Kindness of Strangers

I am in AWE today. All due to a stranger.

As most of you know Dorian and I have moved from glorious California to North Carolina to live with his brother Sean and Sean's Girlfriend Stacey.  We moved here not only to live with these two wonderful people but to start our own garden and perhaps infect a few people with the idea that growing your own food is an incredibly useful tool. (Not to mention delicious, rewarding, and way better for you!)

Now we have this glorious blank canvas of a garden that we get to have our way with. We decided to sheet mulch as much as we could. (find out more about sheet mulch here, or check out one of my new most favorite books Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture) Which means we need an absurd amount of cardboard/newspaper, straw, mulch and manure. As well as a boat load of lime as our pH test let us know our soil is 'very acid'.

 With our budget of $0 we were excited for the challenge of "materials reconnaissance" (OH MY! My spell checker just let me know by NOT putting the red line under that word that I have spelled it correctly (side note - I am a terrible speller and am incredibly pleased with myself)). We started out asking newspaper companies for old copies and ended up with a 1.5 foot stack. The local library informed us that they have an internal recycling system, which means sad face for us. But never fear treasure (abandoned boxes) was to be had! We didn't even have to dig it up it was just laying around the neighborhood so we picked it up when we were out walking (we also found a shovel that was a little broken but would still dig holes! Even after these victories we still need much, much more.

Haulin' a load in my truck!

Next step, straw. ( Which is really what this post is about.) We could have purchased them for around $5 a bale, but that isn't much fun now is it?  Right, so on many of our tours through our little maze of a community we had noticed that a few people had straw bales up for decorations! It being nearly Thanksgiving I had a inkling that perhaps these bales needed to be gotten rid of. Lucky them!  I knew just the people who wanted them! After ringing a few doorbells and leaving some notes we ended up with about seven bales. One of those people that was so kind to give us three bales (seen here in our "truck") even offered to ask her friend about getting more! So we gave her a call today, she had said perhaps her friend had seven bales that we could have. She not only brought seven plus two bales she had gone to her friends' house picked them up and delivered them to us FOR FREE! All from a woman we didn't even know. It was such a sweet thing she did, she even said she might have more for us! (sighing in awe and total gratitude, I think this is a little wink and smile from our friend Karma! you reap what you sow! (pun intended!))

Yeah he is that strong!

It's when things like this happen that remind me why Dorian and I are meant to be here. To share in the human experience.  The world is so full of kindness, consciousness and love; we all just have to remember it is in everyone.