A Bit of a Roadblock

Hey all. So, haven’t written much recently because there hasn’t been much farming to be done, though I did work for a few hours at a farm right outside of Boulder that was beautiful! They had hops growing in the back that provided a nice backdrop to the lovely rows of greens, herbs and lots of other veggies. We helped them harvest for their CSA and planted some experimental Okra, which were adorable little plants.

But, mother nature likes to challenge me. So, alas, about a quarter mile down from the peak of a beautiful hike behind the flatirons in Boulder, I slipped on a wet rock and twisted my ankle. After hiking 4.5 miles back down the mountain on a bum ankle, I relaxed it a bit last night. This morning I decided to get it x-rayed and found out I have an avulsion fracture (one bone shaved off a piece of the bone next to it) and a sprain. The doc said I should account for the healing time of both, which basically means I should be off my ankle for a while – she suggested 3-6 weeks, though that seems pretty excessive.

Obviously this presents a challenge for my trip. I’m extremely disappointed, but I think I’m going to have to cancel my next farm. And in light of the expenses of being in the city, I’m not sure I can just hang around for the next two weeks. As lame as it sounds, and as awful as I feel saying this, I think I’m going to fall into the arms of my mother for a while, and put a hold on the rest of my adventure. I will surely do many more farms in the future, but for now I’m resting. Boy was this anticlimactic, eh?

Utah: SLC, Zion, Moab

Since the last couple of weeks have technically been vacation-type visits, I haven’t felt the need to write anything here. I’m enjoying my time off from the farm aside from spending far too much money. I am still near Zion National Park right now, staying with my good friend Sara. I leave tomorrow to camp in Moab for a couple of nights before venturing off to Boulder.

Not a whole lot to say aside from the fact that Zion National Park is breathtaking. I find myself constantly wondering how various rocks were formed, and what makes up the rainbow of colors that occur naturally here. On our first big hike, we walked through canyons and streams, talking nervously about the fact that there are sometimes flash floods in the area. And on our second big day out we went to Kodachrome State Park, just outside of Bryce Canyon National Park. Kodachrome looks to me like walking on Mars. The landscape is so strange and bright orange! The rock formations are just out of this world – yet another thing that sparked me to ask, “how in the heck does that happen?!”

In general, I’ve been so happy everywhere I’ve been. The landscapes are just amazing. I’m looking forward to venturing east, despite the inevitability of less beautiful scenery (ahem, Kansas), but I hit up Colorado next, which should not disappoint. Here is the full set of photos from Utah so far. Tomorrow, Moab.

Some mp3s From the Road

Nothing spectacular yet, but I’ve done some little field recordings from the road and have a few that are kind of fun. Be aware that the volume in these can change rapidly, so you’ll have to adjust as you listen (sorry):

• Lovely bird and rain at Gypsy Cafe
• Amanda and all of us singing Barbara Allen (kind of improvising as we go) (careful of the volume at the end – it gets loud when we start to laugh)
• Anna and I playing a crappy version of Ida Red
• Feeding the sheep and Daisy the donkey at Sophie’s

More to come.

Goodbye Montana, Hello Yellowstone

It was hard to say goodbye to Montana. It’s funny how a place that I’d never thought about visiting could have such a profound effect on me, but I expect that will continue to happen as I discover the many other beautiful places this country has to offer.

Dave took me under his wing my last few days and ensured that I had all the necessary farm/Montana experiences. He put me on the tractor, which was terrifying, but ultimately a good experience. I had a bit of deja vu from falling off an ATV many years ago (big, bumpy machines still scare me), but I made it out alive and can honestly say it was pretty fun.

We also visited the National Bison Range, which is huge and located really near Arlee. I found it ironic that there were signs on the way into the range advertising “buffalo jerky” and “buffalo burgers,” but I guess the wild game aspect of the range is as important to local people as the preservation. And as I heard from many trustworthy people in the area, it is actually a necessary part of controling the area. But it still makes me sad.

Regardless, the bison range was pretty amazing. We saw lots of birds – meadowlarks, pheasants, etc. and got scarily close to bison grazing on the side of the road. Knowing how fast these big guns can run made it all the more scary, but it was amazing to see them up so close.

