It's been a long time

It's been a long time since my last post and I've been busy after finally finding my new path and beginning to walk it.  My trip ended last September in Findhorn and I realised that after travelling around to all those different places that Sussex was the place I felt most at home. Like Santiago in The Alchemist who went on a long journey only to find himself back where he began with the realisation that all he needed was within himself, I discovered the most important aspect of my outward travelling had been my inner journey. I spent 3 months completing The Artists Way, a wonderful guide to help people re-connect with their creativity. Many things came from doing the morning pages, a free association writing exercise you commit to doing every morning. I began drawing again and started turning my heart path journal into a book and then one morning as I was waking up I had a vision of a little bird peddling furiously on a wooden cart around some tracks. Within 20 minutes I had drawn the bird and written the story and spent the next month creating 'The bird that did not know she was one", a modern fable about finding happiness through living your true nature. I have been sending it to publishers and even though I haven't found one yet who wants to publish it I will continue sending it out and may eventually publish it myself. I have also trained in a therapy called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and Matrix Reimprinting which is a recent evolution of EFT so my new path is one of a therapist and artist. I feel very happy to have found my true purpose which is what my heart was looking for. My EFT website will be launched soon and will include my new blog called Living from the heart..where the journey will continue. Wishing you all happiness and joy in your heart and thanks for reading my blog love amy x

Butterfly of consciousness

Floating calmly in the sea of destiny

As soon as I got to the shore I spotted the butterfly floating in the sea, it looked so out of place being a creature of the earth and air. It's wings had become waterlogged and it was trapped just moving with the small waves lapping the shore. This was the butterfly's sea of destiny, I wondered was it aware of it's plight, scared, fearful that death was approaching or was it just resting there having sent a request for help to the universe and trusting it was soon to arrive?

I put my finger in the water by it's head and it slowly crawled onto it, up towards the sky where it belonged.  As I carried it away from the shore looking for a safe place where it could dry it's wings I felt the butterfly's survival to be the most important thing in the world in that moment. I saw myself in it's struggle, I thought about it's life so far and the challenges of surviving being an egg, a tiny caterpillar, a chrysalis and finally a butterfly, it had successfully passed through all these stages of it's journey to find itself floating in the sea with an uncertain future before I had rescued it.

Watching it open and close it's wings, crawling carefully up the stem of grass I'd placed it on I saw it's strength, fragility and beauty bound together in the great wonder of life. I felt connected with the butterfly's life force and became conscious of it being part of me and me being part of it, on an energetic level level there was no separation between us. I was saving myself through saving the butterfly.

When I left I hoped it would be ok, that it's wings would dry out so it could fly off for new adventures but I was also deeply aware that at some point it's journey would be over, it would complete the cycle of life we're all part of. I felt the butterfly in me, the fragility, the struggle and the power that are parts of all of us and the transformation we all go through during our life time, just like the butterfly.

Experiments in winter growing

As I will be residing in London for a couple of months I decided it was time to continue my adventures in growing your own so I sent off for some organic winter salad seeds to have a go at growing lettuce leaves http://www.seedsofitaly.com/catalogue/13. After some research I decided on lambs lettuce apparently a great choice for winter and can be grown under a cloche or sown as an edible green manure (multifunctional), Meraviglia D'inverno (winter marvel) from the italian mountains and Spinach Gigante D'inverno (giant winter spinach). My first attempt at planting seeds was disrupted by the resident squirrels who decided to dig up the pots as with winter coming I guess they were looking for nuts for their food store so I had to re-plant them and protect them with cloches. So far they have survived and some little shoots are coming through. I am excited at the prospect of having fresh salad leaves through the winter especially when the supermarkets charge quite a lot for a bag of salad leaves that's been exposed to argon gas to preserve it- yuk!

Lambs lettuce - leave the cloche open on sunny days to prevent it bolting

Micro Greens
Excited by the sight of little green seedlings coming through in the pots outside I thought I'd also give 'Micro greens' a go and make use of my south facing bedroom window. In recent times micro greens and baby leaf herbs have become very popular with chefs in up market restaurants. I've also noticed things like pea shoots and garlic chives appearing on supermarket shelves, again these are quite expensive to buy and seem easy enough to grow all year round. You just need a growing tray, some organic peat free compost, organic seeds, water and daylight.  The list of seeds you can use is pretty long, sorrel, chervil, basil, dill, pea shoots, mustard, nasturtium, watercress, rocket and all the oriental greens like mizuna, red mustard and pak choi to name just a few. So I bought a few different types http://www.tamarorganics.co.uk and created my own mix of seeds and planted them 3 days a go, they are already growing really well. I will keep you posted on their progress...

