And the very unfortunate thing about sewing is that it doesn’t pay much. You get paid for what you’ve done, what’s finished, and if it’s not finished, well, have fun. There goes that paycheck. And it’s barely above minimum wage, anyway. I’ve tried doing custom work, but that doesn’t come out too much above minimum, either. The problem is that you don’t get paid for all the hours of dealing with the person you’re doing the sewing for. HOURS of trying to get them to make up their mind about what they even want, and then taking things apart and making them all over again when they change their minds or suddenly decide they want something else half way through the process. And there’s very little protection for the sewer in those instances. Sure, you could write up a contract, etc, that says you won’t deal with that stuff- but see how many customers you get then.

The long and the short of it is that people don’t want to pay for sewing. I once had a customer refuse to pay me for alterations I had done (even though we had agreed to the price beforehand) because she said she could have gotten a new skirt cheaper at WalMart. Well, go the hell to WalMart, people, and don’t waste my time. But no one wants to pay me for my real time. No one likes to hear that it really takes several hours (not to mention the time I spent driving to meet you somewhere, plus the time it took to measure you and listen to your long rambling story of why you need this alteration made in the first place) to fix a pair of pants. And that I feel that I should get paid AT LEAST $20 for all of those hours. HA! Tell someone you want $80 to fix the crappy pair of pants they bought at WalMart and see how quickly the customers line up.

And before I continue- PLEASE, PLEASE do not respond to this post with business ideas. Everyone, including complete strangers, seem to have the idea that’s going to change it all for me, and that’s not what I want to hear. I’ve heard it all. I’m good with what I’m doing. REALLY. I do not need you to find me more work. I realize it is all coming from a loving place, but PLEASE.

Anyway. What I’ve been thinking about is how unbalanced our economy is, in terms of what you can make doing what. When I try to think about how I could make money faster, well, the obvious answer would be to find something to do that’s higher paying. But what? The first things that come to mind are all illegal. I used to work for a non profit. That honestly wasn’t much more high paying, the only difference was that the checks came regular. And there were benefits. But otherwise- not much higher. Theoretically I could get a higher paying non profit job, but there aren’t too many of those around. I’ve looked.

This all becomes particularly obvious when I try to trade services with someone. I charge $30 an hour for “marketing” services (far more than I get for sewing), which range from teaching someone how to use facebook to creating brochures and press releases and the rest of it. Usually I’m trading for food- fairly simple- so I can usually take home a roast for an hour of work. But say I’m trading for another service, like acupuncture- at $100 an hour- or a massage- at $60- well that means I have to work for 2-3 hours to make up for their one hour. How does that make sense? It’s not that it isn’t worth it, their hour- I fully believe alternative health care providers should probably make even more than $100 an hour. But why is their hour worth more than my hour? I went to school for sewing. I paid for college. I’ve got nearly 30 years of experience in the field, as well. But I get paid minimum wage for my work? Why?

If you think about who does get paid well- doctors, CEOs, politicians- you can’t even apply the, they have a higher degree thing. Not all of them do (except the doctors, obviously). And they may work a lot of hours- or they may not. You could argue that it’s a lot of stress, their jobs, and that’s why they get paid more. But what about teachers and fire fighters and so on who hardly get paid anything at all? Don’t they work long hours and have high stress jobs? And degrees, for that matter? Why do they get paid so much less?

We have this skewed notion of what time is worth. Producing food- ha, well, that’s next to nothing. Producing clothing- same. Producing nothing at all (except a lot of paperwork)- why, good for you, Mr. CEO! Glad you could buy your third house.

This all goes back to my ever ongoing argument- that to fix this ridiculous economy, we have to start by paying people their worth for things of value- for things that will last. Not for fucking everyone else over (bank bailouts? anyone?). Of course we don’t want to pay money for things of value. We’ve got our heads so backwards about “saving” money- we want the cheapest deal! We whine and complain about buying an $80 pair of shoes (that will last for years) but don’t blink over $100+ cell phone bills. Data usage? Really? We all should be questioning what things are worth. What WE’RE worth. We’ve got nothing but time, after all.

Not this exact pig, but a pig very like this pig, from Black Bottom Farm. You might not want to read this post if you find it a little macabre (the pig is going to die).

Anyway, Black Bottom Farm is located in Galena/Massey/Golts depending on who you’re talking to, Kent County. It is where happy pigs live. They have a waterfront view.

Beautiful green pasture.

And they feast on the likes of sprouted grains, gourmet cheeses, and other such delicacies.

