When the Well Runs Dry

Okay, I’ll admit it. When we first bought this old homestead on 45 acres, I was scared to be alone, two miles into the forest down a dirt road with no reception. I’ve watched a bear walk by the kitchen window and the trail camera caught a beautiful mountain lion. I do trust my burly man to take care of us, but honestly, a week felt so long to be camping in this cottage in the hollows. It’s exhausting, like a mental workout, and I love it.

Living this close to nature makes me feel more witch-like than ever.

I am challenged to live in sync with nature’s rhythms in ways that push me as an individual, aka a hard-headed woman, double Cap, firstborn, etc. In my core, I don’t feel comfortable not knowing how to take care of myself. I cannot teach and write about the Wheel of the Year and be disconnected to the systems that keep me alive. Living off grid pushes me to that edge of my comfort zone so that I can grow.

The drive from the mountains to the hollows is over seven hours. We usually arrive at beer-thirty and stop off at North Spur Brewery for a pint and dinner before heading six miles out of town and two miles down a dirt road. The sun is typically setting on our view of 18,000 acres of protected Mendocino Forest as we drive in a downhill spiral, deeper into the hollows on a glorious e-ticket ride. We admire all the growth and greenery upon our arrival. We saw a mama turkey and NINE turkey chicks. I emptied the truck while Joey turned on the water and the propane that fuels our stove and refrigerator.  Then we settle into our swivel cushy chairs on the porch to watch the stars come out.

In the morning, we take turns weed whacking around three garden beds, the spiral to the fire pit, the house and the road. I write while Joey walks up to top of the property to check on the well pump. This well station is 400 feet above the cottage in the hollows. He fired up the generator to start the pump to draw up the water up from the earth, in through a valve, and downhill through a series of thick black hoses to fill the water tank that is only 50 feet from our house. It took longer than normal for the well to refill, also known as recharge. He left the well and came down to tell me the news.

Money fears (how much would the repair be?) and lack of water fears rose until we decided on finding a solution. How much water do we have and how much do we use daily? Joey climbed the hill to a platform (cut into the hill by the previous owners) where the water tank rested. He measured 1100 gallons of water. We weren’t sure how much we would need for our 12-day stay. The plan had been to one day have a wonderful gray water and rain catchment system, outside of washing dishes in a big ceramic bowl. We couldn’t wait for something fancy because we needed to water the watermelon, artichoke, calendula, sunflower, and bushbeans starts. We couldn’t deplete the water from plant allies, new and established who were facing a month of summer without watering from us.

Mother Goddess is the necessity of invention and insight. We could take a bucket into the shower and water our plants from there. I sang as I watered my strongest plant allies: rose geranium, rosemary, lavender and yarrow. I sang Magick in my gesture of giving water back. As a water bearer, I was giving what I wanted to receive. Please refill with water when we take water.

Two days later, Joey’s brother Tony, who has worked on wells for years, explained that a gravity fed system needs back pressure. It’s better for our system if draw up a gallon and a half of water per a minute until the well is full. I’m still learning what all this means but the gist is, we needed to adjust the valve and we will have plenty of water. A solar system for the pump would mean no gas. That is next, I think. We’ll see what is needed and trust the resources and the abundance we have! We settled into this feeling and I felt true wealth. A deer walked through the garden but didn’t hurt anything. I saw a spotted owl.

The day before we left, I found an arrowhead in the garden bed that I had tended for two years just as I stepped forward to admire the yarrow blossoms, a wild plant and ally. I was thinking about the loss of Freddy the Fir tree and how grateful I was that the wild yarrow was staying contained the area I asked the plant to thrive in, next to the lavender. When I saw this arrowhead, it felt like a miracle, a gift for me, a sign that Mother Earth is happy with the way that we are living in harmony with life on this wild, unspoiled extraordinary piece of earth. I am humbled in ways that bring tears to my eyes. I am living in the Garden of Her Eden and I see my abundance.

This lesson makes me think of my favorite dicho, of Spanish proverb "No sabemos lo que vale el agua hasta que se seca el pozo, which mean:“‘We don't know the value of water until the well runs dry.’

This metaphor is a warning to not take your abundance for granted.  If you fail to appreciate what you have, eventually you will run out of it. Lift your thinking and learn to see the value in true friendship, health, sunshine, water, family. Appreciate the treasures in your life as the true abundance and see its value. Shifting your thinking is Gemini Moon Magick.

