A snapshot of seasonal, slow living.

We had our first frost of the season last Saturday. In my home garden, I picked the last of the peppers and tomatoes, including the green ones that I use to make chutney. Cleo, the head gardener at Shakti, and her nephew dug up the pepper plants and put them in containers to be moved inside. Despite my many years of gardening, I did not learn until this year that you can over-winter peppers, increasing their life span and saving money on new plants. The peppers have taken residence in my basement and require minimal care until next spring. 

With the last of this year’s harvest needing to be preserved, I spent the weekend chopping, cooking, and canning salsa and tomato sauce. Viewing the lined up jars of deliciousness felt value-aligned and comforting – validating time well-spent.

I also tried my hand at cheese making this weekend. I received a gallon of goat’s milk and considered the gift a sign to learn how to make cheese. The hardest part, I discovered, was locating rennet: the enzymes used to transform milk from a liquid to a solid. Prior to commercially packaged rennet, people harvested the necessary enzymes by either submerging a piece of animal’s stomach lining into the liquid or by making cheese in the stomachs of butchered cows, sheep, or goats.

After heating the goat’s milk to a temperature of 100 degrees, I added the rennet and turned off the heat. The liquid sits untouched for at least 30 minutes, giving the milk time to coagulate. With a long knife, I cut the coagulated liquid in the pot, creating small curds, which I eventually removed with a slotted spoon into a cheeseclothed lined colander fitted on top of a pot. The liquid left in the pot is the whey. Whey, I discovered, can be used in the garden as fertilizer or used in baking or as a soup stock. So much learning occurred this weekend!  A small aside: Throughout the cheese making experience, I could not stop reciting the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet.”

Other seasonal experiences that I am enjoying are:

• Rising Appalachia’s new album: Trade My Troubles
• Small Prophets: new TV show (Apple)
• Alix E. Harrow’s book: The Everlasting
• Lorriane Anderson and Juliet Diaz: Seasons of the Witch Mabon Oracle Deck
• Seduction of Sound: a new, all female, RnB group out of Nashville
• S.B. Long’s memoir: Uprooted
• Season 4 of The Diplomat (Netflix)
• Long walks with Lily, the dog
• Sweater Weather!
• Making soup

What are you enjoying this fall? Please share. 

Last bit of news:
We would love your help promoting the second annual Handmade Holiday Fair. (You can download the 8.5 x 11 flyer and post.) This November 14 event serves multiple purposes. 

1. When you buy gifts from the artisans showcasing, you are supporting local, female businesses.
2. There are multiple opportunities to receive a door prize. Each door prize is donated by one of the showcased artisans.
3. You support Shakti in the Mountains when you purchase homemade baked goods and other handmade items.
4. People come to hangout as well as to purchase gifts. It is a really fun and loving event.

I hope that you will join us for one or more of our seasonal offerings at Shakti in the Mountains.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week!

Love,

Kim

Thank you Sarah Long for guiding a wonderful writing workshop last week! I highly recommend buying Sarah’s memoir Uprooted: she writes beautifully!

For nearly thirty years, Kim Bushore-Maki has served Appalachia as both a pioneer and champion of holistic well-being and community health. 

A licensed clinical counseling professional, she became the first Master level clinician at East Tennessee State University's Counseling Center, where she provided therapeutic services and directed the Sexual Violence Prevention Program and the Alcohol and Drug Prevention Program.

During her tenure at ETSU, she was a founding organizer of the Tennessee Coalition for Healthy and Safe Campus Communities as well as Tennessee's representative for the National Prevention Network. She drafted ETSU's first Sexual Violence Response Policy and coordinated the region's first "Take Back the Night" program and fundraiser (the oldest worldwide movement to stand against sexual violence in all forms), the proceeds of which funded the first SANE nurses at the Johnson City Medical Center. Kim also served as Interim Director of Disability Services for 11 months.

In 2010, Kim followed her intuition and vision to found Shakti in the Mountains, a thriving healing-arts center that draws on somatic expressive therapy, archetypal psychology, wisdom traditions, and regenerative economics. Kim continues to maintain a small private therapy practice and also leads healing programs and retreats, guides the Shakti Stewardship Program, and serves as a community-building consultant to justice-oriented initiatives committed to building safe, inclusive, vibrant, and resilient communities.  ​

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