Thursday 19 January 2012

17 Jan Tuesday: Clearing, Reiki, Sauerkraut, sharking, dinner, watering


Tuesday morning was spent clearing the area behind the Main Garden of wood and fence posts, and replacing the wind break on the south-ish windy side of the garden.

Wood was moved, and Rex happily invited Harold—his tractor—to help with the fence posts. 

Before

before: mess of wood and posts

those posts have got to go...

Molly and a young feijoa (pineapple guava)

Men at work

Rotting wood pile...one must heave the wood 15-20 feet to hit the very large target

Coal found among the wood

Rex and Harold...having fun

Man at work...or is it at play??? 

the wood pile cleared, sorted, stacked for firewood etc
I am very much a “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” kind of traveler.  Thus, since Rex, Jo and Jacques were all Reiki practitioners, I asked to do a Reiki session with someone.  Molly wanted one, too.  So we did a trade: A Reiki treatment after the morning work session in exchange for us cooking dinner this evening.

The Reiki was an hour of energy work that was an amazing palette of energy forces—heat, constriction, coolness, waves of energy, light sleep or loss of consciousness, a feeling of levitation, and a movie of changing colors behind closed eyelids.

Later that day, I noticed that I had not experienced the compelling energy (pain, actually) that has surround the exposed wires in my lower jaw.   Coincidence or lifting of negative energy? Hmmmmm I will be doing some more of this Reiki stuff.

After lunch we all participated in a fermentation fest. We made the batch of sauerkraut for Kermit, the sauerkraut “mother,” and Molly made kim chee.  Then Jo found two more recipes—one for fermented beets and another for cabbage Rejuvelac (which is “normally” made with wheat berries).

Living sauerkraut making involves sterilizing the containers, weighing out the cabbage and calculating the proper amount of brining salt to use, then shredding the cabbage, mashing it in layers with salt and peppercorns (or whatever),  weighting down the mix, and putting on the lid.  Then waiting a month.

Molly and Jo get to work on the kim chee

Jacques was the champion shredder...of cabbage that is...

shredding

12 kilos of cabbages --this is just part of the load for the monthly sauerkraut

Rex and Kermit, the sauerkraut mother.  Rex is bashing the cabbage with the salt.

I'm bashing the cabbage in another container, to be added to Kermit

kim chee work continues

the glorious, full Kermit, ready to start fermentation


Jo decides to ferment some beets...or is she shredding a bloody heart?

Molly uses the VitaMix for kim chee ingredients

More mess...


Huge spider, which crawled out from the savoy cabbage from the garden, is captured in a plastic container for release in the garden.  This specimen was plump and energetic!  Rex finally got him...

beets ready for fermentation

beautiful froth on beet #2
Molly and I did about 45 minutes of sharking around the native trees…we’re not done yet.  We found a very aggressive squash in the process. 
the squash are getting a full grip on one of the native pittosporum trees.

very aggressive
 On the way in to make dinner, a check on Winnie the Pisa, our compost pile....
Winnie the Pisa has shrink a lot in one day
Winnie was already up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then we made dinner from Jo’s recipes—a quinoa curry salad with apples and raisins, the sauerkraut/avocado appetizer, and a cacao mousse cake.  Molly did the heavy lifting with the cake and the blender/food processor combo…plus she decorated with a sliced strawberry fan.
  
Molly and Teri's dinner
Today’s lesson was about watering, and we spent about an hour after dinner watering—to the depth of the first digit on our index fingers…which took quite a bit more watering than I was accustomed to.  Guessing did not work.  Live and learn…


In the evening, Rex was at his Ukelele club, so Rex, Jacques, Molly and I watched Robert Smith videos on faster EFT (http://www.fastereft.com) and learned more techniques about letting go of areas of stuck-ness and personal beliefs about oneself, in order to heal emotional blockages that produce tension and dis-ease.

During the video, Jo shared that one of the teachers she had encountered said that one of the reasons people repeat the same mistake over and over and use the same beliefs to stay stuck (“I’m a perfectionist” or “I’m not attractive” or “people always treat me like that” or “I’m unlucky”) is that even if the behaviors or situations are traumatic, the individual has had success in surviving the situation.  Each of us knows deep in our bones, that we can live through even the crummy things that have happened to us, so we frequently opt to do that rather than do the more pleasurable thing—that we do not know that we could live through.  Hmmmm...

Back to the video.  Root cause of all problems: Birth.  One of the pieces of advice was to repeat the process taught until the blockage was gone or until you pass out.  I secretly practiced these techniques until I fell asleep.

2 comments:

  1. OK, you and Molly are definitely the coolest people now. Would love to take the sauerkraut making lesson from you - I made mine two months ago and I don't know if I did it right. I'm afraid to eat it until I get the thumbs up from you.
    When you get back, would you please go through over the methods with me?

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  2. I can't wait to get my own living sauerkraut started...and it will be fun to "taste" yours. We had a fermentation Fail...the cabbage rejuvelac. Live and learn...

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