I am so thrilled to have a place to get pork that I know has been cared for. Spoiled, in fact. And so it was with great excitement that we decided to get a whole pig and split it between four families. A whole pig is a lot of meat.

And the really exciting thing is that when you get a whole pig (and friends who know what they’re doing), you really get the whole pig. Head, feet, skin, fat, everything.

So among other things we plan to:
Make our own bacon and sausage
Render out the fat and make lard (to be used for baking, soap, and cooking)
Make pork rinds and cracklings
Figure out how to cook pig feet
Make something (?) out of the head- head cheese, or some kind of cured meat
Make stock from the bones

Thank goodness for Joy of Cooking. It has instructions for most of these things. What excites me more than anything is the relationships- the cooperation between all of us, to carry out all these tasks, to have these nutritious foods for our families. There’s nothing like the friends you make while rendering fat. : )

And that’s just a start! YAY! My freezer has never been so full.

If you want to find out more about Black Bottom Farm, please visit their facebook page. You can also get Black Bottom meats at Kent Island Farmer’s market, at the Kingstown Colchester Farm CSA pick up, and on farm on Saturdays from 12-4 PM.

And just for the fun of it, piglets playing in the water.

So here’s another response to this book that apparently has everyone in a tizzy. Or at least the other blogs I read.

I’ve been thinking about the subject since my post yesterday. And the more I think about it, the more I think those of us leaving traditional career paths to work from home and can food and sell shit on Etsy are actually pioneers. It does not escape me that we are often imitating pioneers in a perverse sort of way, what with all the bread baking and cheese making and meat curing.

So I will rephrase what I think was the most critical point: if we are escaping, that’s not a bad thing. We aren’t abandoning the fight for better conditions for all, we’ve just realized that’s never going to happen within the current economic structure. One of the things that really astonishes (and delights) me about reading these articles is that they’re echoing what I’ve always thought were somewhat radical opinions. So many people are dissatisfied with the path that was laid out that we’re all ditching? This is practically a mainstream idea now. The key thing is that more and more people are actually succeeding at ditching these days. Walking away from a 9-5 desk job no longer means sitting around a dirty cheap apartment playing guitar all day (I’m pretty sure it never did except in the minds of those who scorn the leaving). It means being “successful” in that you can be self sufficient and sustain yourself. You can make what money you need to satisfy the system (taxes, rent, insurance), and otherwise live your life. It is possible. And it nearly makes me giddy to think this might become an actual reality.

I feel that I’ve spent my whole life preaching the alternative. Preaching the get out while you can, don’t take what they tell you at face value, do what you love sort of message. Even more so I’ve always ranted about art as object- about the solution to our economic problems not to be to produce more of the same shit, but to move to a place where we place value on the material, on the beautifully made table that took many many hours to make and will last you your life. Or on the time investment it takes to produce a perfect chemical free apple. And that the solutions to all our problems come not in making corporations bigger (cause that’s obviously benefiting no one), but in supporting those with skill. Here and Here for example.

I’ve always struggled somewhat with this idea Daniel Quinn has of “walking away.” When I first read Beyond Civilization I got so excited. Of course, we can make chairs, we can all have jobs, real jobs that contribute to our lives, if we start making the chairs again (sorry, this is a lengthy argument and I am trying to get to a point so I am skimming). But we’re still paying taxes and stuff, right? We’re not really walking away. And he talks about how we’re not really walking away, physically, we’re walking away mentally. And a lot of other authors (Derrick Jensen) have scoffed at the idea. Said it’s escapism. But I don’t think Quinn ever meant walking away and not looking back. Obviously we can only walk away to some extent (so long as you can still be thrown in jail for not paying taxes) anyway, right? So you can walk away and still be doing work to bring down this civilization that’s killing us all. Walking away in fact makes it easier- you don’t feel as connected to it. I think walking away more than anything has to do with realizing you are not a part of all that mess- not if you don’t want to be.

And it’s probably unlikely that the majority of people who are “walking away” by becoming self employed artisans or farmers or bread bakers or whatever and doing it because they’re hoping and praying for the collapse of this horrible system. They’re probably just doing it because they enjoy it. And being free. So much more free than you ever can be when you have someone standing over your head.

But if it all works out the same in the end- well, I’ve always said you’ll get farther when you lure people to your side with cookies. People like cookies. And this life is one beautiful cookie.

[reading this the morning after writing it I realize how disjointed it sounds. I will have a go at explaining it point by point over the next week or so.]

