And if you’ve clicked through to this page, it might do you some good to read it all the way through despite it dealing with the subject of death.

The prospect of death has been one of my life-long fears, a fear I will hopefully be confronting head on in my upcoming Jill Purce workshop which starts this Saturday.  It’s the reason Bruce & I have  journeyed all this way to London – to spend a week with Jill Purce in an intensive healing voice workshop which will focus on purging fears, anxieties, phobias and the like using the Tibetan spiritual practice called Chod.    I don’t really know what this all means or how exactly we’re going to accomplish this, but I’m open to the experience.  And I’m sure to write about it once we’re done.

But back to the reason for this post.  My travels over the last six weeks has allowed me to meet with dozens of friends around the country.  It’s been great catching up – on  love, marriage, divorce, kids, parents, jobs, and, well, life itself.   Many of us are at that age of dealing with aged parents and facing the inevitable loss that will come;  we’re of that age where as a parent, one needs to think about their children’s future should something happen to us;  we’re at that age to think about grown-up things such as the need for wills, estate plans, and our post-mortem wishes.

Which brings me to the subject of eco burials.    If in life, we aim to be environmentally conscious, why not also in death?   How many of us have actually given thought as to what we’d like to happen upon our deaths?  How many have actually written it down and/or let other family members know our wishes?      How many of us know what our options are?

I came across the following article about eco-burials a few weeks ago in Eucalyptus Magazine, a free Bay Area publication and it gave me pause for thought.   Bruce and I have spent some time thinking about our post-mortem wishes, but I hadn’t come across some of the more recent options that are available to us.

Green burials – the thoughtful way to return your body to the earth.  It appeals to me and it’s catching on, both in the United States and in New Zealand (and I’m sure in other countries as well).    Have a read through this article and let me know what you think.    As we celebrate our lives, so should we celebrate our deaths.   Shroud decorating parties, anyone?

From Eucalyptus Magazine, September, 2011:

Death is a subject that most Americans don’t like to talk about, read about, or even think about. We plan for weddings, births, and retirement, yet few among us plan for our own death. But when someone dies, it’s not just his or her loved ones who suffer the loss. Death takes an environmental toll on Mother Earth, too.

According to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), more than 60 percent of Americans choose to be buried in a casket in a cemetery (or their loved ones select that option for them). But the environmental cost of a traditional burial, including the metal and concrete production required for caskets, vaults, grave liners, and tombstones, is substantial. The damage is exacerbated if the deceased is embalmed, a process that uses toxic chemicals including formaldehyde to temporarily preserve the body. After an embalmed body is buried and begins to decompose, the embalming fluid leaches into the ground, contaminating soil and groundwater.

Joe Sehee, executive director of the New Mexico-based Green Burial Council, a nonprofit advisory group that promotes sustainability in the death care industry, points out that nearly 1 million tons of metal are buried in caskets in the United States. We bury enough metal each year to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge, and enough concrete to build a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit.

Sehee says that with increasing awareness of the environmental cost of traditional burials, “green burials” have become more popular. “We continue to get more hits on our Web site and more inquiries,” Sehee says. “People find a great deal of solace in not only being environmentally sound, but also in returning to earth and feeling that their death is somehow connected to their life.”

Typically, a green burial service involves burying a body without the use of embalming chemicals, metal, or cement. The body may be buried in a biodegradable casket or no casket at all. Instead of taking up space in a landscaped cemetery, the body might be interred in a “green cemetery”—a nature preserve of nearly untouched land. Green cemeteries, also called natural burial grounds, eliminate the environmental costs of lawn and landscape care, including irrigation, as well as upkeep to graves and headstones.

There are currently 22 cemeteries with natural burial grounds certified by the Green Burial Council. One of them is Fernwood Cemetery in Mill Valley, a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Its 32-acre green cemetery looks exactly like the hilly grasslands and mixed forests of the adjacent Golden Gate National Recreation Area. There are no large gravestones, vaults, plastic flowers, waving flags, or mowed lawns. Embalmed bodies are not permitted. Natural rocks, wildflowers, or trees serve as grave markers, and each burial site is recorded for posterity with Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates.

Fernwood’s manager, Kathy Curry, says she gets calls from people who have read about green burials or heard about them on television, but the practice is still not widely known. She describes her business as “an educational process.”   “I think a lot of people don’t know that it is possible,” says Curry. “Often it’s just a matter of letting people know that [green burial] is an option and what it means. Then they’re interested.”

Sehee says that aging Baby Boomers are the demographic most interested in green burials. “They gave birth to Earth Day,” he says. “Baby Boomers want to participate more fully in their end-of-life rituals in a manner that is compatible with their values.”

The idea of green burial is not particularly new, nor is it particularly American. In Europe, more than 140 green cemeteries exist. The United States has only 15.   “There’s    definitely an increase in awareness of people wanting to do a green burial,” says Jerrigrace Lyons, executive director of Final Passages in Sebastopol, an organization that provides education and instruction for people interested in family-directed, home funerals. “We’ve had a lot of people wanting to choose that option.”For example, when Sebastopol resident Roberta Ryan lost her husband, Steve Rodin, she chose to give him a green burial. Rodin had been a landscaper for 30 years.

“He was a man of the earth,” says Ryan. “He had always been connected to plants and the earth and really understood the cycles of life.” She felt that a green burial was what he would have wanted because “he lived a green life. It was very much a part of his value system.”    Rodin was buried at Sebastopol Memorial Lawn Cemetery in an old-fashioned pine box with rope handles. Ryan pre-purchased a site right next to her husband and wants the same simple treatment when she dies.

