Gratitude for Freddy the Fallen Tree

The Mendocino Forest flanks the two miles of dirt road from the highway down to our sweet cottage in the hollows. When the rain drenches the soil, the earth loosens and slides, exposing roots of the Madrone, Douglas Fir and Oak trees that eventually lose their foundation and topple over. After a heavy rain, the trees fall across the road so frequently that we travel with a chainsaw.

I watch with awe and fear as Joey expertly trims the branches that I pull off the road and throw down the steep incline. Then he “bucks up” the trunk into logs, which we stack on the side of the road so he can come back later with Hank the tractor. We’ll repurpose the logs as either posts for the garden beds in front of the cottage or firewood.

Last winter, we noticed that a huge 115-foot Douglas Fir tree was leaning over our house in the hollows. The magnificent tree, my favorite Christmas tree mind you, was growing nearly sideways on the hill behind our cottage. The angle was such that nearly seventy percent of its full trunk would crash into the length of our home. If the tree fell, it would kill us.

It rains a lot in Mendocino. The sound of rain lulls me to sleep. Unless you imagine the rain pulling the soil downhill and a tree killing you. The vision prompts the question, are you ready to die? Will you ignore what scares you and live with your head in the sand like an ostrich? These are good questions to ponder in the quiet of the forest.

Joey could barely sleep. He wants to live to be 104. Me? I want a few good decades of peace, prosperity, health, love, and dancing. In time as more trees fell, I realized we would have to “take” the Douglas Fir tree. From my teachings and natural knowing, I would need to ask the tree permission before calling in the menfolk and their chainsaws.

I affectionately named this tree Freddy the Fir. I think of Freddy Mercury and how this tree could be Frederick or Frederica, so it’s androgynous and spicy. Plus, aside from the Mother Tree in a Redwood Fairy Ring, I don’t experience the gender of most trees. I hugged Freddy, and promised that even though we were going to take their life, their spirit would live on and be lovingly turned handcrafted furniture. I let Freddy know about the coming transition. I waited. I wanted to give Freddy time for whatever final business a tree has after living 200-300 years. I asked for permission and forgiveness. I saw the true conscious spirit of Freddy and felt extreme gratitude, and still do!

A couple of weeks ago, Joey came to the hollows with his best friend Billy and his 15-year-old son Wyatt, and Tom, an 80-year-old bowl-legged cowboy who walks and talks like Yosemite Sam to cut down Freddy.  We figured the tree was 80 feet, but it turned out that Freddy was 115-feet tall. What a magnificent life!

When I returned to the hollows on this last visit, Freddy was on the ground. I went to the trunk and placed my hands on the crystal bubbles of sap. I sang and thanked Freddy. What a gift, what a blessing.

Then I got to work collecting Freddy’s needle-covered branches that were now a fire hazard. We clipped the thin branches and made a slash pile to burn. We saved thicker branches to make fences. When Freddy fell, the trunk broke into pieces.

Joey milled a chunk of the trunk that was five-feet long into six slabs, two-inches thick. The rounded top and bottom will be made into stairs for the terraced garden. The middle slabs may become a live edge table or window trim or maybe even the beginning of a new deck. I want to be help in the building but I’m afraid of the chainsaw.

I asked Joey to teach me to operate the chainsaw. However, I have not pushed for lessons. I went to ER when I was fourteen after about ten of us flew out of the truck bed. Banking a corner too fast, the truck got the speed wobbles and flipped. Ten teenagers scattered on the road between Peralta Junior High School and Sears at the Orange Mall. One guy was pinned between the curb and the truck. My friend Melissa Martinez chipped her front tooth off. My knee was bleeding from a tiny cut no bigger than a thumbnail. It felt like the angels, or the ancestors, caught me midflight, but that’s for another story.

I was taken to ER anyway. In the bed across from me, a black-haired Latino screamed in anguish. He gripped his leg from behind the knee. The jeans of his thighs were ripped open and the bloody gash revealed that it had been a chainsaw accident.

The chainsaw takes and creates, providing an interesting metaphor for dealing with power. You wield power with confidence, thorough safety check, focus, and a fair amount of humility for the kick back. Sounds a lot like teh chainsaw and Witchcraft.

There are many trees on these 45 acres where we are blessed to live that have a blue line spraypainted on its trunk by logging companies. We have saved these trees from being forested. When others fall, we look for ways to repurpose the wood, to extend the life of our breathing buddies, the trees. We take daily forest bathing walks to help lower our stress and rediscover an easy cadence.

