The Real Secret of the Stones

I spend most of my time at Milbeg Arts building a stone column. To gather stones for this project, we deconstruct a 200-year-old stone wall made of flat greenish brown siltstones held together by nothing more than mud and the root systems of hundreds of small plants and blackberry bushes. We stack these rocks along the backside of our cottage from largest on the right to smallest on the left.

Plant Roots Hold Together a 200-Year-Old Wall
(Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman)

The Rock Pile Behind Our Cottage

Before beginning to build, I listen to some basic instructions:

1)   Find the corner stones first, and then work inward.

2)   Find rocks that are about the same thickness and flat on top.

3)   Make sure your rocks don’t wobble.

When finding the corner stones, I place and replace stones until I find the best 90-degree corner that fits without a wobble.  The next rocks find their place through imprecise intuition and the use of cement.  My ultimate goal is to build to approximately the same level for each layer. 

Adding the Cement
(Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman)

The process calls for thinking in specifics and generalities at the same time: the specifics of 90-degree corners and the generalities of basically straight lines and almost level layers. It is a puzzle game where being too caught up in the specific fits will infinitely stall you, but ignoring the specific shapes completely will leave you with an indistinguishable, unstable blob.  

I know the former dilemma well. In times of extreme stress, I fixate on small details and the smallest decision paralyzes me because I give the decision of what I should eat for lunch the same importance as I might to the decision of what I should do in a moment of life threatening danger. This, at its worst, can result in the feeling that my world is constantly on the brink of collapse.

While building my column, I learn quickly that if you try to build an 8-foot column out of only small stones or only large stones, it will collapse. It is built best by using mostly large stones with a few small stones creating stability in between the imperfect fits.

Building Away
(Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman)

I began building at the place indicated by my lower hand.
(Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman) 

The building process is about stability, overarching lines, and compromise. You must give things their proper weight. Each decision adds up to a whole life, but the small ones—like lunch—usually won’t change its general shape.

I am good at rock building, “a natural” in our host’s words. After two weeks of hard work, the layers of my column rise above my head to eaves of the roof.  I find myself wishing that my life’s next steps rose before me so solidly high.

The Finished Product
(Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman)

Applying what stone building has taught me, I come up with these questions:

What are the corner stones of my life?  

What is the general shape will they make when they fit together?

What will stabilize the imperfect fits?

Which pieces fit together best now?

Which need to wait for later?

I can answer the first question easily.

Education.

Nature.

Movement.

Hands-on.

Stewardship.

People.

Creativity.

Writing.

Teaching Consent.

Women’s Empowerment.

These are the corner stones of my life.

The other answers don’t come as easily. Luckily, my building has taught me that I shouldn’t get too caught up on exact fits or perfect synthesis. Inevitably my life will contain rough edges, the layers will never be perfectly parallel, small parts may fall apart, and I may have to rebuild. Regardless, if I keep on building, decision after decision, mixing precision with intuition, eventually, I’ll construct a life of which I am proud.

Milbeg Arts: Teaching the Art of Sustainability

The Entrance to Milbeg Arts (we've drank tea out of that polka-dotted teapot). 

In Bantry, a smiling woman with a wide-brimmed leather hat and dirt covered jeans greets us with a warm hug. This is Annie, our first WWOOF host. After stuffing our bags into her car, Annie drives us to the dump to drop off some trash. Chatting a mile a minute, she tells us that she tries to live waste free by composting, recycling, and reusing everything. For this reason, she doesn’t produce enough trash to pay for a collection service. Parking the car, she asks us to help her to look through the wood scrap heap at the back of the dump. While searching for a doorframe and some trim for Annie’s latest project, we pick up some wood scraps for firewood. In this process, Annie joyfully saves a perfectly good basket from rubble. And thus, she introduces us to her sustainable lifestyle.  

A Poetic Lesson About Water Conservation From Milbeg Arts :)

About 20 years ago, Annie bought a five-acre piece of land in Coomhola, Ireland. The property held the remains of a 250-year-old farmhouse and several decrepit storage buildings made of rocks haphazardly piled into a few walls. Annie, a woman of vision, looked at the mess and saw its potential to become a community arts center for art classes and performance arts festivals.

