Earth Oven: Cooking In The Ground (again!)

Epic wins and some minor fails! This 4th of July me and Bort re-visited the successful Earth Oven project we tried last summer ... for those of ya'll who missed it, who loved it, and who want to trouble shoot this labor intensive way of cooking here is how we did it this time....

THE EARTH OVEN:::::::::::::
The first step is to grab some shovels and do some intense diggin' - this time we made the hole less wide but very deep, keeping in mind what would be put in there to cook. I think this hole (in the pic below) was maybe 2-3 wide and the same deep. But ya'll know I can't do math, so this is a rough guess.
The second step, is to gather alot of good rocks to line the hole with. The rocks will hold the heat in better and release it for cooking!
The third step is to gather wood! Lots of kindling to get a raging fire started and stack up some good burning logs in the hole. The process of the fire takes many hours because as it burns down, you have to keep adding more and more logs, sticks, wood in order to make it hotter, and create more coals. FOR HOURS, the longer the better! We let this one burn for maybe 5 hours, but more burning time = better cookin'.

Eventually the fire will burn down to just hot coals in the bottom of the hole.... we made sure the fire would not spread either, by hosing down the area around it (since the grass and flora has been really dry lately!)

The fourth step ya gotta do is once it gets close to the time the fire is going to burn itself out, start gathering plants that are safe to put in the hole with the food --- things like thistle, nettles, bamboo leaves, burdock leaves (in tropical places big banana leaves would be great)... these plants will create steam in the earth oven to help cook the food. Indigenous people would wrap their meat in the leaves to protect it from the dirt.

ALL BURNED and Ready! ::::::::::

Once your fire is burned out and there is a pile of hot coals, now is the time to start layering the flora on top! This part should go rather quickly so that too much steam does not escape right at the beginning....

So the fifth step is to put the greenery in fast as ya can! Bort in the pic below is putting tons of bamboo leaves in first...

He wrapped his food in foil ---> what he wanted to cook for the party was two chickens, a buncha' ribs, corn and some veggies!

The food was placed in the center, and then more greens were put on top!

Which leads to the sixth step ::: THE BURIAL!

Steam will be rising, we just kept on shoveling the dirt back on top till no more steam could escape! That is why it's helpful to keep the dirt you originally dig out in a neat pile next to the hole...

ALL DONE, and time for it to cook!

We waited from about 2 pm to 8 pm before preparing to dig up the food and see if it worked!

*

THE DIGGING UP! ::::::

The last step on the earth oven TO DO list.... dig that shit up!

All dressed up for the party with a tiny audience of friends & family we got to diggin' up the chickens, ribs and veggies to see if it worked...

we dug up the dirt, then carefully pulled up the steamed to death greens we had layered. Here is where we learned a few things for later trouble shooting....

1. If you wrap your food in foil or leaves, make sure you wrap it VERY tightly- because dirt can get into your food.

2. The type of wood you use may make a difference on the amount of heat- just like when burning for house heat certain types of wood like locust, walnut, hickory will burn hotter then other softer wood.

3. Timing is everything! Make sure you have enough time to really have your fire going for many hours and be able to leave the food in for MANY hours - that way all your work will be worth it! Be aware that the thicker the meat/food the longer it may take to cook.

4. This round we forgot to put a pile of rocks directly on top the food before the flora and burying, more rocks= better oven!

For us, the ribs were cooked to perfection, but the two chickens stuffed with veggies didn't cook all the way to the middle (for reasons listed in the trouble shooting above, like not enough hard woods, not enough coooking time for the thickness.) For some reason also, the packet of veggies didn't cook, but the corn on the cob did.

BON APETITE! In my mind, it was way more a success then a fail! TOtaLLy worth the fun!

Smooches Xoxoxo

Momentary Lapse Of Bloggin' : Happy Belated 4th Of July

Hey Ya'll - sorry I didn't get to share with ya this weekend, but I actually went out of my forest ova' to Big Sandy Mush (my old haunt) for a good Ole' 4th of July Party....
Tomorrow I am going to show you the epic wins and fails of cooking meat & veggies in an Earth Oven ( cooking straight down in the ground!)

PS- to my many friends who have MCS, yep that is me holding a sparkler and being around fireworks! I am way way healthier (but i still think fireworks are way way bad for the environment!)

