Long days, bright sun

It's summer! The days are long, the sun is bright, and I'm wearing shorts. Yay!

When I moved here from Virginia, one of my biggest worries about adjusting to the climate was that I wouldn't be getting the oppressively hot summers I'd come to love. That's right, I worried that I would miss the sticky Virginia summers. The gray, wet Pacific Northwest winters, I decided, would probably be OK, but it wouldn't feel like home if I didn't have to kick the covers off in July. I haven't had to kick off the covers yet, but at least I don't need a jacket after dark any more.

I haven't been the only one enjoying the weather. Mini has always hated socks, jackets, and all things warm, so she is reveling in the freedom of shorts and sandals. Ryan has been plotting hiking and backpacking adventures for us, and then spending his weekends and evenings building things outside instead. He doesn't come in until after dark when I scold him, and it hasn't been getting dark until almost 10:00. Boys. The garden has been soaking up all these rays, and is overwhelmingly abundant. (And so are the weeds! Ah!)

Some new things around here: (Photos after the jump!)

-Mark and Deepti are working on re-vamping our pond, which had been swallowed by the blackberries and brush. One day we'll have a pump and some fish and everything.

-We got a couple new hens (1), a Cuckoo Maran and an Araucana. I just put them in with our other ladies last night, so they've been making a racket today to impress each other.

-Ryan built us a new side deck (2)! With stairs! It's lovely. Our house is looking less and less like a junk pile every day. He also built a lumber rack for the carport. Did I mention that he's been building until dark most days?

-I finally named the rabbits. I've been reading Dune aloud to Ryan, which inspired their names: Irulan (3) (the tricolor Rex) and Ms. Atreides (4) (the brown Rex/chinchilla mix). Irulan should be due to kindle (give birth) any second now. She is, in fact, overdue, and I'm starting to worry.

-We (but mostly Ryan) installed 90% of a drip irrigation system in the garden (5). We found out we're just a bit short on tubing, but it's already cut down on the time we spend standing in the garden with a hose.

-I've been applying for full-time jobs teaching elementary school. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

-Deepti is officially a third year resident now. Yay! Her schedule will look more like a normal person's and less like an indentured servant's from here on out.

-Ryan sold his car, and we replaced a non-working 1986 F-250 with a 2004 Dodge Dakota, which brings our fleet of vehicles to 2 working cars, 1 working truck, and 1 almost-working VW camper van.

All together now

We are officially a community now! Forming an LLC together didn't count, and having a bunch of meetings didn't either-- it took all of us living together to make it real for me. Em, Dee, and Mini moved in about two weeks ago. I have been sleeping much better than I thought I would with a toddler upstairs, and it's been great to wake up and have Mini right here on the days when I watch her. We're all working on finding the balance for noise levels, sharing the kitchen, distributing chores, etc., but I think it's coming together nicely. The worst change so far is that I can't belt out with my funny voices during nighttime read-alouds to Ryan anymore, and that's really not so bad.

An update on the rabbits

Tragedy/inexpertise struck my little rabbitry the other day. I underestimated the wiliness of my Silver Fox doe; she escaped her pen one night, only to run to the road and be hit by a car. Major bummer. I cried about it. After I dried my tears, I improved and reinforced my cage system before buying another doe. This one is a tricolor Rex who's had two litters before, one with 8 kits and the other with a whopping 11! I made her a double-wide cage so that she and her huge litters will have lots of room for hopping. Both her cage and the cage of my junior doe (who is getting bigger by the day) are now suspended from the ceiling, which makes for a much more sanitary situation. Cleanup should be a breeze.

Ryan thinks the new tricolor doe is less cute than the Silver Fox was, which makes him more comfortable with the idea of eating her and/or her offspring.

Still. A bummer. I'll be keeping my eye out for a junior Silver Fox doe, just because I'm still excited about that particular breed.

The beginning of garden bounty

Even with a bunch of slugs doing their best to stop me, I brought in our first harvest from the garden last week. It was modest, but hey-- it was a harvest! Spinach, mustard, arugula, and beet greens. We've had about a half dozen strawberries a day off of our new strawberry plants, and several more from the plants of our neighbors who moved out. Dee discovered that we have a cherry tree near the road to the west of the house-- score! Our apple trees have bloomed and have teeny, tiny fruit coming in. We've been busy mowing the grass. Things are growing!

