a little roundup from the vault

‘Tis the season of food growing and reaping, weeding and harvesting, fermenting and canning. I’ve been tackling cherries all this week. Sweet cherries, compliments of our lovely fruit growers and sour cherries, the first from our farm. I’ve also been foraging as much as possible. The thistles have flowered and I do love a good thistle vinegar and effervescent cordial. But these are details for an “in my kitchen, around the farm” post that’s coming up on Saturday. For today, I thought I might do something a little different.

There are 308 essays on my humble little Substack. These aren’t short little quips either, but substantial essays on topics from everything to nutrition, food, the current state of affairs, preparing our lives and our larders for the choppy waters ahead, parenting, marriage, natural medicines etc.. It can be daunting to go back over so many essays, looking for certain topics so I’ve taken it upon myself to do some of the heavy lifting for you. An opening of the Slowdown vault, if you will. Don’t mind the cobwebs, there’s some good stuff in here, I promise (and everyone knows spiders are our friends)

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Some of the essays I wrote on “science” or modern medicine and how to untangle our minds and energies from that diseased way of thinking can be found in the essay, “Who’s Your Daddy”, part one. In part two of the same essay I go into how I emerged from the system I was trained to respect and adhere to, via a then, tragic incident with my sick baby that I now understand as a great blessing.

It’s interesting to delve into my state of mind during the whole covid plandemic biz. This essay, “Pay Attention (or pay the piper, either way you pay)” with my distaste for the offerings of parading experts is just as relevant today as it was then. Maybe more so. And this essay, “Here For it All” where I write of my heartbreak over the masked children and the fearful humans, scared of their own, miraculous bodies.

The collective, then, hollowed out by their zoo lives in this human zoo world, march to the internet to find gurus and quippy articles to figure out how to be happy. The collective finds its traditions in Starbucks line-ups for their “regular” chemical brew. The collective chase distraction like rabid raccoons, hungry for the next shiny thing. The collective numbs itself with those aforementioned distractions and then adds a side of drugs, or booze, or plastic processed food, or porn, any addictions to pull us out of our lives. That’s what we settle for? And then, of course, they are told that the dysfunction is with them. Their failure. Their weakness. And would you look at that, our faux-gold king has answers for that, too - sweet little pills to bring us back to that smooth mellow place far, far away. 

In the essay, “Owing a Pig a Debt” I write about the unconventional lessons and learning that have served me well over the years. It’s not easy to learn from mistakes and tragedies, but if that’s what you’re given, that’s what you get. Sometimes it’s tough to know what we want or what’s good for us when we’ve never experienced it, but we all tend to know when we don’t want something. For whatever reason, that’s how my life lessons have shown up and how my life is immeasurably richer for me moving into the unknown with faith simply because it’s the opposite direction of the thing I don’t want.

In extraction we lose ‘rightness’. Our bodies know it, they are the most beautifully attuned sensors ever created. But they are not sensors at all, are they? They are us, from each ridge in our fingertips to every strand of hair, they sense and feel and adapt. They send messages and respond. They hone to the frequency of our lives. They are us but they are not the only us.

from the essay, “The Biohacking Luddite”

In, “Humility for Divinity” I wrote about the evolving of my life as a woman and a mother. “The mother that I am now is paired back, rendered and refined. “Love”, I tell myself. I pray to my God, “Let me be the very expression of love.” There are no small, soft bodies against my legs. No hopeful eyes looking up at me, asking for this or that. No chairs pulled up alongside me at the kitchen counter, asking to help. No little teeth marks in my butter. That mommy, like all the iterations of who I have been, sits, collected inside of me. All of them there, all of the Taras, all of the versions of her beloved people, young and old, big and small. They sit together, gathered around a warm, glowing bonfire of memories, grabbing moments from the flames and throwing them into my awareness at random. Gifts of light and warmth suddenly in my consciousness. Ty on my shoulders, picking plums from a tree and dripping the juices in my hair. Ella pretending to be a kitten for weeks at a time and the mommy that would pet her nose while she purred. Tying Mila’s tiny little hockey skates, whispering words of encouragement to my little warrior heading into battle while she giggled in delight. “More, mommy, more.”

There’s quite a few essays and audio chats with hubby and me around marriage and love. This essay, “Enduring Love” gets into what’s worked for us in our marriage, including the things that got us through those tough times. A big part of the tools we use to keep things copacetic is decision making and what that looks like in practice as outlined in the essay, “Costs and Benefits”.

The essay, “On Hallowed Ground” part one and part two are a full rundown on the raising and keeping of a healthy milk cow. In the essay we do morning chores together and I talk to you about all things mighty milk cow and butter, Tara style. And seeing we’re in the kitchen, we might as well talk bone broth. Need a tutorial? You got it. In “Slow Food for Fast Food” I write about some of the practices that keep us in good eating form whenever or wherever we are.

Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about what it means to be truly nourished by our environments and our food. I reread this essay, “To be Nourished”. That gets me part of the way there. I still feel the same way but I’m just the kind of gal that wants to continuously grow. That means I’m always questioning what I’m doing and where I’m going. To that end, I’ve thrown away a lot of “health” practices after actually paying attention to whether they were serving me or not. I’m going to be writing more about this in the future. For now, some other things to think about in how we nourish ourselves include the environment of our homes, lives, and how we operate in this world - with love or fear?

What if happiness is meaningless after all? What if it’s peace and connection and love that fill a life? All the things that can be found, the very meaning of our lives, outside of a fleeting canary called “happiness”. Outside of that sliver of a feeling is the depth and breadth of the genuine in life and it is found everywhere - in the heartache, in the struggle, in the darkest shadows. No need to wait for the lightening strike of joy to hit. 

Be still. Accept truth. Slow the hell down! Press your luscious, pounding heart against a mighty tree and listen. Let the perversions of modernity leak out of you. A pool of lies and manipulations gone from your mind, released from your heart, dripping out into the atmosphere where they are picked up by the laughing winds and dispersed with ease. Fortification for the weary.

from “Fortification for the Weary”

See you on Saturday. I will be there with cherry juice dripping off my eyelashes and dirt under my nails. I hope you will be, too.