Over several years, Annie built the farmhouse back up to its two-story height. With the help of family and friends, she tiled the roof with slate tiles, installed electricity and running water, and finally, fashioned a cozy home for herself. Almost all the windows and doors were salvaged.   After three years of commuting back and forth from England to Ireland, Annie completed the restoration.

Annie's Restored Home:
In order to save energy, they hang dry all clothing.
(Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman) 

Not long after Annie moved to Ireland fulltime, she began to host WWOOFers. She estimates to have hosted over 500 volunteers since the late 1990s. Everything from the greenhouse to the compost toilets to the garden walls and tool sheds have been built by volunteers. This includes the small stone house we have called home since arriving. The space used to be just a few broken down walls. Over six years, WWOOFer built up the walls, attached a roof, and insulated the walls with sheep’s wool. Now, the WWOOFer house has a full kitchen, running water, electricity, and excellent Wi-Fi.

The Building of the WWOOFer House.
(Courtesy of the WWOOF Ireland Newsletter)

Hanging in the WWOOFer House.
(Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman)

Nine years ago, Annie’s community arts center plans were put on hold. After Annie’s own WWOOFing trip to New Zealand, she was inspired to found the official WWOOF Ireland organization. In the time since, she worked incredibly hard to nourish sustainability and cultural exchange in Ireland by running WWOOF Ireland out of her home. Now, the WWOOF Ireland website has 473 farm hosts and close to 4,000 WWOOFers.

A schoolteacher at heart, Annie has donated her property to the learning process of volunteers. The place is filled with the disjointed growing pains of hundreds of passionate and often, inexperienced students. Some walls are slanted and tiling uneven; a dozen soon-to-be finished projects are scattered about the property. Despite the visual chaos, communal ideals hold the physical environment together. Milberg Arts may not yet host painting classes, but it will always welcome pupils interested in the art of sustainable, self-sufficient, do-it-yourself life skills.

This is a book I found at the Bantry public library that I thought
 accurately summed up the lesson of our first WWOOF host. 

Dead Zoos & Green Deserts

Jet-lagged Kyle is SUPER excited about Ireland's National Natural History Museum!

On the lawn outside the “Dead Zoo” (aka Ireland’s National Natural History Museum), five deformed sheep-shaped bushes frolic with red Christmas ribbons around their necks.

Sheep-shaped Christmas Bushes

When we walk into the main hall, we see three giant skeletons of the now extinct Irish elk whose antlers easily reach almost twelve feet tip to tip. These ancient deer—the size of Alaskan moose—once roamed throughout Eurasia from Ireland to Siberia. We call them Irish merely because the most intact remains ever discovered were found in the bogs in Ireland. These three particular specimens are estimated to be around 10,000 years old. Standing under their vast bodies, I begin to imagine what kind of ancient Irish environment could have supported such majestically large creatures. Somehow I can’t imagine them thriving on the endlessly green—and virtually treeless—pastures that currently cover the country.

Kyle admiring the giant elk.

             At the back of the chamber, a display labeled “Conservation” catches my eye. The heading “Green Deserts” is written in tiny font over a cracked display case. The term green desert means an outdoors area that, although uniformly green, lacks biodiversity and actively discourages the development of native plants and animals. Ireland is covered in a wealth of livestock grazing fields, cultivated public parks, and home gardens. Most of the tourist appeal of Ireland comes from a longing to engage with its idyllic pastoral landscape of rolling green hills ripe with lambs and shaggy cattle. Unfortunately, this deceptively lush landscape is often the result of widespread deforestation, herbicide overuse, monoculture, and aggressively maintained horticultural order. Native Irish plants and animals (like the once widespread Irish elk) have little chance of survival. 

When the first humans arrived on Ireland around 9,000 years ago (7,000 BCE), the island was blanketed in forests of Oak, Elm, and Scots Pine.  By 4,000 BCE, the forest began to decline. Over the next 5,000 years, both the Elm and Scots Pine died out completely.  By 1900, the once extensive Irish forests were virtually nonexistent, covering only 1.5% of Ireland. Scientists believe that industrialization, population growth, and the clearing practices of Scottish, Welsh, and English settlers caused this mass extinction.

