http://songcroft.com/calendar/

It’s that time again. Our Self-Sufficiency Skills School class schedule is on our website. If you are interested in becoming more self-sufficient through learning the skills early homesteaders used, sign up before the spaces are full.

Some of our topics include:

Wild Medicinal Plants. Saturday, May 5  10-12 $25

During this class you will learn to identify different plants and how to use them. Marilene will teach you how to prepare simple remedies that you will be able to make on your own in the future.

Winter Vegetables Sunday, May 19th    10-12pm   $25

Believe it or not, you need to start in June here in Western Washington. You will learn ways to extend the season, which varieties will grow best here, and special technique to help you be successful.

Permaculture Design Course    June 6-20th, 2012

Come join our 14 day/night Permaculture Design Course (Earn your PDC Certification) June 6-20, 2012

Dynamic team of 4 experienced instructors, plus guest speakers in the Permaculture movement:

Kelda Miller – Primary Lead for duration

Marilene Richardson – Special Host Lead 2 days offsite www.songcroft.com

Jenny Pell – Special Guest Lead 3 days at Shambala- See Jenny and Kelda’s bios at www.permaculturenow.com

Tyler ‘TyTy’ Burns – Assistant lead for duration

Space is Limited! Class Curriculum and additional details to be posted often, call for more details 360 387 4110~ or visit : http://blog.livewellventures.com/permaculture-design-course-shambala-farm/

Soft Cheeses Around The World

Saturday, July 22  11-2  $40 per person

Come to our family farm and see how to make soft goat cheeses from around the world.

So Much More Than Canning

Saturday and Sunday, August 11-12  10-4  $125 per person

Food preservation galore! hands-on experience with lacto-fermenting, dehydrating, hot water bath canning, pressure canning and more.

Folk Wine Making

Sunday, August 26  11-1pm  $35
Come learn how to make folk wines from local fruit! This class covers what you need, as well as basic recipes for you to take home and try on your own. Pre-registration required. Adults only.

REGISTER RIGHT AWAY AS SPACES ARE LIMITED

Please share our class schedule with your friends and family. Doing classes such as ours with friends, family and neighbors is a great way to build and strengthen community.

High 55   Low 37   Overcast with deep darm clouds. Light showers. 

It’s that time of year again. It’s when people from all over the world decide to WWOOF or not to WWOOF. WWOOF’ing is an acronym for Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms.

People from all over the world experience travel, community life, family life, farm life, and for some their first shot at adult life. Last year we enjoyed the company of three WWOOF’ers whom were young, energetic, interesting and eager to learn from our experience. It can be a truly win-win situation for both us and them.

From January through April we are pretty busy answering emails and phone calls from the many folks looking to learn how to live more self sufficiently. Most are looking to learn to grow food, some are interested in livestock and others are interested in living in community. Most of the WWOOF’ers who contact us are interested in permaculture.

We have limited spaces available so we spend a fair amount of time talking, asking questions and reading the resumes and applications that are sent to us. So far, we have three full time apprentices and two others that live locally that will come by once a week to work along side us.

Although we are a small family farm, we are able to meet the needs of interns by finding out what their interests are and designing projects and educational experiences to help meet their needs. Because we have experience from running the SongCroft School, we are well prepared to give the WWOOF’ers hands-on experience along with the dialog that brings it all together for a good learning package.

If you are thinking about doing something different and worthwhile this summer, you might ask yourself, “To WWOOF or Not to WWOOF?”

High 55  Low 37  Rainy, windy, thunder, power blips

My kids keep asking, “When is Spring?” I don’t think anyone around here knows. We’ve had three sunny days so far this year. Two of which only lasted until mid-day and then the sky let loose with torrential rains.

We do have some signs of Spring. The chickens are laying. We are averaging 29 eggs a day out of 31 hens. We have turkey hens sitting on eggs. The bees have shown that they are strong and healthy although they are not able to get our much due to the rain. I will likey have to feed them again. Our rabbit does are bred and hopefully our goats are too. Let’s just pray that the buck got the job done. This is a new buck and although he was sold to us as proven, he doesn’t seem real amorous.

Our girls never look super big until just before they kid so we may not know until right before. Ugh!

