The next morning at brunch Stojan (pronounced Stoyan) told me that his father in Bulgaria had just died.  I said, “We live within this world for awhile, circled up and growing like an egg, and then we travel again, going in a line toward the next world, like a sperm.”  Stojan wanted to do a ceremony to send his father a prayer blessing for safe passage to the next world.  Stojan said, “I want to release my father’s spirit to fast flowing water.”

An idea started to form.  I went down to the woodworking shop and used the bandsaw to cut out thirteen little pine boats (one for each person in our home), and I drilled them to each hold a tea candle, and each one had a bow line as well.  We decorated them with paper sides, we put a rice offering in each one of them along with incense stuck into hearty Russian rye bread (of course!), and we began to form prayers for safe passage for Stojan’s father.

I read some poetry:  Wendell Berry’s “To a Siberian Woodsman” and “The Gathering” which is about fathers, ending with, “I have grown to be brother to all my fathers, memory speaking to knowledge, finally, in my bones.” Stojan played his drum.

The mood became meditative.  Prayers were beginning to form.  People wrote them as they came, and tucked them into the boats.

It was just 24 hours since our guests had arrived.  I was pleased with the little fleet of boats created by our circle of friends.  We went to bed, knowing that we would be up at first light to launch the boats on the early morning outgoing tide.

In the morning,  some of the group carefully carried the boats, all tied in a circle, down to the water’s edge.

We lit the candles and the incense.

Stojan was very intent on getting all the candles and incense lit.

The weather was calm.  Amazingly, there were no mosquitoes !

I opened the circle and tied Stoyan’s lead boat with the sail to my rowboat.

Now the fleet was all in a row, ready to be towed from the cove out into the bay where a gentle east wind would carry the boats, flowing with the tide, toward the open sea.

Stoyan joined me in the rowboat.

Seated in the stern of the boat, I push-rowed so that Stojan could watch the little fleet of boats and pray for his father’s safe journey to the spirit world as we towed them out into the bay. The wind was calm, and the boats went with the tide.

It was a good ceremony.

Rest in the Light, Father, abide in the Heart.

Larch

The most beautiful dulse grows in shady crevices in the pounding surf.

Fill a four quart soup pot half full. Soften a six inch strip of digitata kelp in water and then cut it up in half inch pieces with a scissors or knife. Yes, it’s slippery. That’s the sodium alginate which is a great detoxifier for the body. Add the digitata, turn up the heat, then add a few eighth-inch thick slices of ginger and plenty of peeled garlic cloves. Add a few dried shiitake mushrooms. Once they have rehydrated, remove them, cut them into small pieces, and add them back. Add thyme and shoyu to taste. Simmer this dashi (Japanese soup stock) for at least half an hour. While you are simmering the dashi, cut up root vegetables to add to the soup.

The photo includes carrot, red potato, daikon radish, turnip, rutabaga, and beets, and you could also add onion, burdock root, celery root, salsify. This soup builds from the sea to the soil to the air, and in evolutionary terms, it starts with ancient kelp and primitive mushrooms and then progresses toward the plants that have been brought from the wild into the garden. So slice them up thin and pretty, and add them to the pot, starting with the hardest roots that will require the longest cooking, proceeding toward the softer roots that won’t need as much time. When the roots are almost ready to eat, you will add chopped greens for the final three minutes of cooking and cover the pot. Use a variety of greens, and use a lot. The soup pot should be near full by now. Here’s a photo of winter greens from our unheated greenhouse in January:

Kale and parsley and celery are always good additions, beet greens and spinach will bring variety, and even carrot tops, minced fine, will work. Top the soup with chopped scallions and serve hot.

Now here’s a wonderful addition: In a separate pot, cook rice pasta for 15 minutes until al dente, drain the noodles, add them to the soup, and you now have umami vegetable noodle soup! I like this photo Nina took. I told her it reminds me of two little boats gently knocking together at the dock in the harbor.

This is a late fall soup that’s been warming us up. Outside there’s a bit of snow on the ground, daylight is short, and we spend more time in the kitchen, slow cooking our food. This soup has the warm colors of orange vegetables, flecked with green vegetables. Make a big pot, and I’ll show you some ways that you can brighten its flavor on the second day.

You will need 1 and 1/2 cups of cooked chickpeas, so the first step is soak 3/4 cup dry chick peas overnight and then cook them with a 3 inch strip of kelp or digitata kelp for 1 and 1/2 hours. Nights are long. You’ve got time. And besides, if you cook more chickpeas, you can use them to make hummus with lemon juice, raw garlic, salt and tahini ! (No charge for the extra recipe.)

The second step is to cook 1/4 cup of brown rice with two tablespoons of seaweed soup mix (see www.theseaweedman.com) and five cups of water for half an hour to make a stock. While the stock cooks, cut up the vegetables for the next steps, and don’t worry if the stock cooks longer than half an hour.

The third step is in a soup pot, saute’ 2 cups chopped onions and 3 cloves of garlic (minced) in 4 tablespoons of coconut oil (unrefined) until translucent. Add three cups peeled and chopped sweet potatoes or winter squash and saute’ for five minutes. Add these spices: 2 tsp. Hungarian paprika (sweet), 1/2 tsp. tumeric, 1 tsp. basil, 1 tsp. sea salt (or more) to taste, pepper to taste, a dash of cinnamon, a dash of cayenne to taste, and two bay leaves. Add the rice/seaweed soup stock and simmer for 20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes can be mashed roughly with a potato masher. Do it!

The fourth step is add 1/2 cup chopped celery, 1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes, 3/4 cup yellow and/or red sweet peppers, 1/2 cup sliced carrots, 1 and 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add 1/2 cup chopped green beans or peas, and simmer for 5 more minutes. Stir in 1/2 cup chopped parsley and one tablespoon tamari. That’s it! A masterpiece!

