Cooperative Creativity

We had a joint mini-meeting of the Cynaguan Brewer's Guild and the Herbalist's Guild at Investiture. Brewers need herbs.
And that got me to thinking: Cooks need herbs, too. And they need cheese.
We have all these guilds that do things, and we don't often do them together.
Mostly, I think, that's because guild membership ebbs and flows and people don't like to commit to things. But wouldn't it be really fantastic for the cooks to be able to put on their feasts using components made or grown by the other guilds?  I was really tickled to make a couple gorgonzola cheeses for Collegium this past fall; so much so that I set about making a couple basket cheese and a couple MORE gorgonzola, originally for the Perfectly Period Feast but since we're having our Emeritus Feast in our local Shire of Mountain's Gate the cheeses will be at our local Feast instead.
It's so easy to get pulled in several directions in the SCA. It's important to me to learn things, and to get better at them, but there are some things I just can't get excited about on a daily basis. Like making garb - not exciting to me. But attempting to make gruit ale, even when I fail, is immensely interesting. Cheesemaking is interesting. Fermenting food is interesting. Fostering cooperation and promoting fellowship is interesting. It is said that people born under my stars become Jacks-of-all-trades, but Masters of none. That has been true of me, mostly because I become bored and move on to something else. But the art and science of creating food and drink in cooperation with microflora is challenging and fascinating, so there's a possibility that I may have found a niche. If it is possible to promote the humans working cooperatively, too, that would make me feel very good.

It's really illuminating to return to the ol' blog and see that the last post I made, nearly 18 months ago, contains the exact same feelings on community as I was pondering today.
I need to keep better care of this blog. It's better for my mental health than Facebook and I've never been much of a Twitter(er), although I do enjoy the tweets of others.
So, here we are in January of 2013! My locavore diet has gone out, and back in, and back out since last I visited. I'm now on a waiting list for a gastric bypass, mostly because I would very much like to be around for a few years longer than I can otherwise expect at my current weight.
We now have an old horse and two wether goats. In further anxiety-provoking news, our elderly neighbor across the road cares for them while we go to events.
SCA-wise, we're kind of in a holding pattern. Miach is still fighting. I'm still Principality Chirurgeon. I've begun to think about my own relationship to the SCA vs. my relationship in tandem with Miach. Not because there is any trouble with Miach, but because I'd like to make my own place on my own merits. I've become enchanted with fermenting, and interested in pursuing this as a Period craft. Miach is now our Shire Seneschal, and our Shire is struggling. We lost our friend, Michael Pringle/Mike Johnson, a year ago. His wife, Miriam/Roz, moved to Caid. Geoffrey of Clan Fergus and Oian, and their wives, do not play any longer although Geoffrey speaks of taking it up again at times. Wylowen and Kaitlyn got married, and they still attend some events, but work and finances keep them busy. We had several new folk that came to the Shire during a period of divisiveness and ended up aligned to Chateau de Camville, the household of Sir Richard de Camville, and identify much more strongly with their household than with the Shire. (For which, by the way, I cannot blame them. The Shire floundered badly for the past 3 years, lacking Geoffrey's vision and Oian's steady all-inclusiveness.) With Roz moving to Caid, An Tellach Mor is down to just Miach and I. Morgan and Siobhann re-converted to Christianity, and more recently have expanded their Hold and concentrated on the Barbarian Freehold. They pulled out of An Tellach Mor, and the rest of the An Tellach Mor hearths formed Black Sheep Keep due to the schism. We have remained friendly with all, but ultimately An Tellach Mor is now gone, as An Triobhais Mor and Clannada na Gaedelica before it. At this point, the next household will be founded by us if and when Miach is knighted, and only then if he wins Coronet, and our vision of it is younger. Meanwhile, Gunther and Juliana rarely attend events any longer, and the Squires have varying levels of involvement. Titus moved to the East, and asked Gunther to take over his squires (Edmond and George), and I truly believe that the only reason Gunther and Juliana are still even minimally involved in the SCA is because Gunther feels an obligation to his own, and Titus', squires. Things would not be going any better had Miach become Sir Richard's squire, because Sir Richard and Alloria are now only doing Chataeu functions, which are pretty much private collegiums, and their mundane horse club. If Miach had picked Uther, things might be headed slightly up, but Uther and Kara don't attend events like they used to, either, and have been concentrating on the live steel game of Battle of Nations. So, we went from having some powerful allies to being on our own, more or less, in the space of the past 2 years.
I successfully made some good Gorgonzola cheese, and the Blackberry Mead that I was sure was going to be vinegar 'cause I left it on the lees for months and the airlock went dry a couple times, turned out pretty good. And it's the little things that keep our spirits up!

