12.25.09

Merry Christmas from the soon-to-be Ruckers! Much love to all.

And a thousand thanks to Adam Brimer for the brilliant photos.

audrey's and my bedroom

...Someday:

permaculture seeds sprouting on st. croix

A cool article about cool goings-on at VISFI. CHECK IT OUT. Oh, and those tidal pools are where I almost died last March. I'll post a video of them later on....

sustainable connections run strong and deep

During one of my final weeks at Creque Dam Farm in St. Croix, we had lots of visitors come through for the Bush Skills Rendezvous. One very nice man from Pennsylvania, Kenny Point, stayed the longest. He was very interested and inspired by the R2R program and all the wonderful people on those beautiful 200 acres, and he wrote about it here:

Ridge to Reef for a Sustainable Education

He took the above picture right after Patrick and my presentation on renewable energy (notice the lit bulb in my hand). This makes me miss the island so much....

divine treehouse

How amazing is the guy who built this? (See lots of pics here)


Horace Burgess, of Crossville, Tenn, built this 97-foot tall, 8,000-10,000 square foot treehouse/church. Inspired by a four-second vision from God, Burgess has dumped 14 years and about $12,000 into the project. And it looks like it was worth it to me.

Who wants to go visit?

Read the story here.

i must have done something right

I'm engaged to be married to this girl:


Audrey and I were engaged on August 9, 2009 on top of Mount Roberts in Juneau, Alaska. There was a perfect little spot next to Father Brown's Cross (Whitey's Cross), just a half-mile up the trail from the tram station.



Crêpe, there it is.

the yellow dwarf and the dinner plate

With a few more posts left before I can really close the book on St. Croix (for now), I should probably go ahead and get these up here - before we all forget that, yeah, that actually happened. I shall start with the conclusion of my final project at VISFI: to design, create and install a working solar system for our client, Kyle O'Keefe.

I left off (almost FOUR months ago, geez) talking about how Patrick and I had to decide on the best location for the solar panel. Well, after surveying the area, we decided this was the prime spot:


Patrick and I worked closely with zen-master/zig-zag man/bearded electricity guru, Don Young, to develop the optimal system for Kyle's needs. We constructed a box out of scrap wood that was lying around the container pad to house all of the components of the system that would convert the sunlight into AC and DC. Then all we would need to do is send the current up to Kyle's cabana, connect a few wires, screw in a bulb, and voila - power.

The box, which we painted a lovely shade of green, was attached to a 6-foot post. The roof of the box was slanted at 17 degrees (the degree of latitude in St. Croix) and doubled as a platform for our solar panel. A maze of wires ran from the panel, to the charge controller, to the batteries, to the inverter, to the fuse boxes, and under the ground to Kyle's cabana. It honestly took every ounce of our sanity to check and recheck our math, solve wiring puzzles, and get all the tools we needed to finish the job. One of the things I was most proud of after completing the project was knowing how much we were able to recycle from previous projects or from junk lying around the container pad. As frustrating as it sometimes was to try and find the right size screw we needed or to try and get our hands on a wrench or a charged power drill, it felt great to accomplish so much without even one trip to a Home Depot (not that one even exists on the island or anything).





The big moment came the day before the project was due. Patrick and I had spent the previous afternoon digging a seemingly endless trench that would become home to one measly 4-in-1 10 gauge wire, we had connected all the wiring in the system, and the panel had been charging the batteries for a good 48 hours - it was time for the moment of truth. Now, I don't mean to be overly dramatic or sensational, but it was a very emotional moment for Patrick and me. It actually was our moment of truth. Would the light bulb light? Was all our work actually for something?

I twisted the bulb into the rusty socket of the old metal fixture we had borrowed from the baby chicken pen. I gave Patrick the thumbs up. He switched on the inverter. Current flowed through the fuse box, into the long gray wire, through our ramshackle joint box, and into the old fixture. The bulb's filament slowly began to glow, brighter and brighter (actually, not slowly at all, more like the SPEED OF LIGHT, but I like to pretend it was all in slow motion), and soon it was burning with the electrical fury of a thousand suns (40 watts). And the peasants rejoiced.


As Patrick and I were making the long walk down the hillside, back toward the community center, I noticed the setting sun in front of us. How incredible it was, I thought, that we had taken unseen particles of light and transformed them into something - creating a light of our own. We began to chat about this very miracle, when both of us turned around to gain perspective. We wanted to look back toward Kyle's cabana to imagine what it would look like from the other side of the farm if the lights were on. We wanted to imagine what future farmers at VISFI will see in the distance when someone is reading by the light of our bulb. We just wanted to imagine it, but we saw this:


The full moon had risen, stealthy in the night sky. It hung like a dinner plate directly over Kyle's cabana, casting its pale glow over the farm. It was, as Elton John might say, the circle of light.

bush skills

OK, time to play catch-up on my posts...