A super worthy cause

Some friends of mine started an organization that facilitates the escape of LGBTQ people from Uganda. Uganda passed a law in February that criminalized homosexuality, with sentences up to life imprisonment. As a result, LGBTQ people throughout the country have been arrested, harassed,  and attacked. This organization, the Friends New Underground Railroad, is helping LGBTQ people who wish to leave the country to do so. As of June 7th, they have helped 78 people make their way out of the country as refugees, and have 90 more on a waiting list for assistance-- that's huge! I know they are working with a very limited budget, and a little will go a long way if you have the money to make a donation. Please consider donating to them, even if it's just $5, and please help to spread the word. Check them out: Friends New Underground Railroad

Cages and Fences

What makes a farm look like a farm? Is it a big red barn? Is it a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, a row of corn? In my opinion, it's the fences. Fences show that you mean business. We have fences now-- does that mean we're official?

Fence #1: The Garden Fence

Vegetables are delicious. I want to eat them. You want to eat them. The deer want to eat them. With all these vegetable seeds and seedlings in the ground, it was time to start keeping the deer out. See the fence in the photo at the top? It looks like it's just vertical pieces of wood, but there is super lightweight deer netting strung from post to post with a wire at the top for extra support.

Pounding eight foot tall wood poles into the ground sure is fun when you're just over five feet-- I'm sure I looked pretty funny on a ladder with a post pounder in the middle of a field. Dee and Ryan helped hang the netting, and Ryan rigged a gate that hopefully will do the trick. It doesn't look like much, but it's something for the deer to hit their noses against and think twice about jumping.

Fence #2: The Chicken Fence

After the deer, what were the second most pesky animals in our garden?

Chickens. Yes, our very own, beloved, egg-laying chickens.

Chickens like to scratch. They like to make dust baths. They poop everywhere. They eat tender young greens. In short, they are a menace to the vegetable garden and any low-lying landscaping. It was time to put an end to their reign of terror.

Here is a recipe for a chicken fence for the amateur fence builder:

6-ft T posts, enough for 10-ft spacing around your perimeter
One post pounder
4-ft welded wire fencing to the length of your perimeter
A whole bunch of UV-resistant zip ties
A gate that Em found on the side of the road
One 4x4 post that's a bit too long
Time
Ryan
Carabiner(s)

First, measure our your perimeter and pound in posts at each corner and at approx. every ten feet between the corners. Then, begin to secure your welded wire fencing to the T posts using the zip ties, trying to get the tension tight enough for the wire to stand up fairly straight between the posts. A tensioner would be helpful here, if you have one. Stare at your second-hand gate until you figure out how you're going to use it, attach it, etc. Send Ryan to the store for supplies accordingly. Walk away and let Ryan install the 4x4 post and the gate. Tip: Carabiners can be very helpful for latching gates open/closed.

Run an extra wire around the top if you notice that the friskier hens are escaping, as ours did. Luckily, chickens don't jump as high as deer do, especially if you have the chunky "dual-purpose" hens that are so popular on homesteads these days.

To top it all off, they actually have two separate pastures in there, so we can do a bit of rotational grazing just like the books say you should.

Cages #1 and #2: The Rabbits

(Okay, they're not fences, but they are enclosures. I think it's close enough.)

Readers, I have a confession to make: I discovered that I like eating meat.

If you have known me for very long, this may come as a shock. For those of you who are new, let me just say that I've been vegan or vegetarian since 2006, with a few exceptions here and there for studying abroad and similar occasions.

My choice to be vegetarian/vegan was based mostly in environmental reasons. The meat industry is huge, environmentally irresponsible, and downright gross. The dairy and egg industries aren't much better. Although there are groovier options out there, the labeling is often misleading and the prices are high. And, honestly, buying shrink-wrapped flesh gives me the heebie jeebies.

And so I decided to raise our own. I decided to raise rabbits. I plan to write a post expounding on the virtues of rabbits as a meat animal, but for now, suffice it to say that rabbits make a lot of meat with little input. For this, you need rabbits bred to be meat producers-- none of those adorable dwarf varieties or perky, active pets. No, you need rabbits that were bred to be little bricks, rabbits that will eat their food and then hunker down and convert calories into pounds.

As of today, I have two rabbits. I am hesitant to name them, so for now I'll call them what Mini does: Brown Bunny and Black Bunny. I bet you can tell which is which. They're both females, or does. Brown Bunny is a Rex/Chinchilla mix, and she won't be ready to breed for another couple months. Black Bunny is an adult Silver Fox, a heritage meat breed that also has beautiful pelts. Black Bunny spent some time with a male rabbit yesterday, and I'm hoping for little black kits in about a month.

