Blog Posts

Distilling Friendships and Rosewater

6/1/2012

          At the recommendation of our cousin Max, Quiet Creek’s present-day theatre camp director, we headed into Corsica’s foothills to an essential oil farm called Essences Naturelles. As a teenager, Max had volunteered there, picking organic kiwi and clementines.

          My Dad ventured to this unique farm on his own meeting both Albrecht and Steffi, the farm’s owner and manager. After Dad’s interaction, they graciously invited our whole family to a dinner party the following Friday evening.

          With bouquet in-hand, we arrived on our rental bikes with excited anticipation. Warmly welcomed by our hosts, we toured the essential oil garden, distillation warehouse, and laboratory. Dad joined Steffi in the cottage garden and kitchen digging potatoes and preparing an exquisite sauce to top the pommes de terre with local cream, onions and chives.

The rest of us were entertained by Phillip, a French WWOOFer (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) who was sharing his physical strength in exchange for room and board. Another guest, Samuel was visiting Albrecht’s daughter Bianca and was preparing for his Swiss woodworking debut in New York City. Andrea, a chemical engineer from El Salvador, also joined us for dinner. She had studied essential oil distillation at the farm and was now a perfumer in the infamous town of Grasse, France.

During a poisson de Corse, a local fish dinner, we comfortably experienced four languages –English, French, German and Spanish. Incredibly, the gathering offered a diverse, intellectual discourse on the perils of genetically-modified foods, oils of the world, distillation of fruit liquors, Chunnel transportation, and the protective tendencies of Corsican dogs. The banquet was completed with strawberries and crème fresh while our proposal to volunteer two days a week at Essence Naturelle was enthusiastically accepted.

As promised, we arrived Monday morning willing to do whatever was needed at the bustling business. Steffi greeted us with baskets and buckets and mentored us on how to hand-pick roses. With magnificent aroma surrounding us, we harvested over an acre of flower heads. She then directed us to the distillation building used for making rosewater.

The farm did not distill rose essential oil because five tons of petals are needed to make one kilogram of rose oil. So instead, she weighed the harvest, poured it into a big stainless steel drum, and added five liters of water for each kilo of petals. Then attaching tubing to the glassware, she explained the rosewater distillation method.

“The steam from the petals,” she commented while lighting the propane burner under the barrel, “will rise up out of the glass pipe and condense into a liquid when coming in contact with cold circulating water. This rosewater will then drip into the container below. The distillation continues until all the rose petals have lost their delicate pink color. The end product is used in the farm’s laboratory to perfume organic cosmetics. The flower waste is composted and used in the herbal garden to carry on sustainably.”

Intrigued with physics and chemistry, Ashton and I easily convinced our parents to purchase the needed equipment and to offer this newly-learned technique. Be on the lookout at Quiet Creek for the expansion of a rose garden and for upcoming distillation classes. Definitely consider log onto www.enc.fr for the highest-quality essential oil products I have ever come across.

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Sea to Sea Sabbatical

5/29/2012

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Returning from the Caribbean Sea was surreal; we arrived at Quiet Creek through a time machine haze. A week of R& R (regroup and repack) was changed to two weeks of A&A (adjust and avoid) due to a 90-day travel restriction to foreign countries. So to avoid experiencing French imprisonment, we shortened our trip coming and going to keep immigration officials happy (unknowing of the laws, Claire had earlier booked a 120 day excursion).

          Our new tickets channeled us through Boston with an eight hour layover. In preparation for a long oceanic fight, niece Laurelee suggested we ditch Logan Airport and explore Beantown. In fifteen minutes, the subway landed us in Boston Commons standing on John Hancock’s grave. We hooked up with a comical tour guide who explained many tidbits of American history, along with the fact that we would soon be visiting the ancestral land of Paul Revere; his parents being French Huguenots.

          Our jumbo 767 into Frankfurt, Germany pleased all jet setters. Lufthansa not only provided abundant, delicious food, but also permitted Claire and Ashton to stretch out on the floor while providing non-stop multi-media for Rusty and Walker. Setting foot in Deutschland and honoring his German teacher, Herr Sweitzer, Walker ordered a 30 centimeter Weiner schnitzel.   Gorged and excited, we boarded our next flight to Marseille, France.

