Saturday, 30th May - Smudge Sticks and Spinning

This is Becky Thorp from SunStar Herbs in Cerrilos, NM.  She grows most of her own herbs and some berries for edible or medicinal purposes with such names as horehound, sweet Anne, anise, mugwort, chaste berry, artemisia, et al.  

You can see the smudge sticks, which she makes, in the lower right side of the photo.  Traditionally they are burned by the native indians and religious groups for spiritual purification in differing rituals but Howard bought a sage stick to ward off the mosquitoes, which we hope will work, as I always get welts when bitten. They also apparently ward off “no-see-ums”, (nasty, tiny insects, which of course you can’t see), but the bites are supposedly worse than those of mosquitoes, also female bloodsuckers.

Having a second Saturday in Santa Fe, we dropped by the Farmers’ Market again and bought some odd items like the smudge stick, two beautiful pink and white peonies at $3.00 each with a few buds that would open later, three lavender bags, which we were told to add to the dryer to make the clothes smell nice, a pound of snow peas and some red corn-cob jelly from the same organic farm as before for our family to try.  

We wouldn’t like to try it but years ago, corn cobs (with kernels already removed) were used in the outhouse when nothing else was available and they were plentiful - ouch, just the thought......  They were also used for fuel for heating at one time rather like peat from the peat bogs in Ireland centuries ago and during the famine.

We met a man concentrating heavily on spinning yarns with mohair from his angora goats and wool from his beloved Corriedale sheep. Before we started chatting, he gave me one of his cards and the first thing I saw was the  name "Oasis Fiber” - I thought it was unusual and began to ask where his name originated from when he told me it was Frank - duh, what a pillock!   Then I realized that it was the name of his company.

His animals are all pets and after they’re shorn, he cleans the fibers, dyes them using commercial dyes and then hand knits or crochets items to sell at the market or online.  It is such a time consuming business but he loves it. He feels that the market for hand made items is actually growing  because, he said, people in a recession tend to revert to buying less commercially produced products.