Is this the Real Life? Is this just Fantasy?

This is my home for several weekends, and some weeks, every year. It happens to be located in this picture in Woodland, California. But it has been seen near Bakersfield, near Gilroy, near Quincy, near San Francisco; in Arizona and in Oregon.

This home comes with a village of similar pavilions, mundane pop-up tents, RVs, horse trailers and vans inhabited by people very much like me. For coherence and ambiance, only the period-style pavilions can be placed in the front along the tournament field, but the people in the pop-up tents are no less a part of the community than the peers in the multi-partitioned, dagged, banner-flying pavilions.

The Village embodies a set of behaviors and ceremonies with which we mark the turning of the year, changes in leadership, births, deaths, accolades and banishments. As night follows day, the Heralds will shout out important tidings and calls of "Thank you, Herald!" will echo from all quarters of the Village. "Long live the King" is followed by "Long live the Queen", and we always give 3 cheers (usually "Huzzah!" but "Hurrah!" is occasionally heard). When people are called in to Court for an award, we can tell what award they are getting by the introductory verbiage that the Court Herald recites. We sing "To The West" and "The Black Swan Rises" with conviction. Sometimes, often, we cry as we sing. The Village contains elders and callow youth, sages, fools, saints, sinners, craftspeople, merchants, artists, scholars, teachers and students.

As in many other communities, 10% of the group does 90% of the work. That's just the way human society functions. At any given time, certain groups of inhabitants are going to be pissed off at other groups. There is gossip and back-biting, scheming and subterfuge. And there is also deep friendship, responsible stewardship, support, and love. Again, that's just the way human society functions.

By any definition of "community", SCAdians are a community.

Is mundane community any different? I am totally convinced that if mundane society broke down, the SCA "villages" scattered across the Earth would survive much more intact and functioning than many mundane communities. Yet, we believe that our mundane lives are somehow "Real". It is only our belief that grants legitimacy to ANY societal construct. The Catholic Church is no more "Real" than the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster spiritually, but hundreds of years of mankind granting legitimacy to the Catholic Church has invested it with a patina of Authority. We obviously must agree on certain things, or chaos will rule. We make laws, we grant power to enforce them, we decide on borders and choose a governing philosophy. But none of it is "Real". It is all a human construct, that we have agreed to. Much of our maturation as individuals is based on how well we understand and adopt this construct. If we fail completely to adopt it, we might be labeled "insane", so most of us go along with it. But along what might be considered a "sane" gradient, there are still many options from petty crime to CEO to Dictator. And the SCA is no different. You could be King. You could be a Fringee (someone who camps and parties alongside the more involved SCAdians, on the "fringe" of the Village).

Periodically, people try to salve their egos by announcing that "it's just a game". I always find this unsettling. Of COURSE it's a game, just like politics is a game and business is a game and honestly - religion is a game. You learn the rules and you play the game to your best ability, that pretty much sums up ANY human endeavor. We are a gaming species. But the implication is that since it is "just a game" it isn't real, people aren't important, and emotions and relationships aren't involved. The implication is that there isn't community and interdependence, when evidence clearly shows that there are. It trivializes all of us.

Just Call Me the Dairy Queen

So, I located a source of fresh raw cow's milk that seems clean and hygienic (the cow is a 4-H cow). Making cheese has been almost as aggravating as making ale and mead. When it's all working correctly, it is fantastic. When it goes awry, it is bad. Curds are very touchy, just like yeast. If you disturb them while they are forming, things do not go as planned. One of the ways to try to eliminate some of the frustration is to use raw milk. The homogenization and pasteurization process breaks down some of the proteins and makes it much more difficult for curds to form.