After an easy landing we buzzed through baggage claim, passed three people talking at the custom’s desk, and walked outside into the blustery Mediterranean air.    Our un amis de un amis (friend of a friend), Remy, was waiting for us with our “Welcome Orners” on the airport marquis, a blown-up family photo in hand, and the traditional kiss to kiss to each cheek.

          We immediately felt at home on French soil and dined on a meal from French soil; Remy taught us how to collect wild edible greens and flowers around his chateau. Our basket was full of colorful pink cistus and malva flowers, yellow roquette buds, and shades of green lamb’s quarters, fennel, mint and thyme.

          Instantly we connected with his wife Cecil and her daughter, Roman, reciprocating words from our respective languages. Remy, linguistically versed, patiently translated when the conversation faltered. With a view of the Mediterranean Sea, we toured the thousand year old olive grove, shepherd’s cave, aqueducts, and bee colonies. Remy even showed us an ancient salt trading route with the remnants of a limestone road cut by iron wagon wheels.

          Reluctant to leave, but with the promise to see each other soon, we headed to the ferry with Remy at the steering wheel. Without him we surely would have been stranded. He however not only got us there in time (the ferry dock for foot passengers had been relocated several kilometers away), and arranged an escorted ride to the loading platform ahead of all the passengers (foot and car).

          The twelve-hour ride from the southern coast of mainland France to the island of Corsica was spent eating baguettes with artisan cheese and sleeping in our cozy four-bed cabin. Occasionally, we dimly heard French announcements over the loudspeaker. The ferry could have been sinking for all we understood; nothing but the chilly Mediterranean waters could have awakened us.

          At 7 a.m. Rusty easily exited us off the ferry, onto a shuttle, and hiked us to the Bastia bus stop. Marsha, his cousin had generously provided not only her Corsican villa for the summer, but also many pointers, one of them being the public bus schedule. We dutifully read it, without being aware of French holidays. While breakfasting on local grapefruit, pears and strawberries, we waited for the 10 a.m. bus and then the one to arrive at noon.

Knowing that something wasn’t quite right, we flagged down a taxi driver willing to transport us the 30 kilometers needed to reach Moriani Plage. Racing down an autobahn-like highway, Pierre was clocked at 140 km/hour. For math class, Ashton later calculated that Pierre, with us on board, was 50 miles/hour over the designated speed limit.

Bianca, other amie de amies, hospitably picked us up at Pierre’s drop-off (ironically the town’s bus stop) and piled us in her compact car with luggage on lap and dog kennel on floor.

Grateful for our many friendships, we arrived exactly 72 hours to complete the itinerary of our C& C trip (Corsica, Pennsylvania to Corsica, France). We look forward to sharing our SSS adventure (sea to sea sabbatical) with you.

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The Richness of Community

5/10/2012

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        In Harmons, Jamaica I saw poverty -- the lack of material resources. The people had the basic necessities: clean air, simple shelter, clothing, water collected off their roofs, fresh fruit, vegetables, free-range eggs, meats, but nothing more than that.

Told to my mom by one of our neighbors, Winsome, that nobody in Harmons ever starved. Everyone took care of each other and shared what they cultivated and harvested from God. Though they had little money or luxuries, I witnessed their richness in community, friendship and God’s love.

          On our way back to the USA, we stayed a night at an all-inclusive resort in Montego Bay here materialistic wealth was everywhere. The bars, restaurants, waterpark, swimming pools, and beaches were open twelve hours a day. Excess was abundant; people could eat and drink whatever and whenever they wanted. They appeared to wander from one excess to the next, independent of each other with no sense of community or friendship. They had the fanciest clothing and latest technology.

          So I ask who are the richer people? Is it the American and Canadian tourists who materially had everything they could want, but appeared lost in the excess? Or was it the people of Harmons who had just simple necessities, but a supportive community reaching out to help in any way?

What if the whole world shared materialistic wealth? It would also make everyone equally rich in the things that are really important: love and peace.

        Take a trip to Harmons or read Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, this thought provoking book and my mission experience have opened my eyes.