My last day, we went to the Missoula Farmer’s Market, which was lovely. It was nice to see a smaller farmer’s market with all the greens and flowers. I tried to make the best of my last day, and by the evening I was taking in every aspect of the house, the air, and the landscape. I went out to the garden around dusk to do one last round of watering and felt nothing but bliss from my Montana experience. I felt that even though everything I had contributed to the farm had been taught to me, that maybe I did have a small impact on those vegetables, and hopefully they will be better for the love I tried to give them.

In the evening we had a BBQ with some friends of theirs, and Lisa, an amazing farmer and BLM employee, brought out some sticks of dogbane, which we peeled into strands of fiber that the Native Americans used to use for weaving. I sat there peeling those sticks and felt really meditative in the process. I think these simple processes of me working with my hands and using my body have been really beneficial for my mind. But my bliss was interrupted by one of the dogs pulling a chicken out of the coop and begin chewing on it. Luckily, she was okay.

Just half a day or so before I was headed off to Yellowstone, Lisa was toying with the idea of coming with me, and decided to come along! We had to drive in separate cars, but it was so nice to have her companionship along the trip. All I’m going to say about Yellowstone is that it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. We lucked out with great weather, a fairly light crowd, and the most amazing campsite ever (right next to the river). I feel like I’ve lived just that much more for having been there. See Yellowstone photos for the rest.

And here is the full set of photos from Arlee.

Arlee, MT

Geez, I’m such a bad blogger! But the internet has been down at the farm in Arlee, and the days have really been pretty packed. It’s nice waking up at 7 and going to bed at 9:30 or 10 – it makes the days feel as long as they are, since it’s still light when I go to bed most of the time.

Arlee is a farming town about 30 minutes outside of Missoula. It’s a beautiful place – farmland everywhere, surrounded by snow-topped mountains in all directions. The town itself is probably the smallest town I’ve ever been in. There are probably 10 or so stores, all small, and no hardware store or drug store or anything like that. It’s located on Indian Reservation land, which is great. It’s the Flathead Indian Reservation. I can’t say much about that except that I LOVE how the Native Americans treat wildlife. There is a lot of construction going on near Arlee right now, and as a part of that they build big tunnels under all the roads for wildlife to go through, so they don’t have to cross the roads! Amazing.

So much has happened, it’s hard to document it all. But I’m staying with a couple and their 9-year-old son, Mason. Kathee and Dave are such amazing people, and really dedicated organic farmers in an area where that is certainly the minority. Kathee and I have planted a handful of things – tomatoes, basil, broccoli, corn, sunflowers and gladiolas. I’ve been building a fence for the pea plants that were already coming up when I got here (and now the big project is weeding those beds, which are already overrun with quack grass and various other pests).

Every morning I help Dave move the irrigation pipes. This is hard work! They are about 30-foot pipes that are quite heavy, and you have to latch each pipe to the previous one while the water is gushing out of it. They do it this way so that each pipe’s latch gets firmly held by the pressure of the water. The first day I did this, I cut up my hands all over and bashed my right thumb between two pipes (you have to get a lot of momentum to get the pipes to latch, so getting a finger caught in there is pretty painful). But those have pretty much healed by now, along with the huge scratch on my upper arm from barbed wire. Yay.

The farm also has a small flock of sheep, laying and meat chickens and a 30-year-old donkey named Daisy. Needless to say, the sounds at the farm are always entertaining.

This weekend Dave was nice enough to invite me to a house on an island (off of a nearby lake) that their friends own. It was at Flathead Lake, which is an amazingly beautiful place! The photo link at the bottom will show some of those. It was a fantastic group of people – most of whom met by working at a co-op together in Missoula in the 70s. We camped out on the island and enjoyed ourselves relaxing, reading, kayaking and painting rocks. It was pretty serene, and I’m grateful that they included me!

I should get back to the house now and do some watering. Sorry for the short update, I’ll try to do a longer one soon. I have so many stories.

Photos!

Photos from Portland, Seattle, Spokane

I’m in Arlee, Montana right now, getting ready to go to bed (at 9pm). I’ll write more soon, but as of right now I’m so exhausted. I just wanted to post some photos:

Portland and Seattle Photos

Spokane Photos

Goodnight.