There are other sustainable options for negotiating our departure from this mortal coil. In 2009, nearly 37 percent of Americans who died were cremated, up from 25 percent just 10 years before. In Canada, that number was more than 68 percent in 2009. Still, many eco-conscious consumers are wary of cremation because the incineration process requires fossil fuels (typically natural gas) and releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In response to this criticism, the cremation industry has made efforts to decrease its carbon footprint. Some recent changes include using chimney filters to reduce emissions, employing solar energy to power furnaces, and utilizing the most fuel-efficient cremation containers.

Some cremation companies are opting for more high-tech solutions. Smart Cremations in Redwood, Washington, utilizes computer software that reduces cremation emissions by 30 percent, according to the company’s senior vice-president Jill Larson. The software is designed to make the burning process cleaner and more efficient.  “The fuel energy from the body and container are maximized, which in turn reduces the cycle time and therefore fuel consumption,” Larson says, adding that scattering someone’s ashes is “neutral” on the environment, meaning that it is neither good nor bad for the earth. “Cremation is growing by leaps and bounds,” Larson says.

The number of Americans who choose cremation over burial is expected to reach 51 percent by 2025, according to the NFDA.  For the family of the deceased, opting for either a green burial or cremation can save a substantial amount of money. The NFDA states that a traditional burial costs an average of $10,000 ($6,500 in funeral costs and $3,500 in cemetery costs), whereas according to Larson, a cremation costs about $1,300. “We’re talking almost a tenth of the price,” she says.

Joe Sehee of the Green Burial Council agrees. “A green burial is a lot cheaper than a traditional burial. There are cost savings since embalming and burial vaults are not required. And eco-friendly caskets tend to be less expensive than conventional ones.”

A traditional casket costs between $2,000 and $10,000, depending on its materials. Biodegradable caskets are usually made out of inexpensive materials like rattan, wicker, or even cardboard. One Bay Area company, Colma Cremation and Funeral Services, sells caskets made of willow, seagrass, or bamboo for less than $1,500. Funeral Director Joseph Stinson says, “When given the choice, [people] will go for natural as opposed to artificial.”

Wrapping the body of the deceased in a shroud may be the most inexpensive option. Kinkaraco Green Burial Products, based in San Francisco, sells biodegradable shrouds priced at $399 and up, which can be used either with or without a casket. Available in a variety of fabrics including linen, hand-woven wool, and silk dupioni, the shrouds come with a handle and strap system that allows the body to be lowered for burial.

Kinkaraco’s founder, Esmerelda Kent, says that shrouds have been used for centuries by people of many religions. Burial in a shroud, she says, “is a practice devoid of unhealthy chemicals, glues, toxins, or violating invasive procedures, which allows only organic matter into the earth without metals or any synthetic fibers.”

That idea of organic decomposition appeals to Corrina McFarlane, an eco-conscious, 54-year-old Santa Cruz resident. McFarlane has decided that when it is her time to go, she wants a green burial. Specifically, she wants to be buried in either a tubular-shaped coffin made from a willow tree or in a shroud made of organic cotton. She sees her future green burial as “a continuum that’s in line with my life choices.”

“If you’re a person who has been ‘lit up’ by all of the concepts surrounding sustainability and leaving as light a footprint as possible, then you are not breaking faith with the choices you’ve made in your life,” McFarlane says.

For resources in New Zealand,  see  Natural Burials NZ and this article on NZ eco funerals.

While we work on the house and all the renovations, the garden and grass continue to grow and we continue to mow.   We have tried to maintain the grounds and garden over the last many months and thanks to woofers we’ve managed to almost stay on top of things.

In December we had woofers Iwen from Australia for a few days and she helped us  transplant our 80 tomato seedlings which we started from seed in August.   The tomatoes are doing really well and we should soon be harvesting.

During the time Pete, Kat, and Purple were here, we also hosted woofers Katie and Ashley, both from the U.S.    They were a great help to us and they spent many days sheet mulching around the fruit trees, weeding the gully, weeding the floral gardens, and helping us with general household chores.

Katie is a master sewer and on one rainy day she spent several hours mending one of Bruce’s coats; she also has training in floral arrangements and created amazing bouquets for the house; and she can draw and loves animals and drew an awesome portrait of Nina!

Ashely, also a talented lass and with experience with Habitat for Humanity, helped Pete and Kat with the renovations; cooked us up some fine TexMex cuisine; and found some time to make us some beautiful wall art!

The gals also got a first-hand glimpse of how to distill your own alcohol as Bruce has been busy brewing up batches of vodka for Kiwiburn!

In the garden, we started harvesting our broccoli crop – some of the largest we’ve grown so far!

The cherry trees which we planted two winters ago produced a mighty bowlful of deliciously sweet cherries which we savoured with delight.

We also got two small bowlfuls of strawberries and one big handful of black currants!

The peas and kale did wonderfully and we’ve been picking both for almost three months now.

Our second year asparagus seedlings are coming along.

And finally, the garlic crop was ready to harvest – all 200 bulbs of varying sizes.  I am pleased with the crop and think we might actually have enough for the year!

In the kitchen, we were busy making elderflower cordial and a few batches of strawberry/rhubarb jam – a new favorite!

We all attended a local seaweed walk/tour where we learned about the many varieties of edible seaweeds in the harbour and managed to collect some for sampling.  Katie made us an awesome fresh seaweed salad.

And as we approached the holidays, we were busy with much socializing.

We had a lovely meal out at a swank Christchurch restaurant (Tiffanys) for friend Tobi’s birthday.

And we hosted an amazing solstice party in Wainui.  The summer solstice was quite special this year with a full moon and lunar eclipse.   About 15 people trekked out from Christchurch for the night, in addition to the seven of us already here.  Folks set up tents or slept in their vans and it was quite inspiring to know we could fit so many people comfortably on the property.

