Quick Sunday Updates and Imbolc Nostalgia

Happy Sunday y'all! I'm usually up early (around 4am) on weekends, which gives me a little extra time for steem before the fam gets up. Yesterday was a curation post for @naturalmedicine and my proof of trees post. Today, it's steem engine. I just updated some things, and am loving getting active on here again. I remembered my 10k actifit tokens, which I'll sell you for 10 steem if you want em. I'm powering up to support more people and my communities of NM and TSU. I joined three curation trails, (@naturalmedicine, @tribesteemup, and @ecotrain) and would like for my 10% votes through them to actually have value rather than .0001 steem.

Quick homesteady update: last weekend I culled our remaining six chickens, and this weekend I tore down and hauled off the old coop and run. We decided to go that route and let the sun bake the ground a bit to get rid of their virus. I'd struggled over this decision for months, and decided to keep the birds, but changed my mind recently because that choice just wasn't a settling one. We'll be getting a new coop, making a new run, and getting ten new chicks soon.

That's a picture of the coop that my friend has said she'll give us. It's got a chook door, a people door, nesting boxes, and roosting bars. An actual purpose built unit that's really ultra cute! I'm excited.

With our tax return this year, we've decided to overhaul our water well. We'll get a new pump, tank, and well house, which I think will total around a thousand dollar project. Yikes! But we'll have well water instead of city water, so it'll actually be an investment, both for money and for health.

There's another small hugel I made last weekend too! I planted greens and tobacco on it. More tobacco than I'll ever use, but that's okay cause I've got folks at work that are interested in replacing some of their industrial tobacco use with natural, local, permaculture tobacco. Should be fun to look into. :) This bed was made with logs and sticks from my parents trees and their neighbor's trees too, plus soil from the top swale. More soil from that Swale went over to the north hugel as well, but not enough to complete it. Enough for one leg though, which will be one of our cucumber beds again this year.

So, as we come into spring, expect to hear more from little old Nate. I'm going to be busy in the yard and the books, learning to manifest physical health through the gift of creation.

Going through my old photos this morning, this week marks one year since I planted my first goji bush. From a twig the size of a pencil lead, it has grown and suckered to nine canes, each 1-2 meters long! This plant is the embodiment of abundance that got me so excited last year about naturally abundant systems. The chickens loved the berries, I loved the growth and free chook food, and it just kept growing!

Yesterday marks one year since I discovered the area at the woods that I call "the spa." I didn't know it then though, as I didn't have access because of the route I used to explore it. Here's the first picture i ever took of it, where you can't see the foot bath or the picnic area, just the 2m deep swimming hole:

I havent been out there in a while. I need to change that.

Also, this marks a year since I discovered turkeytail mushrooms there, which catapulted me onto the herbalism path. I didn't know the name at the time, but I also found lion's mane on the same day. I'm tincturing a mushroom from that same spot right now. Imbolc is a magical time, as @trucklife-family reminds us.