I hope everyone has an amazing New Year, filled with blessings, hope, courage, new direction, and clear vision! It’s the start of a new month, new year, and a new decade, and I’m glad I get to share it all with you. Be safe!
I’ve got to put on my bragging cap for a little bit because this girl of mine continues to amaze me. Hannah has been putting herself through school for the last ten years now. Unfortunately, I passed on to her my crappy autoimmune disorders so she has had to deal with some pretty horrific bouts of illness while trying to work AND complete her advanced degrees. It wasn’t easy for her.
Dom and I have struggled financially for many years, unable to support our kids financially as they went through school. We made the choice when Simmi was diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies, that I would stay home with her since she couldn’t go to school or into daycare. There were so many times we wanted to help our kids, but just couldn’t. It made our hearts swell with pride to see that despite what we couldn’t give to Hannah financially, she was able to pay her own way, and do so with grace and a lot of determination!
Ten years ago she put herself through yoga school to become an instructor. The photo on the right is of her and Dom from that graduation day.
Autoimmune problems started rearing their ugly heads and derailed her for a time. Through it all, however, she fought for what she wanted.
Six years ago she completely redid her education as a yoga instructor, specializing in trauma-informed yoga. She started her own business, Hadassah Wellness, and continued her education. One year ago she was invited to partner with a brand new crisis care unit because her services met their qualifications. Her company is now an official contractor with the State of New Mexico.
She has two Trauma-Informed Certificates, a 200-hour certificate as well as a 500-hour certificate.
Hannah Hadassah first started studying yoga and wellness in her early teens, completing her first 200hr yoga teacher training in Hatha and Raja yoga at age 19 in 2010. In 2018, she took a second 200hr teacher training at High Desert Yoga in Iyengar yoga where she continues her education. She has done several trainings with Sundara yoga in Trauma informed yoga therapy. Applying practical information from neuroscience of the brain to her yoga practice. She has worked in outpatient clinics with specific experience working with individuals who are recovering from substance abuse and managing mental health disorders.
Hannah currently teaches children 5-12 years old at High Desert Yoga and teaches a variety of adult classes at Hadassah wellness.
Through her education of yoga, nutrition, and natural medicine; Hannah learned better ways to manage her own chronic health challenges more effectively. Providing more awareness into her experience of living with a parent with multiple Auto Immune diseases.
Hannah continues to expand her educational background in yoga and holistic medicine to benefit the bodies and minds of all ages. It is her life’s passion to inspire others in their wellness journey while providing educational resources to support it.
Hadassah Wellness was created with the vision of being able to provide an environment that welcomes diversity of race, culture, spirituality, gender identity, ability and orientation. We seek to provide a safe and inclusive space for all. We reject intolerance and any form of degradation hurt, or abuse. We commit in words and actions to uphold the rights of all to feel safe, valued, and respected. Hadassah Wellness’s mission is to provide holistic services to everyone, not just the wealthy. Providing a sliding scale service rate for low income individuals and families.
At Hadassah wellness love, peace, and understanding unify us.
We love you Hannah and we are so very proud of you. Thank you for being such a beautiful light in this world. I can’t wait to see where you soar to from here!
We now officially own our land. One year after deciding that this was where we wanted to set down roots, it finally happened. We had some lag time with the title company and then a few other issues needed to be straightened out but as of yesterday, we closed.
I was looking back on this blog at my entry for October 3, 2018, and that was when we decided this was home to us. A lot has changed in a year. People have come and gone, plans have shifted, time has slipped through our hands, but we’re here.
Now we can set our plans in motion. We have so many things we want to do but chose not to start anything until we knew this was going to be home…for good.
Three years ago when Dom dislocated his knee and was unable to walk for almost a month, he created the above vision board. Nothing causes us to refocus in on our life goals like a serious illness or injury. We have carried this vision board from West Virginia to our new home in Glenwood. It sits in my coffee packaging room to remind us of how far we’ve come and all the things left on the board to fulfill.
In red, I’ve circled all the things that have already manifested…right down to the round tents and the dark skies! We dreamed, we went off the beaten path to get ourselves back on track, we pursued our passions, we found a place with bountiful diversity, we are home in nature, this land is our land, and even the trees circled in the lower left-hand corner of the board looks like our land. I think I’ll repost this board and circle new things that manifest as we move forward!
I also want to create a new board that will be a continuation of the one we started, because we’re always changing and growing.
Four years ago at this time, we sold our home in Los Lunas, and almost to the day four years later we are now in an even better place without a huge looming lifetime mortgage or outrageous bills that would force Dom to work two jobs. That was the ultimate goal for us. We wanted to be in a position where we could build our own environmentally safe house where I wouldn’t get sick from mold. We’re halfway there.
