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Amy Lynn interviews Linda Mahns about her own personal raw food path and business journey with VT Fiddle Heads, the former cafe and current online store supplied with her own hemp and nylon mesh strainer bags for making nut milks, juices, coffee, tea, sprouting, and other uses. We compare the raw food movement in Vermont in the last 10 years and how requesting raw food items at health markets and coops in the past lead to the selection we have today in Vermont. We also discuss her new pursuits in helping others to live their own juicy life and her future hopes for VT Fiddle Heads. http://holisticpilgrimage.podomatic.com/entry/2016-03-12T16_04_03-08_00 Linda's notes: Amy Lynn did a great job of interviewing and editing. It has been a LONG time since I had an interview done and it has turned into a catalyst for us to begin a raw vegan potluck again: http://www.meetup.com/All-Things-Raw-Raw-vegan-Food-Potlucks-Meetup/ and the FB page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vermontrawfoodpotlucks/ So be on the lookout for new and fun things! Thank you, Amy Lynn, for your interest in VT Fiddle Heads and for your own passions! May we have fun with these potlucks, events and other fun things in our immediate future! xoxoxo

Some photos taken today (for the most recent newsletter going out...hint hint hint....

going to pick up fabric

it is a snowy day here today

a great big heart of love for you

still working on the painting and decorating of the place. but got some calligraphy in!

say HI to Meg, our office manager! (Hi Meg!)

Our main sewing maven, Catherine. She was a monk in a former life.

happy turkey (or UNturkey day!)

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So much of the art I like to do includes words. Unsure if it's because I was an English major at one time or what but I have a particular interest in the origins of words. In this latest collage, I was interested in pulling out words as well as images that really seem to speak to me at present. I have hung this on the wall and I enjoy looking at it as a daily reminder... Some words to live by: "Life is a journey, not a destination" Pep Calm Momentum Beautiful Change Starts with a single step Peace poetry excitement meditate spirit guts confidence sparkle nerve resolve glee Overcome the notion that you must be regular. it robs you of the change to be extraordinary."

today is the super moon - the full moon near the summer solstice. When the moon and sun goes into Cancer, my own sun and moon sign. It's been a super difficult week this past week. I don't even want to go into it. I have been under and extreme amount of stress to the point where I had a couple days of having difficulty taking care of myself. Thankfully I can see the signs early enough and I have many tools inside my tool belt that I can use to pick myself up by the bootstraps. Let's just say out of many life changing things that could happen, I have about 4 happening simultaneously. On Monday and Tuesday, I contemplated adding a couple more to the list and it sent me over the edge of what I could and really wanted to deal with. So it was time to get my soul back in focus and get some art done. I had a lot of fun art projects to do with my holistic spirituality homework but here's one more that seemed great to focus on for this day, this super moon. Here it is: Collaging is great and pretty easy to do. Anyone can do it and you don't have to be artistically inclined, necessarily. Just take some of your favorite magazines and look to see what appeals to you. Cut and paste and repeat. Everything that is on this art board is something that means something important to me RIGHT IN THIS MOMENT. This is what I want to cultivate in my life. This is what feeds and fuels my soul (and mind and body) I know what it feels like to live an authentic life and I also know what it feels like to live a life of constriction dominated by fear. I choose the former.

I got up at 6:30 this morning - don't ask me why. I lingered in bed a bit, did my intentions and meditations for the day and then got up. There's lots to do this morning! This morning's juice was huge - I'm still drinking it. It contained: beets carrots a WHOLE lotta kale green apple oranges I typically like the kitchen sink variety of juices - where I put in what I have and see what happens. I found a couple beets in the fridge and decided to put them in. Now I'm full from juice. I am sure I will be peeing a lot again today. :-) I'm off to see about meeting a realtor, seeing what I can do to get this Vitamix order out and then I'm off to do a follow up with my ND for some blood tests I had done a couple weeks ago. More to follow... Afternoon time! Busy day thus far. Went to see the realtor and then went to a follow up DRs appt in town. Then drove back and helped at the tail end of getting boxes on palettes for Vitamix. Took a photo or two and will post that here. Was HUNGRY at around 11 but was out and didn't bring anything to munch. I made a smoothie today for lunch (a little more substantial) banana orange an entire head of lettuce blueberries coconut kefir It's good and once again filling me up. OK, I'm off to do some orders. I'll write more after dinner. OH YES! Here are the photos: Evening! The dinner smoothie/juice was: celery radish greens kale carrots and then I put it in the blender with an avocado, dulse and some dashes of hot sauce. It was good and I sucked it down pretty quickly. I drank it outside - once again it was a beautiful evening out there. Right now I'm going to do some journaling. Time to delve into something a little deeper within myself. Have a lovely night.