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Catch a Skill

4/30/2012

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    When my dad Rusty heard our neighbor “Brain” (his pet-name) was going to “pack a skill” he was interested to know more. The local people use the phrase “to catch a trade” meaning to learn a skill, so to support one’s family and self in this remote community of Harmons, Jamaica. My dad assumed that packing a skill was a trade that one might catch and was curious to learn more. As it turned out, Brain was building a charcoal pile or just a “coal” pile according to the Jamaicans.

     He had spent some time in the bush cutting down young hard wood trees and then cutting them into six foot sections. He piled them at the edge of the field behind the Harmony House garden which he had chosen to smolder the wood.

    Packing a charcoal skill, my dad soon learned, took skill. In the center of the twenty foot level area, Brain carefully constructed what he called a “baby,” three cubic feet of dry kindling. He then began setting larger chunks of wood about eight inches in diameter and sometimes up to six feet long into a sort of a teepee. Brian and my dad did this until the skill was packed tightly with saplings to fill the holes. Jerry, a Rastafarian neighbor and friend, assisted in cutting the sapling plugs with only a few swift swings of his machete. Our friend Dave explained that to use the machete properly you must ‘drive it like a car with your foot on the pedal’ so to be safe and under control. The skill grew up and out very quickly to nearly six feet tall. Brain had my dad climb up on top of the pile and jam the rest of the foot long sapling plugs into the remaining holes. When the wooden part of the skill was complete it resembled a beaver lodge. Brain and Jerry then covered the top with some zinc roofing and then covered the whole pile with cut grass and weeds about a foot thick. Rocks and logs were placed around the bottom and the green layer was covered with soil. All the time a tunnel was kept open to the center of the skill to light it. When the soil was complete Brain lit a rag soaked in kerosene that was tied to end of a long stick on fire and shoved it into the tunnel to the “baby.” Brain covered up the tunnel as smoke slowly started to seep out of the vents. The next day the skill seemed to be a smoking volcano on the verge of eruption with smoke filtering out of the pile, but Brian carefully controlled the smoke flow buy adding dirt onto selected holes.

    The skill was left to smolder for nearly a week until the smoking ceased, indicating, in the words of Brain, “it finished.” After an additional day of cooling off, the soil was shoveled off and Brain and my dad used a grub hoe and a rock rake to “draw” or unpack the skill. This soon turned out to be long, dirty work. The finished charcoal was spread out in a halo around where the pile used to be. After the charcoal cooled it was packed into feed bags and covered with large, fan shaped leaves that Brain cut from the ‘bush’ or nearby tropical woods. They slid down around the top of the bag to make a perfect lid and then the bag was tied with “wists” (vines). Brain’s skill yielded fifteen bags of charcoal which he can sell for six hundred Jamaican dollars each (about seven American dollars) to his neighbors and friends.

    Charcoal is used by most of the community for cooking their food on open fires or on cement platform stoves. The advantages of charcoal are that it creates a hot fire and burns with very little smoke.

This week my dad caught a trade by learning how to pack and draw a skill.

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Mango Madness

4/24/2012

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Flitter, flatter, something falls through the branches and hits the ground below -- thump. A few leaves follow the fallen fruit’s path spinning down to earth. From out of windows sets of eyes and ears peer out, searching. Unexpectedly from one of the doorways, a little girl darts toward the tree. Her mother screams and runs after her calling for her to come back. A teenager sees the fruit and dives for it too. He reaches it before the girl and snatches it up. The girl shrieks as the boy runs off down the path. Jealous tears of frustration streak down the girl’s face, she struggles against her mother as she is carried away from the mango tree.

In Jamaica, mango season begins during the summer months, but in April on the tree right outside the Harmony House, the fruit is ripening nicely. Technically the tree stands on the path between the house and our community of neighbors which makes it open for anyone to pick. Though there are many fruit on the tree, they are hard to get.

Mangoes are said to be one of the sweetest and most delicious fruits of the Caribbean. I agree. When you take a bite of a fresh yellow mango (after peeling the skin off of course) it is as if you are taking a bite of heaven. In between slurps, my dad says they remind him of peaches. They are very sought after and you have to know how to get them.

A fully ripe mango, Mangifera indica, is high in Vitamin A (beta-carotene), which is a cancer-fighting agent, Vitamin C, Vitamin B1, and B2, niacin, potassium, iron and fiber. Green mangoes have a higher proportion of Vitamin C, but may irritate your mouth, as testified by my friend Junior. Mangoes are good for the kidneys, digestive system of the body and the skin. They relieve clogged skin pores, reduces cysts, excess body heat and fever. Even the mango skin is great for you, just blend it up in a smoothie.

