Lessons from inside a Tipi

There is a notable difference between how people used to react when I told them that I currently live in a tipi, and how they react now, when I say that I lived in one. As if I have returned to the realm of sanity and they can now entertain the notion of having anything in common with me at all! That we lived in a tipi for two years has them itching with need to see cracks in my smile, confessions that it had all been a bad idea, a momentary lapse in reason!

Sometimes you just need a change. A radical, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of change! We needed to feel the earth, the seasons, to know what the moon was doing, to no longer have walls between us and our world, to sleep outside. A friend offered us her tipi, and we packed our bags, and started giving things away.

Living in a tipi is very much like living on a sail boat! You’re always turning the flaps to the wind. It was hard constant work. But I had started to feel like a domesticated cat, and I needed to know that I could fend for myself out in the wild!

It made me much stronger and I developed skills that I now take for granted, that I never thought I’d need, like making fire, using a cordless drill, securing loose ropes on my own in hurricane weather with the rain beating down on me in the middle of the night, sick kids inside and a fireplace that won’t stop smoking!

What did I learn in those two years?

-Having fireflies flapping through your kitchen at night when you switch the lights off to go to bed is cool!

-Rain spiders are not poisonous.

-Outside showers rock, no matter the weather.

-Community grows when someone is in need.

-You are tougher than you think.

-A view of the stars from your bed on a clear warm night through the open flaps of a tipi needs to be experienced at least once in your lifetime.

-We are better designed to sit on the floor than on chairs.

-Wet things dry.

-It’s important to understand your cycles and the planet’s cycles. When you fight against your natural context instead of understanding it, you put your body under stress and you stop coping.

-Kids like tipis!

-Life is simple.

-When you stop hiding for cover behind walls and windows, you find a humbleness in the face of the enormous natural elements of this planet which forever helps you to make decisions based on them instead of just yourself.

-Living in a tipi taught me to not take any comforts for granted. We de-consumerized ourselves and down-scaled without feeling deprived or lacking and we've never turned back.  

Do I miss living in a tipi? Nope! Would I take it back, given the chance? What do you think!?

Why normal toothpaste is NOT my friend!

When I started to look at the ingredients of everything I consume on a daily basis, toothpaste was one of the first things I checked. Something about this daily frothy soapy experience made me suspicious! After doing a bit of research I took the family off normal toothpaste. 


We tried all sorts of natural substitutes, amoung them, charcoal of Aubergine (homemade). I don't recommend it!
The cause of this hasty exploration into completely natural personal hygiene and beauty products?


Sodium Lauryl Sulphate. 


There are loads of other nasties, but this is my personal fav as it is in almost everything!

Both Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and its close relative Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) are commonly used in many soaps, shampoos, detergents, toothpastes. The reason? We have come to expect products which have a cleansing action to foam up and both of these chemicals are very effective foaming agents.

SLS has been linked with skin irritation, skin corrosion, eye irritation and cornea damage, scalp irritation, swollen hands, face, arms, fuzzy split hair, menopausal symptoms, drop in male fertility, baldness, and in a few cases, blindness! In research done in 1983, the Journal of The American College of Toxicology found that some soaps, which had concentrations of up to 30% SLS, were "highly irritating and dangerous".

It is often used as an absorbing agent to allow other ingredients like vitamins, moisturizers and minerals to be more easily deposited below the skin's surface. The problem is that many beauty products come with a host of other toxic chemicals which can now enter the blood stream easily. SLS has shown up in the tissues of the brain, liver, heart and other vital organs! And can we expect anything less from an ingredient which started off in Industrial cleaners? It's all a bit disturbing really and even though many sources say that there is nothing wrong with SLS, i'd rather take my chances with the charcoal!

There are many more options available than there used to be. We use Vicco tooth powder now, it’s an ayurvedic toothpaste made from many different plants. It doesn’t foam. It makes your teeth brown while you’re brushing so best not look in the mirror! 
It took a while, but we rooted out all SLS in our home. And I’ve educated my kids too. It does mean that we need to pack toothpaste for sleep-overs though!