Nature is Homesteading

Nature Herself oversaw homesteading in the hollows these past few months. After ten weeks’ absence, we returned to the hollows in late September for a booksigning tour for A Box of Magick, to find nine plump pumpkins (Cinderella species in between the 40-50 artichoke plants and Jack o’Lantern pumpkins in the corners of the garlic bed) and four juicy watermelons. We harvested these beautiful gourds and left the vines and leaves to compost where they fell. I transplanted the opulent rose geranium, which was thriving wherever I put her. This plant of self-love has always been an ally. Joey began building the fourth flower bed and cut out the poison oak choking the century-old olive, fig and apples trees around the property.

Now it’s early November and we are back at the hollows. The olive trees are producing like crazy. I need to find the secret recipe one of our AirBnB guests gave us for salt instead of lye to process the fruit. I’m getting used to having a refrigerator versus living out of a cooler and the meals are improving. Rosemary, oregano, thyme, lavender, and comfrey survived our long absence; borage and basil did not. It seems that the artichoke will continually grow, even though the fruit won’t be ready for a year, and its purple flower continues to bloom.

Halloween is the time to plant garlic, so I cleared away the decaying pumpkin leaves and vines and filled an entire bed with garlic cloves with the exception of a robust thyme and two strawberry plants, which are protected from the deer by the stink of garlic and the wire fencing.

We brought a frame for the bed and box springs – no more sleeping on a mattress on the floor.  New solar lights on the covered porch allow us to enjoy the forest at night and see each other and the glasses filled to the brim with delicious wines we bought from our favorite Mendo winery, Artevino Wines.

A true blessing this visit was meeting new friends Brett, Missy and Ceila, who can trade with us: Brett will show us the edible mushrooms and will help us extract and mill a 100-year-old fallen redwood tree to make a dining room table. Joey and our friend Dave hunted a few of the 40-50 destructive wild boar on their property, which they will turn into food for their dogs – among other things. Apparently wild boars are too active to create the fat needed for bacon – so that’s sad. Missy is selling my books her store, Re-Evolution in downtown Willits, and together we made Witches’ Torches. Ceiba, their 10-year-old daughter, is an aerial acrobat and an artist who has inspired the main character of my next book.

Last winter, the heavy rains caused the hillside to collapse into the road, which then dropped ten feet. Thankfully, our neighbor fixed the road, but that’s not entirely feasible to depend on others. So, on the way home, we drove to Bend, Oregon, to check out a tractor. It’s our ten-year anniversary present to each other, which makes me laugh at the irony of a former OC girl ecstatic about joys of homesteading the gardens we will plant in this beautiful forest.

Arty Chokey Farm

Magick swirls around me as I walk through the forest of redwood, madrone, fir and oak trees. I seek out the redwoods to find the mama trees and just breathe. The nearness of nature makes me feel like a child. The way the garden is responding to Joey and I feels like making love to the earth.

Our friend Samantha says that we are practicing dry farming - a style in which you saturate plants and then leave them be for long stretches of time. It’s our practice because the hallows to the mountains is an eight hour drive and with “gas prices these days” we only go once a month. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Joey’s plan is to create Arty Chokey Farms, farm delivery of the finest artichokes. It’s the retirement plan from CalTrans to earth tender and artichoke friend.

Meanwhile I am tending to the medicinal herbs and flowers and getting to know them. I like to sprinkle yarrow, rose geranium, and chamomile flowers in one of my ceramic bowls for a delightful facial steam. My garden is small for now because my plan is to get to know my herbal allies intimately before I decide who gets a lot of room in the raised beds and what kind of sunshine they prefer. I want to have retreats for spiritual feral women to help me build solar cob hot tub, flower beds and an outhouse. Then we’ll luxuriate under the stars and share our wisdom with each other.

We water from the well that is 400 feet above the hollows that travels from the pump through pipes to our sweet home with its garden. There is so much to learn about working with the land. I’m dreaming of taking Starhawk’s permaculture course. For now, I’m launching my tenth book A Box of Magick and so turn to my herbal allies and tree buddies to sustain me through our friendship, whether I am in Willits, Crowley Lake or on the road.