Oh, the thought that plagues me night and day.

Is leaving a regular job in the regular workplace tantamount to giving up? Does it mean I’m not making a difference, not fighting for women’s rights? I often wonder. Maybe I wasn’t challenging those things daily in my job, but I was challenging them often, as I made my presence known as a respected advocate in a male-dominated field. Every time I sat at a table of white men in their 50s and made it clear that my voice was important I felt like I was making a difference.

And there are so many days, anymore, when my world seems so terribly narrow. I joked to another self-employed, home based friend the other day that it’s a miracle to spend a day talking (as we did recently). Often when the handsome fella gets home from work I pounce- after 8 hours of not speaking to anyone but the animals, I’m desperate for talking. And everything seems small- like there is nothing beyond the garden and the kitchen and my sewing room.

But I’ve observed that since I’ve been self employed, I’ve been more socially active, not less (sometimes to the detriment of my paychecks). Being self employed means I can do community stuff when I need to do it, during the day, as opposed to in the middle of the night (like I used to). It’s easy enough to flip flop working at night and lobbying, or promoting a farm, or helping to build some kind of community network during the day. Not to mention I have far more energy, if not more time.

You could say I’m less ambitious. I have no interest in a “career”, so to speak. Often my dearest ambition is to clear out the weeds in the garden. But in reality I think it’s far more ambitious to believe I can make enough money from doing what I love, without the support of a salary. Isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it ambitious to believe I can be my own boss, to control my own future? To make this plan work?

I could write a whole post on the very different challenges you face being “poor”- which really I’m not, but having to tell people you very literally don’t have money for something brings along it’s own prejudices. Am I abandoning my sisters in the institutional world? Am I abandoning the fight for equal pay and actual maternity leave? I’m not sure. I like to think that walking away from that is more of a statement than making compromises. I certainly wasn’t challenging equal pay where I was. Not in the slightest. Instead I decided to walk away from those values entirely- the values of a hierarchical, competitive workplace. Nope, I wasn’t going to participate in that struggle- I just didn’t think it was worthwhile. And those who are working “in the system”- well, aren’t they, by default, acknowledging that the system itself is something worth saving? They’re trying to improve it, after all, not take it apart.

This is the classic anarchist argument. I’ve spoken of it many times before. Emma Goldman spoke of an incident when she sat down with a union to discuss the eight hour day. She tried to encourage them to see beyond that one step forward- that small advance in worker’s rights, to the bigger picture- that a capitalist economy was never going to favor the workers, ever. And one old man stood up and said, but what about me? I’m not going to live to see this system come apart. What about right now? What about making our lives that much more tolerable?

And that’s important too. That’s why there are women out there still fighting for equal pay and maternity leave. This system isn’t going to come apart tomorrow. And so it’s up to some of us to fight from within- and some of us to pave the way out, for others to follow in our footsteps.

Also this reminds me why I liked Daniel Quinn. He tends to get dumped on sometimes for not taking his concepts far enough. Anyway, here goes.

You know this whole concept of our way of living being better makes absolutely no sense. I mean, think about alligators for a second. Alligators eat maybe once a week. They expend a little bit of energy to get a big meal, and then they lay around. Sometimes they lay in the sun. Sometimes they lay in the shade. Sometimes they swim around. How can our way of life possibly be better than this???? It’s like the beginning of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish which if you haven’t read you should (actually I should read it again. I wonder where I put it). He goes on about how humans think they are the smartest beings in the world because they have invented wheels and cameras and money and Rolexes and all this, while dolphins spend all their time playing around and basically accomplishing nothing, and dolphins think they are the smartest beings in the world for the same reason. I love that quote. Anyway, the same thing is going to happen to us as happened to the Mayans. Even all the archaeologists and anthropologists say so. It’s just that no one knows what will happen after that. My boss studies Mayan civilization, and he is pretty sure it was environmental pressures that caused them to abandon their civilization. They overtaxed their resources. They weren’t quite so good at invading their neighbors as the Europeans… well, the Europeans survived by conquering the Americas. The Mayans, for whatever reason, were not driven to conquer. So, you know, there’s that.

