Esalen, the Place of Three Waters

Sunset View from the Lodge

Ful Moon rising over Esalen

I learned about Esalen at massage school, some of the founders of IPSB had been present in the early days at Esalen and trained and formulated their own visions in that community.  We learn about the Esalen style of massage, Esalen being one of the first places in California training people in the art of massage.  It is a retreat center, perched on the cliffs between mountains ascending to the sky, green with coastal redwoods, and the pacific below.  The infinite view of the ocean and the sound of her waves is the backdrop to everywhere and everything.  The site is named for the Esalen native Americans who frequented this area, sometimes establishing a settlement on the site.  They named the area the place of the three waters, where the ocean, the freshwater stream, and the deep sulfur waters coming from 200 feet below the land are all present.  Today there is an exquisite bathhouse where you can watch the marine life while bathing in silky, warm mineral water.  On this most recent visit, I could see Sea Otters and Grey Whales daily from the baths.

Walking up the path from the baths, notice the massage tables and one tub.

You come to Esalen to learn something, to experience something.  There are weekend retreat and five day retreats as well as month long study programs and all sorts of levels of work scholars and staff.  Workshops range from massage, psychology, yoga and other moving arts, art and creative writing, meditation, somatic practices, gardening, hiking, music...Once you arrive, there is no need to leave.  A stay at Esalen includes your workshop classes, 3 amazing meals a day, 24 hour access to the baths, and your room accommodations of which there is much diversity in cost and amenities.  If you are more of a bohemian, they offer a sleeping bag accommodation that is very affordable.  You can also do work exchange and spend some time helping out on the property for a small discount.  I have most recently returned from a workshop on Homesteading Arts where I learned bread, cheese, honey bees and fermentation of veggies.  In the past I have attended Kirtan retreats with Deva Premal and Miten as well as Jai Uttal and have taken an Anusara Yoga training at Esalen quite a few years ago.

The Murphy House was my headquarters this visit.

The view from my classroom in the Murphy House

The fireplace from my Murphy Room sleeping bag dormitory

The high yielding Esalen garden fed with the rich compost created here

Another stunning feature at Esalen is the garden.  The land is cultivated for vegetables served in the lodge as well as flowers and herbs.  Exquisite rows of lettuce, chard, broccoli and flowers have beautiful trails running throughout them leading you from one area of activity to another.  On the backside of the property is the farm, a larger scale production area that also houses a large scale composting operation.

The Ecstatic Matriarch of the Garden

Monster Kale Trees!

Esalen Honey Bee, there home has a view of the whales passing.

 Pathway through the Garden

California Poppies

The Esalen Chickens, Bantam breeds

Bee Hive with Farm in the background

While observing the Bee Hive I saw Whales pass very close to shore, what a view!

Esalen is a community in the truest sense of the word.  Living in community is a powerful ctalyst for personal transformation.  If you don't know what I'm talking about I recommend you visit an Ashram, Kibbutz, Commune or take a long camping trip in a group, and you'll discover what I mean.  The key to a successful community is organization and cooperation.  In general, work is divided.  This means you'll do a lot of one type of work, but in exchange, other things will be taken care of for you.  You might do laundry all day, but someone else grows your food in the garden, prepares it for you, and does your dishes.  Full paying guests offer their fee to be invited into the community of Esalen for a short period of time.  All of their needs are met, and they need do nothing.  Those who stay at Esalen for a longer period of time have a job within the community such as in the office, garden, kitchen, laundry, grounds, etcetera.  Other communites I have visited, everyone offers some bit of service each day, even if for only an hour.  I enjoy the practice, sometimes called Seva, and I often seek it out.  Working in the community is an opportunity to meet those who may be on extended programs or are staff members.  It can be fascinating to see how things are done in a big operation, and it connects you to the land nd resources you are utilizing during your stay.  On this recent visit to Esalen I did a work exchang program.  For my five day stay I did eight hours of work and received a $100 discount of my workshop fee.  I worked alternately in the laundry, folding clean sheets and towels, and the kitchen, slicing vegetables, unfourtunately I didn't get any photos of the laundry, but here's some photos of the kitchen..

At Esalen, even the coffee grinder has political ideas!

Reminders to the staff before they head out into the dining room to feed the hungry masses!

Breakfast manager keeping it light, don't worry that jicama ended up in the trash.

Together we chopped a LOT of brussell sprouts.

Organic yumminess, almost everything in the kitchen is organically sourced, good job!

I'm part of the team!  And the day before I washed and folded a hundred aprons!

