Speaking of brother John…

Jen and I are fortunate to have 2 wonderful brothers. John Prosser (featured in previous post) enabled us to go to Italy where we spent a couple of days with John McElhinney (Tree’s brother) who teaches 2nd grade in Trieste. While there we crossed the border to Slovenia and visited the Predjama castle which dates back to the late 1200’s and is built into a rock cliff. Later we had a delicious home-cooked meal using fresh local ingredients at a Slovenian gostlina.

John and Tree at Predjama Castle - Slovenia

Jen and John at a Slovenian Gostilina

John Prosser and 3 String Bale

We mentioned in a previous post that our recent trip to Italy was the first time we have been away for an extended period of time since getting goats, chickens, dogs (and cats!) and going online with sunstoneherbs.com. We were able to do this because of the wonderful John Prosser - Jen’s brother - who has been living with us since we moved to New Mexico in September.

When he is not milking goats or helping out around the homestead, John is a musician who writes and records original compositions. You can check him out on MySpace.

Last night, Jen and I went to listen to John perform with 3 String Bale at Johndhis Barbecue in Albuquerque. Below are some photos and a short video of the boys performing John’s song Tangerine. Bard Edrington is on banjo and Tom Studer on electric guitar and harmonica.

John Prosser performing with 3 String Bale.

Yarrow at the Colosseum?

We were just looking through our photos from our trip to Italy earlier this month and have decided that perhaps we’ve become a little obsessive about plants. There were about 10 shots of what we initially thought was yarrow (Achillea millefolium) growing in the remains of a Colosseum wall until closer inspection revealed it to be some variety of mustard. Not to mention that it was way too early in the season for yarrow…

Thanks to all of you who patiently waited for us to return to process your orders. This has been the second time we have closed sunstoneherbs.com since going online in 2000 (the first being during the week we moved from New York to New Mexico).

We had a wonderful, relaxing time - lots of good food and lots of art - and are now ready to jump into the growing season. Here are some parting shots.

Blue skies through the Colosseum.

The Roman Forum

Us posing in front of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence.

Rainwater Harvesting at the New Mexico Xeriscape Expo

Jen and I dropped by the 2008 New Mexico Xeriscape Expo yesterday to check out the exhibitors, visit our friends Bard and Zoe at the Soilutions booth and attend Brad Lancaster’s seminar on harvesting rainwater. We bought a copy of Brad’s book before moving to New Mexico and are in the process of designing both rainwater catchment and grey water systems for our new homestead in the South Valley.

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands (Vol. 1): Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life And Landscape

Brad is an energetic and gifted speaker. His talk was exciting because it was filled with common-sense (and easy to implement) solutions to managing rainwater so that it creates and supports sustainable landscapes rather than ending up as stormwater runoff that is directed away from communities and the watershed.

Senate Farm Bill - A Mixed Bag of Wins and Losses

In a press release issued on December 14th, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition called the farm bill adopted by the Senate earlier this month a “mixed bag of wins and losses for family farmers, consumers, and the environment.”

“We applaud the Senate’s decision to advance working lands conservation, especially the Conservation Stewardship Program, as well as important competition provisions that will restore balance and fairness to livestock markets,” said SAC Policy Director Ferd Hoefner.

“At the same time, the Senate’s failure to pass the Dorgan-Grassley payment limit amendment repudiates the large majority of farmers who support reform and the largest bi-partisan nationwide movement for farm program reform ever mounted. Most importantly, it means uncapped commodity payments will continue to flow to mega farms and push rural communities, family farmers, and the next generation of producers off of the map.”

Read the rest of the release here.

The River Cottage Meat Book

Jen opened her Christmas present from me this morning (I can never wait until Christmas) so now I can write about it. I gave her a copy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book which was originally published in the UK in 2004 and was released this year in a revised American edition.

Engagingly written and accompanied by gorgeous photographs of British farm life, perfect cuts of meat and mouth-watering dishes, this book is far more than a cookbook. It opens with a manifesto on high-quality, local, and sustainable meat production that forces you to think long and hard about the meat you eat. What breed of animal did it come from? Where was the animal raised? How was it treated? What did it eat? Questions that Big Agriculture doesn’t want you to think about.

A guide on choosing and storing meats and fowl follows with the remainder of the book devoted to procedures and recipes for roasting, cooking, barbecuing, preserving, and processing meats as well as getting the most out of leftovers. I can’t wait to try the loin of lamb stuffed with apricots and pine nuts!

Talk About Eating Local

In an article earlier this month in Science & The City, Steve “Wildman” Brill talks about the bounties to be had in New York City’s Central Park.

From the article:

“Burdock is one of the tastiest and most healthful root vegetables. It’s an expensive detoxifying herb when you find it in health food stores, but it abounds in cultivated areas throughout Central Park. Remnants of the decaying leaves reveal the taproots’ locations.”

More here.

 

Sunstone Goes to New Mexico!

Yes, it’s true. We’ve moved to the Land of Enchantment. Not to worry, we’ll continue doing our same Sunstone goodness here in a sunnier clime. We saved seeds and harvested overtime during the summer to keep us in stock while we design and plant our new gardens. For those of you with fond memories of our home and gardens, I’m happy to report that the homestead has loving new owners.

Can herbs grow in New Mexico? I’ve been asked. Yes! And they grow beautifully here. It’s only about 10 degrees warmer here than in New York. The difference is that it is almost always sunny here, and arid. The aridity makes drying herbs here much easier, without needing any supplemental heat. There will likely be a few herbs that we will not be able to grow here. But on the plus side there are many herbs that we will be able to grow for the first time or grow more easily, like pomegranates (ok, that’s a fruit), passionflower and vitex. And Rosemary grows outside all year round here, as do some varieties of fig! We will continue to grow and harvest the herbs for our products with joy and gratitude.

Why New Mexico? We came out to visit friends early in the year and fell in love with the big sunny blue skies, the friendly people and dry weather. We came back and said, hey, why not have an adventure! Jen is from the west coast originally and is glad to be closer to her family. Tree is having her first big adventure away from the east coast.

We are still getting settled, but are making friends and enjoying the community here. All the animals love their new home and sunny weather. Yes! We brought the goats and the chickens and dogs and cats. How could we leave cute Betty, Desi the princess and Tosca the queen?

Jen is taking a Permaculture Design Certificate course with Scott Pittman of the Permaculture Drylands Institute to jumpstart that learning curve of growing in the southwest. Jen and Tree have also become active in Sanchez Farm, a not for profit community farm project of La Plazita Institute, a wonderful organization in the South Valley. More on that in another blog.

We will miss all of our friends and community in New York but instead of feeling like we are losing friends or community, we feel like we’re bringing all those connections with us to New Mexico, to join our ever increasing web of friends committed to living lightly on the earth. Thanks to so many of you for your well wishes. We look forward to seeing you out here in the magical southwest.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Of the 8 summers we have spent in Olivebridge, this one has been the most spectacular. It’s been incredibly sunny and dry so far and, miraculously, no biting bugs! Usually we stop sitting out on our deck in the evenings by mid June because of the mosquitoes, but so far we have had dinner outside every evening.

5:30 rolls around (yes, we eat early) and like clockwork, the dogs and cats and Rita the chicken (the beggar of the group) assemble on the deck with us.

Server and Email Problems

Over the past week our web server went AWOL. Our site was down and emails that you may have sent us were bounced back or lost. We are up and running now with a new web hosting service.

We try supporting independent businesses whenever possible, but after too many extended outages we’re going with a mainstream company that can provide 24/7 service.

Apologies for any inconveniences.