Sustainable SW Blogs

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Well, it has been 2 weeks since I did my second, third, and forth flights.  Have yet to zoom up since Kurt left.  Spent the first week recovering from the physical exertion my first flights required and since then been practicing ground handling (kiting) as weather has permitted.  Just as I have read and been taught...the more you practice - the more the motions become anticipatory rather than reactive.  Keeping things under control makes for an easy launch.  As you can imagine, it doesn't take very many aborted launch attempts to wear you down while hefting 90 lbs on your back.  I am gaining the confidence necessary to take off on my own very soon.

Here is an interesting note about my choice of trainers for the sport of powered paragliding.  There are a lot of different sale pitches out there and I have researched them all.  The thing that really sold me on Kurt Fister and www.flightjunkies.com had nothing to do with products or offers - it was a brief mention in one of his YouTube videos about him accepting Christ as his savior.  That is one sales pitch that no one else dared to offer.  Two weeks ago I posted about my first flight that happened on a Sunday.  What I left out that day was after my premier flight early that morning, Kurt flew my unit north and landed at The Big Bend Tabernacle and gave his testimony to our congregation.  How he came to Christ is a great story.  When he isn't teaching powered paragliding - he is teaching Christians how to win souls.  The scripture I posted yesterday is subtly noted on his business card.  72,91,58,0,C          

In an effort to max out on nutrition while minimizing pack weight, in anticipation of our Gila Wilderness backpacking trip that starts on Wednesday (ends Saturday), I made a batch of raw crackers. My goal was to use the pulp from today's juice which was a green juice featuring chard, kale, and spinach. In a food processor I combined about 2 cups of the juice waste with 1/2 cup of ground flax, a bit of curry and onion powder, salt and pepper, with a few tablespoons of Brags amino acids and a whole lemon's juice.  I spread the mix on a dehydrating sheet where I'm dehydrating it at 115 degrees for 8 hours. It smells great! I'm considering vacuum sealing a blen made of cashew nut cream seasoned with lemon, garlic, and parsley as a spread.

 

Please come to this great Event. Hope to see you all there!

Book Talk

The post another test appeared first on Doug Fine.

Christ suffered a horrible death by crucifixion in order to pay for the sins of all mankind. You have two choices. Seek and you shall find him and be granted eternal life...or...deny him and suffer far beyond what He endured on your behalf. Even if you don't believe in God or Satan or Heaven or Hell, you have nothing to loose by asking Christ into your life (because He will oblige you). If you search in earnest - you WILL find Him. As Christ lives through you - you will experience His glory and become increasingly aware of the power of Satan. Allowing Satan to close your mind to the possibilities means there will be Hell to pay. Take advantage of the offer...you won't regret it.  Christ did his part - the rules are pretty simple...  John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.  

With a 3 night, 4 day backpacking trip coming up in the Gila Wilderness (our route), Mikey and I are busy preparing light weight, high impact food. We've been dehydrating fruit of all variety and have reduced their weight greatly. As it stands we'll carry two watermelon, 2 cantaloupe, 1 honeydew, a pineapple, and a load of strawberries all without reaching 1lb in weight, likely it'll weigh in a .5 lb. For lunch'y snacks today I made blueberry quinoa bars, and chocolate, raw peanut butter and coconut balls. I also kicked off a batch of vanilla extract by splitting vanilla bean and placing it in our home brew 80 proof alcohol to steep for a couple of months, though this is not for camping.

The real winner here is the blueberry bar and so here's my recipe which I completely made up:

Mix dry ingredients separate from wet then mix all together. Bake 350 for 30 min on pan lined with parchment paper.