Every morning I walk down into the garden to get a few papayas for breakfast. I walk right past the tree, since I wake up earlier than most, I can usually beat the rug rats to the ones that fall overnight. If they fall during the day, the situation I described above is bound to occur.

Another technique to secure the fruit is by climbing the tree with a big stick (which is pretty hard) and knocking down the ripe ones. Brain (our neighbor), Ashton and I tried this with mixed results. Brain climbed the tree and Ashton and I waited below ready to catch the falling fruit. As soon as they started dropping people poured out of the surrounding houses. Brain jumped from down from the tree, grabbed three mangos and took off up the path. Ashton did the same leaving me to be attacked by the bombardment of requests for the mangos in my hands. I, unable to refuse, handed out what I had then dashed after Brain and Ashton with only one mango remaining.

An additional way to attain mangos is to throw rocks and try to knock down a ripe one. My aim is not good enough to hit my intended target, so I’d probably knock the whole tree down before hit the mango I wanted.

Although last week I witnessed Donavan (one of the Harmony House staff members) walk down to the mango tree and picking up a few rocks. He threw them up into the branches and must have had an amazing aim or just really lucky because he accumulated a large group of ripe ones. When he was finished he picked them up, stuffed six in his pocket and with two in each hand walked up the path munching happily.

I have diagnosed myself with OMD (obsessive mango disorder) and am currently addicted. My family and I hired one of our friends, Mutta to pick some; he arrived this morning with 50 mangos.

It will be hard to leave this delicious fruit, but when we finally get back to Pennsylvania, it will be the start of blueberry, apples, pears, grapes and raspberries season. Maybe I can satisfy my mango cravings.

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Birthday Traditions

4/15/2012

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Flour -- we bake with it, we fry with it, we knead with it, and we sink our teeth into the baked goods we make with it. Most of the time we, as Americans, come in contact with this white or brown dust only through our mouths. In Jamaica we make dumplings, fried chicken, and pizza crusts, but flour also serves a whole different purpose.
    Here, a birthday tradition is to pour a cup of flour over the head of the birthday individual, whatever the age. Recently I celebrated my fourteenth birthday and came to learn intimately what this Jamaican custom involves.
    On April 6, I went onto the deck of the Harmony House to do my morning devotion. My friend Ian tiredly ventured out holding his bible and coffee cup. He then poured out of his “coffee” cup of what I soon found out to be flour onto me. The white waterfall cascaded down my head and onto my neck. He smiled, stepped back to take in the whole effect, and walk away snickering.
    Then I was mobbed by the North Carolina mission team. They wrapped me in crepe paper, placed a birthday hat on my head, and floured me. Leaving white footprints, I walked from the deck into the meeting room for the morning gathering.
    Loyd, our Won by One to Jamaica leader, came in carrying his coffee cup and bible and stood right behind me. Although I saw through his guise, I did not say anything so as not to ruin his fun. Loyd announced our serving assignments for the day: mixing concrete for the Porus house, stringing up peppers at the greenhouses, and conducting a marl haul for a Harmons’ resident. Nonchalantly he turned to me and dumped, what I already knew to be flour, over my head.
    By this time I was on the lookout for people who had intentions to mischievously celebrate by birthday. Somehow I missed Junior; he generously dusted me.
    Fortunately I did not get floured at my serving site, and when I returned I played basketball with a few Jamaican friends. Setting my hat down to grab the ball, I was immersed in the fun forgetting all about my hat. Stanley brought it in as I was sitting down in the courtyard to take off my work shoes. Ever so smoothly, he turned my hat right side up and put it on my head; the flour came rushing out covering me once again.
    After a jerk chicken dinner and a lime coconut birthday cake, I fell exhausted into a deep sleep. The next morning I had to shake flour out of my bed. On Sunday, my Pastor Clinton shared he missed me at Good Friday concert, saying he had intended to flour me while hoping to sing “happy birthday”.
    Flour may feel nice when kneading bread dough, but it is not pleasant going down your shirt. A cup of flour goes a long way. It gets everywhere, from between your toes to behind your ears. But I am not complaining, it could have been a lot worse; I could have been egged (another Jamaican birthday tradition).

