When we started planning out renovations for the house, a waterfall feature was not something we discussed. Yet on a Friday morning a few weeks ago, that's exactly what we found in the basement, springing, or should I say, gushing from the bathroom wall, spilling out across a cork floor and brand new carpet, and cascading down the garage steps. It was almost like an optical illusion watching water pour out through drywall. But like a Magic Eye that makes you nauseous and dizzy from crossing your eyes, seeing it once is good enough. While Daniel ran around to shut the water to the entire house off, I used a push broom to guide the inches-deep water from the soaking bathroom to the garage. If you've ever accidentally spilled a glass of water on carpet, that's what you call "wet." But when gallons of frigid water tsunami over carpet for several minutes, that's what you call "soaking." And guess what cork does when it gets drenched? It puffs up
If you’d told me a year ago that I'd be asking my friends and neighbors to collect cardboard boxes, newspapers, and leaves and scouring Craigslist for hay, alfalfa, and manure, I would have looked at you and ramped up my resting bitch face. But that’s who I am now. One of the most major goals we had when choosing to move from a 600 square foot city apartment to a 4.5 acre mountainous property was to establish our own “mini-farm.” That means growing our own food, managing chickens (though we will not be eating them), and eventually adding goats to our brood. The growing conditions here at 8,000+ feet are less than ideal, so this past summer I took a “high altitude permaculture gardening” class at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, CO. Though it sounds like all I did was learn to cultivate marijuana, I promise only a few minutes of the 2 weeks-long class even mentioned it. I was lucky to find the institute and attending was more than life changing. I