Friend Andrew from the States arrived the morning of the 20^th, just in time to celebrate his birthday on the 21^st for the first time in the southern hemisphere!    With cake ready, we welcomed in his birthday and he was treated to a very nice body detox foot spa bath!

We had a big potluck dinner and then most of us trekked up into the hills to watch the full moon eclipse.  It was magical.

And then we rolled into Christmas.  Friends Tobi, Alex, and Dennis came out for a few nights and friend Amba and mom and nephew came out for the day.   Unfortunately I was a bit under the weather with a bout of food poisoning which put a damper on my culinary intake but did not put a damper on my Christmas spirit!

Once everyone departed by Boxing Day, we were just the three of us and Nina for the week leading into New Years.  Much needed quiet time ensued with our New Years Eve consisting of making gourmet burgers and poutine (French fries with gravy and melted cheese), playing board games, and having a few glasses of champagne.  I managed to stay up till 12:15 am to welcome in the new year.

And January 1^st blessed us with a stunningly beautiful day.  We all hopped in the truck and drove around the harbour up to Mt. Bossu and had a really lovely hike with amazing views of the peninsula.

And so we begin this new decade.  May it bring us clarity in our visions, peace in our hearts, and lots of smiles on our faces.

PS:  In case you didn’t know, Birdsong is the name we’ve given to the property.  Birdsong Retreat and Sanctuary – come see us some time!

Last August, I wrote about our joining the Wwoofing Network (Willing Work on Organic Farms).  The Wwoofing Network is a great scheme whereby organic farms and properties can connect with travelers looking to experience authentic New Zealand life styles.  The catch?  The wwoofer host provides accommodation and food in exchange for four hours of work per day by the wwoofer.  It’s a great way for property block owners and farmers to get free labour, to meet interesting people, and to share their knowledge and expertise; and it’s a great way for travelers to travel cheaply, pick up some new skills, and meet quirky-yet-hopefully-interesting lifestyle block owners/farmers making a go on the land.   It’s a win-win situation for all!

Due to my travel schedule and the work we had started doing with Pete (our builder), we only had one or two woofers throughout the whole of Spring, but things kicked into gear in February and it’s been non-stop ever since.   I receive a couple of email requests per week, some for folks who want to come right away, some for folks wanting to reserve a space a few months in advance.  We’re slowly learning how to ‘read’ people’s profiles to see if they’d be a good fit with us and we’re learning lots about managing people and how to strike a good balance between having a house full of people versus a house of just us two to relax {the latter which has been far and few between these past four months!}.

We’ve been truly fortunate to have a great crew of people come through.  We’ve generally tended to schedule them for a minimum of one weeks time and often to coincide for when Pete is here.   “If we’re having one person on site, we may as well have three,” has been our motto.   And more often than not, we’ve been a household of six to eight people for ten days at a time.   Somewhat exhausting, often exhilarating, never boring, and always fun, we have gotten so much great work done.

Here’s a glimpse of what we’ve done.

February:  Erin and Vanessa from Chicago.
Vanessa and Erin came during the height of summer.  The weather was gorgeous and they were keen to have a go at anything.    Vanessa is a trained horticulturist and so it was great having her help with some tree pruning.  During their weeks’ stay we made a few batches of jam, they shelled piles of last years’ walnuts, and they transplanted over 100 seedlings and potted up over 50 cuttings of rosemary and sage (all of which are doing quite well).

March:   Mike and Mike from New Jersey AND Brian from Arizona.
I was in a household of six men in March as wwoofers Mike, Mike, and Brian were here along with Pete and Purple during Phase 1 of the Heating Installation Project.  Oh my.  We did a LOT of eating and Bruce and I were in the kitchen all the time prepping and cooking.  These guys liked to do physical labor like digging and most of our digging projects got done.  Brian dug a few swales in the upper orchard for our new fruit trees and the three of them dug a trench around our budding bamboo grove and they dug a few fencepost holes.  Mike and Mike also did a bunch of weed wacking and mowing for me.   Thank you gentlemen!

April:    Linnea from Colorado;  Anne-Sophie from France, and Kat from the U.K.
I now found myself in a household of five women as along with Linnea, Anne-Sophie, Kat, and myself, my neighbor’s sixteen year old daughter spent four days with us too.  It was a go-go-go week with some serious jam-making of four different varieties made (and a jam-off to taste test them);  seed sowing of a dozen or so styrofoam trays of veggies;  a trip down the hill to the ‘free’ apple tree where we collected about four sacks full of apples which then were processed (apple jelly, apple butter, and apple chutney), and the rest wrapped and stored (and still doing well);  arts-and-crafts day to mend our Green Fairy black light lanterns; and lots and lots of yummy cooking.   Anne-Sophie graced us with authentic quiche Lorraine and lemon meringue pies and Linnea led the crew on a culinary Nepalese feast for royalty.  And she made delicious fruit pies.  Linnea was also a seamstress-extraordinaire and so she got the task of hand-mending our greenhouse cover and for fun she made a pattern of some really cool pants we all liked.   The weather during their stay was also amazingly beautiful and so I made sure we got out to do some hiking and touring around Akaroa.   Thank you ladies!

May:     Stephanie from San Francisco and  Krista from Toronto.
Stephanie and Krista came independently and got along well together and with the crew as they joined me, Bruce, Pete, Kat, and Ollie during Phase 2 of the Heating Installation project.  Oi, what a busy ten days that was.  During their stay they helped dig out, weed, and create a few new garden beds; did a bit of seedling transplanting; helped de-nail a bunch of wood from the demolition; helped carry very large steel beams into the house; and, do what we do best, cook and eat!   We also had time for lots of fun and squeezed in a few trips down to the beach to explore some new areas and have a few yuks attempting to build a human pyramid.