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A Compact Community

4/12/2012

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    Jamaica’s community is rich in its social network. Adults mentor each other's children at local dances. Gardens feed the gardenless. People genuinely spend time wanting to know “was up?” Deep conversation is shared eye to eye at the cistern and at the clothesline.
    This week we came to know the meaning of this tightly knit community in a closely packed van. Our church (led by Pastor Clinton at the Harmony House) was invited to attend a harvest festival at Belcarris Church in Banana Ground about an hour and a half from Harmons.
    Each quarter, Jamaican churches hold harvest festivals to praise God for His bountiful produce and to raise resources for the community in need. Members of the churches traditionally bring fruit and vegetables locally grown, but now the majority of the donations are “sweeties”. We donated Quiet Creek’s bread baked in Harmon’s newest earthen oven.
    When the evening of the harvest service arrived, our family walked out to the gate to be picked up by the van. When the four of us opened the door, we saw finely dressed church members packed into the ten seats available. The nineteen of us squeezed together sitting on each other’s laps and on the van floor.
    Jamaican roads tend to be narrow with huge pot holes; fortunately none of us had any extra van space to bounce around as our pastor jogged back and forth missing bicyclists, canyons, and goats. Quickly it became hot in the sardine can; we opened the tinted windows and let in the fresh Jamaican breeze and sunset.   Zipping by terraced yam and cassava farms, we admired Banana Ground, it having a very different landscape than our hometown of Harmons.
    Jamaican schedules tend to be as random as the rainfall. Twice the departure time had been changed and when we arrived the service was in full session, so we quickly found seats. Up front upon a tile mosaic was a collection of fruit and baked goods. Elder Reid spoke from Galatians 6:1-9 thanking God for providing local nourishment throughout the year. Seven people from our church (including my mom) sang “Jesus Take the Wheel” by Carrie Underwood. They were accompanied by an unplanned keyboardist who almost threw them off key.    Additional lively hymns and prayers resonated over the harvest.
    Then people were invited to purchase the fruit and baked goods making two lines on either side to pay. People were grabbing, pushing, yelling and altogether going crazy! Luckily we made it without injury ending up with a box of bananas and a few bags of oranges. We waited outside sharing bananas with our friends.     When everyone was finished we piled back into the van. Many fell asleep wedged between mothers, fathers, and children with a true understanding of a healthy, compact community.