Soup for lunch, white beans and lots of spices

My beloved teacher, Charlie Cascio, watching over the kitchen even in his retirement

The Birds and the Bees...an update

A few days ago, I started to loose my mind.  It had to do with a certain chicken named Julia Childs who was acting a lot like a rooster.  She was territorial, and aggressive, she had definitely given my hand a few hard pecks at times when I was trying to hold her and give her a look over.  But most importantly, she crowed, like a rooster, and lately more often and louder and louder...it was really only slightly annoying, but it gave me so much anxiety that someone would complain.  So this weekend I called the man who sold me the chicken and on Monday I drove Julia back and exchanged her for a French Black Copper Maran, a female this time!  We named her Madame Chocolate.  After two days adjusting to her new environment and crying a few tears for the beautiful rooster she left behind, she began to give us eggs!  Beautiful big dark brown eggs!  We love Madame Chocolate!  Ruby Rose is getting quite big, her comb developing, so I think she'll be laying really soon as well.  This afternoon I found my third egg and I must say that discovering them truly feels like finding a treasure, a jewel.

I opened our new beehive for the third time today.  The first time was a big endeavor, cutting comb growing from the lid and repositioning it into frames like you would do rescuing a hive from an undesired location.  The next time I opened the hive I was a bit worried by what I saw, heavy pieces of comb sagging and bowing out of the frames.  But today  could see the comb beginning to take better shape within the frames and it had developed enough integrity that I was able to adjust the comb a bit better into the frames without it all falling apart.  I also had more poise today and had developed my bee suit well so I was able to spend more time calmly observing all of the comb.  I was able to find the queen, to distinguish the drones, and at one moment I saw a young bee literally being born out from her little prism of comb!  The bees have not begun to explore the upper hive box I placed in inspection 2, next time I open the hive I will try Ron's pyramid technique to encourage the bees to build out the second story of their hive.

It was a satisfying week on my little farm by the beach.  The bees are doing well and with a change to our chicken community we now have eggs!

Open a Channel and watch the Honey Flow!

It began with a sleepless night which unfolded into a kickstarter campaign that has become a hive of bees on my roof!  Now I'm a member of the San Diego Bee Society and I'm packing my bags for a five day training at Esalen called Land of Milk and Honey.  All thanks to the generosity of others.

That's the short story, here's the long story!

I have mixed feelings about bees.  I love honey, I love flowers, I love fruit!  But I'm also a bit of an allergic person to bites, mosquito bites can become 4 inch welts on my body.  I feel a little fearful of these insects and their power, and I was not completely convinced I had a good idea at first, and worried a bit I might have an awful idea. But I guess that's part of the experiment, to determine whether suburban bee keeping is a good idea or too much of a hazard.  Well, in the beginning, the first few people I shared my bee idea with were family members, and they were not supportive at all!  They were full of doubtful questions and inquiries.  But I investigated thier worries and found a lot of great information about risk and liability, which is much more limited than you might think.  I asked a good attorney friend of mine what she thought, and she had a colleague who kept bees at his home in Hilltop and she would introduce us.

Our new hive, from Felipe, in its pallet cage on our roof, a few bees hanging out.

What a fortuitous connection.  The kind gentleman was happy to show me his hives, situated on the roof of his garage.  He had been keeping bees for one year and is 105 year old house just above downtown.  He particularly enjoyed collecting wild swarms from around the city with his 19 year old son.  Consequentially, he had a lot of hives, I think about 7!  After a lot of talk, he asked me if I wanted some bees, and after a little stammering, I said yes.  He invited me to come back that night, as night was the time for moving bees, when all the colony are huddled together in the hive.  I returned at night with my husband and we sealed up the entrance to the hive and put her in the back of my prius and drove her home and put her up on our roof!  Instantly I had a hive of bees, which aren't easy to come by, and the actual physical hive, and langstrom hive, the most common type of hives used.  He had a local welder build custom stands for his hives out of rebar and had also developed with this welder a perfect wand hive tool.  All of this he gave me!  Thanks god I had brought several cans of my tea along to give him.

Examining a beautiful comb from Felipe's Top Bar Hive.

Two days later I returned to my new bee friend's house and along with his son and another, more experienced bee tender who had come to help, we opened all those remaining 6 hives and gave them all a looky-loo with varied maintenance on each.  It was fascinating, my first experinece working with the bees, opening up hives, looking at frames, surrounded in bees.  At times it felt a bit hectic, one hive in particular was really noisy and aggressive, they call it "hot" meaning africanized and I got stung twice through my heavy work clothes, ouch!  But other hives you could tell were different, more quiet and calm, these are hives with Italian Honey Bees.  I learned to use the smoker, to pry open boxes with the hive tool, to cut and reposition into frames pieces of comb and to begin to understand what I was seeing when looking at the comb.  There is brood, bee babies, uncapped honey and capped honey.  It was amazing!

Bee equipment purchased through the generosity of others.