Ryan has promised to build a real shed for them, but for now their cages are housed in a hand-me-down greenhouse I got from a crazy woman on Craigslist. There's always something build around here. Fences, sheds, decks, community...

Under construction

Things are coming along according to plan. Ultimately, the plan is for Ryan and me to build our own house, and for Em and Dee and Mini to live in this one that currently exists. Until our house is built, Ryan and I will live together with Em and Dee and Mini in one house. For the past few months, Ryan and I have been living here-- just the two of us-- because the house has been under construction that makes it something of a death trap for Mini, who is almost two. By the end of this month, that construction will be complete(ish) and Em and Dee and Mini will move into the newly refinished upstairs.

Whoa! Times are a-changin'. Things that I'll be parting with:

-Sleeping in until 9 on weekends
-Sleeping through the night every night
-Being able to leave delicate things, pens, and important paperwork out on any surfaces below chest height
-Having a break from hearing/singing "The Wheels on the Bus"
-Being able to cuddle/straddle Ryan on the couch while eating breakfast
-Taking long baths while listening to audiobooks

But it's not all bad. Some of the things I can look forward to include...

-Sometimes eating other people's cooking
-Hearing peals of toddler laughter
-Sharing more
-Having closer friendships (or enemy-ships, dun dun dun) with Em and Dee
-Taking concrete steps toward living in community

In other news, it's starting to feel like summer. What happened to spring? I think we skipped it. Maybe that's just how the seasons go around here. Honestly, the whole winter here felt more like spring back in Virginia. This is going to take some adjusting.

The garden is in!

Well, the garden is in. At least, the soil is mostly where it belongs and I dug the paths out. Just in time, too-- the sky opened up a few hours after I put my shovel down. The rain is helping to settle the new garden beds into place. They initially looked craggy, and today they're just a little rugged. It's been raining on and off all day today, which put a damper on my plans to get some seeds in. With water below on the paths and water above from the sky, it was too much water for me to persevere beyond adding the amendments and a bit more topsoil. (I shoveled the paths down and the garden beds up to improve drainage for the beds and their soon-to-be plants, but that means that the walking paths are now walking moats.)

I did manage to add the amendments, though, so that's something. I added Calpril lime, feather meal, and bone meal, to be precise. The meals were to boost the nitrogen and phosphorous, respectively. The lime was to boost the pH, and to do all the other lovely things that lime does to your soil. (I found the website of the guy who gave the inspirational lime workshop I attended a couple weeks ago! Check it out; perhaps you, too, will be inspired.) The lime I used is a "pril" or pelletized lime, and it smells wonderful because they stick it together with molasses. Yummy.

Tomorrow's forecast is "chance of showers" rather than today's "showers," so I'm hoping I'll have a few dry hours to get some beds planted.

A couple short pieces of news:

-A have continued to experiment with eating Japanese Knotweed. I am so far still alive, so the internet must have been correct about its edibility. I made a pie with it, which has received mixed reviews. Perhaps I will add some strawberries next time, or at least some grated beets to make it a more appetizing color. Pie fillings are often slimy, but people don't seem excited about them when they're green and slimy.

-I am still taking aerial class, and it's awesome. I can feel myself getting stronger, and we're starting to learn tricks/moves that actually look cool. I have an intense notebook to keep track of what we've learned and what I've been working on; I guess I do miss academia sometimes.

Yards of soil

Friends, today I belatedly announce the arrival of ten square yards of soil in our driveway. Yes, indeed, ten yards of top-quality, deep black, compost-smelling soil found themselves in front of our carport on Monday afternoon.

Many of those yards were destined for our nascent garden. (About five of them, if you want to be exact about it.) Do you have a guess as to who volunteered to transport it to our garden plot? Little ol' me!

Little ol' me made a discovery: soil is heavy. It's heavy in the shovel, it's heavy in the cart, and it's especially heavy in the cart when you're pushing it through mud.

Nearly halfway through the pile!

If you live 'round these parts, you'll know that things have been getting less muddy for the past couple days. We have been blessed with a few days of sunshine, and can reasonably expect two or three more. In fact, we very reasonably can expect our soil to dry out enough to till it and form it into our garden beds! That's why I spent six hours shoveling, carting, dumping, and distributing soil yesterday, and about three more today. Tomorrow will see me rototilling that good stuff in. If I feel up to it after that, I'll start shoveling soil from the walking paths up onto the garden beds to raise them for improved drainage. If not, I'll do it Friday. And Saturday? If the garden beds are done, I'll be planting! Hallelujah, it's finally happening!

