more vermont

Still farming in southern Vermont.

Most of our days start with breakfast around 8:30 leading to a morning meeting at 9ish. At the meeting we figure out what everyone is doing for the day and discuss upcoming projects. Maggie usually ends up working in the kitchen (cooking for the winter market or a retreat) and I do something outside (harvesting, working in the greenhouses, fix-up projects). This usually goes until around 1 when we have lunch for an hour and then have a meeting about afternoon work. That work goes until 5 or 6 and then goes into dinner prep. We have dinner and then clean up the dishes.

And that's what our days here look like. We'll be here for about 2 more weeks before we head to upstate new york to work-exchange at the buddhist meditation community.

Then the schedule changes a little bit because some local band from Vermont announced a fall tour and we're going to try to go to as many shows as possible. We're still working on tickets for that extravaganza of the rock and roll.

Vermont is unlike any other state I've ever visited. It's purposely rural, but doesn't have many of the negative aspects of rural life that I've come to recognize from growing up in the south. We'd kind of like to move here... but negative 20.

flannel and cheese: or how we are doing in Vermont

We are here

or more accurately, a little up the street from there because the farm has shifted to a second house, but we split operations between both places. we're working on a family farm that has a booth at a local farmers market and a weekly csa pickup (definition). most days we do some combination of planting or harvesting, taking care of animals (chickens, ducks, and dogs), and helping to run the income sources (csa and farmers market booth).

vermont is as beautiful during the fall as a thomas kinkade painting about fall would have you believe. (if thomas kinkade didn't live in a parallel dimension where all seasons happen at once and "artists" don't actually have to make art to be called artists and make a lot of money off of pictures better suited to bad greeting cards than canvases). Guess we'll just have a deal with beautiful rolling hills with a dozen shades of orange and red trees in a southern vermont valley. Sigh.)

our woofer hosts have three kids ranging in age from 7 months to four years. there are four other woofers other than maggie and me that represent a wide range of interests, ages, and backgrounds.

plus we bought 15 boxes of ice cream at the annual ice cream sale at the local gas station (it's actually good ice cream- not the usual questionable stop and gulp fare).

views from the front porch of the farmhouse:

we moved into the old green house at first. but it wasn't very ideal. (not kidding).

we tried to clean it up, but it was kind of a lost cause (bandanas to avoid mouse "dust") and moved in with another woofer into the old apple barn that had had a lot of work done on it.

much nicer...

Two (of the three) greenhouses

and the farm ducks (that were once pets of one of the kids, but he lost interest. now they just kind of hang out and swim in a puddle in the driveway.)

ok troops! carry on!

It was a Sunny Day in DC

Back from North Carolina and then to DC.

Maggie and I stayed with Emily O and the mighty Finn. Emily still works for NPR and has moved up the morning edition ranks. We've decided that NPR's ratings would triple if they gave Emily 10 minutes a day to talk about whatever she wanted to discuss. Because she's hilarious and her show would be hilarious.

We spent two days wandering around the museums up and down the mall and eating delicious food in China Town.

Oh, and we saw Sunny Day Real Estate at the 9:30 club. Which was kind of something I'd been looking forward to for my entire life. They played most of Diary and LP2, Guitars and Video Games (great song from HIFTBSO), and Spade and Parade. I was impressed by how much the band was in sync- and I think that Jeremy Enigk has a better command of his voice compared to when I saw the band in high school.


what do these characters say? i hope it's a really literal description of hooters. something like really mediocre food served by girls in tight clothes, but if anyone asks you think the wings are delicious. or as emily said: "it's probably not about the wings. because saying you go to hooters to eat the wings is like saying you read playboy for the articles."






awesome light installation.







Tomorrow we leave for our first WWOOF farm in Vermont. Alright.

Blue Ridge Ride and North Carolina

Blue Ridge Ride

I'd planned on doing an average of 60 miles a day for eight days with an average elevation gain of 6500 feet each day. I used a BOB trailer to haul gear behind my cyclocross bike. Long story short, I ended up doing roughly half of the parkway before I decided to call maggie to come rescue me. I enjoyed touring, but learned several lessons that make a successful tour tricky: no matter how strong of a cyclist one is- a fully loaded trailer should be matched with a triple- i rode a compact double with a mtn cassette- but started having really bad knee problems within one day of the tour, not riding for a month and being sick for two weeks before starting and expecting to still have a strong ride is rather silly and i should have known better, and carrying all of the tour's food from the start is also reasonably goofy.

So, all in all, I had a great experience. The parkway is beautiful and i encourage anyone who has an oppourtunity to enjoy some (or all) of the 470 miles. I like touring and will plan another trip (with proper gearing this time!). Pictures below.










Boone and Asheville

After the tour Maggie and I went to Boone for the afternoon, had food at the Black Cat, and walked around. Boone's a nice place, but the traffic (of all the things we didn't expect) drove us crazy. And yeah that was intended. Read the sentence again.

We spent the next day in Asheville- which was fantastic. We randomly ran into Ben Acree... still that's not all that surprising somehow. Ben may or may not be in Denmark right now. We went to the Highland Brewery, lucked into a Magic Hat tasting at a beer store, and had food and beverage at barley's. It was a nice place to be.







And this sign was great (though I didn't understand it)

also

I tried to edit the post David put up from Twin Oaks. For some reason the formatting got funny and a lot was cut out. Now the formatting is still funny but at least all of the words are there!