Clear cut forest remains.

Since 1900, afforestation efforts have built the forest back up to around 10% land coverage in 2006. Unfortunately, commercial timber species make up close to 75% of these woodlands.

Commercial (& invasive) lodgepole pine timber stands.

Tree saplings planted in reforestation efforts.

In recognition of the conservation work yet to be done, the Natural History Museum display encouraged locals to plant “wild gardens” filled with biologically diverse native plants species that will attract native wildlife, creating mini-ecosystems. The display also pointed to the potential for Ireland’s numerous hedgerows to serve as wildlife corridors. A living fence of trees, shrubs, and bushes border most pastures and roads in rural Ireland.  If these hedgerows are allowed grow with minimal trimming, native animals can use them as shelter and biological highways.

A Unique Water Conservation Technique

            On the recommendation of Google, we went to Brother Hubbard’s for brunch our second morning in Dublin. After enjoying a wonderful Middle Eastern/Irish fusion brunch, I went to the restroom to discover something awesome above the toilet.  

The sink above the toilet. (Photo courtesy of Kyle Ackerman)

 The sign barely visible in the upper righthand corner read:

I washed my hands in the gushing water. The sink ran for at least 60 seconds, stopping only when the toilet tank was full.  The experience made me viscerally aware of how much water it takes to flush a toilet.


For more information about the history of Irish forest, go here!

The Rocky Road to Dublin

Why WWOOF? 

The beginning of this dream to WWOOf in Ireland came to us (Kyle & me) about a year ago celebrating New Years in Santa Marta, Colombia. I, however, have been dreaming of this moment for almost 7 years. 

I first learned about WWOOFing from my college orientation leader in the fall of 2010. Jeannette had spent a year WWOOFing in Latin America between her junior and senior years at Yale. She described her experience as a time of arduous manual labor and deep personal growth.

            My sophomore year at Yale I experienced academic burnout. I studied constantly, but a numbing T.V. static buzzed constantly inside my head, making it impossible to concentrate. I thought I wouldn’t make it through the semester. Remembering Jeannette’s story, I rushed to purchase a WWOOFing membership to volunteer on organic farms in Central America. Luckily, by December, the TV static had faded and I decided to stay at Yale.  Regardless, in the hard months that autumn, the idea that I could escape to the fertile soils of Central America allowed me to push forward.

            A year later, reeling from a relationship’s deterioration, I decided it was time to escape for real. I spent spring of my junior year at a university in Galway, Ireland.  After a semester of wandering down muddy cow paths and climbing into trees that overlooked horse pastures, I had a realization: my soul and body feed on fresh air, physical activity, and engaging with the outdoors (especially in times of uncertainty and hardship).

            Struggling to readjust to Yale’s breakneck pace the following fall, I remembered what I’d learned about myself in Ireland and signed up to volunteer at the sustainable farm.   Every Sunday of my senior year—come sun, rain, ice storm or polar vortex—I walked uphill twenty minutes to the farm. Whether I was pulling weeds beneath giant Brussels sprout leaves or planting tiny seeds in neat rows in the green house, I felt a much missed—and previously lacking—sense of peace and purpose.

            Now, about two years later, I find myself once again lost. I quit my teaching job because severe anxiety (along with other issues) made it impossible for me to both do my job and take care of myself. Since then I've been recuperating. For the first time in my life, I don’t know where I will be in a year’s time. The road ahead of me is muddled with unknowns and plagued with uncertainty. Sweating in the cold, rainy fields of the Emerald Isle with my beloved boyfriend by my side, I hope to reencounter the peace, purpose, and clarity that grow in fresh dirt. That is why I want to WWOOF.

The Adventure Begins

Well, it’s less than 12 hours before our flight leaves for Ireland! Bags packed and passports double-checked, we are ready for an adventure:

Keep your eyes peeled for a post announcing our safe arrival in Dublin on Saturday!

Also, click the link to check out the Rocky Road to Dublin Song. :)