I Believe in Everything

Dacha Model in prog, originally uploaded by Lea LSF.

I’ve been working on this sketch, eventually to include the entire 16 acres of property!! Yes.. This idear has been floating about for a while and is now coming to fruition b/c of two impetuses.

1. Lovely + talented Ari Moore of Shirari Industries is building the Dacha Protege a new shiny wordpress hacked website, in exchange for what is essentially a lot kale over years to come. My role in this: To help design the Dacha a logo, and to create a map of the homestead that can be inter-activated through flasher. I can’t wait to sit with Ari as she works to learn all this cool stuff!!!

2. I am applying to an art school in the area, and want to include something of The Dacha Proj proj in my portfolio and hoping this will give context to the photos of our projects there.

Also something to look forward to is the transformation of all this into a 3d model to be added to google earth (thanks Katya for idear), and then printed on a 3d printer in chocolate as a big birthday cake to the dacha on its next birthday.

yes,
Lea

It would take me many days to write about all we’ve been up to since early Spring 2009. One day we’ll have more time, and soon there will be a video camera to call my own- so more videos of how we go will hit this blog and the Dacha’s blog. In the meanwhile enjoy these four photos, and go here for more.

Southern side of windows, double-paned, argon filled, no low E. And them thar hills, well they mark the line between a major watershed divide. To the north, which we are, the groundwater ends up in Lake Eerie. To the south, the Chesapeak Bay!

Locate your very own watershed here.

The big tree to the right is a giant black walnut tree. Today, Joe and Danila found a mouse in the house eating some shelled walnuts. Naughty mouse!

We hit water at 64 feet, coming in at about 13 lbs/minute. The drilling took 2 & 1/2 days. We found a guy that does it the good old way!

I’ve been living in the big red house by Cascadilla Gorge, otherwise known as the Tara House. Besides Danila and myself, the rest of the house’s inhabitants are Buddhist. These photos were taken in the shrine room, where everyday a flame is lit as an offering.

(more…)

April 6, 2007 7:30 a.m Garden of Edith, LI, NY, USA
overcast, windy, rainy.

My first weekend here serendipitously corresponded with a health retreat entitled “Farming for Yourself,” and let me tell you about the unlikely group it drew- motley in their diversity. It was one of those rare congregations that couldn’t have happened otherwise.

Here sojourned a middle-aged couple, Rita and Ron, who as a hobby follow the farm season’s progress on weekends. So when Ron, a full-time employee of the NY State Lottery, is not out at stadiums dressed in the money suit shouting out this week’s jackpot, he is down in New Jersey for the first taste of strawberries. And when Nurse Rita is done checking all the blood pressures one woman can handle, she can be seen at a garlic festival in Long Island. Rita and Ron walking side by side, splitting cloves of Russian Salvation, German Red, Morado de Padronera and Asian Tempest, pondering the virtues of both hard-neck and soft-neck garlics. Incredible.

(more…)