Over this last month, we’ve accomplished a lot!
We got the underside of some of the oak trees trimmed up and removed the huge grapevine bush to make way for our outdoor kitchen. We’ve been cleaning up the wood slash that was in different areas to cut down on fire danger. I think this was the most tedious job I’ve had to do in property clean up. It’s ongoing when you live in a place that is so dry it can easily become a tinderbox and go POOF! in an instant.
We’ve been enjoying BBQs and friends hanging out. We have some friends staying with us for a while and Simmi has been in her glory having kids to play with every day.
We have a White-Nosed Coati living nearby. He doesn’t seem to have any family so I’m unsure how long he’ll stay in the area.
The rock foundation was busted up and the covered porch was removed. I’ve been moving rocks away from the area so that the trailer can be hauled off soon. If you would have told me last year I would be strong enough to haul rocks alone for 4-6 hour time stretches, I would have told you that you were insane. But here I am strong as an ox. It took two years to recover from biotoxin illness but I did it! Every time I go outside and walk around I remind myself of how far I’ve come. From the trees I cut down, to the wood I haul, and the boulders I throw to save our rickety wheelbarrow from certain death, I am strong again.
Every time I procrastinate, it’s because I am still in an old mindset believing it’s going to hurt, or I’m going to have to stop because I’m in too much pain. Then I go outside and start moving my body and I become addicted to the fact that I am NOT in pain and it doesn’t hurt to move…it actually feels good. That’s how I know I’m getting better.
Dom works about 60 hours a week right now. He’s working on a build at the Apache Creek Firehouse, and there are two clients that hired him to do some repair work on their log cabin and deck. He chose to only take one day off, and that time has been spent cutting firewood from branches we cut months ago. In two weeks the firehouse will be finished so his schedule will open up and be a little more fluid again. He’s started designing our cabin and he’s hoping to get that started soon.
The firehouse addition is a monster job. The concrete work, steel framing, metal roof. Oye! He’ll be happy when this job is complete. There are three more roofing jobs after this that are lined up and will take him through the winter months if the weather agrees.
The temperature has plummeted to about 17 degrees at night. What does that mean for us tent folks? Nothing really. Haha
It’s amazing how much living in a home with four walls and a heat source can dull us. We’ve become scrappy creatures over these last six months. When we moved here the temps were hovering at about 22 degrees. We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders wondering what the big deal was. It was 17 last night and it was fine. We haven’t hooked up stoves or a heat source in our tents yet. We sleep well in the cold. Geez, when I think about it, in Scandinavian countries parents leave their kids bundled up in the cold to sleep during the day.
The key is warmth. Are we warm at night? Absolutely! 17 degrees and toasty warm under the covers. No fear of Simmi being cold either. If she were cold, believe me, we would NOT hear the end of it. The protesting would start and not stop until we got her warm.
When the trailer is removed, we’ll be moving our tents up next to the rig and we’ll install some heaters. Simmi will have a catalytic propane heater and we’ll have a woodstove. I’m still on the hunt for a few of them. A friend of ours gave us a tiny one that was super cute, but not big enough to warm the tent before we go to bed. We’re not planning on heating our tents throughout the night, just an hour or two before bed so we’re cozy and can enjoy the early part of the evening by firelight.
I’m really happy with the way things have progressed and the future is looking bright!
Thank you for visiting my blog. I've entered my 50's, and as I delve into the next exciting chapter of my life, I’m so pleased to be able to share it with all of you. I am a lifelong artist, writer, vocalist, crazy organic farmer, and own and operate Buffalo Mountain Coffee Roasting Company.
for syntropic agriculture. I have to put away my impulse to rip weeds out of the ground and instead chop and drop them so as to not disturb the soil as it comes into balance.
I’m really not a goat person. Goats are these larger than life creatures even if compact in size and they’re just always in your business. They’re very affectionate and super sweet, yet demanding and will show displeasure when something is out of place. It’s enough to drain the energy right out of me. It doesn’t really have anything to do with goats…it’s me that’s the problem.
Noah in his own place. He was in the last remaining tent for a while, but it’s ready to collapse and with the monsoons upon us it’s currently flooded with water, scorpions, vinegaroons, ants, and other creepies wanting to stay on a nice warm bed. The photo on the right is of a vinegaroon aka whip scorpion. They’re pretty harmless but look badass, right?!