The Forest Floor

Returning home is a grand thing, and when you live on the edge of a little forest, coming home is magic. A couple of years ago, I spent time in a woodland community project in Wales. We lived in a little house build out of ‘wiggly bits’ of wood and because there are no wood borers in Wales, you could literally cut the wood and use it, bark an’ all! Our little house had a turf roof with a sky light and a view of the stars. I learnt a lot about out door living and about myself. I thought I’d share this poem with you. I wrote it while I was there. I promise it's not long winded!

The Forest Floor

A poem by Mariella Rossi

It’s a place of healing,

the forest floor.

A place alive with secrets and knowing.

My learned sense of reality catches on the brambles and thorns as I pass,

and the tentative uncertainty of my untrained step

loosens with the soil on my feet

in the puddles on the path.

It’s a place of healing,

the forest floor.

A place intent on living.

Where each movement beneath the

towering company of life informs the next.

A little slower this time.

A little softer.

More quiet.

And with each surrendering breath,

another can be heard.

One more colossal and unified in its polyrhythmic sway.  

The trees and vines and creatures with their watchful eyes,

and the earth underfoot,

swell and recede in a merry yawn.

On my twilight walk to fetch water

the dark patiently dilutes all colour,

but allows detail a stolen moment to define my way.

The texture of bark on the lean trees around the spring,

the burbling contortion of their reflection at its yielding mouth,

the lichen-rough rocks,

smoothed at the water's edge,

all persist and scintillate into grey.

The soft pricked dendrites of moss cushion my knee

as I slip and fall,

one foot in the spring!

And my scream and giggle pierce the listening night,

and there is no other human being in sight.

So I sit. Wet and still. In the moss.

For tonight, when the darkness stretches its veil impenetrably-tight

over the forest I shall be inside,

to find my place within it's creeping, writhing breath.

Its a place of healing,

the forest floor.

Where living things may grow.

Rain and mulch and returning home!

The weatherman forecast 100 mm in 48 hours in the Garden Route, we got 52 mm on Saturday alone. We came home to much erosion damage and a virtual moat between our path and our house! Annual soil loss in South Africa is estimated at 300 - 400 million tonnes, nearly three tonnes for each hectare of land! If we start to address the situation on our own little pieces of paradise, it will make a difference. Top soil is worth it’s weight in gold and is difficult to replace when it's gone!

Only 13.5% of South Africa’s land surface area is considered arable/suitable for food production. Every year an estimated 34 000 hectares of farmland is converted for other purposes, such as urban expansion. At this rate, by the year 2050, there may be no more than 0.2 hectares per person available on which to produce food in South Africa. This is much lower than other countries and it really does enforce the point that we need to grow our own.

Mulching is every gardener’s best friend.

It is, by definition: A protective covering, usually of organic matter such as leaves, straw, or peat, placed around plants to prevent the evaporation of moisture, erosion, the freezing of roots, and the growth of weeds.

A layer of mulch 7.5mm thick can reduce your water consumption by about 70%! Just think about it, the only open bare earth you see in a natural untouched environment is desert! And desert is a hungry thing! The ground needs to be protected and there are many different mulches that can be used.

We use opened up cardboard boxes on our paths with saw dust over. In the beds we use Lucerne as we don't often find hay at the co-op here, but hay is your best option. You can also use stones, newspaper, leaves raked up from the garden. Grass clipping may leave you with a lot of grass in your beds!

Our veggie garden incurred almost no damage, being mulched and all, and we returned home to the last of the tomatoes and very happy lettuce! Thank you rain, please do come again, just wait until the moat dries!

A day on the farm

Three weeks ago, when we left for Gauteng there were weather warnings; rain, storms, heavy wind, flash floods, tornadoes! We delayed our trip by a day. On the way back home we spent the night by my sister in-law and her family on the farm. In the evening we checked the weather; rain, storms, heavy wind, snow, flash floods! Again! That was last night. We will be extending our stay on the farm until further notice and see this as a great opportunity to experience large scale farm living and stay warm and dry!

This morning at the not-so-crack-of-dawn we headed out onto the farm to see what there was to see. My brother in-law’s primary crop is maize. Not much to see in the fields as they’ve recently harvested, but seeing the machinery and storage needed to undertake such immense work made us all feel very little!

They also farm with pigs, sheep, cattle on a smaller scale. And it’s baby season. After ten minutes in the pig pen my son says, I feel like a farmer! With muddy shoes and covered in dust, he definitely looked like one! 