We really have enjoyed all our wwoofers and hope to stay in touch with many of them. They have helped us get on top of our game and have saved us from endless hours of grueling work alone.    I am grateful for their hard work and enthusiasm and for helping us maintain our little piece of paradise.

Thanks team!

This winter, Bruce and I came to the realization that we cannot maintain the Wainui property alone.  There’s plenty of grunt day-to-day maintenance chores to do and often times not enough time for the fun creative projects.     Which would you rather do?  Yeah, I want to spend more time on creative projects too!

Solution?

We joined the Wwoofing network in New Zealand.   Wwoof stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms and anyone who has any size property in any stage of organic practice can join to become a Wwoof Host.    It costs $40 to join and we have access to thousands of Wwoofers from around the world.  It’s a great way to meet people and expose them to the awesomeness of New Zealand.

Here’s our profile:

Main Description: We are an American ex-pat, mid-40′s couple, no kids living on a lifestyle block on Akaroa Harbour. Nestled in Wainui Valley, we are in the midst of building a retreat/sanctuary. We have lots of interests and projects and try to cater to wwoofers interests. All skillsets are welcome. We have a separate lovely sleepout to offer with stunning views. Prefer couples or self-guided individuals. Minimum 7 night stay. We are very social and enjoy intellectual conversation, metaphysics, meditation, music, & board games.

General Description:   The tentative name for the retreat center we are developing is Birdsong. There are heaps of Kereru (wood pigeons), Bellbirds, and Fantails here. Early risers will delight to be awoken by their calls; late sleepers should bring earplugs or a sense of humor. Most of our moderately sloped (15% on average) property is in trees or bush, so there are plenty of walks to take and secret special places to find. You must be able to negotiate uneven terrain to Wwoof here, by the way. We are at the beginning of establishing a permaculture and forest garden system, so that means lots of compost making, weeding, mulching, and plant propagation, seedlings at this point. We dabble a bit with Biodynamics and the EM Bokashi composting method. We have a well-established flower garden and something is always in bloom. Our big harvest time is in March and April, when we have pears, walnuts, and Blackboy peaches aplenty and need lots of help collecting and making jams, jellies, and experiments with fruit wines. There are other sorts of general small farm tasks as you might expect. At times there may be more artistic and/or building projects going on, and a person who could do some artistic/creative work here would be very welcome indeed. We have a good library for organic, permaculture, spiritual and science fiction enthusiasts. We have no animals aside from worms and bees. Experiments with a top-bar hive system are in the beginning stages. Besides the birds and the sound of the occasional farm bike, this is a very quiet, restful place. The views are spectacular. It’s about 2 km downhill to one of the two best beaches on the Akaroa harbor, though the water is rather cold for our tastes. We are good cooks but always looking for someone to help. We have no food issues ourselves, but can easily accommodate vegetarians. Vegan and other limited diets will have to do more of their own cooking, which should not be a problem as we are well stocked with staples. We have a variety of interests, including organizing Kiwiburn, the official New Zealand Regional Burning Man festival {http://www.kiwiburn.com}. Others include German board games (i.e. Settlers of Cataan), alternative structures, orgone, sacred geometry, loom weaving, science fiction, music, movies. We are both over educated and can converse on a wide variety of topics. We lived in San Francisco for 15 years and are quite open minded. We are both social people but slightly introverted. A self-motivated detail oriented person or couple will do well here. Your accommodation will most likely be in a very nice sleepout with ensuite that we use for paying guests when there are no Wwoofers staying with us. Lucky you! One week minimum stay, please.

No sooner did we sign up than our first wwoofer response came through.   And through a friend of a friend, we’ve connected with another young person from the States who’ll be visiting New Zealand for a few months.    We’re picking her up on Saturday and she’ll be with us for the month of September.     The universe has answered our call for help.   Oh, thank you universe!

We have had an amazing harvest this autumn and have been non-stop with our noses in our preserving books and our hands in the kitchen!    Dehydrating, juicing, freezing, canning, and baking are all methods of preserving food and we’ve had fun experimenting with all of them.

Oh and I should say gorging too!  Yes, we’ve been gorging ourselves on all the delicious fruits, nuts, and veggies from in and around our garden.     The walnuts started dropping from the trees in early April and continued through the month.   Every few days we’d go out with a bucket and collect them.  They must be totally dry in order to store them, so we’d lay them out on sheets and haul them in and out onto the deck to dry in the sunshine.

Ol’ man pear blessed us this year and we shared plenty of pears with the possums and birds.   Ready by mid-February and going through March, our tree produced, oh, maybe 1000 little to medium sized pears, half of which we had to chuck into the compost (because of bird and possum damage).   The rest we mainly juiced or dehydrated.  We also made a lot of fruit crisps/crumbles.   We scored many boxes of pears from a Christchurch friend who had two gorgeous old trees that produced large succulent pears.  And there are several ‘wild’ trees around Wainui from which we foraged.

We’ve got three old apple trees on the property of unknown variety and three young Peasgood Nonsuch trees.  The old trees did well and we yielded approximately four big boxes of fruit.  A decent amount of it was riddled with coddling moth damage, but it was still edible/usable – you just have to cut each one to inspect the insides and cut out the inedible bits.    Mainly this fruit was used for juicing, dehydrating, or baking.  The Peasgood Nonsuch, which are only about six years old produced all of five or six apples – they’ve got a long way to go.    To store apples, you individually wrap each apple in a piece of newspaper, layer them in a box, and store in a cool place.  We’re giving this a go and have two full boxes in the storeroom.