Hello there! Here I am again, doing a short juice/smoothie fast. The reason: In the last year or so that I had chocolate sights, smells and tastes so nearby, I succumbed to chocolate again. (Who wouldn't when it's being made right in your place?!) :-) I was off all caffeine and sugars for over 2 years and then started up with a bang. I have to admit I can get pretty darn addicted to this stuff. I'm serious. I recognize it as an addiction because I can't seem to get enough of it... So this fast is a break. I technically started this break in NJ when I was there for 2 weeks recently. I greatly reduced chocolate and sugar intake while I was there and so it seemed good to take a real break now. I would have done it immediately upon my return but had SO many things scheduled for that first week back that it made sense to pick a quieter week. (However I write this and I already have something planned for so many days this week...) This morning's juice was 32 oz in size and contained: celery kale cuke green apples carrot orange it was pretty heavy on the cuke but nice to drink first thing. I got up early this morning and immediately began posting up things for sale on craigslist. We have to weed down some inventory to make room for new endeavors. I've been wanting to post up that list since March so it's a long time coming but I was grateful for the gumption to post it. I put a link to it on the cafe page: http://www.vt-fiddle.com/rawfood/fiddle_heads_cafe.php. Anyway, I worked for several hours on this. I posted so much that craiglist told me to slow down. I hope it's going to be OK. :-) The afternoon came and I was getting hungry. I ate a mango that was very sweet but very fibrous. Still, it tasted yummy. I went over to the cafe and took more photos of things I wanted to sell and then came back to make another juice. This one I plumped up more like a smoothie. In this juice/smoothie, the ingredients were: oranges a WHOLE LOTTA mesclun mix celery carrots and then I added bananas and 1 apple. YUM. this was a delicious drink. I drank about 32 oz of it. It went down pretty easily. The afternoon was pretty relaxed by comparison to how other days have been going and I welcomed it. I posted more items for sale and then spent time listening to a book on tape. I had a nice chat with an old friend and then it was time to get dinner ready for everyone. Dinner for me was: celery kale parsley cuke tomato and then I threw the juice from that into the blender and added 1/2 avocado, dulse and a few shots of vital heat. The night has been so nice and I went outside to drink on the grass. Very nice. I enjoyed it immensely. The avocado made it very filling and the dulse and vital heat (hot sauce) made it savory tasting which I have found from previous fasts that I enjoy at night. The rest of the night is before me. My mood is calm and I'm just riding the wave of doing very little. Enjoy the night, Linda

I have been listening to the sound track from 1 Giant Leap since I watched it last week. Here is the link to this awesome awesome video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA26XwqKA8Q - I find it so damned inspiring. I love the funky world music, the faces, the images, the quotes - it's all fantastic. There's still so much on my plate at present. We are meeting with a realtor to see about selling a house. I'll post up more about that later. There is school for me, finishing up school for the kids (which means putting together the portfolio to show in order to appease the dept of education), work, life and relationship issues and so forth. I'm honest when I say some moments are tiring. I came back from my vacation and during the weekend felt a little worn out, mainly - I THINK - because I wasn't ready to come back here. So I sat in my favorite lil chair and put on the music to this documentary and it was almost immediate, I felt elevated and way better. By Monday, I felt great. Things felt magical, like they did when I was on vacation. I had to do some crafty projects for homework. One of them was to find a photo of me at the age of 7 and write with my non-dominant hand the things that I enjoyed as a kid of that age. This is what I did. It was not elaborate but I remember doing these little images way back when. If I look hard enough, I'd be able to find a very colorful drawing that I did at that age. I wouldn't know where to begin to find it but I know I have it. Here's the seven year old girl that I was:

My daughter looked at the photo album with me and her comment when she saw this photo was that I looked bright and happy. That was sweet to hear. I can remember being in my 20s, looking at the fat kid that I was. I have a lot more sweetness for myself when I see these photos now and that's probably because I have kids now... This was a sweet kid in this photo - one who had a big curiosity for life and found beauty in so much. P.S. you can find fun exercises like this and more if you go here: http://www.natureandthehumansoul.com/newbook/exp_2.htm - you can read Plotkin's book "Nature and the Human Soul" and do these exercises. They are fun and get you thinking. Good night and happy soul searching!