  

All the animals on the farm are fed off the land without the use of growth hormone and antibiotic, but because the process to certify organic is an overwhelmingly complicated one, they just get sold off to the usual places. It seems like such a waste to me as good healthy ethically grown meat is such a scarcity. I think this is something which needs to be demanded, not requested, from our supermarkets and grocery stores.

Watching the kids run around between the sheep made me realise how essential it is for us to be in the company of animals, it teaches us a necessary context. It reminds us of the broader company we keep on this planet! It was a day well spent and we’ll see what weather tomorrow brings!

My Winter blues P.O.A. (Plan of Action)

We rarely get sick, my six year old son has never been on antibiotics and my fourteen year old daughter hasn’t been on antibiotics since we stopped seeing it as an option for treating respiratory dis-eases.  Antibiotics are useless against viruses so all that you would be doing by giving your kids antibiotics for the common cold is depressing their already straining immune system.

Studies have shown that taking antibiotics may actually permanently reduce your immune system's ability to fight viruses. It’s making the problem worse! Overuse of antibiotics by misinformed adults is producing strains of super bugs, or bacteria, that we just can’t control. But I know, when that little person starts throwing a fever, and just lies there like a rag, it’s terrifying and it’s our responsibility to keep them safe and healthy.

So, what do I do if I see a cold coming on?

-Firstly it’s really crucial to stop it early. Just one morning can make all the difference, it’s much more complicated to cure a sick kid than to help a kid whose immune system is telling you it needs time out (to go pick tomatoes!) from getting sick. It’s kind of like gardening, if the plant is strong, pests stay away from it, if the plant isn’t happy, pests take it out!

-Take away all mucus forming foods (gluten, dairy, sugar)

- Up the raw foods, especially sprouts

-Juice (apple, carrot, pepper, beetroot, ginger, mint, whole lemon)

- Feed them as much of Papa’s special tea as they will tolerate:

Ginger (grated, as much as they can take)

Honey (3 spoons)

Lemon juice (half)

Apple cider vinegar (table spoon)

It tastes as bad as it sounds but if you put loads of honey, it’s actually quite yum.

-Echinacea

-The right homeopathic remedy for them every half hour.

-I watch them and give them different homeopathics as their symptoms change. I really recommend homeopathics for kids, and going on a home homeopathics course is the best thing you can do for your family’s health. Children respond so well to them.    

-Plenty rest

I know that this is a very controversial thing to say, but children can handle 40 degrees. It’s very stressful, but since bugs only die around that temperature, it really just prolongs their illness by giving them meds suppress temperature.

When my husband and I had our first anniversary we decided to have a home cooked romantic dinner together as our two year old baby boy was a little sick and we didn’t want to leave him. Half way through the meal, we heard crazy sounds and he had gone into fever convulsions and stopped breathing! Terrifying! We rushed to the clinic and the doctor said he was fine and with some cortisone and antibiotics would be over it in a week. My husband politely declined the cortisone, took the prescription for the antibiotics, and we left.

We went to our homeopath/GP the next day and learnt that the fever convulsions don’t come from high fever but from fever that rises too fast. He went from normal to 39.9 in half an hour, that’s what did it. Fever is the body’s strongest artillery against illness so we decided to let the fever rise slowly, so that the body itself wouldn't go into shock. The next week we didn’t sleep much, we wrapped cloth soaked in vinegar water (best traditional method I’ve ever found for fever) around his feet once the fever had started and had him on a humidifier a couple times a day. We woke up hourly throughout the night to check his fever and gave him children’s paracetomal suppositories half an hour after he’d hit 40 degrees. After about 5 days he was better. A few young children that I know got that bug that year, they all ended up in the clinic with convulsions. It was so scary.

 The reason for this story? We didn’t take the big Pharma route, we chose to do it our way, even though we were scared and sometimes unsure, and our son has never gotten anywhere near that sick again. Every winter we watch as all the kids in the class play illness ping pong and sometimes half the class is absent, but there is Luka, usually barefoot and healthy. He sometimes gets the sniffles, but nothing one day at home can't fix.