1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup quinoa
1/4 cup quinoa flour (ground quinoa)
1/8 cup flax seed ground
1/4 cup almond flour (ground almonds)
1/2 cup cashew chopped into small parts
2 tbsp chia seed whole
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/8 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup blueberries
3 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp molasses
4 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp water

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I got a call the other day, "can you bring over your bee clothes, we have a swarm?" Mikey and I have had swarms on our property almost every spring since we moved here. We did not catch them because we already had a colony and we did not have an extra hive. I got in teh car to answer the call and dropped some bee hats and checked out the new colony that my friends had captured in a box by cutting down the limb of the tree the bees made a swarm ball on. The bees were calm and hungry. We fed them sugar water to hold them over as swarms on the run only have a couple of days to live before figuring out food and shelter. When I checked in to see what had happened the next day learned that the swarm moved back to the tree and were again encouraged to come down, this time into the beehive I brought over as we lost our colony last year. Our fingers are crossed for them.

A hearty "no egg" breakfast.  75,84,58,0,W

Dehydrating for Backpacking, a photo by mikey and wendy on Flickr.

Our next backpacking trip will be a 50 miler in the Gila Wilderness. I am dehydrating melons, berries and smoked tofu for the journey.

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I have mastered the waiting game...patience is a virtue when it comes to powered paragliding.  76,82,37,0,B

This week we have enjoyed spending time with a family  visiting T or C in their converted Greyhound bus that they've been living in for one year. The kids are home schooled though from what I can tell their lifestyle has world schooled them.

The other morning while hiking I talked with their daughter Atlee about what school was like for her when she was still in the system back in the Seattle area. She described an experience that matched my own when I was growing up even though for me junior high was 30+ years ago and in New York. She told me stories of girls competing based on clothing and ostracizing each other for being different. Atlee proudly told me that since leaving school the people she has met on the road are unique and she valued this. We've noticed that the homeschool kids we've worked with since living in New Mexico out shine those schooled by the system in attention span, creative thinking, idea generation and interest in learning. I brought Atlee over to our friend Jeannie's place today to see her looms, and other textile arts. It was a match! In typical T or C and small town fashion, each generation shares with the one behind it.

I've always enjoyed a sport. I windsurfed for years, roller bladed, and I swam every chance I was given. No sport has been as body changing as running. I've run 231 miles since Feb 4th, which has dropped me three sizes in clothing. I lost ten pounds, and I probably gained  more than that in muscle. My ass transformed into calves which are now like piston pumps. But what I'm most impressed by is my heart which which has become a very different kind of efficient blood pumping and oxygen delivering system. I feel this when I am walking and hiking. Even my resting heart rate has dropped significantly. I am strong from running in a way no other sport has provided. A heart rate monitor helps me to monitor my heart's development.  A strengthened heart will benefit me the whole of my life.

I cut my morning run short at 5 miles because there was a bull in my way. Mikey runs with them but I find them super scary and totally unpredictable so I let this one turn me around. He was hanging out just past the goats we run with who were zig zagging along a cliff's side. He was blocking the road that I needed to run up in order to run farther and the fence meant to stop them was down. I let the tree full of vultures that was right across the road from this scene stop me. A foreshadowing of could have been in store for me and Sesame.  ARG!
(last image: a scrap I keep near my computer with my measurements for sizing clothes when ordering on line. )

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I'm still sitting on a large stock of garlic bulbis from the garlic that went to seed while I was on my book tour. I figured that by now they'd be dry and ready for grinding into a garlic powder but no. I'm going to have to put these out in a solar oven for a while or stick em in a dehydrator. Their ability to maintain moisture has me thinking they're real keepers, they've outlasted my full sized garlic bulbs.

Now that our papercrete wall is stucco'd it's time to repair stucco cracks. Having no experience with stucco I researched the process online and choose a method that uses a silicone that can be painted over followed by a thin layer of stucco. My only complaint is that in spite of my having used the exact stucco that the wall was done with (an extra bag left over from that job), the colors do not match.

You may recall that in Wendy's book she lists staying up all night to watch astral events as one of the reasons to not have a job. We did just that... an allnighter in our Hot Spring with friends to enjoy a stunning total lunar eclipse. It was worth staying up until 4am. We had originally planned to go hiking for the eclipse but a drop in temps and running injuries kept us local. The hot tub is hard to beat for watching astronomical events on a chilly night.

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