It really comes down to, who the hell is really happy with this way of life? The people at the top, maybe, the ones with all the money, but they’re the ones all committing suicide now as the economy starts crashing so I’m not so sure about that. Most of us from early on are really uncomfortable with the concept of growing up to do the same things our parents did, because our parents usually aren’t that thrilled about doing what they’re doing. I mean, whose parents didn’t complain endlessly about going to work? I don’t know, maybe there are exceptions somewhere. And yet you’re supposed to want this… why? I mean, would we all have gone to school beyond the age of maybe 8 if we hadn’t been forced to? And by the time we graduate high school, most of us have been successfully brainwashed. This is just what you do. There is no other way. I love this quote: “Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can’t stop doing, we love it so much.” It’s so true. We don’t know what else to do. But my opinions on communism can wait for another time.

I think one of the things that really touches me is Quinn’s mention of this kid he heard about, whose name he changes to Jeffery. I know so many people like this. They are some of the most amazing people I think I will ever be privileged enough to know. I knew this one guy. He could pick up any instrument and just play it. And he had such a head for music… every time I ever saw him play, even if it was just sitting on the back porch fucking around, literally moved me to tears. I am being entirely serious. And yet because of how incredibly fucked things are he had no place. He wandered. He would work for a couple months and get frustrated and quit and maybe come back and work a few more months, and he was so incredibly depressed, and so frequently described this feeling to me of just being lost, of having no place, of not knowing where to go, and THIS IS EXACTLY WHY CIVILIZATION IS FUCKED. Sorry. But this gets me really worked up. His family would be like, oh why don’t you get a job, how can you keep mooching off people like that, why won’t you take responsibility whatever, and this is the biggest tragedy I think I will witness in my life. It would be a complete waste for him to get a job, the same way it is a complete waste to build a parking lot over a heart breakingly beautiful lake or forest or something and then abandon the parking lot. How can we possibly do this??? My whole goal in starting a farm is to give people like him a place to go to get everyone off their backs. They may not even want it. But I love him so much that I at least need to try and create a place where he and other people like him can continue to exist, and for myself too. I’m built a little differently, so I can at least tolerate dealing with all the bull shit [modern note: obviously that didn't last], though I have to get away from it for longer and longer periods of time (hence coming to Germany for a month), and so I can be the one to save up the money and organize it and see it happen. A lot of people for some reason really like working on farms for a few months at a time when they get a chance, in that it’s so straightforward that you can do it for a couple hours a day and feel like you’ve really accomplished something, and then still have the time and mental energy at night to write and play music and the other things we love. Whereas working a bull shit desk job or retail job or whatever just saps everything I have, and at the end of the day all I can do is stare blankly at the wall (or in the worst cases, watch tv) and wish it were all over.

And here’s where Quinn has a point, whether you want to call it tribalism or whatever. In a regular job, people are interchangeable. The only person actually integral to the success of Summer Farm is basically Violet and I guess Rose because she owns it. But everyone else is interchangeable. Actually Violet really is too, it would just be harder b/c she currently knows what’s going on. But still you can just take someone out and you can easily put someone else back in. This will not be how my farm is run. I mean, we might offer some positions like that for interns or whatever when we need extra help, but the idea is that the people who are in are IN. They are investing their lives in the farm. The idea is that you wake up in the morning and you actually want to go and do something because it has meaning and purpose for you. You know that if you don’t do it the other members of your community will bitch and complain, and sometimes you won’t do it anyway but mostly you will. Nikki describes it here as working in waves- one week one person will be feeling really productive and do a lot of the work and the next week that person will be feeling less so and someone else will do more work. And let me tell you, even having been here only a few weeks I’ve seen it happen. Sometimes things happen less quickly, and it’s a hella lot more chaotic and messy and most people would probably flip out at the idea, but things happen if they have to. It’s more a natural rhythm. There will probably be other people living at the farm, because some of us will get married and stuff, and those people will pay rent. The rest of us won’t even need wages though, because the farm gives us what we need, and what’s leftover we distribute among ourselves, etc.

Random Quinn quote: “If you had a billion dollars in the bank, would you go on doing the work you do to make a living?” This is like when my friend Steve recently asked me, as we were discussing the farm plans, what would happen if the farm got really successful (against all odds). The question was if someone offered us millions of dollars to buy the farm, what we would do. And I was puzzled by this question, because I was like, well, unless I wanted to buy a bigger farm or something, I can’t imagine why I would sell the farm. And he was like, but you could have millions of dollars. And I was like, yeah, but what would I do? This is the difference between a job and a life, between what Quinn calls a tribe and the regular run of the mill rat race sort of thing where every person is on their own, and everyone is terrified of losing their job because then they have nothing left. If you work within a “tribe” you have skills and you have people who will back you up and won’t leave you out on your own if something goes wrong. So why would you leave?