The best option would be to own your own dairy animal. That is not a good option for us, although dairy goats would do a great job of weed control around here, as well. But we take too many weekend or longer trips, and dairy animals have to be milked twice a day, so we didn't pursue that option. (IMO, the perfect thing for us would be bees, because we make mead and bees are awesome and necessary for pollination. But Miach is allergic to bee stings, and he won't let me put any hives anywhere on our property, even if it's an acre away from him. But I digress......)

Purchasng the milk was not simple. It called for a lovely detour from the Farmer's Market up to Nevada City, to purchase 1/2 gallon canning jars to put the milk in, then another detour to the home of the cow, which was off of a road that probably would have been best traversed by the Durango and not the Matrix. But we survived the adventure, and discovered a wonderful new hardware store in Nevada City!

Amazingly, raw milk smells exactly like pasteurized/homogenized milk. Of course, there is a thick layer of cream on top, which I poured off into other clean and sterilized jars of various sizes. There was about 2 quarts of cream, with enough cream still in the milk that it was probably about 2% strength. You can make cheese with both buttermilk and yogurt as starters to acidify and culture the milk. Yogurt likes it a little warmer and buttermilk likes room temperature. You can also make MORE buttermilk and yogurt. So I ended up with about a gallon of yogurt, a quart of buttermilk, a pint of clotted cream, a pint of sour cream, a cup of butter, a half-gallon of pasteurized milk for Miach to cook with and use on cereal, about 2 cups of ricotta cheese (which may have turned too sour during the draining process 'cause I completely forgot it was draining in the utility room for 2 days), and about 2 pounds of compacted curds that I hope will turn into a hard cheese. The process took an entire weekend, at the end of which I have never had such clean arms from so much cleaning and rinsing, nor such smooth and soft hands from all that butterfat. The yogurt didn't firm up much, but it seems much firmer now than a week ago. The buttermilk had the usual tart taste, but was also much sweeter than store buttermilk (late edit: it's now much less sweet and refreshingly tart and thick). I haven't used the cream or sour cream yet, and Miach hasn't touched the milk I "cooked" for him. All the products can last a long time except the milk.

Now we're down to sugar, flour, rice, coffee and tea being the staples we need to purchase at the mainstream grocery. While in the Flour Garden in Auburn, I noted a poster on their wall about locally-grown grains being used in their products, so it's possible I could even get flour at some point locally!

The Chickens Came First

I gave up fast food about 2 months ago, not for the first time but hopefully for the last. The stuff was killing me. My metabolism is not fast food friendly, or maybe it's too fast food friendly. In my job, I spend a great deal of time in my car. It's my office, my waiting room, my supply room. It is often my coffee shop. Fast food fits right in with my work life, and thanks to my poor choices I am very much overweight and out of shape.

About 2 months ago, I tweaked my knee (also not for the first time) and was once again reminded of just how much weight my poor knees are moving around. My doctor said there was nothing much to be done about it, and it would just take time to heal.

So I decided to resume the joint supplements and fish oil, and I also purchased a small ultrasound device which finally got my knee to being functional again. And I decided that I have got to lose weight. Weight-loss diets don't usually work well for me, because the key to losing weight is that you change your lifestyle, as most of us know. And I kind of like my lifestyle in some respects. I brew ale. I make cheese. Sourdough starter lives in my 'fridge. Cooking and food fascinate me, and they are a hobby that I share with my dear Miach. The problem isn't the food we cook at home, it's the food that I eat in the car and the crappy snack stuff.

The chickens are what started me trying to be more mindful of the ecology of eating. Chickens are fascinating and amazing. They will eat just about everything, including your leftovers, and give you an egg in return. Egg white is perfect protein. Our chickens produce way more eggs than we can eat. We give eggs to our friends, and some of our friends have been very happy to have them because their budgets are tight. There is a big difference between fresh eggs from free range chickens who are living the high life, and eggs from a production farm that houses hundreds of hens in cages where they can barely stand up and get no fresh grass or bugs.

The same is true of tomatoes. Everyone knows that store-bought tomatoes taste pretty much like cardboard. They're pretty, and they add color to a salad, and a scientist will tell you that they have all the same nutrients, but they do not come close to tasting as good as a home grown tomato.