The route we took isn’t for the faint hearted, and I do believe that antibiotics have their place, we had a very good infrastructure of professional therapists and doctors to turn to and that made all the difference. We learnt a lot that winter! The secret is to be in touch with your kids, if they start getting sick, don’t wait, do something straight away. I’d love to hear your family healing secrets as I’m always on the lookout for home remedies. 

super easy healthy snacks on the move

The thing about sitting at a market for a week is that you’re surrounded by junk food! Quick, easy junk food! And even though I can easily resist the call of burgers and hot dogs, being vegetarian an’ all, there are some things that become tempting by way of proximity! Things like cupcakes, caramelized nuts, pancakes! Snack attack stuff.

So this time I decided prevention is better than cure and I made sure that we would be kitted out with all manner of snack that fits my happy health criteria. I’m off sugar in all it’s wonderful forms from fruit to potatoes but my husband’s not so this is what’s in our combined lunch box of goodies:

Dates slices (coz who has time to roll date balls?)

Ingredients:

1 date slab

Packet fine desiccated coconut

Sunflower seeds

Goji berries

Currents

Sesame seeds

Cut the date slab into thin slices and soak in boiled water till it cools, pouring enough to just cover the dates. The more water you add, the more coconut you’ll have to add later to stiffen the mix. Once it’s soft it’s time to get your hands dirty and squelch the dates up so that the mix becomes smooth and even, then add the desiccated coconut until most of the moisture is soaked up and it starts to bind together and then add the seeds, berries and currents. It’s best to do all this with your hands, keep adding coconut until the mix stops sticking and rolls nicely into a ball, then press into a tray, scattering a little coconut in the tray first and then again after so that the slices will be coated on both sides. Cut into squares, or get your kids involved in ball rolling. If you are going to make balls, roll them into shape first and then coat in coconut or sesame seeds. You can luxe this recipe with essential oil (no more than one drop for a whole batch), chia seed, minced dry fruit. Or you can do what I love doing, you can add cocoa powder and cayenne pepper and then roll in Cocoa powder, they look like chocolate truffles! Too yum! Can’t keep my kids away from these as you can see! 

Best kept in the fridge.

Savoury snack pack

sunflower seed

sesame seed

 linseed/flax seed

sun dried tomatoes

soya sauce

dried mushrooms

Nori sheets

Dry roast seeds in a pan on high heat. Stirring often. Once the seeds have finished popping (I recommend doing it with a lid on!) take the pan off the heat and add a splash of soya sauce, stirring the seeds around quickly so that it coats everything before it sticks to the pan. If you add too much soya, it will stay sticky. If you do add too much, just return it to the heat and continue stirring it around until you see the seeds aren’t sticking together anymore. Once cooled, add chopped up sun dried tomato, shredded Nori sheets, dried mushrooms.

Masala peanuts

Raw peanuts

Masala

Salt

Along the same line as the snack pack but spicy!

Mix water, masala and salt into a paste. I usually use a quarter cup for about 200g of peanuts. Play around with how salty or spicy you like it. Again, dry roast raw peanuts in a pan over medium heat till they turn brown, take the pan off the heat and add the paste, stirring as you pour. Leave a while to dry and cool.

Homemade chocolate!!!!

Raw cocoa butter

Coconut oil/butter

Honey

Stevia

Vanilla

Additional: finely chopped dried fruit, essential oil

I found the recipe on the back of the Souring Superfoods packaging works perfectly for me. I don’t make it with raw cocoa all the time as it can make you hyper and anxious and it get a bit dear.

Add equal parts cocoa butter and coconut oil in a bowl placed on top of another bowl filled with freshly boiled water (opposed to a double boiler on the stove), once that’s melted, add honey and vanilla or essential oil, Rose Geranium is a winner, but again, only one drop for a batch of 150g or more. Mix until the honey is properly melted. Then add cocoa powder until it reaches a ‘melted chocolate’ consistency. It should be thick without going fudgy. At this stage you can add goodies to it like desiccated coconut, raisins, cranberries, cherries, dry figs or just keep it plain.  Then place in the freezer for a couple of minutes. It’s really easy. And once you’ve had your own chocolate you’ll never turn back. I add stevia instead of honey but I know it’s an acquired taste!     

All of these snacks should last at least a week but generally they don’t last a day in my house! If I come up with any other quick snack survival tactics this week I’ll let you know!