Organic seeds used as part of micro greens mix

Grow micro greens indoors all year round

Micro greens day 7 - nearly ready to eat! 

Findhorn experience week

It’s taken some time for my Findhorn experience http://www.findhorn.org/ to settle enough for me to get my thoughts in order so I can write about it. As mentioned in a previous blog what I had not anticipated about my travels was how physically and emotionally tiring it would be. ‘Change is as good as a rest’ so the saying goes but as I discovered for me too much change is not so good. One of the many realisations I’ve had on this trip is balancing my desire for adventure and new experiences with the need for familiar surroundings and people is important but to be fair I did know before I set out that giving up my personal space and becoming a nomad living out of a rucksack was going to bring some challenges, and so it did.

I’m only telling you this so you can understand my state of mind when I arrived in Findhorn because if I’d had a choice I would have postponed my trip as I was already feeling tired before I got there. However due to the fact I’d planned my trip so far ahead (again an old behavioural pattern of mine, planning from fear of the unknown) I had to go or loose quite a lot of money. The result of all this was when I got there and sat in the opening circle with my group and saw how busy the timetable for the week was I realised my energy levels had hit a wall. All I really wanted to do was go and lie down in a room on my own and sleep. I felt like my brain couldn’t cope with any more new information, it had reached saturation point. There is a lot of truth in the saying ‘ you can have too much of a good thing’ and Findhorn is a good thing most definitely. One of the few spiritual eco-communities in existence who have been walking the talk for the past 50 years, educating thousands of people from around the world about how to reconnect with their spirituality in an eco-conscious way, unfortunately I was just too tired to fully appreciate it. It was a shame because I’d really been looking forward to my time at Findhorn thinking it was going to be the ‘piece de resistance’ of my trip.

The caravan where community founders Eileen & Peter Caddy lived

Entrance to the universal hall for community gatherings

Looking after myself

I realised I’d been presented with an opportunity to choose a new way of dealing with this unexpected situation. In the past I would have pushed myself on and not listened to my inner voice telling me I needed some space to rest but events in recent years have shown me that way of being doesn’t serve me well. I decided the best thing was to speak to Paul one of our course ‘focalisers’ he was very understanding and supportive and told me that looking after myself was the most important thing and by doing that I was also looking after the interests of the group. I would have felt guilty in the past that I was letting others down or that I should be strong enough to keep going but after my breakdown two years ago I know that I need to heed the voice telling me to rest and that it’s ok to do that as if you don’t look after yourself you are not in a position to help others. 

Even after taking time out it was still a very intense week but a great opportunity to experience group spiritual practice, we did sacred dancing, meditation, taize singing, attuning to the intelligence of nature, lots of group sharing and what Findhorn call ‘Love in action’ which means working in the kitchen, garden or homecare giving you a taste of the day to day reality of what it takes to run a community. I did feel the whole week was aimed at complete beginners which I found a bit frustrating but they are very skilled at enabling a group of complete strangers to deeply connect with each other in the space of a week, an important skill to have in these times of separation. At the same time it can also create a space where people feel they have to try and connect with everyone when in reality they’re not feeling it, this can make it a bit of a strain too.

An offering of love

Garden of abundance

My original plan had been to go and stay at Newbold House, a nearby community of ex-Findhorn members after my experience week but on Thursday we were taken on a tour of The Park (Findhorn has two sites Cluny Hill and The Park) by Craig Gibsone our other focaliser and one of the founding members of the community. Craig is an artist, a potter and a permaculturist amongst other things who lives in one of the barrel houses a mini village of eco-homes made from old whiskey barrels. As part of the tour he showed us around his amazing permaculture garden that took co-creating with nature to a level I hadn’t seen before in any of the other gardens on my travels. It was a great demonstration of minimum effort for maximum yield. Craig calls plants that just turn up in his garden ‘Volunteers’ who play an important role in maintaining biodiversity. There were potatoes, Russian kale (a.k.a ragged jack), new zealand spinach, cabbages, broad beans, apples, horseradish, Jerusalem artichokes, blackcurrants, sweet cicely, lemon balm, purple sprouting broccoli and many perennial herbs and plants that I can’t remember but it showed how abundant nature can be and that it is possible to grow lots of food in even a small garden. Permaculture is about creating synergistic relationships between humans and nature and recognising that fulfilling natures ‘needs’ means fulfilling our own needs. There was a wonderful happy energy in the garden that was lovely to feel, it seemed as if the plants loved Craig as much as he loved them. Craig is the first spiritual permaculturist I’ve met and for me this is what had been missing from the places I had stayed before where I had experienced spirituality and permaculture but separately. I then discovered he was running a course the following week called Spiritual Practice-Permaculture and one of my new friends made the inspiring suggestion that I do that instead of going to Newbold so I signed up for it. Finishing my travels by integrating the two strands of spirituality and permaculture that had guided my journey seemed the right way to go and there was the added attraction of four other people from my experience week were also doing the course.  On the last night my group went down to the ‘red beastie’ bar in Forres town, apparently they ended up doing a circle dance in the middle of the pub and in the past I would have been downing the whisky with everyone else till 2am but I decided I needed to do the sensible thing and get an early night to get ready for the start of my new course the following day. A new leaf has definately been turned!