I'll also be starting some logs for mushroom cultivation (shiitakes! oysters!) on Saturday with our neighbor, who happens to be one of the best neighbors I've ever had. He's not just super friendly. He also is doing most of the things that I want to do. He has chickens, rabbits, sheep, and pigs. He has a garden. He grows mushrooms. He's probably coming to Burning Man with us. And he owns the house, so he'll be sticking around for a good long while. Hooray!

Here's a cute neighbor story: Awesome Neighbor (known as AN) came over to our house. Looking out our kitchen window, AN spied a particularly nasty exotic invasive weed known as Japanese Knotweed. He expressed his sympathy and wished us the best in our eradication efforts. I hadn't encountered it before, so I looked it up after he left. I confirmed his identification-- yup, definitely Japanese Knotweed. But what's that, Wikipedia? Did you say that it's edible? And that it's a lot like rhubarb and makes a pretty decent jam?

I harvested a laundry basket of Japanese Knotweed, tore the leaves off, peeled the stems, gave them a rinse, chopped them up, and treated them like tasty jam-makings. After more time in the kitchen than I'd like to admit (this was my first solo jam-making), I had seven jelly jars and a couple overflow containers of knotweed-and-orange jam. It's tangy (hopefully in a good way), and it didn't jell quite right (it was my first time!), but it's totally edible. I had it on a PBJ for lunch today. As the best ending of this story, I walked myself over to AN's house, presented him with a jar of knotweed jam, and thanked him for identifying the plant for me in the first place.

Digging, digging, in our garden

We had a patch of a few days without any rain, which meant that it was time to start tilling. You don't want to work the soil when it's too wet, especially when it has a lot of clay in it like ours, so hoping to till in the springtime is a nail-biting experience. I don't know if you've heard, but we get a lot of rain around wintertime here in the Pacific Northwest. If we take good care of the garden beds we're putting in this year, we won't have to till next spring-- I'm already looking forward to it.

The fellow who leases land from us to grow blueberries has a rototiller. Small motors tend to be finicky, and this one has its quirks. It likes to pop out of gear, but it otherwise runs pretty well. It did give me a huge blood blister when I tried to start it the first time, but I choose to think of that as an initiation ceremony. It weighs a ton. Not literally, but it sure seems like it when you're trying to push it around in mud the consistency of peanut butter. (OK, maybe we should have waited for a longer dry spell before tilling.) We marked out a 1600-ft area for our garden, and tilling it really drove home how big of a project gardening it is going to be. It's one thing to draw the layout on grid paper. It's one thing to poke tiny orange flags in between the dandelions. It's entirely another to shove spinning tines through every inch of it to hack the grass to pieces. We didn't even kill all the grass yet. When our next dry spell arrives (keep your fingers crossed), we're going to till the whole thing again, adding amendments to the soil while ringing the death knell of the sod.

In preparation for what I'm sure is going to be a glorious garden plot, once it's tilled and fenced, I've been starting seeds. You may have heard about the time I killed all of my tomato seedlings a few weeks ago. Well, folks, I am proud to announce that all of my new seedlings are alive and well. I've been diligently watering our tomato, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts starts. Yesterday, which was about three weeks away from our statistical last frost date, I started more tomatoes, basil, a whole bunch of squashes, and some melons. Yes, melons! This particular strain was developed in Minnesota, so hopefully we'll get some juicy melons out of our garden even with our short growing season.

Also in preparation for having a glorious garden, I've been brushing up on food preservation. This, of course, is in anticipation of having an overwhelming bounty of homegrown vittles. Specifically, I've been stopping at a farm stand on my way to aerial class twice a week to stock up on whatever they have that's cheapest. Lately, it's been pears for 59 cents a pound. Awesome. Once they're home, they are sliced, soaked in an apple cider vinegar solution to prevent browning, and tossed in the dehydrator, where they stay for about ten hours. (I have the dehydrator plugged into an outlet timer, and I now think I'm the smartest person since Richard Feynman.) Dried pear slices are irresistibly delicious. I fill a half gallon mason jar with them every week, and every week it manages to empty itself just as the next batch is ready.

That half gallon mason jar, by the way, is housed in a beautifully repainted kitchen. The kitchen used to be an atrocious lime green-- countertops, cabinet faces, and wallpaper-- paired with very dark wood paneling. We kept a bit of the dark wood, but mostly the kitchen is now cream and blue, with a stencil for fun. It's lovely. I'll take pictures some day when it's clean.

Oh, and I started aerial class. It's awesome. I am going to be so strong eventually. For now, I'm going to grunt and sweat and whimper. But at least I'm on a trapeze while I'm doing it.

