The horrible, awful, terrible year...

2019 was the most horrible, awful, terrible year of my life and I have some doozies of bad years in my history.  I can hardly wait to be done with it and start fresh again with January's clean slate.  2020 is going to be a year of starting from scratch.

The first fresh start is a new place to live.  I've secured an apartment for me and Lightning and Gizmo.  We get to start moving in on December 27.  I don't have much to furnish or decorate with so the look is likely to be an ever-changing version of "Secondhand Chic" as I can upgrade our stuff.

One of the most exciting things about being fully on my own again is cooking my own food.  I've pretty much decided that my first meal in the new place is going to be soup.  But I keep changing my mind about what kind of soup it will be... Chicken Noodle?  Creamy Potato?  Navy Beans with Ham (and some cornbread)?

I'm also interviewing for a job that I'm really excited about.  It would be a huge departure from both my previous work experience and education but I KNOW I would make a heck of a good General Manager at a local Co-op that focuses on locally produced food and other goods.  The variety of foods being made close to home is pretty amazing with gourmet cheeses, maple syrup, lunchmeats, and honey topping my personal favorites.  It's so fun to discover more!

And I'm taking another stab at school... SNHU has a Master's of Counseling that I can enroll in for the quickly upcoming January semester and in 3-5 years have the credentials for LCSW licensure.  The distance between Maryland and New Hampshire presents some challenges but I'm hopeful they can be worked out.

My health also remains a focus area that carries over from the old year into the new.  There's still lots of fallout from the big PE (pulmonary embolism) event in November I'm thankful to have scored what's by far the best health insurance I've ever had in my whole life.  And I plan on taking advantage of that for as long as I can!

As if all that isn't enough... I really want 2020 to be a year filled with fun and adventure!  I want to see new places and try new things.  Things I've wanted to do for years but could never quite get done like learning to fly fish are at the top of my list.  If I can get the knees into shape I'd also like to bicycle the 15 miles of the GAP Trail that runs between Frostburg, MD, and Meyersdale, PA.  GAP means Great Allegheny (or Allegany since we spell it differently in Maryland than they do in Pennsylvania) Passage where it crosses the Eastern Continental Divide.  And I want to take a mushroom foraging class, crochet the temperature afghan that I worked so hard to track daily temperatures for all of 2018 and get my finances situated to buy a house in 2021.

Please help me stay on track by asking about these things throughout the year!

There's An App For That

Do you forage for food?

I'd never exactly put that word to it until recently, but I do.  I always have.  I grew up with parents who were foragers.  Some of my favorite childhood memories are fruit picking trips cleverly disguised as weekend family camping trips.  Not far outside of Shelley, ID (my... how far I've wandered!) you can, or at least you could 30-40 years ago, drive up into the mountains through Wolverine Canyon.  We did that a lot when I was kid because, looking at it with today's insight, it was both nearby and filled with resources.

I remember 'harvesting' these things in Wolverine Canyon:

• Chokecherries
• Elderberries
• Currants (Yellow, Red and Black ones)
• Oregon Grapes
• Crawfish
• Trout
• Deer
• Sage Hen
• All kinds of fallen trees for firewood
• Watercress

We'd bring one or more of these things home on any given trip.  The next day or two would be devoted to preserving (except the crawfish and watercress which were always used fresh) the bounty for later use.  Chokecherries, Elderberries, Currants and the Grapes were quickly turned into jams and jellies.  The trout was filleted and sage hens cut up and either frozen or canned.  Deer was usually processed at a local butcher who would do game meat.  And wood was chopped down into smaller pieces to burn as supplemental heat all winter.

A few times my dad cut Chokecherry branches that had naturally formed into a good shape for a cane or walking stick and then peeled back the bark, shaved them smooth with his pocket knife and, when they were well dried, oiled them so they are a luscious natural wood finish.   Later they were cut to height as he sold or gifted them away.  I still have the one he made especially for my mom and if I shrink the way she did in her later years one day it will be the right height for me, too.

It was just a normal part of how we lived.

Just like picking asparagus growing along the roadsides in the spring...  Or picking the extra apples, with permission of course, from a neighbor's tree for juice, jelly, apple sauce, pie filling and dehydrated apple chips.

Some day make your own apple chips!  Try dipping the apple slices in cinnamon and sugar before drying.  Or... my favorite:  strawberry banana jello powder.

Everywhere I've been after that it's a normal thing to mentally tally the resources around me.  Now there's an app that will track a lot of that for me.  I signed up on Neighborhood Fruit and took a look around this morning.  It seems like a pretty new thing that doesn't have a lot of information entered in for many locales yet.  But it's an interesting idea.  One I really like and will continue to check back periodically.

On Neighborhood Fruit, you can both enter information about fruit you have available to others who will come glean it and search for those opportunities for yourself.  Some estimates say that as much as 80% of the fruit growing in backyards around the country is not used while the fruit we do eat is grown in water-intensive orchards far from our homes.  That just doesn't make sense to me.  It's not sustainable or responsible.

In the spring, I have every intention of adding fruit trees to my yard.  And I know they'll produce more than I could ever hope to use myself.  I will be entering them on Neighborhood Fruit.