Communal Dinner at Full Bloom

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Its a sad statistic but….. In the U.S. 46 percent of all adult eating occasions are now solitary eating occasions and Americans consume 31 percent more packaged food than fresh food.  We are privileged here at Full Bloom to be eating most every dinner together. Currently there are 11 adult residents and we each partner up with another resident to cook a communal dinner.

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Here’s Rosie putting together a Ratatouille from our abundant gardens and you’ll see there a big bag of yellow wax beans as well. Vegetables are in no shortage this time of ear at Full Bloom.

There’s something really amazing in being able to experience the diverse cooking styles of each resident.  Everyone has an commitment to eating local, non package foods but beyond that it’s anybody’s guess what will show up at dinner.  Recent highlights include: terriaki venison, Cheddar zucchini bread, local grass-fed beef chili, and garlic roasted beets and fennel.

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Full Bloomers serving themselves up on burrito night.

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Summer outdoor eating together

We’re doing our best here to re-instate a culture of valuing eating together and eating what comes from the landbase together.  It helps that its mostly a thoroughly enjoyable experience!

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”
― Thomas Wolfe

Inspired by the Leviathan Studio on Lasquitti Island B.C.

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Just coming by from two inspirational weeks at the Leviathan Studio in B.C.  Mark Young is the founder and coordinator of this center dedicated to exploring the form of contact dance.   He has a certain devotional energy around the form as he attributes it to helping him recover from brain trauma.  He built the studio mostly by himself and some teenagers from the island he restled up to keep them out of trouble and give them something to focus there energy into (moving and stacking rock for the walls seen in the picture).    The Studio was built completely into the landscape with large rock and trees incorporated into the interior.  It creates an experience of still being in wild nature.  As a dancer I felt inspired to include the feeling and texture of the place into my dance.

DSCN0703 DSCN0693 DSCN0713Mark keeps the workshops at the studio very affordable through a relatively simple meals, and no frills lodging (camping).  Which was fine by me.  I came to dance!   Through the simplicity of the the place one is able to just enjoy the natural setting of the island with the coastal breezes and beautiful conifer trees.

After the trip I am emboldened to create a center her at Full Bloom that can offer individuals the opportunity to dance, enjoy the natural world, and connect with other kindred souls!
“There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good”.  ~Edwin Denby

 

Raw zucchini flax “bread” – what to do when you’re awash with zucchini…

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If you’ve ever grown a couple of zucchini plants you know that there comes a point in the season where a your swimming in them, and where a couple of them get away from you and they end up the size of a small child.  Well I’ve discovered my answer to this common culinary quandary:  Raw zucchini flax “bread”.  It may not be your cup of tea but I find it an an awesome alternative to tortillas, bread, and other high carb, gluten rich fare.  And plus I can be a hero to all my community mates that are walking around saying “What are we going to do with all these zucchinis!?”

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Here I am in the Full Bloom commercial kitchen with all my ingredients ready to toss em’ together and make some olive zucchini bread!

I never use a recipe, but to get you started I would suggest the following proportions:

6 cups ground Flax

12 cups grated zucchini

2 cups olives

fresh rosemary, basil, and oregano salt to taste

1/2 cup olive oil

mix it all together and taste it.  Do you like it?  Does it have enough salt? rosemary? add more.  Or maybe you want to toss in some jalepenos or some grated carrots?  Spread out onto your dehydrator sheets and dehydrate to desired pliability (tortilla like or cracker like)

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Here’s all the ingredients in a bowl prior to mixing

Have Fun and let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

Ryan

 

Food at Full Bloom

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Food is such as a wonderful way to a bring people together.  Its that time of the year where the abundance of our gardens and the local farms is erupting into the kitchen in the from of a amazingly diverse, colorful, and fresh meals.  After our community work day this past Saturday myself and my landmate Miceala prepared a huge salad with lettuce, fennel, carrots, beats, calendula flowers, and armenian cucumbers all freshly picked from our gardens here.

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Me and Micaela posing for a pic in the Full Bloom Commercial Kitchen before lunch on Saturday.

 

We also put together a cast iron frittata with 2 dozen local eggs from pastured hens, fresh basil, and a little bacon from the ranch down the road.  There’s something deeply satisfying about knowing where one’s food is coming from.  Its such an intimate experience, taking in food into our bodies and its a beautiful thing when we have the good fortune of that food being grown and prepared with love.

“Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well one must love and respect food.”
Craig Claiborne

 

 

The Art of Meeting

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For Full Bloom to continue to function, grow, and ideally thrive we (all the adult residents of Full Bloom which is currently 11) choose to have a community meeting once a week.  I thought I would share a little about how we structure our meetings so that they are both nourishing and effective.

We begin each meeting with 2 minutes of settling time.  This may be guided by the facilitatator (a position which rotates weekly) or may be simply time for each person to arrive and settle into being with this particular constellation of people for the next hour and a half.  We then move into engaging with each other using the Matrix Leadership model (www.matrixleaderhsip.org) of group facillitation.  In this model members of the group connect with another member directly in “the eyes and ears of the whole”.  This allows for connections to be fed that may have been underfed during the week.  The sharing from individual to individual may be an expression of gratitude for what the other has done or a “check-in” about what’s been going on emotionally for the person during the week.