Spring fever

The flowers aren't the only things excited by the spring weather. I seem to have kicked into productivity hyper-drive, too.

A brief list of some of my major projects from the past week or two:

-Baking bread,  8-10 loaves
-Processing and dehydrating the last of the season's pears, available super cheap at the local farm stand
-Flagging out our garden plot, which will be tilled by a hired tractor today
-Starting (and subsequently not killing) tomato, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts seeds
-Planning fencing to contain our chickens' ranging, which will otherwise kill the flowers we plan to plant out front
-Did I mention that I redid our front walk a couple weeks ago? We have flagstones now.
-Taping off and priming the walls and ceiling of the kitchen and dining room, which I hope to finish painting by Saturday
-Baking brownies spontaneously to celebrate birthdays and significant occasions
-Hand washing most of our laundry
-Learning new recipes, including Thai curry, falafel, an awesome roasted veggies thing that Ryan wants every day
-Feeling much stronger in handstands and tumbling, doing pull-ups, and generally being pumped about what my body can do
-Attending the Small Acreage Expo and attending a lecture that made me excited about liming our soil
-Making friends with our neighbors, who are surprisingly young and cool

Whew!

P.S. In case you were wondering, the yogurt treatment worked great for that case of nasty chicken butt!

Crazy chicken lady

I've been keeping a closer eye on my hens after our disappearing hen scare. (In case you missed the update, she's fine!) I noticed yesterday that one of our Ameraucanas was looking a little-- well-- gross.

I think the Ameraucanas are funny-looking birds anyway, mostly because of their fluffy bloomers. (At least, I think they're Ameraucanas. They look more like Americaunas than Araucanas, anyway.) Check out this photo to see what I mean. The Rhode Island Reds have almost sleek backsides in comparison-- see?

So yesterday I was staring at my chickens' butts. To my unpleasant surprise, I saw that one of the Ameraucanas had something weird going on with her bloomers. It looked like the feathers had stuck together and formed dreads. Yuck.

Of course, I flipped through my chicken keeping books, which are only so-so for in-the-moment information gathering. I then turned to the internet, which very helpfully told me that it might be a condition called "vent gleet, " sometimes known as "nasty chicken butt." It's basically a yeast infection of the digestive tract. (If you're really curious about this condition, I suggest you read this helpful article about it.) OK, cool, I might have a chicken with nasty chicken butt. Good to know.

The articles I read disagree about whether you need to isolate the affected chicken and how intensive the treatment needs to be. I'm hoping that, if it is indeed vent gleet, I noticed it early and I don't have to freak out. Honestly, I would rather not have to try to catch one of my hens and get her to stay put to soak her bottom in an epsom salt solution for 20 minutes. That sounds like torture for both of us. All sources agree that probiotics are a good idea, to restore the correct balance of good and bad beasties in the chicken's gut. I could buy acidophilus capsules and dissolve them in water that I hope the chickens drink in time. Or I could just feed them yogurt. In fact, yogurt is pretty good for chickens in general, so I'm even allowed to offer it to the unaffected hens. And it's high in protein, which they need during their molt anyway. And I have it already! Sounds like a plan.

I scooped some yogurt into an empty hummus container, sprinkled some chicken feed around it and on top of it, and watched my ladies take a few tentative pecks at it. Dude. They loved it. I expect them to finish off what I gave them by the end of the day.

Here's hoping that I can cure "nasty chicken butt" with a treatment that they think is a treat!

When things go wrong

Well, folks, it's finally happened: something has gone wrong. In fact, not only did something go wrong, two things went wrong-- all in one day! Don't panic, it's not the end of the world. It's just a bit of a bummer.

Yesterday was a busy day. As with most things that go wrong on a farm, that was the root of the trouble. I went straight from one meeting to another meeting to tumbling class, and I discovered two unfortunate things when I got home:

1. Only three of our four chickens came home at the end of the day.
2. My tomato seedlings dried out and died.

Dang.

Let's start with the chickens. As you may know, we purchased four chickens a month or two ago, and they've been doing pretty well. They're going through their molt, so they're a bit weird looking and they're not laying much, but they're ours, they're funny, and one or two home-grown eggs a day is better than none. Now that the days are getting longer and drier, we've been letting them out of their run from time to time to roam around and forage. They love doing it and it cuts down on our feed costs, so it seems like a win-win situation.