So, pondering eggs and tomatoes, and being obsessed with food and how it's made, one naturally begins to want to control not only how the food is prepared, but how it's grown. A lot of the reason that agribusiness must use chemical fertilizers and pesticides is because large-scale plant production is just like large-scale egg production. It isn't natural. It's economical and efficient.

Not that many years ago, we didn't eat the way we do now. My grandparents slaughtered a hog every fall, made their own ketchup, canned their own vegetables, raised chickens for eggs and meat. One grandmother made the best damn pickles I have ever tasted, both "bread and butter" and "lime" (both were made with cucumbers). The other grandmother made award-winning egg noodles and rhubarb pie. Both grandmothers canned their own food. My mother, a modern woman, froze the vegetables that my father grew in our sizable garden in the suburbs. We had corn, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, turnips, carrots, peas, and green beans.

I learned all this as a kid, and here I am living in one of the best climates in the world for growing vegetables year 'round, and instead of growing vegetables I've been obediently making myself fat on food that is quick and cheap. When we cook meals our parents and grandparents cooked, many times the food does not taste like we remember it, and we blame our aging taste buds or in moments of clarity we acknowledge that mass-produced food is just not as tasty but far be it from us to grow our own. We don't have the time for that.

Out here in the country, even when you think you're all urbanized, life is just different. People you know butcher their own meat, they hunt, they fish. You are gifted game meat frequently.

Last year there was a small roadside stand along Highway 49 that sprung up for a brief period in the summer/fall, obviously when the garden on the property began producing more than expected. It was a thing of beauty, driving by that lush garden. So sometime during the mild winter months, I decided to make raised beds and Miach made three of them, with hardware cloth on the bottom 'cause we have ground squirrels. And we got a barrel composter, and faithfully put all the peels and tea bags and egg shells and stuff that we used to throw away in there. And the chickens ate all the stale bread, and leftover rice and spaghetti. So, we are throwing very little away now. The chickens have straw bedding and use wood shavings in their nesting boxes, and when we clean the coop what we have is a perfect mix of chicken poop (green waste, nitrogen) and fibrous material (brown waste, carbon). In fact, the floor of the chicken run is much improved soil. The chickens scratch in it, turn the compost, and it becomes dirt. But throwing the old straw from the coop onto the chicken run would just be too much, so we haul the coop bedding out to the front pasture and mound it up, and it magically turns into composted soil. I went out there this winter to turn the pile, 'cause that's what you're supposed to do. I've tried in the past to compost yard waste, and it has never worked out. But chicken poop and straw, now there's evidently the magical mixture. That pile was steaming, and underneath when I turned the pile, there were huge fat earthworms. In the spring, after at least 4 months of composting, I went down and hauled most of it back up as black soil, but it was just a fraction of what we needed to fill the raised beds, so we ordered a truckload of topsoil and managed to get 2 beds filled and planted before it got too hot. I planted tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in one and acorn squash and melons in the other. The melon seedlings fainted in the heat and died, but they were the only loss. The squash is now a huge bushy thing with leaves the size of platters. I remembered after it flowered profusely that we used to eat fried squash blossoms when I was a kid, and realized that all those flowers just couldn't make fruit and that our mothers probably realized that and culled it down and treated us. The tomato plants grew outrageously and we have been getting 2 to 6 tomatoes daily for the last couple weeks. The hot banana peppers are fruiting, but so far the green sweet and red sweet aren't. The eggplant is fruiting, and I'm just not sure when it's best to pick it. It is only about cucumber sized now. I planted some bush beans, to dry and make soups out of this winter. We might try sweet potatoes this weekend, in the third bed, we have some that have sprouted. This winter, I'll get a handle on this gardening bit and grow my own seedlings to plant in the spring. I have a whole collection of heirloom seeds from Seed Savers .

So, here is the current hierarchy of food:

• Try to grow it ourselves.
• If we don't grow it, buy it at the local Farmer's Market in Auburn. This includes fruits, vegetables that we aren't growing, and meat.
• If we want to eat it and it isn't at the Farmer's Market, buy California-grown organic.
• If we absolutely must have something that isn't in season in California, at least buy organic.