this semester is Holistic Spirituality and one of the fun things we get to do is keep a journal. I am excited about this. I actually do this as much as I can. I do collage and painting for fun and to feed my spirit. Sometimes I meet up with a couple friends to do this and other times, I do it alone. It feeds/fuels me, ignites me, recharges me and gives me an outlet for hopes, dreams, wishes, prayers, intentions, etc. I want to begin this semester by including a collage that I did recently. It is colorful and reflects my wish to become a living prayer. The colors in this excite me and speak to me deeply, as do all the images of playfulness, meditation, mothering, standing in the sand and of the "be your own guru" Buddha that takes up so much space on this poster paper. My intention is to actually use a journal and do it up in all these ways that I do for my usual collage projects. That might be difficult since I tend to like to paint on everything! (See image below to see what I mean) That is the door in my living room (the door to the bathtub.) I have this thing for Kwan Yin and I have her everywhere. This past December I decided it was time to paint the door and what better painting than Kwan Yin. I painted her in under a work day and it pleases me to see her life size on my door. This is what I mean, my life is my art and my art is my life but I will try to contain it into an actual journal. That will be more portable and easy to deal with. As it is, I have so many posters and paintings around that I need a gallery or something to house them. I invite you to seek inside yourself for a soul stirring journal entry. What is burning and alive in you? I look forward to finding out. :-)

I want to write about this before the bliss of the day's events completely leave... :-)

I woke up yesterday morning and did a little meditation first thing. I got out of bed around 8 and made myself a big huge green smoothie:

(I actually made enough for 4 people)

3 medium bananas
local frozen blueberries
kale
1 orange
rice protein powder
vitamineral green

I added quite a lot of kale so it was very dark green. It was pretty yummy, though and I felt pimped out for the day. I got dressed and met a friend for our mother's day treat to ourselves.

We went to Stowe, VT to a place called Stoweflake. There's a spa and resort there. It's a beautiful spot. My friend Linda and I drove there and got caught up on a slew of things that are good, bad, stressful and otherwise in our lives and when we opened the doors for the spa, there was an almost immediate sense of dropping everything and taking a big luxurious pause. Linda treated me to this day, which was very surprising. I didn't plan on that at all and I started to cry. For years and years now, if I want to celebrate and honor anything for myself and my family, I have to do it myself. I have for years bought my own gifts and planned things for various holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. It's just rote now. So Linda and I planned on getting a massage and she told me about this thing at Stoweflake where you can do a spa day for about the same money and have access to the whole spa and have lunch, etc. Her treating me to this was so unexpected and sweet and I just welled up and thanked her with a BIG BIG hug.

We selected our lunch and then went to the back room where we were given plush robes and slippers. Linda showed me around to the place where the cushy lounge chairs are, the pools, saunas and locker room and showers are. We got dressed into bathing suits and then went to the mineral pool. It is 101 degrees of sheer pleasure. We sat in there and floated around until we got good and warm and then went to the waterfall pool. It was awesome to have the waterfall beating down on my head, neck, shoulders and back for I don't know how many minutes. Then it was time to go back to the mineral pool until all tension and stiffness went away.

We sat in the lounge for a minute and drank the cucumber water that was delicious. Why don't I drink this all the time?! Then we went into the steam sauna for a few minutes. That was interesting. I had never been in a hot steamy humid sauna before - only dry ones. It took some getting used to and I couldn't stay in there longer than about 5 minutes. Afterwards, a shower with beautiful smelling products and then back in our plush robes to meander about. We walked down the hall in slippers and robes and ate lunch at their cafe. (We actually sat outside near the closed pool but wanted to get some fresh air.)

Linda remarked how nice it would be if this was more standard for our culture: things like turkish baths and the custom of communally caring for ourselves. It was great to see people of all shapes and sizes just taking care of themselves. It was wonderful to see the standard uniform of women walking around our private sanctuary in robes and slippers languishing in a few hours of peace. Even better to see was when the women came back from their massages with their complimentary bottle of water and the blissed out, relaxed facial expressions. Just wonderful.

After lunch, we laid out on the lounge chairs and waited peacefully for our massages. My body felt weighty in a very good way. I had no plan for these hours other than to nourish myself in this peaceful way. We talked sometimes and other times just closed our eyes and got ourselves into a deeper place of peace. My body was very very happy for this experience and it caused a deep sense of peace in my mind, too. AHHH, I really needed this and I shouldn't wait another year to do it again. With any luck, I won't.

It was a magical 5 hours at the spa. I had a glorious massage and then we rested for another hour and a half on that lounge chair, drinking cucumber water. I brought a piece of chocolate to share with Linda. It was very difficult to get up. Who would want to leave this paradise?!

We drove home on a beautiful VT country rode during beautiful weather. The magic never ends sometimes. We were remarking about how wonderful and good we feel when we get out of our heads and into our bodies. I think that's when we are open to real magic in our lives. It was great to see the difference in our speech and body language after the day of relaxation. We had so little to say in comparison that was processing and more of gratitude and sharing in all the beauty around us. We also did a bit of dreaming for future field trips here and there. :-)

The evening was spent with my children. We went to montpelier for dinner - there was only like 1 restaurant open on mother's day! What a crazy town! It was nice. Afterwards, I took the kids to get some shorts and things for upcoming trips and just because they are growing so tall now that they need the stuff.

Here's a wish for more mindful times spent in our bodies, in our lives and an openness for magical moments.

lots of love,

Linda