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Marcellus Shale Saga

4/5/2012

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    Last week Quiet Creek Corner shared how the people of Harmons, Jamaica have been taken advantage of by the bauxite mining company. This community continues to wait for drinking water and be exposed to dangerous, open pits. Harmons appears to Americans as a distant place with a problem that would never to occur in the United States, but the Jamaican situation is quite similar to ours. Could the extraction of a natural resource, with water issues, be replicated in Penn’s Woods?
    During the twentieth century, shallow natural gas companies began leasing land from landowners across Pennsylvania. Leasing landowners received a few dollars an acre per year and renewed leases every five years. When the companies drilled for shallow natural gas the landowner reaped royalties and free gas. The shallow gas drilling has caused little to no permanent damage to the land or water. This win-win situation went on without major conflict until a scientist discovered something much deeper a few years ago.
About a mile underneath the land surface, specifically in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, is a sedimentary rock called Marcellus Shale. This shale contains trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Some gas companies renewed leases with landowners; companies considered shallow and deep gas to be the same with no change in the leasing funds. In contrast, other gas companies paid a hundred dollars per acre which easily persuaded some landowners to lease for this higher price. Some landowners, although, held out and leased their land for three thousand dollars an acre. These landowners who waited are called “Shalellioners”.
    Shallow gas extraction technique is no longer effective in deep gas reservoirs; hydraulic fracturing is now prescribed. This process involves drilling a mile vertically and then horizontally into the deep gas layer. Various layers of casing and grout occur on the drill hole. When the well is secure, a rod goes downward into the horizontal part of the drilling shaft sending explosives to fracture the shale with millions of gallons of water (pumped out of local rivers), sand and toxic chemicals. This mixture is forced into every little crack in the shale to keep it open for the natural gas to flow back to the surface.
    Some of this flowback water (now laden with natural occurring radioactive elements) is pumped out of the well where it is reused in another hydraulic fracturing process, sent to deep injection wells, or evaporated out of holding reservoirs on the drill site. The majority of the flowback water is left in the shale strata and could eventually migrate into layers above, contaminating water to private and public wells and springs.
Now documented, deep gas companies are experiencing problems. Some water wells taste unpleasant and are deemed undrinkable. Livestock die from accidentally spilled hydraulic fracturing water. Methane gas is found in people’s faucet heads; so much that they can light them on fire. Streams supplying high grade trout fishing areas in the vicinity of Marcellus Shale gas wells are found to be bubbling with methane causing fish kills.
     On average, a deep gas well nets a profit of ten million dollars. Currently, the landowner is taxed on his/her deep gas leases and royalties.
Deep gas wells are being drilled as you read this. Be aware of what is going on around you, have your water tested immediately, continue testing your water for conductivity, and know your regional contact at PA Department of Environmental Resources, if problems arise.
    Contact your local officials with questions; here are a few to begin the discourse. During drought periods are rivers vulnerable to the millions of gallons of water removed for hydraulic fracturing? Over time, will gas well grout and casing disintegrate becoming a conduit for polluted water to migrate into drinking water supplies? Could this contaminated ground water eventually reach the streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds? Shouldn’t the deep gas companies be taxed on their profit? Could truck drivers, who are supposed to take the flow back to deep injection wells open the back valves of their trucks and let the contaminated water spill onto the road? Could they nonchalantly water the roads so to “keep the dust down”? How will the gas transmission infrastructure, where 52 inch diameter pipes must be laid to distribute the Marcellus Shale gas, impact residents?
Isn’t water the life source of Pennsylvania? It certainly is here in Harmons, Jamaica and the residents are still waiting for a consistent supply. Let’s learn from history.

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Bauxite Blight

3/28/2012

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Bauxite Blight

3/28/2012

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Pop cans, food covering, and airplane wings all contain one main ingredient, aluminum. Anything that needs to be lightweight, hard and flexible is made from this metal. Where does aluminum come from? How has this metal impacted the community of Harmons? It can be explained with one natural resource: bauxite.

Deep in the heart of Jamaica, the soil is red and has more clay than silt or sand. It is similar to Georgia clay or Virginia soil but there are some differences. The biggest difference is the presence of bauxite, an aluminum hydroxide, which is extracted to make aluminum.

Only found in a few countries, bauxite is highly sought after. Jamaica is ranked fourth in bauxite production after Guinea (1st), Australia (2nd) and Vietnam (3rd). Even in Jamaica, it is hard to find a high concentration of it in the red clay. Here, in Harmons, Jamaica (where we are serving God) there are some of the richest bauxite veins in all of Jamaica.

It all started in the 1970’s, when a mining company came and tested the soil of Harmons. When finding the soil high in bauxite, they proceeded to buy as much of the valley as they could from the local people. These people (well below the poverty line) were farmers and when they were offered very little money they sold almost immediately thinking that they were making a fortune. The bauxite company promised to build drinking water tanks at each end of Harmons and relocate people whose land they had bought.

No mining took place in Harmons until a new generation was born. Approximately four years ago, the bauxite company started mining. This generation of farmers was forced to relocate as the bauxite company tore through the land their parents had sold for almost nothing.

The mining created acre upon acre of red muddy canyons through the valley of Harmons. When the global economy fell in 2008, the mining slowly dwindled to what it is today, a trickle of trucks taking the red soil from a few strip mines in the neighborhood. None of the land has been reclaimed and none of the promised water tanks placed in Harmons. Countless people go without water for weeks, collecting off their roofs or carrying water from a government reservoir. A few houses of relocated residents were built, but the vast majority live in tin shacks.

Next time you take a drink out of a can, fly on an airplane or cover your food, remember Harmons, Jamaica. The landscape is barren, people are void of a consistent source of water, and homes are unsafe shacks.

As consumers of this natural resource, aren’t we responsible to do something? Please consider writing our federal senators, Honorable Toomey and Casey, at www.toomey.gov and www.casey.gov about the aluminum industry.