The Lab

the folks i stayed with the longest in Reno live two houses down from Kyle and Katie's Be the Change Project. i decided to call it the Lab (short for Labyrinth) because the house and land are a place where many experiments are going on, many works in progress, interesting combinations of things... and when i walk around inside the house it feels a little like a labyrinth with so many doors and hallways and small rooms.

two community meals were held out front of the house in this circle of chairs while i was at the Lab.

there is a lot of composting going on in the large back yard. the main bin system has eight spaces where the compost is turned from one space to another. there is a separate two bin system for the humanure in the back. wood chips, easily available in reno aparently, are the main carbon source.

i swaddles this one passive pile, which was being held within a metal cage, with chips and branches. i gave a demonstration of the method of depositing material that i learned from Joseph Jenkins. then we added the straw and dried out vegetable debris on top. my most recent compost sculpture!

i laid some of the deck boards with eric on one of the fine evenings recently. this is how it looks when wet after a rain.

i've been using the sun oven every day. sometimes just heating water for dishes and tea in the evening...

the garden...

don't forget to have fun!

Reno sings

my second day in reno toni took me to see Lost City Farm, which she started with lindsey in 2013. toni and i learned much of what we know about growing food from the same internship at Green String Farm. it was cool to see how she is applying the method on this previously vacant acre. this happened to be the day of an Art Town event hosted by the farm. many people who had never seen the farm, some who didn't even know about it before, came by to check it out.

 i did a short composting demonstration when i deposited the small bucket of food scraps from toni's house. afterwards i gave the bins a nice makeover, watering them thoroughly, shaping them evenly into the bin, piling the leaves stored in one bin on top of the one i had just deposited in, and placing leaves of straw from one bale to keep heat and moisture in the piles. one bin had a little finished compost in it with a lot of coarse woody material mixed in. toni told me they don't sift it, which i dug. no need to when applying it as a top dressing in row crops!

 later on in the day i took my first shopping trip to the Great Basin Food Coop! a couple friends of mine were part of the founding group a few years ago and still work there. the beautiful building with mural around the front door and demonstration vegetable gardens wrapping around really impressed and pleased me. i talked to the first employee i saw and it turned out he was aware of Lost City Farm. i told him they could really use more hands and he said he would be interested in coming out to volunteer. toni tells me that not many of the 215 folks on their volunteer mailing list ever show up to help. its a shame because the base for something really amazing to happen is already established there.

 after the visit to the coop i meandered down to the river. following my intuition and senses, i came to a stage in the park where people were gathered watching Sierra Nevada Master Works Chorale. it was a very patriotic and spiritual performance and i got really into it, singing along and resonating with the meaning. i stood with my bike next to this huge pine tree, the sun shining on my face. when i looked around me i connected and smiled with others in the audience. it was a great feeling of togetherness that i had missed on the night of the 4th when i stayed in by myself. one woman came up to me to tell me she had gotten a nice picture of me. it was a sweet expression of the spirit of connection that she would do that and let me know about it. she was appreciating the beauty all around her. after sending me that first image she decided to share these others too, which might give you a better idea of what i was seeing too.
thanks cindy!

i continued to ride the bike and headed towards the sunset. it felt so good to ride the bicycle around on nice roads without my gear weighing me down! i wanted to get out to the hills for a better view, but they were too far. i found a place on the edge of town where there was an open field that allowed a nice view of the sky. i ate a banana there and took a moment to be with the beauty in stillness. on the way back to toni's i harvested some sage that was growing by the road so i could make smudge bundles.

ashland and dunsmuir

i had the opportunity to go with someone making a trip to ashland so i took it spur of the moment on monday. the trip was full of beautiful interactions and good vibes. we went to the co-op there in ashland for lunch. my new friend Basking Roots was on the trip and craig drove. he was taking his brother to the airport in medford. we stopped by lythia park and drank some of that special water before heading back south. also on the way south we stopped at a reptile shop and communed with the snakes, lizards, frogs, and other creatures. i was stuck by the calm, slow, wise presence of a snapping turtle. right before leaving a chameleon who lives careless in the shop climbed onto me and said hello. Roots was enjoying holding a snake and craig found a companion of a bearded dragon, which is the kind of lizard his brother had had as a child. he bought it and it rode on his shoulder the rest of the day! after stopping back in shasta for a while we accepted craig's invitation to visit his home in dunsmuir, just south of shasta. it felt like a lush little forested valley to me and his house was very comfortable and spacious. he shared with me his electronic music and he recorded me singing a little so he can maybe incorporate it later in a track. that was fun to do with him. i had worked on a couple spoons while in the car and gave him one i finished. another creative burst was when i found a piece of chalk on the sidewalk in front of the house and drew the seed of life. there was more chalk sitting on a shelf by the front door of the folks who live below him and i decided to just go for it and use what colors i wanted. i felt like it would be alright to use them without asking, even though i knew that was sometimes not okay. after i was finished craig told me that the guy there had expressed to him that these were for everyone to use!