Well, it's a win-win except for the fact that they have to fend for themselves for a few hours, and chickens are kind of dumb and defenseless. We keep them safely locked up until a few hours after dawn and we shut them in an hour or so before sunset, when they usually come back of their own accord to roost for the night. Last night, at chicken bedtime, I headed out to the coop. Three chickens. Both of our Araucanas were there, already roosting, and one of our Rhode Island Reds was just about to go up the ramp into the coop. But where was Red #2?

We left the coop open for as long as we felt we could, to give her a chance to find her way back and slip in, but eventually we had to close it to keep the other three safe from nocturnal predators. Maybe she just found a good-looking branch and decided to have a sleep-away, and she'll show up at the coop today, clucking to be let in. But, honestly, it's more likely that she was something's dinner last night.

So now what? Do we respond by keeping them in the run all the time? By fencing in a pasture for them? By only letting them out when I'm home to keep an eye on them? I don't know. Should we buy another hen to replace her? I'm still hoping she'll show up.

Sigh.

(UPDATE! Red #2 was outside the coop when I went out there to check this morning! What a hardy little lady!)

Right. Moving on to the tomato seedlings. This one is a less involved story. Basically, the seedlings dry out really quickly under their lights, and I just plain forgot to water them in the morning. By the time I got home in the evening, it was too late. Oh, well. I was going to start some broccoli and Brussels sprouts today anyway, so I'll just do some new tomatoes, too.

I can't just tell you bad news, though, so here's a few bright spots to round out this post:

-We found a great new place to buy our chicken feed. It's basically a bulk feed buying club, and it's based out of the home of some awesome people just a few streets away from us. When we showed up Saturday to pick up our first bag, we got the full tour of their farm, which got me all excited about what we can do with ours.

-I got back into baking bread, and my loaves have been turning out wonderfully. I like baking.

-We had a productive community meeting yesterday. We even broke into committees, a little unofficially, so that we could tackle financial agreements and garden planning at the same time. (No surprise-- I was in the garden planning group.) We have a garden plan! I know how many beds we'll have, how big they'll be, and where to put them.

-The flowers are coming out, which means we've been finding out about all the pretty things this property was keeping secret until now: the camellia blossoms, the banks of daffodils, the rhododendrons that are about to explode, the cherry tree, etc. It's the first time I've been pleasantly surprised by this property. Oh, and I finally spotted the koi in our pond!

(Once a month is better than never, right?)

The exciting event of the past week was Ryan's parents visiting. They're nice folks, and it was a pleasure to show them around town. I might mean "show them around" a little loosely, seeing as I was exploring Olympia right along with them. We found out that the Boston Harbor Marina is adorable and should be lots of fun this summer. (We saw a seal in the water!) We found a couple parks that we hadn't known were so wonderful. We spent a day in Seattle, exploring Chinatown and the arboretum, which gave us ideas for trees to plant here at home. (Including the beautiful Birch Bark Cherry-- just look at it!)

Notably, we had a birthday celebration dinner for Ryan on Friday at our house, and no less than 14 people attended. It was a very full table! We had tons of salads and breads (ah, potlucks), along with a delicious butternut squash soup, two pies, a cake, five vases of flowers, and a balloon animal extravaganza. It turns out that two of our guests-- one of whom is Ryan's dad-- were experienced balloon animal makers, and one of them brought balloons and a pump. The inflatable fun lasted late into the night. I made a giraffe and a fishing rod, both of my own design.

Ryan's actual birthday isn't until the 24th, so if you missed out on the party you're not too late to send a "happy birthday" his way. We just wanted to get the celebration in while his parents were in town.

Contrary to the warning I received before moving to the Pacific Northwest in the middle of winter, the weather has been surprisingly pleasant. The sun is shining right now, in fact. We usually have sunny moments here and there, even if the day as a whole is gray. I'd rather have spotty showers than the weather I evidently left behind in Virginia-- yet another snow day today, I hear! I can definitely feel spring around the corner: the camellias and forsythias are blooming, the daffodils are up, and the days are getting longer. I've been inspired to work on the garden and landscaping over the past couple weeks: flagstone pavers for our front walk, pruning back the overgrown shrubs in the front yard, and tackling the blackberry canes that took over portions of our yard during the years of neglect before we bought the property.

Another thing that has surprised me during this transition is how I'm turning out to be a decent cook. Who knew? Ryan's mom even asked me for a couple recipes from dinners at our place. As you might have heard, Ryan has an inner ear condition that he can regulate to a certain degree by keeping his sodium intake low. As a result, we can't eat out too much, or even use many prepared ingredients, which means that I've been getting lots of practice cooking from scratch. It seems to be paying off. I'm not master chef, but I can make a quiche from the ground up and can put together a dessert mid-dinner. I think these are good signs. I feel like I'm preparing for having an abundance our own home-grown ingredients-- I'd better know what to do with all that zucchini once it starts coming in!