Poverty is also a really interesting concept. See, you can only be poor if you can only survive with money. The only way our economy continues to function is that we deprive people of the skills and resources they would need to provide themselves with food and shelter, thereby forcing them to do something else entirely in exchange for money, with which they can then buy food and shelter. This is really ridiculous. I think the most fascinating thing in the world is to take away someone’s money and hand them the ability to get their own food. Well, more accurately, to watch them do this for themselves. At first it’s terrifying. No money? We’re taught that this is a disaster. You can’t live without money. But here’s the secret they never want you to find out: you can in fact live without money. They have just made it really hard for you to do this, because we all grow up with zero skills to make this possible.

So, voila. Thoughts on Quinn.

“If you can only be free living on a mountaintop or a desert island, then clearly you’re something less than free.”

All the more reason not to get married. It aggravates me so much I barely have anything to say about it. Long before I even had the vague potential of getting married, I was against getting married. I remember having a passionate discussion with a group of fellow Planned Parenthood volunteers about it like ten years ago.

And the person they quoted in this article says it best: why are benefits tied to your relationship status? Why aren’t they awarded on an individual basis? Oh right, because if you’re single and self employed it is impossible to afford even basic coverage, because our health care system is fucked six ways from Sunday. And I don’t want to engage in the whole health care debate, because I haven’t been following it what so ever, other than to say that the whole thing is such a complete mess that I’m not sure anything can save it.

But it’s not just health insurance. Tax breaks for being married? Why? You’ve decided to attach yourself to another person for the time being (because let’s not delude ourselves, what are the divorce statistics these days?), and so you don’t pay as much money? What sense does that make? How does you being in a state sanctioned relationship benefit the state to the extent that they don’t need your money as much as they need money from those of us choosing not to get married?

At the end of the day, shouldn’t the terms of your relationship be defined by you and your partner(s), not the government? What do they have to do with it at all? More than anything else, I don’t want a legal marriage because I don’t want them (the state, and here I mean the literal state government, not the “bring down the state” kind of thing) setting the terms of my relationship. It is MY relationship. It is a private affair between myself and my partner. The only other people who should be in any way concerned are our families and close friends- which is why we’re having a party where they can come and acknowledge their commitment to our relationship.

When did marriage become a state thing, anyway? Way back in the day, wasn’t it something acknowledged simply by your religion and your community? I have a strong feeling that the whole thing has a lot to do with property, and whose property is whose. Which is the majority of the reason we have government in the first place. Whose shit is whose. The earliest legal issues were over property lines. Does your farm end at this stream or that stream? And what happens when the stream bed changes, as stream beds inevitably do? And so you have marriage to tie your property to his or hers.

But I vote that if you’re going to own property together, you simply set down a contract that says who has what. A legal document. Because that’s what should dictate the co-ownership of property, should it not? Not your relationship status. The decisions that any two adults make to essentially go into business together. Your relationship is for you. You and the person your are having the relationship with. And perhaps at some point in your relationship you have to make some decisions about property. In which case, that is (currently) the righteous domain of the state.

But who you’re sleeping with? Why should that have anything to do with it?

And FORCING people to get married to keep their health insurance benefits for their CHILDREN? That’s nothing short of sadistic.

There are inklings of it, when we start our flurry of wine making and garden preparing and the seedlings raise their limbs to the sky. I know it’s coming. And yet there’s something of a denial of the reality of full time food production.

And so I sit in the kitchen at 11:55 PM, having just set the timer on the canner for 1:15 AM. Why? Because I try to pack too many things into one evening, of course. Isn’t it always the case? Tonight I decided to bake a chicken, make chili, and can beef stew, all on top of the normal dinner making activities (we had rockfish and salad, which is at least simple). I also intended to ferment some vegetables, but that just didn’t happen. Too busy cleaning up the kitchen.

So why am I sitting up instead of going to bed for a bit and then waking back up for the timer (which I often do)? Pressure canning still terrifies me. Every time I do it I stand anxiously over the thing, instruction book in hand, wondering what exactly qualifies as a jiggle. If you’ve never used a pressure canner, there is a weight on the top that helps to regulate the pressure by releasing steam. As steam escapes, the thing is supposed to jiggle, but it is only supposed to jiggle a certain number of times a minute. I have never achieved the correct number of jiggles. Yet everything seems to turn out all right, somehow. The pressure stays where it’s supposed to and the cans seal and we haven’t died. So that must be ok. But you read so many horror stories (most of which I’m pretty sure are dramatically exaggerated) that it’s enough to make you sit, awake, staring at the canner and praying your house doesn’t explode.

