ILC Week 3

It seems that I am spending a lot of time foraging this week. I found a couple of morels last week and really want to have enough to use in the tasting. I have been all over: Rose Park, Fort Borst Park, Winloquia Park, Wilapa Trail, and the Rainbow Falls State Park. I have been bringing my Plants of the Pacific Northwest with me to help me in identifying new species.

This week I have had the opportunity to access several hundred loaves of bread. It took some time because it included me volunteering in the warehouse. It is pretty exciting to see a big semi pull in that is FULL of bread! It is also a daunting task as it has to be organized and dispersed before it molds. The bread this week came twice and I was able to donate several places/groups including The Serenity House, One Hand Helping Another, Family Education Support Services, The Belly Brigade and to some elders of the Rainbow Family.

I received some sad news this week. My best friend had cancer show back up in his body. He is 67 and over the last year his health has been declining lately and we just got the results that his blood work shows that the cancer is back.

This has projected me into researching the commidification of cancer and natural cures. I watched the movie A Beautiful Truth which is about the Gertsen therapy. This therapy recomends very clean eating as well as a few lifestyle changes. Fittingly it matches up very well with the readings this week. The cancer Chuck is fighting is from the chemicals the US government exposed him to while he was in Vietnam.  I have already harvested and artist conk and plan on making him medicinal tea with it. He is very open to any alternative therapies at this point, and I can think of very little that I wouldn’t do to have just a little more time with him.

This week  has been a heavy coordination week as in week 4 I will be traveling to Eugene to meet with some rainbow family members and the Eugene Avant Gardeners. The Avant Gardeners are a group of rebel farmers who grow food to give away for free. We were able to talk about the needs of the community and how we could support the food banks. The food banks in Eugene usually have to close every summer for the Oregon Country Fair. Otherwise, the food banks would get completely drained in the week long influx of out of town visitors.

I feel like I have moved every start 5 times already. This week I am rearanging again. I need to put the starts into more sturdy crates that were just donated so that they can survive the trip.

I have been working on the Serenity house garden. I ran out of dirt with the garden box only being half-full though. This means that I am now sourcing another load of dirt AND another pickup truck to borrow.

I hope you all enjoyed this weeks wild-harvested tasting!