The grapevine at the Clyde house had its best year in the four years we’ve been there, yielding beautiful succulent grapes from mid-March through the end of April.   These grapes are mainly eating grapes, which our friends and we have enjoyed.     Our crab apple trees produced 4 kilos (9 lbs.) of apples, which we’ve made into jelly and lemonade.    Our two blackboy peach trees yielded less than last year but still did well, probably giving us two boxes of peaches.   These, while they’re okay for eating, are mainly used for baking and jamming.

Our young orchard consists of six quince, three apricot, five fig, two lemon, three goji berry, three apple, and twenty olive trees.   I’m not sure when they’re supposed to start producing but we got very little from them this year.     In spring, the apricots were in full bloom but unfortunately we witnessed several big wood pigeons sucking on their sweet nectar – we only got ten apricots off the three trees.  The six quince only produced one fruit.   The apples as I mentioned gave us five.  No figs.   No lemons.  Two little goji berries from one plant.   And only one of the olive trees had any olives on them which Bruce was getting excited about harvesting (usually in June before the first frost).  However, I went up to look at the tree a few days ago and they’re all gone.  Not a single one left.  I don’t know if the wind whipped them off the tree or whether some creature got to them first.   A mystery.     Next year we will net some of the trees to keep the birds out and we probably need to keep them better watered during summer.

And even though the young lemons did not do well, our bigger lemon tree did.   Bruce has cared for this lemon tree like a newborn babe – watering it, feeding it, and keeping it well groomed.   Last year it suffered from scale and sooty mold which we got rid of and this year the tree is just laden with gorgeous fruit.   We are now experimenting with making a ginger/lemon juice to have as a daily health tonic.

Oh, and we have one little Chilean Guava which did excellently and yielded us two small bowls of fruit.   Sweet, like nectar, you don’t need much of these to bring a smile to your face.   These are good border plants and I envision one day creating a row of edible shrubs outside my bedroom door from which I can roll out and have sweet fruit right at my fingertips!

On the vegetable and herb front, we had a good garlic crop which hopefully gave us enough garlic for the year; our potatoes were not so good – yielding only 15 kilos; the tomatoes were great and gave plenty of fruit from February through May.   The Austrian Hull-less seed pumpkins that we love so much did not do well.  We only got eight pumpkins compared to over twenty from last year.  The plants we had in Wainui did not produce any fruit – only lots and lots of leaf.   Some type of mineral deficiency I suspect.  We let some of the zucchinis grow into marrows which store well and can be used throughout the winter.   And we had an abundant production of herbs:  parsley, rosemary, St. Johns Wort, lemon verbena, chamomile, borage, lemon balm, peppermint, and sage.

The learning curve for figuring out how to cure, preserve, and store all this food has been steep.   We’ve spent a lot of our autumn in the kitchen and we’ve gotten quite adept at experimenting with all sorts of new recipes.   Here’s the lowdown on our various preservation techniques:

Dehydrating:

I purchased a used Ezi-Dry FD-1000 dehydrator which came with four trays, two mesh liners, and two solid liners.   We’ve had it going on and off for the last three months and a least 24 hours a day for a solid month during the high crop season.      We’ve dried various fruits – mainly pears and apples but had a go with persimmons, grapes, and peaches.    We yielded two big jars of dried fruit which should last most of the year.    For herbs, which we dry for tea, I’ve done trays and trays of lemon verbena as well as chamomile and St John’s Wort.  Below are photos of the Lemon Verbena (center) and St. John’s Wort shrubs and a sunburst tray of chamomile flowers.   My other successful experiment, courtesy of Maggie, was to make my own crackers using the pulp from juicing (mainly carrots) and mixing it with a mix of sunflower, linseed, and sesame seeds and a bit of soy sauce to bind it together.   Hmmmm….. delicious.

Juicing:   I scored a second-hand Sunbeam Café Series 1000-watt juicer which has been a godsend.   We’ve enjoyed fresh juice almost daily for several months now.  Our favorite blend is apple, ginger, and carrot.    Most of the pears ended up through the juicer and we produced several litres of fresh pear juice, which we’ve frozen.    Carrots are in season and we can score a 25 kilo (50 lb.) bag of ‘seconds’ from the farmers market for $10.  Excellent for juicing and for soup making.

Bottling:     I did a few rounds of jams and jellies as well as trying out some marmalades and chutneys.     Some of the notable ones:   peach, raisin, and wine jam (15 jars);  pear apple ginger marmalade (9 jars);  pear cinnamon jam (3 jars); crabapple jelly (9 jars); beetroot and zucchini chutney (3 jars); and a persimmon jam (3 jars).    Next year I need to be more prepared as I ran out of jars several times and had to put a few experiments on hold until I could source more jars.

Freezing:   Due to my lack of jars, most of the blackboy peaches ended up in the freezer.  The peaches, while making for a good jam, make for an even better cobbler and we will be enjoying Bruce’s peach cobbler throughout the winter season.  We made a variety of carrot soups for freezing too.

Alcohol fermentation:   Probably the most fun we’ve had is having a go at producing our own alcohol from fruit.   Brewmaster Bruce is at the helm here with figuring out the proper blends and recipes.    We’re in the midst of trying to make a pear cider (one of my favorites) or pear perry as they call it here.  As I mentioned, we juiced hundreds of pears.  Bruce has about six 1-litre bottles in various states of fermentation.  We will either get a nice alcoholic beverage from this or else some passable cider vinegar.   Time will tell. We’ve got a big bottle of apple cider brewing too.  And Bruce has been experimenting with infusing his vodka distillation with ginger to produce a faux ‘Ginger Wine’ which is also a favorite of ours.  The first bottle he made we drank within a week – the sign of a successful experiment.  He’s now having a go with four bottles in the queue.  And lastly, we’ve just whipped up an alcoholic crabapple lemonade which is currently ‘curing’.