As of last week, we still had enough hail to turn the land white and sheets of ice on the ground every morning but the birds are singing and the frogs have joined in the chorus too. They were tentative at first. Singing on one night and then waiting as if to ask, “When is Spring? Is it here yet?”  But just his morning I saw the first seedlings poking their little heads up through the soil. Bok Choy with it’s little rounded cotyledons looking all proud.

Regardless of the weather, I have been making progress on the land. There has been a lot of compost, manure and soil moved. Our tomatoes and peppers are nice and strong in their 4-inch pots. Our 16 year-old dog may have eaten half of what I had going but we still have plenty for our family. We have bulb fennel, collards, broccoli, and cabbages ready to plant in the beds. Raspberry and blueberry beds were just prepared and so was the soil under a cherry tree so a guild planting can be completed there. It’s going to be a good growing season, as soon as Spring arrives!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shambala-Farm-and-Nursery/102729396478154

Have you always wanted to earn a Permaculture Design Certificate?  Well, what are you waiting for? Jump in and learn with this great team, Kelda Miller, Jenny Pell, Marilene Richardson and Tyty Burns. Join us for two weeks of intensive learning on Camano Island, WA.

You’ll be glad that you invested in yourself!

High 45 degrees    Low 32   Bright and clear day but chilly. The sun is tempting us in to spring.

http://songcroft.com/the-songcroft-self-sufficiency-newsletter/

I just finished the Spring Self-Sufficiency Skills Newsletter. It went out to subscribers today. It is always fun to write about different  Self-Sufficiency topics as I tend to write about things that are seasonal and often are what we are working on on our land. Some of the topics this quarter are Medicinal Bee Gardens, Starting a Nursery and Local vs Organic Foods. I enjoy writing on topics that might inspire folks to try their hand at new things.

This Spring I plan to redesign part of our land for the bees. We already have lots of medicinal plants here but I would like to add some aesthetics near the hives.  Our bees will be making more medicinal honey for our family and I would like to make the area more pleasing to visit.

If you ar interested in the subject listed in the table of contents, you can subscribe to the newsletter for just $10 a year. The funds currently goes towards volunteer work we do. Thanks much! http://songcroft.com/the-songcroft-self-sufficiency-newsletter/

18 Inches of Snow      29 degrees     Bright but overcast sky

You can support our family business by ordering all natural, handcrafted personal care products from www.songcroftnaturals.com. Thank you!

It has been interesting reading about all the events around the Puget Sound region. People have posted pictures of the weather and told tales of their lives as things slowed or for some, stopped.

There were trees down all over my area. We had well over a foot of snow with two-foot drifts in areas. Our power was out for the better part of six days and we were snowed in.

What did that mean for us? It meant that the first day that we thought the storm was headed our way, we got the headlamps, batteries, lanterns and emergency candles all ready. We filled 5-gallon buckets of water, filled the bathtub, cooking pots and jugs too. We moved patio furniture away from the eaves where snow might later fall and crush them and we made extra provisions for our livestock. We made sure our pantry was full and there were extra snack foods for the kids as comfort and last resorts if all heck broke loose as well as a large stack of library books. We cooked in the woodstove, buried the contents of the freezer in bins in the snow, brought in fire wood and pulled out all of the poly-pro and polar fleece. After that was done, we played in the snow, enjoyed the sleds, had snowball fights, made maple syrup candy and I taught my youngest how to use a knitting nancy. We played games, told stories and when we got tired looked out the windows which framed beautiful pictures of the weather.

On SongCroft, things were a bit more of a challenge but they were not a struggle. After having the power off for as much as 16 days, we have a system and can live life pretty easily but as a friend, pointed out, even without electricity life can be sufficiently sufficient or wonderful. I love our days of being snowed in and will cherish them forever as slow days with my family.

Here are some pictures of the weather for you to enjoy.

Please post some pictures of the weather in your area too!

http://rawtelevision.co.uk/

I’ve been meaning to get this on the blog for the past couple of weeks but things just got busy so finally I am getting time to sit and write about an interesting phone call I recently received from the U.K.