I have been thinking of how I want to repurpose the Freddy as the Stump. I’m leaning towards a seat, like a throne or just a place to sit and ponder about how good it feels to be in sync with nature.

soundtracks of our love in the hollows

He prefers the silence. I prefer music in the home. We take turns with these soundtracks of our lives in the hollows., but we always begin with the quiet of the forest.

We enter our homestead through a heavy-duty green gate placed as an ominous protection for the former cannabis farm operations that took place in sections of the 260 acres beyond. We’re taking down the hoop houses and creating gardens for artichokes, plant allies, and food. We are learning from the sun, soil, and life that lives here year-round.

It takes a four-wheel drive and confidence to maneuver the two miles and 400-foot drop in elevation to the trim house built by two generations of pot farmers, and now turned into a sweet cottage for me and my beloved. After passing the site of an 1850s homestead with shards of ceramic cups and plates, an iron sink, and their fruit trees as evidence, we travel through a high grass meadow with blackberries and raspberries growing alongside the road. I am in love with the view of 18,000 acres of protected forest of green conical and rounded tops. Really, truly in love with this home for Redwood, Madrone, Oaks, Firs, Manzanita, Horsetail, and so many varieties of mushrooms I have yet to discover.

The road dips and curves as it spirals downward like the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland with sudden turns around blind corners. We don’t see the abdominal snowman or sasquatch but there are sheer drop offs 100 feet long. Redwood fairy circles covered in shamrock green shaggy moss could stop your fall, or the fiery orange glossy Madrone trunks, Douglas Fir, Tan Oak or even more orchards of fig, apple, pear and olive trees. We’ve seen quail, deer, turkey, bear, mountain lion use the road and other trails in the tall grass and mud. The road takes a final dip then a quick ascent up a hill canopied by an olive tree and a series of madrone trees and we arrive at the now transformed and magickal cottage.

Solar-powered Edison bulb lanterns alight our path while we unpack clothes, food and the latest supplies to make our off-grid life a little easier, more comfortable: a home we are creating together. I brought all our fridge magnets, more face towels, and butter. I always bring butter. We brought our battery one-hundred percent charged because the late fall sun’s daily arc is so low on the horizon that it only occasionally peaks through the densely packed trees or over the top of the old lumber road. During the day we can place the solar panel to catch the merest of light, and when that fades, we are challenged to conserve and spend no more than 10 watts a day, including power tools and daily usage. I’m writing by candles and filtered sunlight while listening to music from my phone, which I’ll charge in the truck when we go into town for a post hole remover and to mail a Box of Magick giveaway to contest winner.

Upon each arrival, Joey turns on the access to well water, which is pumped at the top of the property and sent to us through a series of pipes and storage containers. Next, he turnson  the propane for the fridge and the stove, then he gets on the floor to light the fridge’s pilot light. I monitor the temperature of the house that we haven’t visited in 4-10 weeks by either opening windows or lighting the propane stove and candles, then unpack the groceries and stock everything we brought.

We are here in late November waiting for the arrival of the tractor so Joey can fix the road by widening the dangerous spots, securing hillsides that could erode, repurposing trees that have fallen or will fall with the next heavy rain in our garden, digging out French drains, placing culverts, creating garden terraces and walkways, and a myriad of other Tonka truck abilities. We have worked harder on the property than any visit in a very long time.

We completely dismantled one hoop house. We recycled plastic pipes and irrigation, bagged trash and dumped enough perlite soil to create one hundred square feet of garden for rows of corn, artichokes, chamomile, calendula, nettles – mass production space. Another hoop house is still intact alongside but we are dumping the bags and clearing the debris to create two sitting areas and a greenhouse to catch the sun as it moves.

Joey and I have stayed snuggled in the hollows for three days – working our bodies to their limits, clearing the slate so we can create a comfortable off grid, fully sustained life. I don’t know if this land will be our forever home, or simply a canvas that we work with in harmony to have food, medicine, and water for a time. We are learning from nature how to live with the seasons.  We balance the survival skills with comfort, like a soaking tub, surrounded by sweet smelling flowers and a view of a beloved forest with the full moon alighting the top of a tree.

Mushroom Hunting

We found my favorite mushrooms tucked into the redwood duff on our walk through the property this Winter Solstice. These bright yellow inedible mushies are called Witches Hat. Of course, they are my favorite. Although, I really like this brown guy growing in the middle of our dirt road.