On the second day, squeeze a lime to make a sweet & sour soup, add cumin and cut corn, or serve with corn chips. Add more parsley. Voila! A new soup!

I start by filling a four quart soup pot half full of water. I turn on the heat and add four tablespoons of Seaweed Soup Mix. I add three tablespoons of rice or barley. I add a couple of slices of ginger root. I add three dried shitake mushrooms. I peel a few cloves of garlic and toss them in. When the pot comes to a boil, I turn down the heat. When the mushrooms have rehydrated, I remove them to cool, and then I slice them and return them to the soup pot. In a separate pan, I saute’ a medium size sliced onion with liberal sprinkles of thyme. I like to use sesame oil or coconut oil. When the onion slices are golden, I set them aside. I slice root crops like carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, beets, and turnips. When the grain is al dente (soft enough to chew), I add the root crops. If I want a sweeter soup, I might add a few slices of delicata squash and some cut sweet corn. (In midsummer, I would add cut string beans and summer squash.) During the last three minutes of cooking, I add greens like parsley and kale, and I add the saute’d onions. I season with Eden organic shoyu soy sauce (no alcohol) and sometimes a dash of cayenne. I serve up the soup with a topping of fresh parsley and/or chopped chives. When I reheat this soup on the second day, I add more parsley. The seaweed creates a rich creamy broth that boosts the savory flavors of this soup. Yum!

Cross-hatch pattern on water

In the springtime, early morning new moon tides are the lowest. Early morning full moon tides are also lower than average. We pull on our wetsuits around 4 a.m., and we’re on the water by 4:30 a.m. Apprentices get their breakfasts around 3:30 a.m. if they’re going to have one. (When I was a young man growing up in Minnesota, I worked summers on my aunt and uncle’s 1000 acres farm. During hay season, we fed a hundred head of cattle and 50 pigs right after breakfast at first light. A good day on the farm during hay season, working with a family crew of 5 or 6 people, was a thousand bales of hay into the barn by the end of the day, around 9 or 10 p.m. This is where I learned the work ethic, “If I do not work, these worlds will perish.”)

The journey to the kelp beds takes about an hour. There’s a two hour window of opportunity to pull kelp into the boats. The goal is to pull 2000 pounds into the boats within two hours.

Larch pulls kelp into a punt boat

Coming home takes an hour. We all take a mid-morning break, getting out of our wetsuits, taking showers and warming up. Then we have a substantial breakfast. This is the meal that’s going to be with us as we hang up the kelp. The rest of the day is spent in the open air and sunshine, and if you just want a mantra to keep your hands busy while your soul ripens, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to handle approximately 2000 pieces of kelp, pinning each individual piece of kelp to clotheslines set up on the high water mark in the cove.

Kacie Hangs Up Kelp

By the end of the day, we have all done an honest day’s work, and here’s the proof:

Kelp hanging on lines in the cove

All the Way from China!

This year, digging in the garden, the apprentices found a salamander. I took that as a good omen, portending a lot of primordial energy in the garden, and the garden was, in fact, very lush and abundant. (The soil in my garden, by the way, is totally fertilized with seaweed, resulting in a dark rich loam.)

But there was no omen for the seaweed harvest. I decided to simply be patient and wait. I had four young men as apprentices. They would get distracted. One day Nina said to me, “There’s a Yiddish expression that describes your situation with these boys.” “Tell me,” I said. Nina smiled, “When you hire a boy, you got a boy. When you hire two boys, you got half a boy. When you hire three boys, you got no boy at all.” I laughed, “Nina, I’ve got four boys. I could be in deep trouble, except that the fourth boy is Jay (my son), and he counts for two.” We did, in fact, accomplish all the harvesting, drying, and packaging that I had set out to do, and on the final day of the alaria season (June 30th), we were finishing up a harvest on Bonny Chess Ledge, a place as beautiful as it sounds.

The tide was starting to come back in, and the boys had stripped off their wet suit jackets and were jumping into the surf to cool off. I lay down on a sloping ledge, six feet from the water’s edge. I thought, “Be grateful. You’ve accomplished what you set out to do. Now just relax. Let all your tensions go. In yoga, the Dead Man’s Pose is the hardest pose to do…..relaxing the body AND the mind.” As I relaxed, I turned my head to look toward the water, and there was a healthy baby seal, scootching toward me. I know the language of baby seals, so I spoke to it in its language. Every time I spoke, the seal scootched closer. Finally we were two feet apart, lying parallel to each other, rolled on our backs and looking up at the sky, utterly content. Then we turned and gazed into each other’s eyes. I said to the seal, this time in my own language, “You are so beautiful.” The seal responded with an affectionate puppy growl. I was a little surprised, and then I realized that this good-natured sound was the omen. One of the apprentices noticed what was happening and started to walk toward us. “Max,” I said, “get down low and roll over here. Don’t raise your arms.” Max rolled slowly, and finally we sandwiched the seal between us. We didn’t touch it. We talked and gazed. The seal remained totally relaxed. Finally I got up and resumed my work, loading bushel baskets of alaria into the punt in order to shuttle the alaria out to the container boat. Before I rowed away, I rowed up to the seal. The seal remained, a relaxed member of the group. Seal pups have very open playful hearts. Sometimes I will come upon a newborn seal that still has teeth marks on the umbilical cord stump where the mother chewed it off. There may be a fresh placenta nearby. In that case, I might talk to the seal just a little bit, and then leave quietly so that the mother will return. I’ve been around seals for 40 years, and they swim around me while I’m doing my work. This year, a baby seal brought the season’s omen-blessing, and I’m awash with gratitude as I remember that day.

Baby Seal, Sun-Blissed