Luminous beauty

Foraging in Brighton and London

Last week I went visiting friends in Brighton, after 4 months away it felt great to be back. So far I've not been anywhere that feels more like home than Sussex does for me which is an interesting realisation. Maybe one of the outcomes of this journey will be I feel it's definately the right place for me to put down roots and I'm very open to that possibility. Whilst staying with my friend in Shoreham-by-sea we went foraging along the river Adur and harvested lots of juicy blackberries, elderberries, sloes, rosehips and some delicious apples from a tree amongst the blackthorns. Although we couldn't survive on this it is very empowering to be able to identify edible plants and make your own healthy organic produce with it. The plastic packaged food from the supermarket starts to look even more unappealing. A couple of days later I was staying with some other friends in Brighton who also like a good forage and on our way to the Firle fair we found more sloes, blackberries, elderberries and damsons. I've been thinking for a while now it would be great to make a map of where the best places for foraging are but not share it with everyone though for obvious reasons.

Drying rosehips for tea

Home produce
Back in London where I'm staying for a bit before my Findhorn trip I'm drying out the rosehips in the airing cupboard to make rosehip tea, I didn't have enough to make syrup but would like to try that next time. Having made sloe gin last year I thought it would be good to try sloe vodka (partly because it's a variation on a theme but mainly because vodka was in my parents drinks cabinet!) They have an apple tree in their garden that produced a bumper crop this year so after my mum made apple cheese, similar to the quince jelly (membrillo) the spanish eat with manchego cheese, we dug out the juicer and made some delicious fresh apple juice with the rest.

Kimchi and sloe vodka in progress

I also made some kimchi to use up the store of veg box cabbages that can start over running the fridge if you get them every week. Kimchi is a very popular pickle in Korea made from cabbage, carrots and radishes with a spicy mix of garlic, chilli pepper, ginger and onion that is not only delicious but has health benefits as it promotes healthy tummy bacteria. As it's now september and there are still lots of green tomatoes on the plants in my parents garden I also had a go at the method of ripening which involves putting them in a draw with either a ripe banana or apples that give off ethylene, a gas that ripens fruit and so far this seems to be working. Otherwise it will be time to make some green tomato chutney!

Green tomatoes ripening with apples in the drawer

Eat weeds
Whilst searching for foraging recipes I found this website with some alternative recipes to the usual ones you find http://www.eatweeds.co.uk/. It serves as a reminder that the plants most of us have come to know as 'weeds' can be made into tasty, nutritious organic meals and with more information coming to light about the health problems associated with food produced by industrial agriculture and the rise in food prices we really don't need much more encouragement to learn about how to benefit from this free food. All you need is the knowledge and adventurous taste buds to get you started!

Connecting with nature spirits

It’s been a while since my last post and in between then and now I went to the Bhakti chanting festival that I really enjoyed and have discovered chanting as another form of sound meditation. Then went back to Gaunts house to volunteer at the summer gathering to re-connect with my new friends and also met lots of other interesting folk. In between working in the information tent dealing with stressed workshop leaders and parents who’d lost their children I was able to attend a few workshops. Highlights for me where connecting with nature spirits, which I will be experiencing more of up at Findhorn in a couple of weeks time, healing relationships using inner child work and understanding dreams for spiritual intelligence. It was great to spend time and share experiences with like-minded souls who are on their own journeys.

Strawberry vinegar and other delights

But before all this happened I had another wwoofing placement at Harpsbridge House, a permaculture smallholding a few miles from Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast where I learnt lots of top permaculture tips.  My hosts Nick and Sara Vowles have been living a sustainable lifestyle there for about 10 years guided by pemaculture ethics and principles. The hard work they’ve put into their home and way of life was reflected in their fantastically productive smallholding and their community work. It was great to spend time with people who have been doing it a lot longer than me and to hear about the ups and downs of their learning journey.  They were also very understanding when I had my tiredness meltdown (see previous post) and had to leave a bit earlier than I planned but despite that I had a great time there and really appreciated the warm welcome I received especially after my Old Hall experience.