Our kitchen looks like a science lab with bottles of all sorts of things, in all stages of production, sitting everywhere!     The kitchen is just not big enough nor does it have enough storage capacity.  Hopefully by this time next year, all this will be remedied when our remodel is complete and we have a big brand new kitchen to play in!

Most of the recipes we used came out of two books, the first which can be found in the Christchurch library  (I definitely recommend the Small Batch Preserving book over the other one).  And the inspiration for our alcohol fermentation experiments come from the third:

The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning:  Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation by The Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante

Wild Fermentation:  The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz

With all this ‘free’ food, one would think that we’ve cut down on our grocery bill.  I actually keep track of all our expenses in Quicken and so I decided to see.  And it turns out that we have not really saved that much money.   I’ve been perplexed about this because it doesn’t seem like we’re buying as much.  But as Bruce carefully noted the other day, it’s due to price inflation.   Yes, food costs have risen exorbitantly in the past year.   Just as an example, organic mustard powder rose from $10.13 to to $15.33 a kilo (51% increase);  organic raisins went from $8.80 to $9.50 a kilo (8% increase); and organic currants rose from $5.88 to $11.08 per ½ kilo (a whopping 88% increase).     Milk products went through the roof earlier in the year and have only come down recently but are still above last year’s levels.

So the moral of this story?   Keep growing our own food.  And more of it.  It is by far the cheapest way to eat.  For those of you reading who live in New Zealand, an excellent and free way to get into vegetable gardening is to subscribe to New Zealand Gardener magazine’s Get Growing e-newsletter which comes out every Friday.   It is filled with tips on what to do every week, offers recipe ideas, information on seed vendors, and there’s always a competition or drawing for some gardening related item (and I’ve won several hundred dollars worth of goods this year, most notably a year subscription to NZ House & Garden, Cuisine, and NZ Life & Leisure magazines).    Community gardens are another good way to go and Christchurch has over a dozen in which one can participate.   Join a local gardening club, find your local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group, barter with friends.

Food.  It’s delicious.  It’s even better when it’s locally produced.  And it doesn’t get mo’ better than coming from your own back yard.    So get growing!

We’d been talking about this for a few months, but had been putting it off for it was going to be a bit of a tricky endeavor to move two hives built from four boxes of bees, each box weighing 30-70 lbs. In commercial bee-keeping, the beekeeper uses a flatbed truck to transport the hives, and has special bee boxes that can be closed when the bees are all in at night. The boxes can be kept together, without breaking open the hives, and they get driven from site to site. Bruce had to build special travelling bottoms for the bee hives which would mostly keep them in the hive and still allow air to get in. We only have our van, and we couldn’t lift the three-box hive all at once, so it was going to have to be taken apart and reassembled twice and Bruce would have to be in the van with the bees. I did not volunteer to join him.

The bees need to be moved during their quiet time – usually at dusk or later or in the early dawn. Not being a morning person, Bruce chose the former.

I was the lead scout on this mission, heading out to Wainui in the late afternoon so I could get some mowing done in the area Bruce had chosen for the bees. The grass was well over a foot long in most places, but it was relatively easy to mow. I cleared the path and space in under two hours. And then I waited.

I talked to Bruce around 9 pm as the last bit of daylight subsided. “I’m not ready yet. I’m still distilling (kiwiburn project). Not sure when I’m coming out,” he said. By midnight when he still hadn’t arrived and I could no longer keep my eyes open, I retired, worryingly, to bed.

Tossing and turning, I awoke many times, carefully listening for signs of Bruce. Finally I heard some clanging around in the kitchen. It was 4:30 am and he’d just arrived. “I need to keep going and move them now rather than go to sleep and get up in two hours at dawn.” I was too tired to assist in the darkness, so I puttered, worryingly again, back to bed.

During the next few hours, in my half-dazed sleep, I had many surreal dreams about the bees and I could hear a lot of puttering in the house. At 7:30 am, I got up as Bruce was making his way to sleep. He pulled an all-nighter. He moved the bees into position and lived to tell the tale with only two stings. He said they were not amused and had been agitated, but he was able to put each of the four boxes holding hundreds or thousands of bees, one by one, into the wheelbarrow and wheel them down the hill and over to their new site in total darkness. It was only during the movement of the last box, as the light of dawn lit the sky, that a bee had gotten into his headpiece and stung him right at the base of his throat – ouch! The other was on his wrist. Not pleasant, but not too bad for moving several thousand bees.

And now the bees are in their new home. Lucky them. They have an awesome view and an abundance of pollen right at their doorstep.

Mission Stealthy Sting complete. Over and out.

Bruce says:

Kathy had very kindly given me the option of moving just one of the hives — the smaller one, and leaving the large one, which was in a corner of our property, in place during the sale of the house. Since I started bee-keeping, I’ve seen that people really freak out about bees, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave a hive at a house we were trying to sell. And moving the bees was such a specialized operation that I wanted to do it all at once.

I didn’t leave Christchurch until 2:30 AM, between taking apart the hives, finishing the distilling, unpacking the van from a timber run for the Merkaba earlier in the day, repacking the van with everything else I could squeeze in as we try to de-clutter our house for the sale, and then getting gas. I only saw one other car for a few blocks in Christchurch during the whole trip. Friend Ali asked if I was worried about falling asleep while driving. Taking apart the hives, wheeling the boxes one at a time into the van, getting stung the first time, putting them back together, and then driving the bees was such a hair-raising experience that there wasn’t much danger of falling asleep.
And Kathy pointed out that even a minor accident with the van would have broken apart the hives and filled the van with thousands of very angry bees. It probably would have been fatal.

Once I got to the property, despite Kathy’s crucial mowing job, I still had to clear the remnants of a thorny rose bush prunings pile from the bee site, and then get a spade (shovel) and level out the site. In my adrenaline-fueled-bee-moving-madness, and my leather-gloved beekeepers outfit, this was surprisingly easy.

