Contrary to what may have never crossed your mind, La Casa has not closed down for the holidays. Sure, half of us are away in sunnier lands, with (for better or for worse) family obligations, but that leaves half of us here in town, a skeleton crew, suff’rin’ thru the holidays together with joy, good cheer, and sarcasm!
[[Insert picture of We La Casans Four, sitting around a kitchen table teeming with open bottles and gravied foodbits.]]
Erin, Ronna, Don, and your humbuggish narrator Andrew, had a fine few days of gray grump and psychedelic carnage, cheering on the snow and eating plate after plate of lentil-free leftovers. Our special holiday companions? Alcohol; recreational greenage; movies with subtitles; and, oh yes, gobs of greasy Holimalaise!
Wikepedia says, “Malaise (pronounced /məˈleɪz/, mal-aze) is a feeling of general discomfort or uneasiness, an ‘out of sorts’ feeling, often the first indication of an infection or other disease. Malaise is often defined in medicinal research as a ‘general feeling of being unwell’.”
Now, I speak for at least myself when I say this Xmas stuff is a crock! We buy our children a hollow plastic miracle every year until they’re too jaded to buy it, then we sort of give up and let it linger, linger, linger. But we don’t give up, damn it! Somebody had a kid? Great, let’s keep the lie alive! “Yes, we love Xmastime in this family, don’t we?”
Combine that disgusted disillusionment with the shortest days of the year, ridiculous wastes of energy and resources (just for show), insulting pressure to buy just the right thing to show so-and-so how much you love them, and some narrow-minded Jesus-talk, and you’ve got yourself the bare essentials for a hefty serving of Holimalaise.
We’re even starting to get straight-up sick around here. “I feel like my head is detached from my body,” said Erin a few minutes ago, before going back to bed.
[[Insert picture of We La Casans Four huddled together for warmth on the couch, floating in a sea of vomit and Holimalaise.]]
Ok, it hasn’t been as bleak as all that. The food has been amazing. On xmas itself, we had mashed potatoes, two kinds of mac ‘n’ cheese, breaded tofu, and pecan pie with bourbon sauce, all with some mighty fine vegan gravy. Then, in celebration of Boxing Day (the day after xmas) we had five amazing artichokes with jungle juice! The leftovers keep on piling up (and thank goodness, because the kitchen sink is offline for four days while the fresh caulk dries!).
[[Insert picture of Sophie eating a full plate of full-gravied Human Food (not to be confused with Human) at the kitchen table.]]
Other good things have come out of this gray week, such as winterized windows, a newly-caulked sink and this blog post. (Except for the latter, I’ve had nothing to do with anything “good” around here, by the way.) I look forward to the inevitable repopulating of the house after the new year, but in the meantime, I’m enjoying being on this particular strange island with my three winter-torn comrades.
Some bees gathered on some frames discussing where the best flowers of C-U.
Delicious of the garlic world. You don’t have to be an old apple picker to know that that is tantamount to saying that elephant garlic is hardly worth eating, though, actually, La Casan Jacob would argue this point as he somehow is convinced that Red Delicious apples have some redeeming value. My heart aches for the dear boy. The German Porcelain garlic, indeed, is nice and strong, tons of flavor.
We did garlic and a lot of potatoes, too. One thing, though, their field had gophers. Not only did their field have gophers, but that field had more gophers than I knew could live in one field and what’s more is that these particular gophers had to taste every single garlic bulb to be absolutely sure that they didn’t like garlic. Also, the field had bindweed. It had extra strength bindweed that could bring down a rototiller in an astonishingly short amount of time, but which did not, apparently get in the way of gophers. Ever since, I can hardly believe it when I see packets of morning glory seeds for sale. I want to tell people not to ever plant it, that it comes from the devil. The DEVIL! And irrigation was, as I recall, quite tricky in that field. Al (Mr. Webber) made constant improvements to his “system”, though it never seemed become less tricky to me, and I think, quite possibly, more so. I do recall one great leap in the irrigation technology where the involvement of PVC pipes boosted our watering capabilities, but only for a day or so. Really, all those gopher holes led to one mother tunnel which emptied out not into the field at all, but, oh, down there, off the side of the hill. I thought perhaps it would at least have the benefit of washing the gophers away (or drowning the motherf*ckers), but it seemed to not impinge on them at all and what does not kill them makes them stronger. Pretty sure about that. If anything it seemed to have softened the soil up for them quite nicely. (It may have been about this time in my life that the murder of certain animals [being various rodentia] began to seem maybe not quite so abhorrent as I once thought. My dogs proved to be superior diggers, but insufficient gopher catchers. That’s a big help, as you can imagine.) Oh, and there was the wind. I wouldn’t want to neglect giving due mention to the wind which allowed for no hats, would throw dirt in your eyes, which once knocked me clean over and whose relentless blast caused me to cry and curse the wind god. (I only did that last thing once because the wind picked up noticeably when I did it.) Nonetheless, regardless and despite all we had a lot of fun and we all had garlic and spuds to last and it sure made the Webbers happy. I do not believe I would want to do it for a living, though. Not in that particular field, anyway.
The species in the la casa permaculture garden were chosen for their niche in the whole system. Helianthus tuberosus, aka jerusalem artichokes or sunchokes, produce tasty tubers 
La Casa Grande Colectiva 