Which is not to warn you off pressure canning. As I said, everything seems to turn out ok. But when you get started, the number of dire warnings in the books really make you wonder if it’s worth your time (it is). Maybe I’ll eventually get over it. I can’t help but think if someone had taught me to can, and showed me how to properly use a pressure canner and said, ok, it’s totally fine when this happens, I would have been ok. But here I am. Learned to can from a book. And completely startled to discover that we’ve already reached the time of year when there are just never enough hours in the day.

Really, I still can’t believe it’s even spring. Walking to the bank the other day I was warm. Warm! It was only a month ago that I couldn’t imagine ever being warm again. Cold was my constant. Grey were the skies. In the depths of winter it is impossible for me to believe that it will ever be warm again, just as in the middle of summer it is impossible to believe it was ever cold. Could there have been snow on the ground? Surely not.

I don’t know if anyone else suffers from this seasonal disbelief. But I think that no matter how old I get, I will still be completely astonished by the coming of spring. Baffled to find all this green, so quickly. And most certainly baffled when my leisurely reintroduction to growing food results in me again, being behind, and so soon out of the gate.

We’re behind again, of course, though not as badly as we usually are, which is something of a comfort. Only a week or so behind, I would say. What a miracle. I think working from home really has something to do with that. When I was trapped in an office all day I couldn’t go outside at lunch and weed the lettuce. And picking away at it like that, little bursts at a time, seems to make it so much more manageable.

And usually I do the same thing with the food conversion (as I think of it in my head- converting raw ingredients into things we eat). One project per night. But they stack up- something happens and I miss two or even three nights, and suddenly the fridge is full of raw meat that needs cooking, whether I feel like it or not. And so I stay up half the night making that happen.

Welcome, spring. I will not complain about the long hours, not at all. It has suddenly become tolerable to take cold showers, and that is worth all the late nights in the world.

Hahaha. I’m laughing at that, really. But on the other hand, it’s a legitimate tradition. I might butcher this somewhat in the retelling, but my understanding is that many families in Italy still pass along the family’s basalmic vinegar to a newly married couple. In a big barrel, so that it can age for the first 25 years of the couple’s married life. One, there’s the tradition (and knowledge) that goes along with passing the culture (meaning the literal vinegar culture, not your heritage culture, though I guess you’re passing that along too) from one generation to the next. But it also symbolizes that commitment. We’re going to be together for at least the 25 years it takes to nurture this vinegar to it’s fullest flavor.

Now that’s romance.

So as we do every “new year,” we started another batch of dandelion wine. I always think of this as the true beginning of the year- nothing much is happening in January, after all. But when you start the dandelion wine, it marks the beginning of the growing season, the time when you are turning the soil and starting the seeds and preparing- it always occurs right on that cusp between the reflective, quiet period of winter and the ballistic chaos that will be the next 9 months.

And so it’s kind of nice to get a lot of time to sit quietly with your partner, watching tv (Doctor Who) and beheading dandelions. For full dandelion wine instructions, click here.

We’re also, of course, drinking our wine from last year. It’s not my best batch, but it’s pretty good, which is important since we bottled 15 of these puppies. It’s an acquired taste, for sure. Most people aren’t used to drinking wine that tastes like spring (aka grass).

We also bottled our elderberry wine from last year.

14 bottles as a result. And that will be good too- it’s a very dark wine, as you can possibly imagine, and really needs to mellow in the bottles. We can drink it in July. Here’s how we got started (last July).

We started a new batch of lilac wine. We haven’t actually gotten a good taste of last year’s batch, because I got really behind with the racking and bottling aspect, and so it’s not actually ready. Even though it should be. Oops. Fortunately this kind of wine making (flowers in a bucket) seems to be pretty forgiving. You might not have the clearest, purest tasting wine, but hey, it has booze, and it’s pretty decent. Perfect for our procrastinating sort of style.

I love picking lilacs. I think it’s the only reason I make this wine. Standing outside on the first clear, warm day of the year, sun shining, birds singing, big fluffy white clouds, and those perfect, tiny purple flowers.

Of course they look less good when you dump boiling water over them and add the yeast, but you know.

Here it is strained in the carboy, next to the dandelion wine (on the left).

If you look closely (or click to enlarge) you can see the dead yeast at the bottom and the bubbles rising all crazy at the top.