If you landed here through search, or found your way in from somewhere else ~ hello. Glad you made it. Eaborn is a blog about ancestral living skills. What I write about: growing food, reading the seasons, working with botanicals, knowing your soil and water, and the deeper rhythms that used to be common knowledge. I'm Marama ~ permaculturist, certified herbalist, and frequency healing practitioner with 25 years of practice in the Northern CA Sierras. I write from observation and lived experience. What you'll find here: ✦ Field notes on food sovereignty, seasonal rhythms, and land stewardship ✦ Honest observations from the ancestral record ✦ A curated Affiliate Directory of communities and resources I actually use Comment on what resonates. Ask a real question. That's what the comments are for. When you're ready to go deeper ~ live calls, courses, a real practicing community ~ that work lives in Eaborn Living Otherwise ~ browse, read, find what calls you. And, make sure to ring the bell, if you would like to meet new members as they join. ✦ Marama

Without getting into the details of why, we can just say my yard looks a little unkempt. Besides the fact that I find the physical act of mowing to be exhausting, the stress of it destroys my peace when I’m worried about all the little critters I could potentially be killing. I have managed to cut a small area along our front sidewalk so I can set up a few chairs and my dog has a place to roll around, but the rest of the acre+ is uncut. Yesterday I was visiting a friend in a quiet subdivision a few minutes away from my house, and while sitting on her front porch I was looking around and marvelling at how clean everything was. My friend mentioned she sprays for wasps, but clearly that poison spread like a plague…there was a sparse display of spider webs but no sign of any insects. She doesn’t have any garden whatsoever and her lawn looks like a golf course. It all felt very sterile to me, but I’m sure the average person would deem it a neat and tidy, acceptable suburban yard. This morning I woke up and took my tea outside to sit in one of the chairs I have placed in a small patch of shortish grass. I took my shoes off and let my feet linger on the ground, I watched cardinals and hummingbirds and blue jays feast on the feeders, and listened to the mourning doves cry their sad song. Red winged black birds splashed around in the bird bath and chipmunks and baby bunnies ran around the base avoiding the drips. Squirrels ran through the treetops, turkey vultures circled above, and I could hear deer crashing through the field beside me. I saw toads hopping under the decaying rhubarb leaves, monarchs fluttering around the milkweed, honey bees collecting pollen on the vast array of weeds and native plants, bumblebees resting on the echinacea, and even a garter snake sunning itself on the sidewalk. In a span of 15 minutes I witnessed an entire ecosystem thriving around me. The grass is waist high, the outside of the house has webs in every corner, and the gardens have weeds, but there is life in every inch of it. I grow food and herbs and maintain a habitat that houses probably hundreds of species of beings. People scoff at my lack of maintenance, but I’m happier being a friend of nature, than fighting against it.