My second to last week on the farm had the most busy and compact schedule of any week yet. Thursday through Sunday (March 5th thru 8th) was the 3rd Annual Bush Skills Caribbean Rendezvous at Creque Dam Farm. Bush Skills is a four-day event where people gather to learn primitive skills - everything from basic survival (or as we call it, "thrival") to preparing and enjoying a feast. Several instructors flew in from the states to help teach classes, and many more people came to the farm to camp and enjoy our beautiful setting during the event. The farm went from a relatively quiet crew of 25 to a bustling community of 50 or more.

As an R2R student, I took on several responsibilities throughout the week. I helped teach a class, run the registration booth, prepare meals, clean dishes, keep an eye on the dogs, etc, etc, etc. It was exhausting - but it was so much fun.


The theme of this year's rendezvous was "Hunting, Gathering, and Growing" - and each day had its own theme as well:

Day One - Survival: The basics of tropical living - fire, shelter, water, fibers
Day Two - Tracking and Awareness: The functional art of blending with nature for heightened sense of being
Day Three - Plants: Medicines, herbalism, crafts, and food
Day Four - Food Day: How to grow and prepare an all-natural island feast

We started off each day signing up for the two classes we wanted to take during the day - one before lunch and one afterward. Throughout the week, I made traditional pottery from local gray clay, I made a cooking set completely out of bamboo - a rice-steaming pressure cooker, two small cups and a spoon, I made art out of coconut palm fronds, I killed, skinned, cleaned, and tanned a rabbit hide, and I made a "mongoose stick" and learned how to properly throw it for a kill.




There were several classes that I didn't get to take because of conflicts with my work schedule that looked great as well - calabash art and utensils, cordage weaving, vine baskets, tracking and hunting, shell art and bamboo weaponry.




I did get to help Marshall teach a class on trapping, where we taught a group of high school kids how to build a mongoose trap. We showed them how to set it to trap their very own mongoose-dem.


Each night during the rendezvous, one of the instructors known as Snowbear, would start a fire and gather everyone for a drum circle. Everyone was given a chance to share a song or story or thought - it was almost like open mic nights around Snowbear's fire. Marshall and I shared a couple of our favorite songs to jam to: "In Spite of Ourselves" by John Prine and "Meet Me In the Morning" by Bob Dylan. I'm surprised we never got around to sharing "The Weight" by The Band since we had spent so many cabana nights trying to get those harmonies down just right.

The last drum circle we had was just a couple of days before the full moon, and we didn't have a fire going. It was also more like an actual drum circle - everyone had something to beat, rattle, or shake. I had a large calabash filled with loose seeds that I used to add to the moonlit rhythm. After we had the rhythm going hot for a few minutes, we were visited by a creature from the bush.



This is a Moko Jumbie. Urban Legend has it in St. Croix that the bush is filled with evil tree spirits called Jumbies. They are tall and slender (I imagine like a dark, shadowy Ent from LOTR, but evil) and come out to spoil the enterprises of man. To combat these spirits, St. Croix has a tradition of stilt-walking dancers in bright costumes called Moko Jumbies.

When this came out of the bush and started dancing in the middle of our circle, we were all astounded. Nate had obviously planned the encounter, but hadn't told most people there. I was just shaking a gourd in the moonlight, and next thing I knew, there was a 12-foot-tall creature in front of me. It was quite surreal.

The last day of Bush Skills was feast day. We spent the whole morning preparing the food and cooking using primitive techniques.






When all was said and done, I had eaten:

Stone soup - soup cooked inside a pumpkin using fresh vegetables from the farm, heated using hot rocks that had been in the fire for a while. When the rocks were placed in the cold broth, it began to boil within a few seconds.


Cornmeal biscuits that were cooked inside bamboo rounds on a cooking stone that was placed over a flame.


Rice and vegetables cooked inside a bamboo pressure cooker.


Pasteles, which are bananas cooked inside their own leaves with garlic, peppers, potatos and other vegetables.


Mongoose. Yes, mongoose. Boiled for an hour, then doused in BBQ sauce and grilled.


And my favorite - bread. We coiled the batter around a stick and cooked it like a marshmallow for s'mores. I drizzled mine in honey and chowed down. Then I made some more. It was heavenly.





All in all, Bush Skills was probably the most exciting week on the farm. There were so many new faces in and out of our community during the rendezvous, and I learned so many great primitive skills.

And I ate Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.