Wild Moon Cottage is a small working homestead in the pristine Ozark Mountains. We have dairy goats, poultry, organic herb and vegetable gardens, a start of a tiny fruit orchard, several black walnut trees, wild berries and fields of wildcrafting goodness. We raise our own milk, our own eggs, much of our own medicine and food. I do laundry by hand, make my own vinegar, candles, soap, bread, cheese ........ For a living I am an artist and herbalist. My goal for myself and our homestead is to be as self sufficient and self sustaining as possible.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

6.6.12 Life & Dreams




Today was beautiful as always. A bit hot but not bad, very nice in the shade. I don't know why but I haven't been sleeping well again and feeling low of energy. Otherwise things are very good. I had a long list for today but didn't get half of it done.

I'm working on making sand bag weights for the canopy and I think they're going to work very well. I'm using heavy plastic chicken bags, for freezing your own chickens, to hold the sand. Then sewing bags out of heavy fabric to the bags of sand. I doing 10 lbs bags and will probably make enough for 2 bags per leg.

I'm also working on making clothes pin bags to sell. I think I have a good plan but I can't find the wire I have that i think will work best. It doesn’t rust like clothes hanger wire and I used to could find it easily. I use it for the bendable rag dolls frames.

Someone dropped a puppy off here a few weeks ago so we're trying to find Yappy Jojo a home. About 2 months ago someone dropped off some pregnant cats  *-*  2 of them had kittens and we're trying to find them all homes. We have 8 cats, all spayed and neutered. I know it's expensive and a pain, we've gone hungry to get cats spayed and neutered
but it's well worth it and it simply has to be done.

We never got daylilies this year at all. Not one. The leaves were lush and green but now they're turning brown. And actually we did get some but we had to go pick them elsewhere, none of ours ever budded or bloomed.

We did have a huge amount of wild roses and I meant to gather and dry rose petals for so many uses but I waited to long and there are barely any flowers left. The scent is still intoxicating tho and mixed with the scent of beebalm …. It’s hard not to drift away to elsewhere.

I checked on the horsetail today and could find it  *-*  the pond is dryer than any time in last year's drought and I think the horse has died away. I'll get more tho and try again.

The same for the blessed gingko. I had 2 starts and they were doing wonderfully. I rooted them inside and transplanted them awhile back. They were covered in precious gingko leaves and today ... dead sticks.  very unfortunate but I'll try again.

All the nut and berries trees and bushes we got earlier are doing very well except for one red currant which, is looking feeble.  The pecans, witch hazel, other red currants, spicebush, beauty berry, service berry, pawpaws, green hawthorn and hazelnuts are all thriving. Thank the Mother & Father!

I tend to gather a little each day of most things with larger harvests when needed rather than gather all of one or two things at a time. I'm dry in several ways... drying screen, fabric bags etc and just clean and add whatever to the bag or screen.

Today I started harvesting Queen Anns seed heads (birth control etc), got quite a bit and also left some and used some to overseed the Queen Anns patch. I also gathered more bee balm (f) (mainly as a nerve sedative but also now for blood pressure) , yarrow (blood stop and much more), oregano (culinary and medicinal), wormwood (mainly for treating/preventing parasites and for extreme pain), a little lime mint for tea, black walnut leaves (drinking tea and medicinal), sassafras leaves (mainly for thickening soups and stews but also for tea and jelly), a little cinquefoil (pretty dry at the moment but I needed some. Many uses, good blood stop), feverfew (fever and migraines).

I’m working on an article on drying food and medicines for SimplySelfSufficient.org  I hope to have it up soon, it’s important stuff.

We’re also started to work on an area for my younger sister and her family to live on here. I’ve been looking for a small camper or something on freecycle that we could fix up for them. We thought they were coming last year but things changed, as they have a way of doing. It was definitely best so that we could get better settled in first. We’re working on clearing an area first so they can pitch tents to live in until we get something else up. We can get a lot more pallets to go toward that as soon as we get the trailer fixed so we can haul them. The pallets will help a lot for several things for them.

It will be strange, uncomfortable for all sides at least for a while, but also very good. And I’ll have new people to experiment on, I mean, I’ll have new taste testers.

Just finished a lovely supper of fresh corn on the cob with goat butter and sea salt. And ham and cheese melts with homemade horseradish sauce. I have some raspberry muffins left for evening tea and the tea itself will be beebalm, walnut leaf and honey.

I had two odd dreams last night. Several dreams actually but those two stood out.

In the first dream I was one of hundreds of lemmings. All the lemmings were brown but I was bright red. They were all surging along toward something I couldn’t see and I was swept up with them. I struggled and fought against the current and was eventually able to stand up and see above the mass. I looked around and saw other red lemmings also resisting the surge, standing up and looking too. As the brown lemmings surged past I recognized some as people I know and love and I reached out to them but instead of taking my hand they grabbed me and pulled me back into the surge. I saw the same thing happen to other red lemmings. I eventually was able to break away and work my way toward the side where I found huge rocks I could climb up on. When I was up looking down on the mass I was astounded and horrified. I could see the destination of the brown lemmings and it was a sheer drop off, where they were falling to be dashed upon the rocks below. That was very terrible but the horror was that they were grabbing red lemmings who didn’t want to go and pulling them to their deaths too. I saw tho that many red lemmings had also made their way to the sides and were standing on the rocks watching too. I noticed then that there were now yellow lemmings which seemed different and they hovered or floated through the mass of browns. I looked to see where all the lemmings were coming from and I saw blue lemmings in the distance, standing back away from all others but urging the brown lemmings on. I thought that I wanted to make my way to there and see what was going on but then I woke.

Some time later I dreamt that I was in some kind of structure with my Go bags. There were other people there too, men, women and children. Then there was a voice on a speaker that said it was time for us to head to the designated areas. There was a bright light or a brightness and then I was in a darkened hallway walking toward a lit room. When I walked through the doorway I saw a friend there that I know in waking life. She was glad to see me and we started to talk when it dawned on me that there were only women in the room. That didn’t feel right to me at all and I started looking for a way out. I said aloud that it was right and asked where the men and children were. This caused the some of the other women to speak out and ask too. I felt a panic, like something was very wrong and started to head back out the door. Then I woke.

Back in from looking at the moon. It’s 9:00pm, the day went by so quickly. I’ll run out and see if I can stand the water enough to take a quick shower before bed. 

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