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We intend to keep this heart connection as we move into the logistical portion of the meeting where we take agenda items from all the residents such as: Chore check-in, food garden planning, plan for upcoming party, work day, compost pile location etc.  As you can imagine it can be difficult to keep the group on topic and to move through a topic in a reasonable amount of time.  That’s where strong facilitation comes in.  It is an art and we are all learning it as our live unfold here together.

“The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking and practice. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility”  Sam Kaner et all “The Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision Making”

 

An Evening with Coenraad Rogmans: How to Create a Sense of Belonging through Natural Building

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A big piece of what we are about here at Full Bloom is creating a sense of belonging through how we design our buildings, our gardens, our lives in general.  Last month we were fortunate enough to host a talk given by our local natural building “guru” Coenraad Rogmans.  His talk a was entitled: “The Ten Principles of Natural Building”.  Ocean, our 8 year old resident artist was kind enough to put the title of the talk on our white board:

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It was an enlightening evening as Coenraad emphasized that natural building is much more than what material you use (cob, straw bale etc.) and more about how you design in such a way as to create a sense of beauty, connection, purpose, health, and belonging in the space you create.  Pointing out that real sustainability comes from people feeling at home, at ease, connnected with each other and the land they are living on or visiting.

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We all appreciated Coenraad’s humility and depth of perspective as the evening progressed.  I was left astounded by how important it is to consider all of these principles when designing a space and how they are often overlooked in contemporary architecture and design.  His site is www.housealive.org.  if you would like to learn more about him and his offerings.

“Everyone is aware that most of the built environment today lacks a natural order, an order which presents itself very strongly in places that were built centuries ago.”
Christopher Alexander

Community Work Day: Preparing the Ground of Health

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The expression: “many hands make light work” felt very real during our May Community Work Day at Full Bloom.  I love the experience being together in the garden on these beautiful spring days on the Farm.  There is a bubbling quality to the environment, to the garden that finds its way into our relationships, into our interactions. “Working” in the garden as a community or a family is something so a part of what it means to be human and it has become very rare in modern society, to the detriment of our ecology both inner and outer.  At Full Bloom we are becoming aware of how medicinal it is for our spirits to spend time together outside in the garden, in the forest.  So simple, and practically free.

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As we open Full Bloom to others for healing for inspiration and for learning it becomes increasingly important to not lose track of these simple activities that form the ground of our health as a community.

“Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.” ~Author Unknown

 

Full Bloom got Sheep!

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We recently welcomed in some new members to the Full Bloom Community:  8 wonderful sheep.  These sweet animals will be moving through the central area mowing the abundant grass that grows abundantly on the land.  Through just doing what they were born to do (graze) they will be saving us many hours of mowing and weekwacking.

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Full Bloom Sheep on the front lawn of the Farmhouse

There is some sweet joy, some sense of being connected to all the countless generations of farmers who have “sheparded”.  We will be growing our flock over the years as we learn how to best take care of the animals and to integrate them into the landscape.  My goal is to eventually limit mechanical mowing to a bare minimum as it reduces our fossil fuel use and is better for the land to be grazed.

All I know is its more pleasant to hear “Baaaaaa” then the sound of a 2 stroke engine.

 

“Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate.”  Wendell Berry

 

Full Bloom is a Bloomin’

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Wow what an amazing 2 weeks!

With the weather reaching near 80 degrees every day for the last week, the farm is bustling with activity.   With this kind of heat water becomes essential to keep all the hundreds of plants, shrubs and trees thriving here at Full Bloom.  So the first step of the
“irrigation season” is to put in a large pipe into Yale Creek (the creek that bifurcates our property and is the source of our irrigation water and summer rejuvenation!).

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Two “Full Bloomers” putting the Ditch pipe into the beautiful Yale Creek.

The water travels in an irrigation ditch for nearly a mile before it reaches our pond, from which we water over 20 acres of pasture, vegetables and fruit trees.

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Our Pond with “Duthchmen’s Peak” in the Background

Related so directly with the source of our water, the source of our nourishment takes quite a bit of work and running around, but in the end its a supreme joy.  Till next time….Ryan

 

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Full Bloom Resident John Hutton with his freshly harvested salad mix

 

“Pure water is the world’s first and foremost medicine.”  ~Slovakian Proverb

 

Work And Play Intermingle at Full Bloom

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Here we have several residents of Full Bloom and a some members of the broader community enjoying some dancing in the Community Building.

On April 5th Full Bloom hosted an “Aries Birthday Party” for the 3 community members all born around the same time.  Individuals born under the sign of Aries are supposed to be fiery and passionate people, and that sure seems to be the case.  Jo Ferneau, one of the four Full Bloom land partners, played 3 songs that he wrote and rattled off REM’s “Its the End of the World” with vocal gusto to rival Michael Stipe.  A Dance party later ensued and went until 2am.

At Full Bloom we enjoy periodic evenings of rambunctiousness to complement all the work that we do on the land, in the bakery during the week.  In the “work” we do on the land we intend to bring and allow as much joy and satisfaction as we can.  Taking periodic breaks to enjoy the natural beauty, get to know one another better, or to consider a more “permacultural” way of doing something.  In the picture below for example, our landmate Caleb is a finding a way to have fun with his son, while doing the work of planting native trees on the land.

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Caleb and his son Atreya are planting a Privacy hedge of native pine trees along the road that leads to Full Bloom.

Its an ongoing art: How to blend work and play, function and art to the point that its all just life, its all just an opportunity to love and grow.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

 

Thank you for reading,

Ryan