Joey and I are new to mushroom hunting or picking so of course we consult the books and don’t eat anything that isn’t obviously safe to eat. We hiked overland, exploring parts of our 44 acres that I hadn’t seen before. I was totally lost in my own backyard. Forest bathing, breathing with trees and fog. Joey has been trekking all over the property, whereas I’ve stuck mostly to the pre-existing logging roads or a few game trails - meaning paths that bigger animals like deer, bear and cougar push through the tall grass or on the dirt that wends through the redwood, madrone, black oak and fir trees.

Today, we are deep in the forest and I lost my read on the cardinal points. I didn’t know where north was. Finally I surrender to being lost and that’s when the fun really starts and the forest spirit unveils its majesty. We mostly find fungi that intrigues us but haven’t dared to eat - except for the clearly obvious oyster mushrooms.

Just when I was getting a little freaked out about where we were and how far I was from resting, I recognized a fairy ring I had seen before. Even the Mendo loggers call the circle of redwood trees a fairy ring. You cannot deny the spirit of the redwood.
It’s just not a thing.

I gasped, “This is where the bear was denning.” In summer, we had found this fair ring old old growth redwood trees. I thought it could be a special meditation site for me until Joey noted the bear-sized impression in the duff of the hollowed-out redwood stump and the steaming pile of bear scat.

I had left the place alone until this moment.

Joey scurried up the redwood duff to the center of the ring where fifteen foot wide tree stumps gave evidence to the massive logging of of Mendocino redwood forests after the 1906 San Francisco fire. He looked around the stand of impressive trees and their remains and nodded nonchalantly, “Yup.” He waited out for my yelp and then added with a mountain man’s slow confidence, “The bear is gone.” He laughed as I audibly sighed. We both knew that bears roam and don’t always stay in the same den through the year. It had been six months since we had seen fresh bear scat.

I love getting to know this land and all of its inhabitants.

Living off grid

Living off grid is an invitation to truly understand the impact of our choices. I hesitate to use that word “understand” because there is a definite feeling that this word still carries it’s original use of the late Middle English (around the 15th century) to mean to stand under. In today’s climate of revolutionary individualism, there is little that is more abhorrent and outdated than “power over” suggestions.

However, when you live offgrid without the convenience of power or electricity, understanding my smallness, the impact of my footprint and use of natural resources becomes of utmost importance. I am now intimately aware of how much power I use, rather than waiting 30 days for the bill. I ask myself what is more needed: charging my phone when I don’t even get reception or the string of LED lights that will illuminate the dark house at night. Do I turn on the propane heater or put on a sweater? Do I carry the battery operated tea light to the bathroom in the middle of the night or trust the motion detector light to turn on before tripping in the absolute darkness? Do I start collecting candles? Will four gallons of frozen water jugs in the icebox really keep our food cool for an entire week? What is the most earth-friendly way to reuse the pearlite soil in the grow pots?

We brought a generator to charge up power tools to cut a new window into the 400 square foot trim room so we can get light and air. It was nicer to use the generator to pump air into our camping mattress, but so loud in the silence of these woods. The extra power will run the weedwhacker to cut down the Russian thistle that could be fire fuel this summer. I would prefer to have goats on the property and have begun to ask around with fingers crossed.

We fill the well’s water tank at the top of the property so there is plenty of pressure for the shower in our little cottage (which is nestled in the hollows 400 feet lower than the well). We turn off the water at the house when we go back to the Eastern Sierra, in case of a flood. For the first time in my life, I understand how the septic system works: waste and water drain into a large tank, bugs eat the poop, and the rest drips into underground leech lines (cement pipes perforated with several holes). I have weeded and dumped the soil of thirteen grow pots onto the leech field. There are fifty more pots to go in this section alone. We cannot park on the leech field nor plant food. But we can seed California poppies.

Does it distress you, as it bothers me, when people offer apathetic, arrogant responses, such as “the earth has been on fire and froze in cycles, no different than now.” We are speeding up climate change through our convenient distance - not everyone has this option. It’s not easy to live without the comforts or to keep trying when there are so many people who would rather never know what happens to human waste, water theft, or plastic bags in the ocean. I used to believe that my positivity and example of “doing good” could awaken others. The speed of consciousness is slower than I hoped and curtailed by the powers that be and corporate-sponsored media that changed the connotation of “awakened” to mean something completely the opposite of what we light workers were aiming for when we first embraced personal transformation attuned with nature. And yet, I will never stop trying to awaken my deepest spiritual self within this human existence to live in more equality with all of life each day.

Words are alive and have power to create.

Our choices do matter.

Be stronger than your excuses.

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!