Personal Process: 5000 posts — and counting, down? And collards. And rabbits! -Exopermaculture

By Ann Kreilkamp | July 24, 2014

It may be that I am done with exopermaculture. Or it may be that I’m just going to “take a break” — not sure how long . . . It may be that the problems I’m having with seemingly random glitches in formatting since two days ago have triggered this decision, or it may be that the number “5000” also fed into my process. In any case, I do need to shift gears.

Partly because, also, of course! it’s summer, the absolute height of summer, and in the garden, everything decided to come on at once. So there’s lots of “putting up” to do. I’m going to freeze and dehydrate. Rebecca will do the canning. Me? Collards first. Cut and dried for soups.

Yesterday and the day before, I processed about 18 giant leaves each day, to create altogether maybe four densely stuffed jars. Dehydrator running day and night in the greenhouse.

Now there’s only one collard plant left to process today (just the outer leaves, that way the inner leaves keep growing). Here it is, on top of the first hugelkultur bed. An errant doe hopped the fence and ate most of the chard from that bed. Grrrr.

So we interwove some willow cuttings into the gate that we think she’s been hopping.

Next up for me? Kale.

And of course, when the tomatoes finally turn red, we’ve got to stop everything and can, freeze and dry them. Basil already done, first cuttings, as pesto, frozen in ice cubes. Rebecca and I both made batches in our kitchens. I used hemp seeds for protein, plus of course, garlic, oil, and a splash of vinegar.

Oh yes, one more thing about the garden. We’re going hugelkultur crazy! Rebecca is beginning to convert old beds into hugelkulture mounds by layering hills of wood chips with composted dirt on top. Then she makes a hole in the center, for compost (throw a little dirt on top each time you put kitchen waste to compost in the hole). So that these small hugelkultur mounds work like my son’s Garden Tower does, composting kitchen waste from the centers, using worms that are already in the garden.

Think about it. Each time we make a hugelkulture mound for growing in the garden, we just about double the amount of ground we plant . . . Whoopee!

You can see one of these mounds here.

So back to my main topic: this blog. I’ve gone through many phases in my life, most of them involving writing, publishing, broadcasting of some sort. My dissertation, for starters (1972: “This Is Not A Book About Wittgenstein,” though at the exam, in order to “pass,” they required me to change the name.) Then, 1972-73, lots of journal writing with students at New College of California (then only a year old, in 2010 defunct), and a little in-house, no-holds-bared rag there, that ultimately got me fired, called “The Nutria” (long story). 1978-80: A tabloid magazine in my home town of Twin Falls, Idaho, called “OpenSpace,” that called out all the closeted freaks in that then very Mormon/Catholic/Protestant town, and gave us an open space to write, draw, photograph, dream, always opening space, opening space. Indeed, please, that’s my epitaph, want it handpainted on a sign somewhere: “She worked to open space.”

In the 1980s, for a couple of years, first the Nuclear Freeze newsletter out of Casper, Wyoming, then Heartland, a peace activist rag for the tri-state area of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Starting in 1989, and going for 12 years, Crone Chronicles: A Journal of Conscious Aging. I view all my projects as experiments, and this was the longest, by far, gained a certain national attention, prizes from Utne Reader’s annual awards, etc.

So, you see, most of what I’ve published has been community-based, for which I mostly wrote editorials. Hardly any of it ever paid me. Though I did pull $1000/month from Crone Chronicles for about the last five years, when it finally got big enough to cover that.

At some point the interviews from Crone Chronicles were collected and published in a book, What Matters, that I did not publish myself, and I don’t like what the publisher did with it, so I don’t talk about it, except just this once!

I did publish the book, This Vast Being: A Voyage through Grief and Exaltation, so it has the look and feel that I wanted — in 2007.

Then, in 2011, I started exopermaculture.com. And have been spending about 3-5 hours daily (research and writing) on this once it revved up, ever since, with small breaks, like the one I’m going to be taking now. At least a small break, maybe more. Or maybe a complete revamp. We’ll see. If you wish, I would love to see your comments as to how this blog does or does not help/inform/excite/attract you. Or not! I think you probably know by now, that though I love the interplay with others, I don’t depend on any outside source for my spiritual and intellectual food. It all seems to flow through from the greater universe, and has, for aeons.

Meanwhile, I have three or four unpublished manuscripts that I want to get out again and look over for possible publication Especially one called “A Soul’s Journey,” about my first 30 years, an almost clinical description of the inner/outer evolution that I went through mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I have a feeling a lot of people might benefit from reading it.

BTW: As of several days ago, I have now registered the domain name, “extinctionprotocols.com.” This may be a next step. It may be necessary. If so, it’s because if we are heading in that direction, then we need to find a way to do it consciously, with sacred intent. Besides, if we do that, it just might shift us into the kind of transformation that would bypass extinction in favor of, as they call it, “Ascension,” at least into our own better selves! Hard to believe, here on Earth, right now, as we head into August 2014, and the 100th anniversary of World War I, with all the currents of fear and hate and violence swirling around that this would be possible. But miracles abound. And we’re all about miracles, when you get right down to it, eh?

Tell me, is there some archetypal story involving the death of three rabbits? Because that’s what happened here, over the past few days. First, one of Rebecca’s hardworking Jack Russell terriers killed a rabbit in the garden. So Rebecca skinned and dressed it out, and last night we ate it grilled, for dinner on the back patio with our intern Jeffrey, and one of my new housemates, Katarina, and our dear young friend who helps both of us, Michaele.

Then yesterday, Alyce, our old old (12 years, I think) white rescue rabbit, and fertile source of rabbit poop for the garden, finally gave up the ghost. Very gently. In Rebecca’s living room, where she had brought him to protect from flies that were starting to land on his eyes and he didn’t have the energy to shake his head anymore. So we buried him next to my wonderful dog Emma (lots of posts on my process, following her untimely death), in our newly designated “pet cemetery.”

Then, I was out in the garden yesterday, and came upon a third rabbit —

— killed by Rebecca’s dogs, presumably. Told her about it. She was going to dress it for our dinner, but the dogs got to it first, split it in half, so each got his/her share.