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

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

 

 

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 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

 

Ceremony for our new Community Garden

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This past Saturday the residents of Full Bloom plus several visitors participated in a ceremony to inaugurate our new community garden.  We created a ceremony that drew from multiple traditions that included some singing and offerings to the earth ( we made a mandala out of flowers, branches, beautiful colored corn and candles).  Through the ceremony we were able to set our intention together to create a garden that will be a place for people to reconnect with nature and foster a sense of community.

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Above is a picture of the mandala we made, as each individual added natural elements.  It was then wrapped up and buried 2ft deep in the center of the garden.

Cultures have engaged in ceremonies in their gardens for a thousands of years and it feels good to be continuing in the footsteps of those sustainable cultures we emulate.

“The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them.”
― Peter Redgrove

 

 

Our New Community Garden!!

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Its an exciting time here at Full Bloom as we create our Enchanted Community Garden in the center of the land.  Above is Micaela measuring out the space as part of the garden bed mapping out.  She was our inspired designer of the garden, creating a mandala of shapes including a heart, a star, and a yin/yang symbol.  How fun huh?!

We will be planting an assortment of “permaculture” plants.  These are plants that serve multiple ecological functions such as food for us, food for friends (birds and beneficial insects), soil improvement, and of course beauty (a key piece of sustainability, for beauty will attract people to the place to the garden to take care of it).

Below is a picture of the beds actually being hand dug.  We are digging out the topsoil of the paths and putting the soil on the beds so they will be extra rich.  The final layer will be a couple of inches of premium local composts.  The plants will be ecstatically happy!

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We’ve sowed hundreds of plants in the Greenhouse to fill in the garden and have a nursery order coming with all kinds of perennial shrubs and small trees like lilac, elderberry, hawthorn, and serviceberry.

What a gift it is to be able to co-create beauty and abundance.

“There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.”  ~Mirabel Osler