This can be a real aggravation at times. And I know that it can be argued quite reasonably that it makes no difference nutritionally. But it makes a big difference in taste, and it makes a big difference spiritually. It's important for me to feel that we can feed ourselves and even help feed others from the fruits of our own labor (and the chickens labor, I suppose). It's my goal to can and freeze any surplus of our garden, and it occurred to me after the last of the cherries at the Farmer's Market were gone that it would have been smart to have bought enough of them to can or to have made into pie filling or preserves. I'm keeping my eye on the blackberries at the Market and hope not to miss the boat when the big harvest comes on them! I suspect that I'll know much more about what to get in bulk and when, by next year.

Has this made a difference in my health? Subjectively, I feel more energetic. Lately my skin has developed a pinkish undertone that seems very nice. I don't have as many issues with my digestion. My weight is not changing, which is kind of a shock, since I mostly eat fruit and eggs and yogurt and tomato juice for lunch now instead of huge fast food meals with fries and colas. I'm sure that people who think it doesn't matter where your calories come from, you just need to count them, would feel justifiably smug about that. Just as I felt smug about the Chinese pet food crisis ('cause we cook our dogs food ourselves for the most part), and I now feel smug about outbreaks of salmonella. Life is a gamble, and there are no guarantees, so my philosophy is to do that which makes you feel that you have some control and that you are walking as gently and respectfully as you can on Mother Earth.

Catching Up

This blog tends to veer wildly off the road. I was amazed that I hadn't updated it since my brother died. And so very much has happened since then!

Housing: We bought a house. Much like romance and relationships, the house we bought turned out entirely differently than I had planned. We now own a pre-fab modular home on 2 acres of rural land. We have a septic system, but public utility water. We have a wood stove that we use to heat with in winter, although we do have regular PG&E as well -- it's just damn expensive, so we don't use it. We have chickens, and probably more to follow on that subject. We are growing some of our own vegetables, and plan to grow more. Crazy, I know. I still love Streng Bros. homes, and modern house design. We just couldn't find that in the area we were determined to live in. Plus, Miach was never crazy about the modern homes and he's a lot happier here. And it's weird, but we KNEW this was the place the minute we laid eyes on it. It wasn't a flawless sale. Other buyers put money down on it first. But it turned out they didn't buy it, and eventually things worked out. The big problem here is that there is no garage. We built a little barn/shelter, and there is a workshop. Since we threw so much willy-nilly into the workshop when we moved, it needs to be re-organized and then it will probably actually be functional. And we just need to move a bunch of stuff down to the storage area of the barn and get it out of our spare bedroom.

Gaming: At first, our internet up here was so unreliable we gave up online computer gaming. Miach likes console games, anyway. He and his Knight, Gunther, have a semi-weekly gaming night on Thursdays where they play first person shooters into the wee hours.

Eventually, though, we ironed out some of the more aggravating internet connectivity issues, and we've been able to resume playing Lord of the Rings Online. I'm not really "into" it, although sometimes it can be fun. I tried Eve Online again, and frankly it's not much fun to play without Miach and he has no interest in it. What I like about Eve is the player-based economy and skill tree, which is very complicated and fascinating and individual. But it's lonely out there in the huge expanses of intergalactic space.

Social: So, Miach has gotten really good at this whole SCA heavy combat thing. He's been on numerous Court guards and was the Lord Defender of Cynagua. I've been on 3 Courts, and learned a lot. I'm now the Cynagua Chirurgeon, too. We've discussed all the political and social aspects of the whole SCA experience ad infinitum and ad nauseum, and we're feeling pretty darned responsible and reliable when it comes to holding The Dream matrix together for the enjoyment of everyone. Miach came very close to winning the Coronet in May. We were both feeling that it was almost fated to happen for several reasons, and while it would be rude and arrogant to not feign shock and surprise, I actually was neither. Since accepting the loss in Finals, Miach has had trouble getting back into the groove due to ear infections and now a really severe bone bruise and possible muscle tear to his left elbow. We'll just have to see how it goes. But if he recovers and regains his momentum, and he has every intention of doing so, we feel well prepared should he win Coronet in the future. We actually have A Plan on how to manage it financially. Socially, we're really quite prepared: Neither one of us is a Drama Queen, both of us have worked professionally with all types and levels of mundane society, and we're both rather good at diplomacy. We both truly like other people most of the time, know what people to stay away from or to be very cautious around, and have a fairly well-honed sense of propriety.