Beautiful in Seattle

I’ve been putting off posting since I haven’t gotten any of the new photos off my camera, but I thought I’d do a quick checkin post since I’ll be leaving Seattle tomorrow (already!). It feels like I just got here, but I got ridiculously lucky with the weather. It was raining on Wednesday when I got here, but has only gotten nicer from there, and today it had to be in the mid-to-upper 70s. I’ve been staying with my good friend Trevor in the Wallingford neighborhood.

It’s hard to cover everything when you put off posting for so long, but in a nutshell, I’ve done a great variety of things here. We went to see an amazing string ensemble that was organized by Trevor’s bass teacher at UW, called the American String Project. They were so incredible, and played a piece by Bernard Hermann, the famous film composer who did much of the sountrack music for Hitchcock films. They also played a beautiful Mendelssohn quartet and another piece by Tchaikovsky.  It was nice to see a string ensemble again, and rekindled my desire to play violin more. One more thing added to the list for when I settle in somewhere: find a great quartet to play with.

We’ve spent a lot of time outside, of course. Yesterday we went to the Arboretum, which is one of the most magical places I’ve ever been to. We played frisbee and walked around looking at all the amazing trees and colors. I definitely want to go back there someday. After that, Trevor had rehearsals and practices, so I wandered around his neighborhood. I got a Trophy cupcake, which apparently has won lots of awards, etc (and they had better if they’re charging $3 per cupcake). It was delish, and afterwards I walked down to Gasworks park and sat and watched the water while I wrote in my journal.

Today we met up with my friend Mike and his girlfriend, as well as a good friend Kevin, and went down to Pike’s Market. As if the market weren’t awesome enough, there was a cheese festival going on! So we got to sample all kinds of amazing cheeses, which was pretty fun. We then went up to the U district and there was a street festival going on, so we wandered around there.

Tomorrow I head to Spokane to couchsurf for one night on my way to Missoula. The woman I’m staying with already sounds awesome – she has recommended a great organic restaurant and a beautiful park to spend some time at when I arrive. I’ve also been sending messages to people in Missoula, hoping that I don’t get too lonely on an isolated farm. But I’m looking foward to the experience, for sure. Hope you are all well.

Link of the day: MarKhed Crafts – this is the jewelry company of the woman I stayed with in Portland. She gave me a beautiful microfiche necklace that is so cool! Check out her other pieces, they’re all great.

Now in Portland

I can’t believe two weeks at the Gypsy have already passed, but they have. I have pages and pages in my journal about everything that we did, but am too lazy to relay it here except for this: lots more cob, made a delicious quiche, planted some basil and squash, patched a cob floor, WWOOFer’s dog got sprayed by a skunk (FUN), campfire and lots of music, made two amazing plum-rhubarb pies with Barb, said goodbye. Okay, moving on…

I am now in Portland. I haven’t taken many photos yet, but I hope to soon. So far, I’ve really really lucked out. I sent a bunch of messages to people on couchsurfing and ended up with this amazing couple from Montreal. I can’t even believe how lucky I got. They are both just fantastic, friendly, warm and helpful people. They live on Belmont, which is a nice central location, close to everything in the southeast and a short drive from Alberta, etc. AND, they have two of the most adorable dogs I’ve ever met. A Dachshund and a Westie. They love to lick your face, and this morning they woke up and came and slept with me on the couch. It made me so immensely happy.

Last night the three of us went to the Tin Shed for dinner. I had a delicious vegan burger and they both had mac and cheese – apparently a lot of restaurants in Portland have all-day happy hours, which is neat. From there we headed back to their place and played a strange but totally fun version of scrabble. I headed out just before 9 to go to the Moon and Sixpence, a super cute British pub. Anna from the Gypsy Cafe recommended Sunday night’s old-time music, and she was right on the ball. It wasn’t crowded at all, and the band (Foghorn, they’re local) was amazing. I’m definitely taking fiddle lessons when I get settled. I met a really awesome woman from couchsurfing, Christy, and we hung out and talked about WWOOFing (she has WWOOFed in Europe, Hawaii and the States) and a few of her friends came by, so it was nice to have some company. But after one beer and being slightly mesmorized by the band, I felt like I was being kind of antisocial so I took off. It was already about 11:20, though, so I was glad not to get back to the house too late.