Approaching the one month anniversary of my last post, I decided to fill you in on a few things, dear reader:

-I definitely live in Olympia now!
-We've been hard at work on remodeling the house, getting our chickens, getting ready for the garden, etc.
-I am loving nannying.
-I started taking a class on handstands and tumbling, and it's awesome. Hard. Very hard. But awesome.
-I am learning to cook.
-Things are pretty great.

And here are a bunch of pictures to prove it. (Click "Read more," below, to see them-- they're after the break!)

We hit the road, Part 3

It's been a while since we were on the road, and I've been dawdling with this (final!) installment in the "We hit the road" trilogy. But here it is, folks! Enjoy.

After the bone-chilling wind of Kansas and the snow of Colorado and Utah, the balmy weather of San Rafael felt like a dream. Ryan's friends and family were warm and welcoming, and we had an idyllic visit.

Some highlights:

-We played a whole bunch of Rummikub.
-We had some delicious Mexican food.
-We saw a play/performance featuring some incredible piano playing to accompany a compelling story.
-We spent New Year's Eve in Oakland with a few friends. The evening climaxed with a drunken reenactment of The Princess Bride, rotating the role of storyteller scene by scene. My proudest moment was narrating the iocane powder scene while playing the role of Vizzini, complete with full wine glasses and a "vial" of iocane powder. (It was actually the cage from a champagne cork, but we made do with what we had.)
-We met up with a few of Ryan's friends from high school, who enjoyed a return to their high school antics. This resulted in wandering San Francisco late at night, tossing an LED frisbee to each other across the streets.
-We took a bunch of hikes. The weather was, as previously mentioned, shockingly wonderful.
-We left! This was IT, folks! The final leg of our journey!

We stopped in Eugene, OR to stay the night with Ryan's aunt and uncle. (It's a long way from San Rafael to Olympia.) In the morning, we petted their two golden retrievers and headed over to Corvallis to have lunch with two of my good friends. During lunch, Ryan bumped into a fellow he'd met at a bike frame welding workshop (I'm really in the Pacific NW now), and discovered that the fellow had just helped start a meadery. We stopped by there on our way out of town-- if you happen to be in the area, I think their hibiscus mead is delicious.

And, finally, on the evening of Monday, January 6th, we arrived home.

I live here now.

We hit the road, Part 2

Day 5: Bailey, CO
The wood-fired hot tub was so wonderful, and Colorado was so beautiful, that we decided to stay another night. (Actually, we guessed that would be the case before we even got there, so we had a two night reservation.) We spent our second day there, December 26th, lazing about in the morning, taking a hike in the afternoon, and making three pizzas from scratch to eat for dinner that evening and for road food the next day. It was delicious, if I say so myself. Oh, and we got back in the hot tub that night. Duh.

On our hike, we discovered that Ryan's work boots are a poor choice for hiking when there's ice or snow around. They're a bit slick. We'll come back to that later. The weather was cold but bright; I even took my coat off when we were hiking in the sun. Mountains are beautiful.

Day 6: Bailey, CO to Monroe, UT
We woke up fairly early to pack our things, bid our hosts and their dogs farewell, and get back on the road. After winding our way down out of the mountains around Denver, we were back to big places with few people.

Driving through Utah and what remained of Colorado, my motto for the day was "big." Having spent most of my time in the mid-Atlantic region (not known for its topography), everything seemed huge. Mesas! Buttes! Mountain valleys!

Around 3 PM, we pulled into Arches National Park ("Big!"), our mid-day destination, with the intention of going on a hike for a couple hours. We did go for a hike, but we covered less ground than we had expected. There were a few inches of snow on the ground, which meant an inch or two of compacted snow/ice on the trails. And then there were Ryan's boots. He fairly skied a couple sections. Of course, being Ryan, he had to head off the path to explore a little bit; I'll skip the details and just tell you that he ended up safe after I convinced him to throw me the darn boots and just wear his socks so that he didn't fall off a cliff.

Well. After that adventure, we kept on driving to Monroe, Utah, where we had made a reservation for the night. Let me tell you about this place.

Mystic Hot Springs in Monroe, Utah is run by a man named Mystic Mike. Mike, legend has it, was following the Grateful Dead around on tour when he stumbled upon this hot springs, purchased it for a song, and began to dream big dreams about what it could be. The hot springs itself doesn't have a naturally occurring pool, just some hot water bubbling out of the ground and making a mountain of reddish mineral deposits. Mike took some old bathtubs and jammed them right up against this mountain, so that the water trickles into it, and-- voila! Soaking pools!

