My Happy Place

“Why did you come to Willits?” asks the bartender at Diggers, a bar named thusly because the owners also own the Willits cemetery.

“I am a forest witch and I want to eat fresh fruit, attend festivals and hang out with my people.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” the bartender smiles and slides me a frothy IPA. I clink beers with my man and then he proceeds to win four pool games in a row, but how we laughed made it all worthwhile.

I am in my happy place when I am snuggled into the Hollows. Life feels closer, more real. Our home is 800 square feet on 44 acres with a coastal breeze and a southeastern view of 20,000 acres of privately own forest. We watched a bear from our kitchen window while drinking coffee one morning. Later in the afternoon, we found the bear den in a burned-out redwood tree. I thought the Fairy Ring of ten or so redwood trees could be my ritual spot, but the place is already holy ground.

In this visit we have tackled an amazing amount of projects:

1.       We removed plastic nets and the dowels, held by eye-hooks from the ceiling that the former owners used to dry Cannabis. This 400sf back room is now our bedroom/living room. Joey put in two windows that look out onto a fern grotto because our first two visits felt like we were sleeping in a gambrel-styled container, except for the bad drywall job that I have covered with tapestries. You could not see your hand in front of your face and had to trust the motion detector light to go on before you ran into the wooden beam in the middle of the room. (I’ve covered the beam with a scarf to soften the blow in case of the accidental collision). Next is a sliding glass door onto a deck. I am so excited about this! 

2.       Our sweet cottage is at the end of a two-mile dirt and gravel timber road that Joey is repairing with the wisdom of 25 years at CalTrans. We have whacked the weeds growing in the middle and sides of the road before they become brush, a dangerous fire hazard to drive over in summer.  He piled the big rocks over the potholes filled with rainwater, then the little rocks on top so the water drains better. I did the same thing to create a step off the front porch. Joey improved the old timber road for nearly quarter of a mile with French drains, ditch lines, and rock bridges. I never knew road maintenance could be so sexy until I watched my man haul the tenth wheel barrel of dirt and rocks, all glistening. 

3.       Over the last three trips, we unplugged the irrigation, removed t-bars, pulled weeds, and turned over the soil from 60 grow pots. This trip, I shoveled dirt from the majority of the pots which we raked into mounds for a garden of wildflowers and formed a spiral path to the center where we will make a stone-built firepit.

4.       We discovered that it takes about a gallon of frozen water per day to keep the icebox cold. Joey is going to create a container that perfectly fits the shelf for ice because one large block holds it temperature longer than one-gallon jugs.

5.       We painted the door turquoise and created a sweet garden right off the porch that I can easily tend and feed the morning’s coffee grounds. Last visit, we planted rosemary, calendula, lavender and chamomile. I was thrilled to see that had all grown in our two-week absence. We added holly, rose geranium and red clover to the garden and they all got a good raining so I am hopeful they will do well. The plan to plant lavender all over the house to keep the ticks away.  I’ll transform the hill I look out upon from kitchen window or porch from grow pots into a vegetable and herb garden. I will forest bathe every day.

I returned to our cottage one afternoon after weed whacking a path in the tall grass to my chair where I get one bar for morning texts. I sat down on the deck and a tick fell onto my writing desk. Joey said we had to kill the tick or it would jump on us and he described the whole bloody mess. He told me how to roll my thumbnail over the bug until I heard a pop. I couldn’t do it at first, but then I thought of a Waldorf mom who had gotten Lyme disease and was afraid to go outside afterwards. So, I rolled my nail over the tick and literally screamed when I heard the loud pop of the bug’s protective shell cracking. Then we laughed.
My happy place is always where love and laughter live.

Homesteading the Hollows

It all starts with an idea… living off grid, happy and self-sufficient with my beloved.

My honey Joey and I starting looking for a community to invest in this January. We brought out the map of California. I still believe whole-heartedly in maps. As I drew my finger over highways that meandered the forests of Northern California, I asked the Universe for a town with an independent bookstore, brewery and coffeehouse. I imagined an old main street that would be close by where I could find a farmers’ markets, small movie theaters, festivals and pancake breakfasts. But I always saw myself tucked away, deep in the woods - yes, a Witch in the Woods with my man was my plan.