And He's Off!

David finally began feeling better at the end of last week. He ended up having to get the doctor to give him a second type of antibiotics. The first was amoxicillin based and not strong enough at all. Fortunately, the doctor he went to was mine in high school and i babysat for him, so he responded promptly to David's phone call and sent a new prescription to the pharmacy without David having to go in for a second appointment, this saved us about $70, although by the time we got the second prescription, we have spent almost $300 on David's sinus infection.

It is frustrating to have to spend so much money on something that is not an exciting part of AQ but at the same time, that is why we worked hard to save money, so we would be able to handle whatever situation comes our way. I also think it is important to remember that the money we have saved is to fund AQ and we need to remember not to get wrapped up in worrying how much money we spend. Of course we aren't going to be needlessly extravagant, but we need to adjust to the feeling of seeing money constantly leaving our bank account and never going in.

Anyway, back to more exciting and important things. On Saturday morning I drove David, his bike (a LeMond cyclocross bike he calls the Lemon), and the Danger Cart (his name for the B.O.B. tralier) up to the north entrance of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesboro, VA. It is about 40 minutes away from Harrisonburg. David had an absolutely gorgeous day for the first leg of his trip. We got to the mountain at about nine in the morning. We parked the car at the first overlook, which gave us a view off to the east, towards Waynesboro and Charlottesville. There was still mist down in the foothills but on Afton we had a cerulean blue sky with puffy cumulus clouds and it was in the high 60's or low 70's, I'm guessing.

David attached the Danger Cart, loaded his bag and took a practice loop around the parking area. He has his work cut out for him, for sure. He obviously isn't in the ideal physical condition for this trip. He had planned to have about a week after Twin Oaks to ride every day and take the trailer up Reddish Knob (a very steep ride along the VA/WV border) to get a good idea of the handling and difficulty of pulling the cart. The trailer weighs about fifty pounds so it is adding considerably to his challenge.

I got to talk to David last night for the first report. He has taken our phone with him for safety. I told him I would like to hear from him everyday but I know that might not be possible. Otherwise, every other day would be nice and under no circumstances is he to go three days without calling and checking in with me. I told him if he has to, he can stop a picnicker and explain that he has a crazy wife and if she does hear from him she will call the Park Service and initiate a search. Hopefully he won't have to resort to this but I thought it was useful to illustrate my seriousness. I have a schedule of his ride so I know what section he is riding everyday and what campground he should be in every night, in case anyone is concerned about safety.

Oh, and David said everything was going well. He is worn out at the end of each day of course but thinks he will be able to finish. He was already making friends, a couple of guys who are riding with a third friend following with a camper invited him to have dinner with them in the campground last night.

After I saw David off, I drove up to Leesburg to visit my friend Diane, whom many of you know. We have been friends for just about our entire lives. She and her husband, Kevin, are special education teachers in Loudon County. We had a great time doing nothing in particular and catching up with each other. I brought her knitting needles and a ball of pretty purple yarn to encourage her in learning to knit. She and Kevin are about six months in to looking for a house in the area; it's amusing how different our lives are at the moment.

Now I have a whole week to myself. My plan is to work on several sewing projects I have and to keep visiting with my family. This is the first time since I graduated from Sewanee that I have been in Harrrisonburg for an extended period of time and all of my parents are around as well. It is really nice to be in town for longer and not feel rushed in my visiting.

leaving the farm, time in harrisonburg

We have now been away from Twin Oaks for almost a week. We didn't use the computers much so the blog was somewhat neglected and I know everyone is dying to hear all about it, so I think we will both reflect on it this month. I am still not sure I have had enough time to decide how I really feel about Twin Oaks as a possibility for our future. I am very glad that we went. We saw and learned lots of interesting things and met some great people. We really enjoyed everyone who was in our visitor group - Zitian, Momoko, Diana, Liv, Bailee, Jordan, and Rick.

We left last Friday and drove Liv to Richmond and had lunch with my brother Matthew, who has just started his freshman year at VCU. It was awesome to see him, I'm still having trouble comprehending that he is 18 and in college. We saw his dorm and took him to lunch at a neat little place called Ipanema cafe, which a resident of Twin Oaks told us about (he went to VCU and now sells Twin Oaks tofu and tempeh to them). It was delicious. On our way out of Richmond we got stuck in gridlock for a while. It was a bit of a rude awakening to come into that after three weeks on a farm. It made us yell "Run Away, Run Awaaaaaaay," and I have to admit some of our dislikes of Twin Oaks seemed a lot less important at that moment. Fortunately we made it to Charlottesville and had a great evening with Jason and Ellen (see previous post on their wedding in Cleveland) and David Lowe and his girlfriend Meg. We stayed up really late with Jason and Ellen and I started to feel tired and lame but they said they never stay up that late either, so I felt less lame.

Now we are in Harrisonburg, staying with my family. David is attempting to get ready for his bike ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway but has a nasty sinus infection at the moment. We hope he will be ready to go on Sunday or Monday. It is nice to be in Harrisonburg for a while, we are rarely here for this much time so it feels more relaxed seeing family. It is also really fortunate that we are here right now to help my mom. My uncle Joe died while we were at Twin Oaks and I am very grateful that it is easy for me to be here now to help her start going through the house and to be around when family comes. If we were still in our same set up in Atlanta there is no way I would be able to do this.