It was the first dawn I have seen at the new property, and it was beautiful, with pink tinged hillsides and bird calls and acrobatics. Given my sleeping habits, I don’t usually catch dawns from the morning side, so it was a really lovely end to a long tense day.

Last week I witnessed my fourth swarm this season. I’d never even seen a swarm or a natural hive in my entire life and now I’ve seen four! I think the bees are trying to tell me something; they’re in my future.

I wrote about the first two swarms in an earlier post.

The third was witnessed about three weeks ago out at Wainui. Bruce & I had walked down the hill to the beach one afternoon and as we were walking back up the dirt road to our house, we came around a corner and I could hear them. Loud buzzing. I glanced up and saw maybe 200 bees flying around, not super agitated, but still a bit chaotic. I looked over to the left and there were the other thousand, already forming their cluster on a branch just about a foot off the road and within reaching distance. We stood and watched for a few minutes. Bruce was disappointed he didn’t have any ‘bee-catching’ equipment as we certainly would like to have additional bees. But the bee-family-expansion was not meant to be that day.

The fourth witnessing occurred last week on the property in Wainui. We’d discovered about a month ago that some bees had gathered into the roof of our sleepout and were forming a hive under the tin roof. Not a good place for a hive. Rather than kill them, which is what most people would do, we wanted to ‘catch’ them and create another hive. Bruce has been saying for weeks now that he needs to get to that task, but it hasn’t happened.

Last weekend I was out at the property by myself, working in the yard, and doing a lot of activity back and forth through the orchard which sits in front of the sleepout. When I checked in the morning, the bees were buzzing about the tin roof normally, going about their pollen-collecting business. Nothing out of the ordinary. Around mid-day, I came back up to the orchard and I could hear LOUD buzzing. I was standing maybe a 100 feet away from the sleepout. I glanced up and thousands of bees were buzzing about. Swarm. Again, I watched for a few minutes as they agitated and swirled haphazardly around. I left to go back to the house to call Bruce and when I got back about 15 minutes later, the buzzing had subsided and I couldn’t see any bees. “Darn,” I thought, “I missed them. But they can’t be too far.” So I approached the sleepout and peeked around, listening intently. Finally I saw a handful of bees about 15 feet from the sleepout swirling around some trees. I got closer and sure enough, there they all were – thousands of them, forming their hive on a low-lying branch about six feet off the ground. I was able to get within five feet of them to witness their activity. I had no fear. Unfortunately I had no camera either so no super close-up photos to share.

So yeah, bees are on my mind. And they seem to be on a lot of peoples’ minds as I’ve been seeing articles left and right about bees featured in a wide spectrum of media. Michael Pollan, an author I enjoy, wrote an interesting piece recently in the New York Times Magazine titled “Our Decrepit Food Factories” (12/16/07) wherein he discusses the use of the buzzword ‘sustainability’ and illustrates just how unsustainable our modern industrial agricultural practices are, citing two examples: In one he relates the increase in the breakout of an antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus in human beings to the increase in use of antibiotics on concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO’s or factory farms) whereby because of the intensity of antibiotic used on the animals, the bacteria are evolving rapidly and developing resistant strains. There’s no direct proof yet that this is where humans are picking up this strain of bacteria but many scientists are convinced that there is causality.

The second example cited had to do with honeybees and the very extreme problem facing many beekeepers: Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD. Apparently thousands of hives across America are disappearing into what apparently seems like thin air. Many beekeepers lost anywhere from 20-80% of their hives in 2006 and 2007; enough to warrant media attention around the world. Similar stories have been reported in Europe. The cause for this phenomenon is not yet known, but speculation runs wide that it could be due to a virus, parasites, mites, genetically engineered maize crops which are poisoning the bees, electromagnetic radiation, and auto-immune deficiency. Whatever the cause, what is known is that the bees are being taxed. Pollan cites the example of the California almond season. California produces 80% of the world’s almonds. Almonds are pollinated by bees and the pollination season is quite short. The amount of land for such production is so vast that the almond growers need to import bees from around the country and from overseas to pollinate the blossoms. Hives that should be in winter dormancy are suddenly trucked across the country in the dead of winter; bees and hives are interspersed; germs and parasites are intermingling. It’s easy to see how this could be a breeding ground for a national or international bee epidemic.

CCD is a serious problem. A third of all our crops are pollinated by honeybees. No bees, no garlic, apples, broccoli, brussel sprouts, citrus, melons, onions, almonds, turnips, parsley, or sunflowers, and then some. Just a week or so ago, I received a notice in one of the e-newsletters I get, about a new documentary that’s being made called The Vanishing of the Bees. Check out the trailer on the website. It’s informative and scary.

Bees are fascinating creatures and so integral to our lives. I’d never really given it much thought until Bruce took up beekeeping last year. My hesitancy about having them is gone and I support Bruce in adding more hives. I’m trying to learn as much as I can.