Smooches xoxox

Slitherin' Mania: Copperhead, Black Snake, and 6 ft Snake Skin

The snakes are back! Yesterday I was in Big Sandy Mush... me and Bort were talking about how we had not seen any snakes yet this year, which I guess summoned them from the depths cause not an hour later we had a snake fest.The first snake spotted was a copperhead under some thorny blackberry bushes on a concrete path that leads up to the Silo. It was sitting all coiled up and very alert. I did not feel as though the snake was at ease and I kept a good distance and left it alone. The eyes on this one actually look like they are made of metallic copper colored material - which is probably why Bort was utterly 'creeped out'- (understatement on his reaction to copperheads).
We also stumbled upon a large black snake warming itself in the woods on top my favorite tree. It had some unusual markings on it's side that we didn't know was from a fight/injury or if it was getting ready to shed it's skin... it slithered down the tree trunk and literally did a disappearing act (hole in the ground, hide under the bark, hole in the tree???) It slithered into the oblivion.
When Bort tried to show me another black snake that lives in his well house it wasn't in sight, but the skin it shed was hanging from the rafters and I pulled it down. It was split in two pieces (in the middle of the belly it had broke), but Bort held it together and the snake is about 6 feet LONG!
Not only that but the skin was fresh and new enough to have the head totally in tact! How cool is this??! Even the eyeball skin is on there!
I got to keep this snake skin and brought it home. It smells gross like an old fish, but I can't stop myself from loving it.
Xoxoxo'ssssssss

Big Sandy Mush: Nodding Trillium, Blood Root and Cassette Tape Dance Party

Yay! I got to go for a visit to Big Sandy Mush yesterday - in my GMC Jimmy... the drive was a descent into a deeper more green spring then I've been experiencing high on the mountain in Luck. Every moment was one of magic... seriously filled with butterflies, color, flowers, with various smells of trees, honey combs and blooms.
There were some of my favorite wild & native plants growing over there - and Bort dug up some blood root for me to take back with me to the cabin. He dug it up with a neat handmade 'shovel' cut from a piece of bamboo... (see pic below) ... (i like that alot!)We found some nodding trillium too! The flowers of the nodding trillium are underneath the three leaves (hence the name.)

But the party REALLY got started when Bort helped me fix the cassette tape player in my GMC Jimmy ---> which was holding a big ole' grocery bag full of my cassette tapes thanks to my mom who brought them all the way from New Orleans.

We opened up the doors and back hatch, and turned those old mix tapes on high volume... and of course when I hear things like Billy Idol singing 'Rock The Cradle Of Love' I naturally must jump onto the hood of my funky ole' truck and dance like the girl in the video did!!!

We blew on the wishie flowers (dandelions) but I forgot to make a wish.... not feeling like I have any wishes must be a good thing, maybe cause it feels like all my wishes have come true lately. :)

What was Bort's wish? I wanna know.
Bye bye Big Sandy Mush... the rain clouds rolled in and I rolled outta there back to the Luck Cabin.
xoxoxoxo

Saying Goodbye To Big Sandy Mush

My time here in Big Sandy Mush is now limited - my belongings and maybe my body too will be in Hot Springs NC sometime this weekend. Everything is packed and ready to go on my next adventure in these mountains. I have loved Big Sandy every time I have lived here but Madison County has my heart and I am finally going 'home'.

I am going to attempt to ride my electric bike there almost the entire way to avoid having to ride in a car - finga's crossed ya'll, that this 3rd electric bike doesn't break like #1 and #2! Cause I have go way more then 5 miles... more like 5 miles x's 4 ---> that is unless I do the secret trespassing shortcut plan I have mapped out that I found on google. Sketchy, yes ... sneaky, yes... way shorter... oh my gawd, yes! I think like, maybe a church and someone's house is there in the middle, but I am not sure... my plan is to get to the middle and if another human catches me bike handed to act like I got lost from where I need to go so they will help guide me towards my house and not back to the HWY. ;)

Let me show you the secret shortcut on the map...

(it is the part private paved road at A and part graveled in road at B- which looks like a dark black line ---> going between point A and point B .... you can see if I don't go that way, I have to ride the blue line which goes around a whole mountain.)


View Larger Map

BTW... here below is a cell phone picCHa' my friend Mark took of my house, when he was part way finished putting in the locally milled and way cheap Hickory Floors I got. (There were no floors except plywood before that.) If you are local to Madison County, you can hire Mark to do cool stuff to your house too... he is all eco-fied.
And before I go, I wanna show ya'll a project I was working on a few weeks ago - but I think it came out like an inappropriate 4th grade "do not litter" style poster. I need help with slogans, reallllly bad - so leave some suggestions about what could be said that would get the point across, be mature, and can include censored naked ladies.
I heart this:::



And This too:::



AND I heart every single one of you!!!! Wish me luck...