Today, after wondering how I was going to show myself around the city, I made a day out of it. I got ridiculously lucky with the weather – it was PERFECT. I went to Voodoo doughnuts and had a kind of disgustingly sweet breakfast, but it was cool to see the place. Then I got utterly lost trying to find the Portland Audubon Society’s big park. But I somehow managed to find Forest Park, the big recreational park in Portland, and took a long walk and took some photos of birds. From there I drove to the Alberta Arts District and walked around checking out some of the galleries and shops. I ate at a mediocre (compared to SF) taqueria and drove around some more after that. Now I’m sitting in a coffee shop near where I’m staying. Tomorrow I will try to get together with another couchsurfing person, and maybe head to Christy’s house to see her new chickens! She’s building a coop for them in her back yard. I’m already kind of convinced that I should live here. The people are so friendly, and the neighborhoods are new to me, which is just what I think I need right now. I know there will be some annoyances as there were in SF, but I feel good about it, and think I could find my roots here.

In general, I’m enjoying the self-exploration that comes with exploring new places alone. It’s definitely not easy to spend so much time by myself, but I’m learning lots of things about myself. Like…I really don’t see the point in shaving my armpits. HA. And brushing my hair doesn’t really do any good. Okay, so I’m not going to turn into a full-fledged hippy, but there are definitely some social standards that I am fully rejecting right now, and having a damn good time doing it. I’ve almost completely sworn off makeup as well, and it feels good. But don’t worry, I’m still showering.

I’ve added captions to my photos and added a few. More to come…

Pure Blissful Exhaustion

This is the first day since I’ve been here that I’ve felt utterly exhausted. The day started with a little rain, but as soon as it cleared up I started sorting and stacking the firewood by the shed and before I knew it I was getting a tutorial on how to split the larger pieces of wood.

Yes, I can now officially split wood. I do, however, suck at it. But I’m already getting better. As Barb says, I just have to “channel my energy” and go for it. I’m a bit too timid, so the ax just gets stuck in the wood and I spend more time trying to get the damn thing out of the wood than I do actually chopping. And then there is of course aim. Which I’m also working on.

But one thing is for sure. Chopping wood is ridiculously hard work. My back is squeeling from both chopping and hauling about 10 or 12 loads of wood in a wheelbarrow up and down the hill to the cabin. It’s so satisfying, but achy. After finishing the sorting and getting tired and sweaty from splitting, I moved on to another, equally strenuous project – digging and hauling dirt out of the trench where the new greenhouse will go. I did that for about an hour until I realized that the other WWOOFers, Amanda and Melissa, were up at the cob house stomping cob. So I joined them there for probably another hour. By the time I came down to the house, my body felt useless. Luckily a delicious dinner of pasta revived me enough for an amazing jam session in the living room. What an amazingly satisfying day.

I Love John Muir

Just a quick post to say I wish I had discovered John Muir’s writings earlier. I started my trip reading Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, which was beautiful description but not so smooth to read. And the descriptions of nature are gorgeous, but I much more enjoyed Leopold’s commentary about conservation and the enjoyment of nature as a child, etc. The descriptions got a bit cumbersome.

But Muir is just amazing all-around. He is such a great storyteller, but it’s like he’s not even trying. At times he writes great narratives of his childhood, and at others he is simply publishing his journals from his travels, which are a series of sentence fragments, essentially. And they’re both fantastic. I actually had no idea that he was an inventor. But the first few stories in this book I got, Essential John Muir, are about his experiences growing up with an ardently religious father who thought reading and inventing were frivolous undertakings. So he would wake up at 1am just to have the time to work on his projects without his father’s criticism. And he invented countless little wonders – alarm clocks, full mechanical calendars, gadgets that would sit you up in the morning and turn on the light, machines that would automatically start fires at a certain time.

It’s all pretty amazing. And of course these are all supplemented with his biological descriptions of plants and animals that he encounters on his treks around the country. Truly a genious. I recommend it, and I’m only halfway through.