Cheyanne Dillenberger called to inform me that  Raw Television, out of the U.K., is casting for a new television series on off-grid sustainable living. She said that those who are interested could contact her through the information below. I asked her to send it to me in an email so I could post it here in case anyone would like a change in 2012. So here it is:

CASTING NOTICE:

Raw TV, the makers of the hit shows Gold Rush and Locked Up Abroad,

are searching for individuals to feature as part of a new series for a major cable television network. Do you have the spirit of an American pioneer? Are you fed up with the world you live in today and imagine another – better – way to live? Do you and your

family and friends ever talk about leaving society we know it, leaving it all behind and building a new world off the grid, with the frontier grit of your forefathers? If you are passionate about your beliefs and would be willing to share them with a national

TV audience we would love to talk to you.

If this sounds like you, whether you have a plan in action, have a more long term dream or are already living out on the frontier, please email your

contact details and a brief description of your situation to: Raw Television

casting@rawtelevision.co.uk

 You should have seen my kids faces when I read it to them! They were ready to stuff their packs and head out the door! Our kids grew up in this lifestyle of growing food, raising animals, diy sort of living and using our creativity to figure things out. Even our teen daughter didn’t bat an eyelash when I reminded her that we would likely have to go back to composting toilets and solar showers. Our son used to watch a vhs tape from the UK that showed a family named the Strawbridges. He knew learned about water wheels for energy production, trapping heat in greenhouses and all sorts of things from this video. Both kids were game.

When I mentioned this to a few folks who know us and they immediately wanted to know if we are going to apply. It is an interesting and tempting idea but I am not sure how we would pull it off. We would need to still be able to cover all of our costs while we are away (both for the farm and for travel) as well as have farm sitters. There is also the matter of Bri taking time away from his electrician’s job. Unfortunately, for most folks who are already trying to move in the direction that the they are casting for, we are too busy living the life to participate.

We are planning to keep up on the developments on this program as we would love to watch it if nothing else. Anyone out there planning on responding to the Raw Television casting call? Let us know.

High 34            Low 26    Bright and sunny in the afternoon, thick fog in the morning and night.

Whew, I made it. It’s been a busy holiday season. Even though I have worked a lot, I can truly say it’s been a Happy Holiday season. I have worked most every weekend selling our farms “value-added” items. SongCroft Naturals is expanding it’s all-natural skin, body and hair care from Farmers Markets, to Holiday Fairs and now in to retail establishments. This is exciting news. We now have products and gift baskets in the Yogalife Studio at Greenlake as well as the Natural Clothing Company on First Street in historic Snohomish. We are happy to partner with both owners who are wonderful people that support other small local businesses.

Now that the business events are over, I am taking the next two weeks off to just hang out with my family. We will go ice skating, make a gingerbread house, bake cookies, make name tags, watch classic holiday movies, wrap presents, play board games and create memories that can only be created through true connection and love. This is what Happy Holidays are made of.

My side of the family will join us on Christmas eve for a dinner of smoked chickens, roasted vegetables, baked quinoa, salad and pumpkin pies. A great deal of the ingredients will be from our land. We are still harvesting cabbages, collards, kale, carrots, turnips, beets, onions, spinach and parsnips. We have squash set aside from local farms (those who had extra sent some our way after our ducks made chop suey out of the vines).

We will exchange gifts, play some games and I think the younger generation will be playing with nerf guns and magic cards. (neither of which are something that I can relate to). The rest of us will likely be making jewelry, talking and laughing at life through stories and memories.

I especially value this Christmas as one where I can enjoy both my own family (as my children are still young and at least one still enjoys toys) and my mother who is starting to show her age. I find myself cherishing every moment that I get with her. How fortunate I am to be able to experience this before she leaves this world. A Happy Holiday for her is to have her girls together with their families.

To update you on what is happening on the farm, as mentioned, we are still harvesting the aforementioned vegetables and we also have a lot of herbs. We put up a few hundred pounds or apples and potatoes for the winter so we are enjoying them. Our “Liberty” apple and “Spartan” produced well for their first time. Next year I will likely have to thin them a bit to get bigger fruit. Our medlar gave plenty of fruit. They are palatable but not especially juicy. While they would be helpful in a time of scarcity, they are not proving to be a family favorite.