I know this? Because they will always seem to be in good company with others who may also be guilty of the “blame and shame” game.
and complete.
pounds of rice in a plastic bag, 1 pound of gluten-free flour mix, and other things just add to the garbage we’re trying to reduce.
juice and can it for later use. When that is complete, we will be fully opted out of buying beverages from stores. We’ve opted-out of lying to ourselves about how much we need mineral water, bubbly water, soda, wine, alcohol, and traveling drinks. We don’t need them, we like having them. Is there anything wrong with them? Not necessarily, but for our lives, in opting out of plastic products means that we are not participating in the making of the supplies that go into making plastic bottles and producing waste for landfills, or involved in the health implications that those who work around these chemicals are exposed to every day. 
4. Owning a cell phone, wifi, wireless streaming devices, Bluetooth devices, cordless phones, and anything else that emits microwave radiation. We opted out of wireless technology four years ago and we never looked back. After I discovered I am extremely sensitive to microwave radiation and removed all devices as well as moving to a wilderness area with very little cell signal (cell tower more than 5 miles from our property) we discovered a peace like we never had before. It wasn’t long after we discovered my sensitivity that we observed Simmi was also very sensitive to it. Removing all devices resulted in a miracle…Simmi no longer had violent meltdowns that would last for hours. She was unable to learn, unable to reason, unable to problem-solve, unable to calm down. She was always either laughing and getting into trouble or screaming and physically violent. We thought we were going to need to get her medications for the psychotic episodes she was having. Children are often put on antipsychotics and medication for ADHD if they have frequent violent outbursts, no attention span, and are hyperactive. It only took a month for her to be completely calm and peaceful without any kind of meltdown and that is without the assistance of pharmaceuticals. I am happy to report that we’re now going on our fourth year without a single violent meltdown or meltdown in general. Reaching inward we discovered that we could hardwire our computer to a regular modem. No wifi needed. That’s what we did and continue to do every day. We opted-out of lying to ourselves about how much we needed our cell phones for communication and life. We stopped lying to ourselves about how cool wifi and wireless devices are and how much they enhance our lives. They don’t. They actually do the opposite by damaging DNA and causing autoimmunity, neurological disorders, metabolic syndrome, and even cancer. Beyond opting out for our own personal safety, we are opting out also
Our roastery insulation for the pallet walls will be finished using air-crete, drywall, and some good washable paint.
wait until after we finished our bathroom to install it. I was frantically searching for a proper bathtub and it was elusive for a while. It’s not that there were no tubs around for sale, it’s just that Dom had a particular need for a claw ball tub and not a regular bathtub. Tubs tend to be on the shallow and short side, and because he’s tall, he can’t enjoy a bath unless it’s a claw ball tub. We had one when we lived in Vermont, and it was the only one he truly enjoyed.
diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies when she was only nine months old. We cannot shop for bulk items from a bin…ever. Everything we purchase for her must be sealed.
I’ve started to pick apart what we purchase each week. The first item up is Simmi’s pasta. Because her diet is already restricted, I’m not up for removing pasta just because it is packaged in plastic. However, I have found a recipe for making her pasta and a manual pasta machine to cut it into strips.
much with all the separate cotton bags for produce. Tomatoes won’t mind being intermingled with the other softer veggies, and I don’t think celery and carrots would have a problem being lumped together either. After all, they are often mates when put into a hardy stew.
A daughter who is growing faster than I care to admit! She’s on the fast track to being as tall as Dom in the next few years. She’s tall with these supermodel legs that just won’t stop growing! Her feet? She’s already wearing my size shoes and she hasn’t turned 13 yet. It’s difficult finding clothes that she will wear because she only likes POLYESTER clothing. Yes, that wasn’t a typo. This kid loves all the fuzzy poly clothes. I’ve purchased her merino wool sweaters in the past, and she even thinks those are itchy. I gulp on the thought of buying her leather $75 shoes that she will outgrow in a matter of two months. And that’s just shoes! Boots and play shoes she’s pretty rough on as well.
Our Camp:
another section of the rig, separate from our living space. Doing this reduced greatly the amount of room I had to work with. I had three areas originally for work which included an office, an art studio, and the coffee room, but Simmi will be moving into my office, Dom and I are in my art studio, and all our equipment and inventory is in one small space.
Buffalo Mountain before we moved in. Now that we’re in the rig, we’ve turned our attention to making it more liveable for us over the next year. We want our space to be comfortable, but not too comfortable that we don’t move forward with our house plans.
The mama skunk was such a beautiful little creature. I think she was still young herself because she hadn’t reached the full size of a mature skunk.
Well, my need for having a pond and Dom’s need to play with mud caused me to change my mind about the location of the potager. We’ll be digging out that area to make cob and the hole it creates will make our pond/living swimming pool.
food, and water. On the other side, their pond will be finished. The pond is an old water trough from cows that used to graze on the land a long time ago. It’s hooked up to the well. The two areas are separated because anyone who has ducks knows, these little cute quirky birds love to party all night and spend lots of time mating.
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