The next day, with my one day's experience, my husband and I went to work on our new hive.  We decided to try our own take on a bee suit, weraing our 4 mm wetsuits.  Neither of us got stung, so I think it was a good idea!  We also wore leather garden gloves, boots and veils and we taped up our wrists and ankles the way my bee friends had shown me.  Our friend had collected a swarm from one of his own hives into a nuc box, or a basic hive box empty of any frames.  He should have then put some frames in, but was probably too busy.  Well the bees were busy too and had built a hive right off the lid of the box.  I wish I had a photo to show you how cool it looked when we lifted the lid and saw the rows of comb extending down from the lid.  I think there were about 9 rows of comb with the smallest about 5"x4" and the biggest 14"x8".  The biggest pieces were just amazing slabs of comb and honey and brood.  I did my best to detach the comb from the roof and reposition with rubber bands into the frames.  Then the frames were placed into the nuc box and covered with the lid, after giving the lid and sides of the box a good scraping to remove all the wax comb.  Almost all the frames were filled, I think 8 in total.  So I new I needed some more equipment to let this hive grow.

Building frames for the Langstroth Hive.

More frames, equipment and a book from City Nursery.

City Farmers Nursery is a new discovery for me.  In addition to all your gardening needs, they sell chicken supplies, bee supplies and have farm animals in different sheds and cages all over the rambling facility.  I saw the most beautiful Heirloom Wild Turkey as well as ducklings, chickens, rabbits, and goats.  I purchased a bunch of supplies there to expand my hive.  I had purchased some foundational supplies already on-line, a smoker and veils, but I prefer to spend a little more and support a local business.  Soon I'll explore a coandle making store called Knorr Candle Suppliers.

One of the many farm animals at City Farms Nursery.

A few days later we sported our suits again, smoked up our hive and opened her up.  I could see that a lot of the comb was sagging and nnot supported up in the frames, but I didnt have time then to work on that problem.  Instead I just added new components, a super box with ten frames each with a strip of foundation hanging from the top.  The queen excluder screen between the nuc box and super and a new inner cover above the super. In a few days I'll open her again and try to better support the comb in the frames with string and more rubber bands.

Lighting the smoker filled with dried pine needles.

Smoking the hive to calm the bees before opening their home.

Opening the top and blowing more smoke on the bees.

Examining the comb.

Scraping beeswax from the lid.

Long story short, my campaign only became successful today, and I'll receive the funds in about two weeks.  But the flow was opened and the support came strong and fast.  With the power of credit cards I have already bought most of the foundational supplies and have fortuitously already begun to keep bees!  I am enrolled in the course at Esalen and will be there in just two weeks!

Thanks so much to the 34 souls who contributed financially and to the many others who contributed their positive intentions.  I'll keep you posted.

P.S the queen's name is Carlota

Introducing the Ladies!

One of the BEST ideas I have ever had was to get me some chickens!  I've had these four ladies for about two and a half months, and I love them!  They are so cute and fun to watch.  I enjoy feeding them and even cleaning out their coop, go figure!  I keep running home between appointments to give the girls an hour of free roaming time in the garden.  I find the chickens to be less work than a dog, really just about 5-10 minutes of attention a day and a little longer for a good cleaning once each season.  So, if you've got a little space and a little time and a little sense of adventure, I recommend you give it a try and raise some backyard chickens.  Here is the best website to get started www.backyardchickens.com.  Let's meet my ladies, all purchased on Craigslist from individuals raising chickens at their homes in San Diego.

This is Lady Moonbeam, she's a Silkie Chicken.

This is Ruby Rose, she's an Ameraucana Chicken.

Here's Ruby again with Julia Child up above her.  Julia Child is a French Black Copper Maran.

And introducing the spunky Ameraucana Chicken, Maria Flor!

Learn more:
About Silkies on Wikipedia

About Ameraucanas on Wikipedia

About Marans on Wikipedia

These four chickens live in a coop made of a cabinet and some pallets.

Apple Cider Vinegar

I started a new homemade project yesterday, Apple Cider Vinegar.  I have long been a consumer of Bragg's Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, with the "mother" and a book I have been reading this last week, How to Grow a Farmer, has a great chapter on apple cider vinegar.  After a few google searches I learned about all I needed to know, which is that its easy to make, it just takes time.  I had just bought some extra large mason jars from the canning department at City Farms Nursery and an early morning visit to the farmer's market set me up with a big bag of reduced priced slightly damaged organic apples.  Some clean water and a bit of cloth to cover the jar and I had everything I needed.

It's quite simple, you fill a jar or bowl or Oak Barrel if you're lucky enough to have an oak barrel, with the peels and cores of organic apples.  I think I used about 5-6 extra large apples to fill this jar.  You let these apple trailings sit out for awhile till they get browned, I left mine out about 24 hours.  Then you cover them with water and begin to wait.  Should take 6-8 weeks, so stay tuned...