In the long view, it IS shocking and surprising, because when we first joined the SCA we had no intention of ever getting to this level. But Miach discovered he really likes fighting; who knew?

Every time I say "the blog is going to head this way" it heads in a different direction. And since it's mostly a journal, and very few people have ever read it, that doesn't matter so much. But if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that I'm going to be writing a lot now about trying to live a simpler life, chickens, vegetable gardening, etc. and SCA issues on a more Principality level, vs. a Shire level. And if I had to hazard a guess as to which topic would possibly get some actual traffic, I'd say "chickens". 'Cause they're fascinating, and more and more people are beginning to raise them.

The Last Link

My brother, Jody, died on the evening of March 3rd, 2010, at around 7pm Pacific time. The facility had tried to reach me about 30 minutes before, to report a change of condition. By the time they made the call, the nurse was already on her way to tell them he was gone. I was napping, and didn't answer the phone, which doesn't bother me because I couldn't have talked with him anyway. I got the news from the funeral home calling me around 7:30pm.
Whenever you get news like this, it's always unsettling even when you're expecting it. We've been expecting it since last July. My intention was to make a return trip to see Jody again later this Spring, but it was always a gamble with time.
I haven't cried.
That bothers me to some extent, and I know it bothers my family. I've gotten "misty", as my mom used to say, but I haven't actually cried. Danni, my youngest daughter, has been calling my brother almost weekly. She sent him a Valentine's Day card. She spoke to him on Monday, and reported to me that he couldn't talk long because he was very tired. When I told her she burst into tears and wailed. The next day, I went to her place after work and we discussed the situation. She expressed extreme regret that she did not get to go back and see Jody, but she also clarified some of my own ambivilence about spending money and taking time off to do the socially-mandated funeral trip back to a place that is no longer home for any of us.
She talked about the need for she and her siblings, and myself, to make the trip "someday - when things aren't so crazy and we all have a little more money and time". Truthfully, if I were half the woman girthwise that I am now, I'd go ahead and fly back. But flying back costs me twice as much as it would cost that imaginary normal-sized woman, and this has been a Winter of financial hardship for Danni and one of $1000 PG&E bills for me, and we also just went into escrow on a house. I prefer to put what money I am able to spend towards keeping Danni in her apartment and keeping her car and insurance, and getting us into our own place with a woodstove.
I know this is one of those decisions that will haunt me for the rest of my life, but I also know that Jody doesn't care at this point if I'm at his funeral or not. My regret is that I did not have a chance to see him again, and that Danni did not have that chance, either. For 30 years, the staff and residents of his residential care facility have been his family and that family will have a chance to attend his services. They have been good to him, and they have been good to me. My gratitude is enormous.
In other times and places, my brother's life could have been a nightmare. It has not been so in the time and place that he lived. He was well cared for, and his final months have been lived exactly the way he wished to live them: eating ice cream, watching videos and coloring.
I made a snapshot-book of family photos on the train trip back to Illinois last July. I put in photos of us when we were kids, and photos of his nieces and nephews as kids, then as adults, and with their own spouses and kids. I labeled them all, so the facility could tell who was who and what relationship they were to Jody. I drew a picture of the family tree, with our parents as the trunk, our grandparents as roots, and he and I as the two main branches. My branch curled over his, and my kids hung above him reaching for the future. His branch came out straight and strong from the trunk, just above the roots. The facility staff told my daughter on one of her frequent calls that he spent a lot of time looking at the book, which makes me both sad and happy.
Once when we were kids, we went to visit one of our mother's friends who lived in the city and we were playing out in the backyard and I was supposed to be watching Jody -- but I wasn't paying attention. When I looked up, he was nowhere to be found. Finally, I ran to the back alley, and saw him, a tiny figure walking determinedly with his sway-hipped gait into the distance.
And that's how I see him now.
Good-bye, Little Joe from Kokomo, Wiggle-butt, Mangey Polecat. I'll see you when I see you. Tell the folks we think of them often, and I hope you get all those questions you had answered.
I bet Freckles was happy to see you, and he didn't growl and he was feeling frisky.
And now I'm crying. Of course.