Manifestation of a Vision!

The two photos below show unlabeled and labeled ariel photos of the Ceremonial Grounds!  The photos will enlarge when you click on them for a better view.  The view shows about a 4 acre space and the field used to be a hayfield that suffered from years of compaction and previous to that years of fruit farming, it was a field that was all peaches at one point, approximately 15-20 years ago.  When we arrived it was all forest entangled with vines and prickly shrubs that one could not walk through.  The vines were entrapping and damaging the trees.  The field was poor soil and the hay produced poor in quality.  Over a period of about 5-6 years it has transformed, step by step to the Ceremonial Grounds that you see below.

In the photos you see the various Bateys, Gardens and Conucos.  The Ceremonial Grounds produce all kinds of fruits and vegetables and flowers for our sustenance.  The long raspberry patch produces many raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, and also pollen for the near by Bees who live in the fruit orchard.  We have found that the peaches here flourish.  The Bees pollenate the fruit trees allowing a greater fruit harvest, and simultaneously produce wax and honey.  We have apples, pears, peaches, cherries, walnuts, plums.  The gardens also produce an array of medicinal herbs that we also use for spiritual baths and for the purification lodge.  The purification lodge itself and fire pit (which together looks like a key) are surrounded by a circular garden of medicinal herbs, many of which are native to this area.  

The Conucos are Taino style mounds of soil for planting crops.  We tend to plant the squash plants in them.  Right next to them is a fenced in garden that this year have produced many potatoes.  We apply the practices of crop diversity and crop rotation to eliminate the need for applying chemical pesticides.  The diversity of crops attracts beneficial insects and ensures that even if the insects eat one species, many more are available.  

The Moon Batey or Moon Circle has a large Circular Garden around the actual Circle and Circular Pathway, and supports a wide diversity of flowers and herbs, as well as many flowering shrubs, including an array of butterfly bushes which attract the butterflies.  Many birds find places to make their nests in the Moon Garden.  The Moon Batey is surrounded by many trees, including flowering cherries, ginko, birch, magnolia, flowering pear.  We have planted many trees which are slowly bringing diversity and shade to the Ceremonial Grounds.  We released the vine-entrapped trees from the vines and this allowed them to undergo a strong growth over the last 5 years.  

This has been a constantly shifting and changing process. And the Story of this process is vital to remember.  We recall how the first thing we did in this "field" was put the horses enclosed in a one strand electric fence in the center.  Their manure was the first fertility this field had seen in years.  The area where they gathered to eat their hay and leave their manure became the center Garden, which began as a corn garden and transformed over the years many times in terms of design, to the form it is in now.  

The central batey started as a roughly outlined circle with some River Stones.  It was then filled in and then three gardens developed on its circumference, and finally last year trees planted all around it.  The locust trees that have been planted directly in the garden beds help to "fix" nitrogen in the soil, increasing soil fertility.  We have continued to use the animal manures and leaves to increase soil fertility.  

The space where the purification Lodge is now, has gone through many changes.  It began as a spiral garden planted with corn, then became a series of concentric circles planted with quinoa and amaranth (the amaranth self seeded and is still in that space today, coming back each year), finally it became the space for the Purification Lodge which had previously been higher on the hill where some herb beds now are.  

The Moon Batey also began as a rough outline with River Stones.  We then brought our work horse with his plow in to plow up the soil for the moon garden that surrounds the batey.  As the years went by the Moon Batey took shape and now is a sanctuary for many birds and insects.  In the forest to the left is the Women's Batey which cannot be seen because of the leaves on the trees.  Further up from the Central Batey is the Bohio and two more Bateys in the Forest.  

Down by where the Tobacco and Sage Garden now is there used to be a house many years ago.  It was one of the homes of the African Nazarite Community.  There is nothing left of the house, other than the stones that the neighbor took many years ago (before we arrived) to put on their home.  That is another story.  

Up in the top right corner are some of the animal fields and if you look closely in the nearest field, top right corner you can see the white alpaca and the dark brown llama hanging out.  

This Ceremonial Grounds began taking shape at the same time as Anani was conceived and she has carried an active role in this whole manifestation.  The Ceremony prior to her birth took place right within these Ceremonial Grounds, near by where the purification lodge used to be, and close to where her chickens now live.  She has been hands on in all the gardens from time she was an infant who would always want to be right in the middle of the action.  The only tradition and culture that she knows is this, which is a Living Spiritual Entity inside of her.  She knows all about the various plants, what can be eaten, what can't.  It is her "classroom" and it is her "library", her science "lab" and her gymnasium!  