I stumbled across this book at the library by accident (a sign from the great universe?) and found it to be quite an enjoyable read. Called “Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey, The Sweet Liquid Gold That Seduced the World” by Holley Bishop, she weaves a tale of her own experience as a novice beekeeper with the story of commercial Florida beekeeper Donald Smiley intertwined with an engaging historical account of beekeeping over the millennia. Bees, pollen, beeswax, bee stings, and the ever-so-important liquid gold – honey, are all delved into with lots of interesting factoids such as:

1. Honey is so sweet that bacteria can’t survive in it, so it was our first food preservative and all-purpose wound salve.
2. The queen determines the sex of her offspring by parceling out sperm collected from her one and only maiden flight out of the hive. Fertilized eggs become female worker bees; unfertilized eggs become male drones. A hive is 99% female!
3. A worker bee will make up to 50 pollen-collecting trips a day and can travel a distance of up to five miles. Each trip lasts from five minutes to a few hours depending on the proximity and abundance of the pollen.
4. Bees have been used in warfare since ancient Greco-Roman times to inflict pain, punishment, and torture. Romans developed shipboard swarm catapults for naval battles; the Greeks released bees and wasps into tunnels to plague advancing enemies; medieval warfare relied on ‘bee bombs’ or hives that were thrown over castle walls to thwart attackers; in Vietnam, native fighters set bee traps against American troops; in modern day, the American military is testing the use of bees for use against the war on drugs and terrorism as bees have a keen sense of smell, can be easily trained, and are easier to maintain than dogs.
5. Bee venom is being commercially harvested and used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus, and chronic fatigue syndrome (a carefully applied sting or two numbs the site and stimulates the immune, anti-inflammatory, and circulatory systems)
6. Beeswax (for candles) was for royalty, the church, and the very rich. From the tenth century to the sixteenth century, the church was the biggest and wealthiest consumer of wax in the entire world; at Queen Elizabeth I’s funeral, 10,000 wax torches lit the procession.

So, next time you see a bee a buzzin, take a moment to pause, observe, and be thankful for what these little creatures bring into our lives. For without the bees, life would be far less bountiful.

Spring is a busy time for bees and for the beekeeper. Our bee book says that one should check the hive every ten days for new emerging queens. Many things can cause a hive to swarm, especially the addition of a new queen.

Well, we’ve been busy with the new Wainui property purchase and Bruce hasn’t had as much time to keep on top of the bees although he’s had every intention of it. He’s been talking about properly splitting the hive and bringing a hive out to Wainui {the wish}. He’s gone and gotten the equipment to make new boxes.

And this is what happened:

TUESDAY, Oct 23:

After taking a few days to build the super (the additional top box which allows for the harvestable honey), Bruce went out on this beautiful warm & sunny morning and added the super to the other two boxes (requires full bee suit, opening up the top of the existing box and adding the new one on top).

An hour or so later, as we were chatting in the kitchen, I looked out the window and saw hundreds of bees haphazardly buzzing about the yard. “Huh, that’s weird. Are they swarming?” I said. “Hmmm, don’t think so, but I don’t know,” says Bruce.

Now let me preface this with an earlier story. About two weeks prior, I came out the front door one morning and could hear a very loud buzzing. I looked up and there were several hundred bees near the roof, buzzing around in a wide circle. I wondered if this was a swarm and went and got Bruce. The bees circled higher and higher and were moving in a giant swirl down the road. Within ten minutes we watched them travel past four or five neighbors’ houses and on further. We didn’t know where they came from and we didn’t think they were from our hive as we’d been out in the yard and our bees seemed ‘normal’.

So back to the story. We curiously watched the bees buzzing all over the yard – they were flying around at an average person’s height level. Then within a short period of time, they started moving higher and bunching up more closely together. Within two hours, they had settled high into one of our trees on the property, perfectly clustered together into a beautiful cone formation. It was amazing and stunning to watch.

Yes, we had just witnessed a swarm.

“Wow, what luck” we said. “They stayed here on the property which means they must want to stay with us.” With some head-scratching, Bruce went to his bee book to read up on capturing swarms. He got out the ladder to see if he could reach the hive, but couldn’t. The hive was a good six feet out of reach.

Bruce talked about cutting the tree down with our newly purchased chain saw. It’s a tree that we’d thought about taking down last year as it blocks out afternoon sun from the veggie garden. Friend Amba was appalled that we would even consider cutting down a native Totara tree. I wasn’t too keen on it. An after a careful ponder, Bruce decided against it too.

Instead, he parked the van close to the tree and strapped an open bee box on top. In the box were two honey frames from the existing hive; he was hoping that the scent of honey would draw them down.

Nothing more could be done today.

WEDNESDAY, Oct 24:

A nor’wester blew through bringing very high winds. The bees were not paying much attention to the bee box on the van. The trees were swaying and the bees hung on. Friend Amba dropped by, we all stared up at the bees, and she says, ‘Have they moved lower?” {another wish} to which I reply, ‘Nope, for sure not.” Late in the day, dark clouds rip open and we are pummeled with a ten minute hail storm producing quarter-inch-sized hail balls. I don’t think the bees were amused.

THURSDAY, Oct 25:

Another warm & glorious day. The bees are active. They are relocating lower in the tree! We watch in awe as they descend in formation and re-form two smaller hive/cones about six feet lower – within reach from the ladder. The time of reckoning is upon us.

We both don our bee suits about an hour before dusk. The bees are settling down at this time after an active day. We spread a big sheet on the ground underneath the cone just in case they drop. Bruce starts the smoker. He climbs the ladder. We snip off some excess branches. Ooooh, he’s less than a foot away from the cone. Glorious.

It’s time. One, two, three, snip. With one hand on the branch, and one hand awkwardly controlling the loppers, he makes the cut. The force of this action jolts the bees and half of them come tumbling down onto the sheet. A third are still clustered onto the branch which Bruce gently puts into the box. Bruce snips down the second smaller cone. The bees are startled and start buzzing around. We pick up the sheet and drape it around the box with hopes that they’ll crawl off and re-form in the box.

FRIDAY, Oct 26:

Bruce is up at dawn to check on the bees. They’re still clustered on the sheet so he has to gently shake/scrape them off. By mid-day they’ve formed into two groups in the box. Bruce caps the box and let’s them settle in.

Here they’ll stay for a couple of weeks to get used to their new home. Bruce will create more frames and complete the box and then we’ll take them out to Wainui.

We have a second hive!