We had an agent’s number but didn’t know where to tell him to start looking, so we scoped out a swath of communities via Zillow from Potter’s Valley in Lake County to Boonville, home of Anderson Brewery and a place that had my vote, to a sweet craftsman house in downtown Willits but next door to a school and church. We drove through other neighborhoods and I felt boxed in. I worried that living in rural Eastern Sierra town of Crowley Lake, California (pop 980), had ruined me for such proximity of so many people.

Then, on what I thought was a whim, we drove to a 44-acre property on the Highway 20, just six miles from Willits and 25 miles to the coastal towns of Mendocino (wine) and Fort Bragg (sailors) along a rode that wove between towering redwood trees. It had been an old pot farm with four leveled out places where three brothers had grown cannabis in four huge hoop houses, plus another 200 plants in grow pots with irrigation in front of an 800 square-foot trim house. We had the well tested and the water came out clean. We went back and forth, but with Joey just over a year away from retiring, he needs a new hobby and I need more hippies. Plus every time we thought of this property, a smile of happiness reached across both of our faces. We can do this, we told ourselves. We can reach for our happiness. He will plant artichokes and arugula and sell his produce at a farmer’s market (behind the old Rex-All in Willits every Thursday.) I can write and be near so many of my Northern California Herbal Symposium gals and other friends I’ve known for years. And we can visit the coast.

So, we scrambled together a cash deal and on April 27, 2022, Joey and I (with a little help from sister Cindy) became the new owners of this amazing 44 acre off-grid property with about twenty-five century-old fruit trees of fig, pear, apple and olive. I’ve found red clover, poppies, nettles, plantain, and so much more. There are bay trees - good medicine for the poison oak that follows the waters next to berry patches. Young redwood trees that surround the cut down old growth trees that were harvested after the 1906 San Francisco fire. Sprawling oak trees look like pretty awesome places for tree forts. We are southeast facing a 18,000 privately owned timber forest that will not be cut because the trees have not yet come of age.

The land spirits and Fae folk are powerful here. A sweet fawn came by to say hello on first day, a very large bear has made several appearances leaving huge scat and paw prints behind. The wild Turkey that flew over my head was a symbol of my abundance. Although Joey says that’s dinner - but last week 444 copies sold of The Book of Spells and that’s a very Witchy number and really made me feel like the universe has got my back. In fact, all three businesses that I hoped to find in my new hometown are on the same city block - in the old school part of Willits-gateway to the redwoods in Mendocino County. The Book Juggler bought two copies of The Book of Spells (I carry them around) and put the book on the front page of their website. We went to Northspur Brewing Co. twice but the second time met up with Joey’s CalTrans’ buddies (who don’t known it yet but will help us get gravel and pipes to fix the roads on the property) and Brickhouse Coffee features local artwork that blows my mind and their breakfast sandwiches are calling my name for a long morning write.

As per request from my dear friend Helena Pasquarella I am starting this new blog about the adventures of learning how to be a homesteader making medicine, jams, magick, festivals and a home. We have spent two days on the property, cleaning the outside (only six bags of trash off to our new dump), and scrubbing and blessing inside our new little cottage. We’re making lists of what we need or want.. a cell phone booster, fruit tree expert, off grid solar system, fridge, cob benches on the best views, poppyseeds, solar pathway lights, new shower curtain, more seeds and trees. We need to fix the road, figure our most efficient energy system and what we’re going to plant in these hoop houses. For now there’s a sweet cottage for us to doll up. Eventually we’ll build a cob house and a bath house with a garden just for herbs to soak in.

The reason this blog is called Homesteading the Hollows is because the cottage where we are making a home is at the bottom of the property, two miles from the highway and 400 feet in elevation down into the woods. This land is filled with meadows and forests, but for now our heart and home will be in the hollows. Our next trip back to Willits will be after Mother’s Day, when we’re bringing in furniture and home décor - I am so excited!