the first guy i stayed with made us dinner and we had great conversation before he went out for the evening. the pizza was vegan, with an almond and roasted red pepper sauce, until we added some chevre i had bought at a farmer's market. i had collected some wild mustard that went well with the meal too.
nick gave me some food to take with me for lunch the next day too. this hospitality was a very nice treat as i have been taking care of my own food needs often at my host's places. it gets tiring.
at the next place i stayed i was greeted with a hug. these folks accepted my help and advice on their compost. there was lots of music happening at their house and i went back a few nights later to attend a little drum circle they had around a little fire in the yard.
i stayed one night at a punk house that used to be called 'the barnyard', but now has no name. they have chickens and one large sunken vegetable bed. i was allowed to pee on the compost pile there and cook food in their kitchen with my friends. i did not find this place on couchsurfing actually. three kind people, the first people i met upon arrival in tucson, were staying there and introduced me. the house reminded me of when i used to be part of the anarchist/punk house circles in seattle. there is this wonderful communal spirit that i don't find often in other living situations.
one evening we made dinner and ate while two guys were having band practice in the room right next to us. we all put earplugs or toilet paper in our ears and toughed it out. very abrasive punk music on drum and bass. it is one of the more unusual experiences of the trip.
the house has a pretty good library of books on gardenning and composting, including the rodale 'complete book of composting', which i sat with for some time during one of my visits.
here are a couple of quotes from the book:
'the old-fashioned gardener obtains a black earth in his garden which a farmer never could produce in his fields'
-dr. ehrenfried pheiffer
'nothing is more certain than that continual cropping without manure deprives the soil of it's fertility.'
-james madison
another couple i stayed with let me make breakfast for them with eggs and greens i had gotten from the sleeping frog farm stand at the farmer's market. anya was advanced in her pregnancy and i really wanted to make her some healthy food as a way of supporting a healthy birth. but then of course i want to offend them by implying that what they were eating was not healthy. i find this kind of situation a little frusterating.
david and anya played a game of frisbee golf with me one day. it is the first time i have played! the discs are not controlled in the same way that the standard ultimate frisbee disc is, so it was a little discouraging. i battled through feelings of inferiority and had a pretty good time overall. i was happy to have been shown this by my hosts.
the course was interspersed with mesquite trees. many of them were damaged from being hit with frisbees. the ground was bare and compacted from being trampled continuously. there was a lot of litter. overall i found it a sad ecological impact on the place. i suppose that contributed to my sour mood during the game. stewardship is needed even on frisbee golf courses!
the last couchsurfing host i stayed with was down on the southwestern fringe of tucson, a good fourty minute ride from downtown. they were just getting settled in there. it is the family home of one of the girls, who is the one with the couchsurfing account. she has moved back there to try and create the cooperative household she and her friends envision. there is an idea to eventually have a school there!
i got excited when i heard that one of them was already depositing his humanure in the compost pile! the pile had been hastily made, without the proper mix of carbon. so i got permission and gave it a makeover. it is an open-fronted, pallet bin. when i moved the material, which was manly food scraps, asside i noticed that it was quite hot. the carbonaceous material i decided to layer in was bedding from when they had a horse there. it was mostly fine hay with a bit of horse manure in it. i also used this as a cover material in the poop bucket. it turned out not to be ideal, as it was smelly, but it served alright. clean sawdust or some kind of duff would have been preferable.
while at this house i decided to make some sourdough bread. i got a starter from small planet bakery and got flour to feed it right away at food conspiracy coop. that night i made the dough and in the morning produced one small loaf of very fine bread! i made to batches after that, with great success. i brought part of the first loaf to the bakery as i had told them i would let them know how it went. the man there had said that they used it more as a flavoring and it probably wouldn't do much levening... but it did! it acted just like any old sourdough i've ever used. if anything it was a little more sour and highly active.
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