Garlic Planting

This fall we created a new garden for the garlic, a raised bed garden made from stones and filled with the rich forest soil that had been further enhanced by contributions from a series of goats, horses, donkeys and a bull!  In this particular place on the Land the bedrock of Mother Earth literally is right at the surface and it would be very challenging to attempt to grow plants directly upon the rocky soil here.  By creating a raised bed we give the plants a foot of rich fluffy soil that creates ideal growing conditions.  The soil will be able to retain more water because of its high humus content and will be able to drain off any excess water because it is raised which will help the garlic from getting mold conditions while growing if we happen to have a year of an abundance of rain.  There are many places upon the Earth where either due to natural conditions (such as our bedrock area of the Land) or due to the abuse of the land through conventional agricultural practices which compact the soil, the soil is very hard and depleted.  Raised beds can transform these conditions immediately and allow us to grow a greater abundance of vegetables in a smaller space, which saves water and is easier to keep tended!

We have an assortment of garlic (hardneck, softneck and elephant) and some shallots ready to plant.

Above one clove of elephant garlic is as big as Anani's palm!  These are huge cloves, and there are only four cloves per garlic plant and they tend to have a milder flavor than regular garlic.  Garlic is planted in the fall, it begins its growth and then overwinters through ice, snow, frozen ground, to then emerge in the spring, grow throughout the Spring and is ready for harvest in the summer.  Garlic is a powerful medicinal plant, excellent for boosting the immune system.  The mere fact that it not only survives but flourishes through the cold conditions of winter is reflected in its medicinal power!  We utilize it crushed with honey or olive oil and taken by the teaspoon, or made into a garlic tea for colds and flus during the winter.  It is a natural antibiotic.  It is of course also a awesome addition to every meal!  We love to roast it directly on the grill in the summer!

We plant the garlic deep enough for about 2 inches of soil to cover its growing tip, then as the weather gets cooler we add a thick layer of mulch (leaves or straw) on top of the soil to further protect and feed the garlic.  The sticks are to label the different varieties for the purposes of discovering which garlics prefer our soil and weather conditions.  As we continue to select the best of our garlic crop for future plantings we naturally guide the garlic to flourish in our unique conditions.  This is the benefit of saving your own seed or in this case saving your own clove.  It is the very best of the garlic harvest that gets planted for the next year because we want to continue to improve the crop and if we would only plant the mediocre garlic we would be guiding the garlic in a mediocre direction.  There is a spiritual tool or truth to this simple process of choosing the garlic for the next year's harvest!

Anani loves to be involved  in planting all things, but the garlic is especially easy for children because the cloves are big and are easy to handle.  She also discovers that when planting garlic you do not take off the husk like you do when you cook, and that garlic requires patience, in fact almost a whole year of patience!  Whereas arugula and other greens will emerge within days and be harvestable within weeks!  This is a way for her to learn the natural rhythm of the foods she eats, and the rhythm of life and death and the seemingly contradictory elements of being able to plant garlic at at time when everything else is being harvested.  She is seeing that even within a cycle of "death" meaning winter, some things thrive and begin their process of life during this very season of "death".  

Anani is seeing that the Garlic that is harvested is "reincarnating" as we place its clove within the Earth, and that it then sends up a shoot, fills out its root bulb and becomes a full garlic plant once again.  She also sees this with the seeds from the tobacco, the vegetable seeds, and she sees this occurring naturally and through our action to collect and plant seeds.  She sees how every year tomatoes, borage flowers, calendula flowers, holy basil, and other unexpected plants come up because of the seeds they threw down the year before which have re-incarnated once again in the most unexpected of places as the wind or a bird or bee or even an animal that ingests the seed such as a fox takes a seed and drops it in a more distant place.  She sees that tobacco grows by the Sacred Fire from the seeds of the Tobacco that was offered ceremonially to the fire the year before.  This occurs more and more frequently as we enhance the fertility of the soil and bring in a diversity of crops and herbs to the Land.  We have naturalized plants upon the land that simply were not there when we first arrived.  Sweet Annie grows all over the field now, Amaranth grows everywhere, cilantro throws its seeds everywhere and tomatoes come up in every place where we have ever planted them.  This year in our tree nursery tomatoes came up from two years ago!   Holy basil (Tulsi) also came up and it turns out that holy basil is very very medicinal and makes a tea that is slightly spicy and delicious!  All the medicinal herbs can and are utilized for bilongos, cargas, and other Medicinal purposes.  

Plants are vital to us as spiritual-physical warriors!  At a time when the diversity of plants upon the earth are being attacked, at a time when the use of plants medicinally is also being attacked, at a time when the health of the people of the planet is also under severe attack, the plants are our life line!  We love and honor the plants upon the land, we are always bringing more plants to the land and reaching out to our Mother Earth in the spirit of Reconciliation through placing our hands, our sweat and our love upon her to grow an abundance of vegetables, herbs, fruits, nuts, flowers!  We don't bother to roll up our sleeves anymore, we cut the sleeves right off!  Not only is this process healing for our Spirits, our Souls and our Relationship with out Mother Earth, with the Ancestors, with the Spirits of the Earth, but it is also deeply satisfying!