Xoxoxoxoxoxoo

Brown Salamander (from the creek)

Today got warm, and this is what we found...
Neat little glassy brown salamander with light black and white patterns, muted along it's sides. The way it's skin is smooth and ripples and reflects - it looks like water, running over dirt. Just how nature intended it to.
(BTW- that's not my thumb... i might have cajun man hands, but i don't have giant double jointed hitchhiker thumbs.)
It's reallllllly cute. Ya gotta admit? That face is one to love.

XoXo

Screech Owl... oh my gawd I am the luckiest me I eva' was

If I told ya how I got this close to the screech owl, ya might not believe me... but I will tell ya'll the story anyway...
I heard a sound outside the house that I thought was my cat meowing for my help, so i stepped out onto the deck and made some lilting, soothing calls of her name - Toots. Suddenly I heard the trill call of the screech owl from the large pine tree, then saw the small owl spread it giant wings and fly across in front of me over to the apple tree. It made another soft trill (go here to listen to the sound) - which I copied back to it. We were talking... me and the owl in both our languages. I have no idea about what.
When I got right underneath it with my camera, after a few pictures it got nervous enough to fly into the more camouflaged branches of the apple tree, rather then sitting on top the lone dead branch.
I quietly walked along under the tree, continuing to talk 'trill' with it - long enough to take a few more pics and get to see it spread it's beautiful wings wide - then fly off, low to the ground and swoop up into another apple tree further up the hill.
According to superstition and the Native American beliefs {described by Tom Brown in The Tracker}, an owl only shows itself to you when someone is going to die. Literally.
...
I am still happy to see it, I have waited many years to be this close to an owl again.
"These common owls are fearless in defense of their nests and will often strike unsuspecting humans on the head as they pass nearby at night. When discovered during the day, they often freeze in an upright position, depending on their cryptic coloration to escape detection. The two color phases, which vary in their relative numbers according to geography, are not based on age, sex, or season.
Nesting: 3-8 white eggs placed without a nest lining in a cavity in a tree or in a nest box."

Read more about owls in your region at Enature.com!

XoXoxoxoxo hoo hoo!

Turkey Vulture In The Grey Sky

Every time i see one of these big turkey vultures I usually mistake it for a hawk. And for all I know, I may be now mistaking a hawk for a turkey vulture... but i don't think so. As much as people don't like vultures close up (people don't seem to think they are as beautiful a bird as they really are), from a distance these large birds have as much intense graceful presence as other birds of prey. Turkey vultures carry a huge windspan, as wide as an eagle!
This turkey vulture pictured here- let's call him Larry, was swooping really low to the ground above my head, which is highly unusual. I usually see these birds in groups of 2 to 4, swaying, gliding, and circling overhead. Larry though was all alone, and I almost could swear once he saw me taking pictures he began showing off... you know in a really dark, goth kind of way (as not to totally ruin his Edgar Allen Poe style reputation.)

From Enature.com:::
"Soaring for hours over woodland and nearby open country, the Turkey Vulture searches for carcasses, locating them at least partly by means of its acute sense of smell. As they soar, these "buzzards" ride on rising columns of warm air called thermals to save energy as they cover miles of territory. The importance of this energy saving is clear from the fact that we seldom see a Turkey Vulture on a windless day, when thermals do not form. Turkey Vultures are valuable for their removal of garbage and disease-causing carrion.
Nesting: 2 whitish eggs, heavily marked with dark brown, placed without nest or lining in a crevice in rocks, in a hollow tree, or in a fallen hollow log."
XoXo

Did I tell Ya'll I'm Moving?

...to this tiny cabin in Hot Springs, NC (in the pic below). During my time spent in Western North Carolina (almost 9 years) I have moved over 12 times - which is why I tend to be called a gypsy, someone who can't settle down, someone who can't commit, but also someone who likes adventure and can make a home where ever I end up. Out of those 12 moves, only two were close into a small town, the other ten were always at the end of some rural road, in the middle of nowhere... all by chance, and a little choice.
Once again I am summoning my inner gypsy to make another move, and at the same time giving her a re-assignment to stop the physical moving, and just keep that shit spiritual... ya know?

Big thanks to my Mom & Dad who are helping me make this happen!

PS - I won't be leaving Big Sandy Mush for a few weeks... I sure will miss it.




XoXo