The hens and rooster , Iris, are doing well. They have a very nice dry space thanks to Brian’s work this past Spring as well as the recent coop improvements made this past week. There are now added roosts inside the coop and tomorrow morning I plan to staple a layer of greenhouse plastic across the top of the walls to lower the ceiling in hope of it holding more heat in. The plastic is clear so light will still come through the rigid clear poly-carb roof and the air trapped between the two should create insulations. We have not added a light.

The turkeys are doing well. I added a nesting box today so we will see if we get some eggs. There is a hen that is squatting every time I walk past her. This is a good sign that she wants to hatch some eggs. I will get a leg band for her and over the next couple of weeks, I will band three hens to save for breeding. Midget Whites are good breeders so no artificial inseminations is needed.

The goats are still not bred and just like last year, they are not showing strong signs of wanting to be. There has been no one calling out, flagging her tail or anything else. I thought for sure they would go in to ester on the full moon but instead they got totally silent and pretended to be statues because coyotes came to visit. Maybe the coyotes scared the hormones right out of them (kidding)

I sold six rabbits this past month.  Lots of people have been interested in our rabbits. They are a good bunch and easy for people in the city to raise. They produce great manure that is highly valuable. I have been able to use it to barter with. I love raising rabbits!

Our ducks are still quacking about. They are not interesting in going in to their pen at night and are hard to catch. I am hoping ot catch them soon before a coyote or bobcat gets them first.

Well, that is the skinny on what is happening down-on-the-farm. How are things up your way?

Happy Holidays!

High 34  Low 26   Clear, cold and crisp!

It’s the end of November 2011 and baby it’s cold outside! I spent the morning breaking ice on the animal’s water feeders and making sure everyone has adequate bedding to keep them warm. I hung white tarps up on the outside of the chicken run to prevent side-rains from soaking the ground but to allow light to still reflect in on our girls. I added some herbal tonic to everyone’s water so that they will have the benefit of extra vitamins, minerals and immune system support before the temperatures drop even lower this evening. We are hitting the mid-twenties so far.

This is the time to be nesting and resting  after a busy spring and summer but I am busy with holiday markets for our value-added product line, SongCroft Naturals. This means there is not rest for this girl until after December 25^th.

At that time, I will curl up in front of the fire with a hot cup of tea and work on the batik quilt crazy quilt because baby it’s cold outside.

“Learning to delegate is part of being self-sufficient and sustainable.”

34 Degrees F  Mostly clear with some clouds. Light showers.

It’s a good day here on SongCroft. First of all, it’s 11/11/11. This hasn’t happened since 1911. Interesting! Also, you may have noticed that our website is back up and even better than before.  Well, it’s better than before because we moved the hosting. This is a good thing and it was made possible by Keven Elliff!

We could not have moved our website without the help and persistence of Keven Elliff marketing, web designer, product launch extraordinaire.  I met Keven at Focus on Farming about three years ago. He was teaching a class on social networking for farms. His knowledgeable yet approachable demeanor drew me to him. He has since been assisting me in a variety of projects but most currently undoing what my former website host botched up.

You might be asking yourself why I would be taking the time to share about tech stuff on a self-sufficiency blog. Well, you see, people often write in to me saying, “I don’t know how you do it all” and similar comments. While it’s true I do a heck of a lot of stuff on my own (not to say that my cute husband Brian isn’t also busy with farm chores and tasks) I have found the importance in delegating what I don’t do best.

That’s right, delegating is part of self-sufficiency and sustainbalility! By hiring Keven to do the things I don’t understand, care to learn or have time to learn (yet), I am free to milk goats, plant garlic, make applesauce, bake bread, homeschool children, clip hooves, etc…

And by having Keven Elliff as a resource, I am also able to make sure that I can share information with all of you in hope that someone is inspired, learns something and feels more empowered. These are all positive things.

Maybe 11/11/11 is a power number and magical day?

I encourage you to look at your life, see what you could use help with. Consider whom you can ask for help, hire, delegate to and do just that. In the end, you may find that you get ten times more done or enjoy what you get done ten times more. Either way, you wont be alone.

Until next time, enjoy this magical fall day!

Oh, and if you want to contact Keven Elliff, you can find him at http://kevenelliff.com. Please tell him I sent you.