This Morning, tomorrow….a week.

Today the sun came out like a glorious gift and warmed everything up. After a week of mostly rain, we were feeling dry and ready to get out into the back-yard.

It has been two weeks since the bees swarmed and the chickens came to live with us here on the “farm” which has been the best gift we have given ourselves in a long time, and we are enjoying the process of learning to keep different animals.

Today I fed the chickens and made a small feather garden with their molted feathers,  then I went in to check on the bees, with the intent to make sure that both hives have queens, and they do which is a great relief!

The hive that swarmed had at least 2 queen cells that were freshly hatched and so one of them will make her maiden flight and then come back to the hive ready for laying.

The other hive the “swarm” hive I knew had a queen, but I wanted to make sure that she survived and was a lying once again, which I could tell by the small rice like eggs in the bottom of the cells and the capped brood I found–good news all around!

They were also very busy making honey which was lining the entire top of the box and had to be scraped down, making a tasty treat!

Today I also prepare to leave early for the B.C Shamanic Conference, in Squamish for for a full week!

A week away from the duties of being a mother and wife. For a week I leave behind the mundane world and enter into direct relationship with spirit and from what I can tell this year I will be working harder then I ever have before.

On a practical level this means that anything ordered between Mat the 7th and 13th will not be shipped out until the 14th. when I get back.

I have made a bunch of  bear and wolf claw pendants for the conference, so this also means that anything that makes it back will be listed!!

This year is my 3rd year going and I am very much looking forward to seeing the friends I have made over the years, as we all gather back together from North America and Europe, and as far away as New Zealand.

But this year is also different for me in that close to a year ago I began a new shamanic apprenticeship in a northern European tradition known as the Wolven Path, and this year I will be leading a ritual and moving from my first year and into my second in this new lineage.

It has been a humbling and enlightening experience to begin a shamanic apprenticeship all over again after years of working with my guides as my only teachers.

I have had to “empty my cup” over and over again to make way for new teachings, and I have been amazed at how many lessons  were simply waiting for me,  it has me humbled and connecting in a new and deeper way as I move from my teachings in Core shamanism to that of a lineage tradition, which is very different indeed.

And so I leave this post to head back out to the garden, to spend the rest of the day with my family before I leave for a week.

Bright Blessings

Nikiah

 

 

 

Flowers and Bees and Chickens-OH MY!!

I can’t believe it has been well over a week and I have not burst at the seams with excitement to tell you all about our new pets, well um, chickens actually, but since we have named them they count as pets right?

It all started at our New years Eve party this past winter when I was extolling the virtues of our neighborhood and in the same breath wondering how to bring us together more often as a community.

Well I got my chance to walk my talk right then and there as our friend and neighbors two doors down Jason and Jayne were saying they wished that they had more room in their yard so they could have chickens.

Chickens, did you say chickens I piped up? I would love to keep chickens and since our city now allows us to to have as many as 4 it made us giddy with excitement!

And so a plan was “hatched” for us to share the cost of a coop and chickens in the spring and to create an opportunity to get the kids involved in tending chickens and gathering eggs, a perfect teaching moment for all of us.

We got a local guy whose business is called the “Vancooper”{ clever name if you ask me} to build us the coop and install it, which was great as he also keeps chickens and had loads of great advice and suggestions to get us going.

We did tons of research on breeds of chickens and decided that the color of the eggs would drive us as much as the temperament of the chickens and we settled on Wyandotte’s for brown eggs and Ameraucana’s for blue eggs.

Interestingly enough the day we planned to actually get the chickens was the same day that the bees decided to swarm and so I was very distracted by that for obvious reasons.

But the day turned into a beautiful one and when we all finally were packed up and ready to drive out to the country to get our chickens we were all in good spirits and looking forward to the next adventure!

The woman who owned the farm was fantastic and allowed the kids to choose and promised that if by accident we got any roosters she would exchange it for a hen, so fingers crossed we did not get any roosters, I value my sleep and my neighbors good feelings too much!

Of course there were chicks freshly born and so the kids each had a turn holding their softness. It was truly a full spring day filled with babies and sunshine.

We even got to meet the most beautiful gray horse mother and her new foal.

We decided that since there were 4 kids involved we would get 4 chickens and let each kid choose and name their own chicken, Our kids being much older chose the longest most complicated names, while the little ones chose short and very sweet names.

For anyone who lived through the 80′s or has shown their kids the movie back to the Future we have Marty McFly, then there is Baba, Bearded Blue Egg and Fan.

I even got in on the action holding the chickens and petting their super soft feathers, which reminded me of my early days on my parents goat farm, were we also kept chickens, my farm roots clearly showing themselves!

And so it is we officially have a small community farm in our back-yard, flowers and bees and now Chickens…..

Oh MY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beltaine Blessings

Beltane, which falls halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice,  and means “good fire.” It is also a fertility festival, dancing round the maypole, crowning the May Queen.

May your spring be filled with fertile creative possibility!