It was a shame I was so tired because it’s only now on reflection that I see how much I learnt and how much effort Nick and Sara put into making their helpers stay such a positive experience. There was bread (chilli and coriander seed was the best), cheese and fruit vinegar making, jamming both eating the fruit kind and making music, interesting conversations about sustainability, helping out on a school community garden, bush craft skills, plant identification walks at the nearby nature reserve and I even got an opportunity to teach the permaculture design process for a PDC course Nicks been running this year for some local secondary school teachers who want to teach permaculture to their pupils, an important priority for the next generation.

Teaching the permaculture design process to secondary school teachers 

Experimenting is good 

The most inspiring aspect of my time in the garden was seeing Nick’s experimental approach to growing, a fan of polycultures rather than companion planting his philosophy is to work with nature as much as possible so if nature in her wisdom decides to grow a plant in the middle of a designed bed it will be left there unless it’s getting in the way of his intention. I really liked his experimental approach of just trying things out rather than worrying too much if it will work as even if it doesn’t you will learn a lot during the process. Triage weeding was another example of low maintenance gardening and is possible with a well mulched plot as you can be selective about removing plants that are in competition with the ones you desire to grow. Just choosing to pull out weeds that are about to go to seed ensures you don’t get loads more growing in a place you’d rather they weren’t in residence rather than the Gaunts House approach of five hours hoeing beds to remove all weeds, what a waste of people energy! There were many examples of the design principles and features in action including a shelterbelt around the plot to block the prevailing wind, an apple orchard with geese, a herb bed watered using ‘grey water’, polycultures, stacking, a wormery, water capture and pumping, chickens, geese, bees, mushroom growing, scything, rocket stove cooking and seed saving to name a few. Other things that spring to mind where leaving the cabbage roots in the ground so you can have cut and come again cabbage leaves, using grass as a mulch, the huge variety of delicious jams, pickles, chutneys and vinegars (including the aforementioned strawberry flavoured one) you can make with your produce, using wilted comfrey to feed slugs so they don’t attack your plants, planting phacelia under your blackcurrants to provide bee food and stop birds eating your currants. Most evenings we walked to the nature reserve,  a wild unspoilt coastline very similar to the north Norfolk coast I’ve visited many times but here it was even less inhabited apart from the grey seals that like to bob about close to the shore for us to wave at.

'Cut and come again' cabbage

Grass mulching the polytunnel

Singing to the seals

On my last visit to the beach for some reason I started singing to the seals, they didn’t sing back but one of them did hang around for quite a while and I felt like we shared a moment together before I walked back up the beach and he swam off into the depths of the vast ocean probably to tell his family about the strange warbling two legged creature it had seen on the beach that day… thanks to the Vowles family for a great time.

A beautiful 'sand tree forest' on the beach, the intelligence of nature is awe inspiring 

The importance of people care

I’ve been feeling a bit derailed from my new path over the last few weeks as I began to feel very tired and realised that arranging new volunteering placements every few weeks turned out to be a bit of a punishing schedule. Having to move every week or so and meet new people, learn new information and being on your best behaviour 24/7 eventually takes it toll. In my enthusiasm to create a new life for myself I’ve found it’s easy to fall into old habits of ignoring my need to have breaks. I had set out as the hare and forgotten the tortoise wins in the end. On any journey it is always best to rest from time to time so you can admire the view and most importantly check your bearings to makes sure you’re still heading in the right direction.

Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
Whilst at my last host home a feeling of fatigue hit me that I recognised from previous times of change in my life when I’d stepped out of my comfort zone, it’s not like busy day tiredness but a tiredness of the brain caused by it having to try and keep up with lots of new stuff. My hosts reminded me of the relevance of ‘people care’ one of the guiding ethics of permaculture and also ‘zone 00’ (Zones are a design tool to help you design human energy efficiency into your system) and ‘Zone 00’ represents you at the centre of any system. The 12 design principles devised by David Holmgren http://www.permaculture.org.uk/knowledge-base/principles also offer wisdom for self guidance and this was an opportunity to use design principle number 4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback. The feedback of tiredness being the sign I needed to take a break!

Small and slow solutions 

In my hurry to find opportunities to get hands on experience and ‘fast track’ myself to a new way of life I had forgotten to apply principle number 9. Small and slow solutions to myself so I don’t repeat my old pattern of focusing all my energy on one area to the point of burning myself out as I have done previously. Even with the best intentions I still have to be careful not to repeat unhelpful patterns of behaviour by recognising the warning signs. This experience served as a reminder that permaculture is fundamentally a new way of thinking about how to be in the world by taking time to observe, trying solutions out and learning from them, a very different approach to the industrial growth mindset of ‘no time to waste’ I’d been conditioned to follow. It was good to recognise this attitude had started to creep in so I could stop, take a break and get my bearings before I set out on the road again.