As for accommodations, you can of course camp, but we decided that didn't sound very fun in late December. For warmer sleeping quarters, you have your choice of either refurbished busses (each named after a Grateful Dead song) or old pioneer cabins, many of which were transported to the site to save them from demolition and disrepair. Awesome. We chose to stay in a cabin, complete with wood stove and a guestbook full of psychedelic signings.

Yes, there were junk piles around. Yes, the roads were a mix of gravel, mud, and ice. But the cabin was cozy, and watching the sunrise from the tubs was an excellent way to start our day.

Day 7: Monroe, UT to San Rafael, CA
After emerging from the tubs, we began another day of long driving; about 13 hours, in fact. Much of it was on Route 50, also known as the Loneliest Road in America. 50 is one lane each way through vast, empty lands. Most of the surrounding land is owned by the Bureau of Land Management, I believe. Big. ("Big!") Ryan was driving 110 mph and people were passing us. Of course, we were only passed about once an hour; it's not called the Loneliest Road for nothing.

Finally, well after dark, we pulled into the driveway of Ryan's parents in San Rafael, CA. Whew. We knew we would be staying there for a few days, so we could finally settle in and relax.

Next time on We hit the road, Part 3... we hang out in the Bay area! We drunkenly reenact the Princess Bride! We move through San Francisco one frisbee pass at a time! Maybe, if you're lucky, I'll even write about driving to Olympia! Maybe, if you're really lucky, I'll even include pictures!

We hit the road, Part 1

Ryan flew out from Olympia to help me drive and to boost my spirits. He's been wonderful, of course. Together in the car, we finished reading one book aloud and started on another. We worked our way through an absurd amount of chocolate, bread, and hard-boiled eggs. We laughed a lot and discussed difficult topics. We crossed this continent we call a country.

Day 1: Fairfax, VA to Alton, IL

We woke up early on the morning of Sunday, December 22nd to breakfast on leftover scones (thanks Dad), cry a little (thanks Mom), hug a lot, and head out. I did the first driving shift while Ryan, not usually a morning person, tried to recover from the early awakening. We knew this would be an all-day drive, so we didn't stop much. My loaded-up little lawn-mower (the new pet name for my car) chugged its way up and down the bumps of the Appalachian Mountains, then across a few of the flatter, inner states to the town of Alton, IL.

Alton is just across the river from St. Louis, MO. Alton is home to a Lincoln-Douglas debate monument, several charming brick streets, a museum about Robert Wadlow, and my own excellent grandmother. She received us with open arms, as you might imagine, and served us split pea soup that she had practiced cooking once already to make sure she got it right. My aunt and uncle who live in town came on over, too, and we had ourselves a little bit of a reunion. Ryan was well liked.

In the morning, we took a three mile walk with my grandma, who had already been on a three mile walk with some of her friends before we got out of bed. She's just that cool. She gave us a tour of the town and the surrounding countryside. She took us over to visit my grandfather. She made fun of Ryan's cute butt. She sent us off with several hard boiled eggs and lots of love.

Day 2: Alton, IL to St. Louis, MO

We didn't go very far after leaving my grandmother's. In about an hour, we arrived at our destination: the City Museum. The City Museum is neither a museum nor a city-run institution. It is the product of a mad genius who decided to build a grown-up sized playground/exploration space/art installation/place of wonder. I highly recommend, if you like fun, that you head there the next time you're in the area. Ryan and I both ended up a little bruised, but it was completely worth it. I hear it's an adults only space on Friday and Saturday nights, which sounds hilarious.

After banging our heads and knees on beautiful art, we hung out with some of Ryan's St. Louis friends and their totally insane collie mix dog. Seriously, he was snapping at people's faces, crawling into their laps, and drinking their alcoholic beverages out of the glasses in their hands. Aside from worrying about the continued presence of the nose on my face, I had a great time. I firmly believe that Ryan has excellent taste in friends.

Day 3: St. Louis, MO to Hays, KS

We brunched in St. Louis. Ryan's friends continued to be wonderful, even with more daylight and less alcohol. We didn't have a destination for that day; the idea was simply to drive as far as we wanted to, and to not have horribly far to drive the next day. In good spirits, we sped off into the flatlands of America. I had learned how to use cruise control two days earlier, so I felt well equipped.

After many miles, the sky darkened. The roads were empty. Lonely. We decided to stop in Hays, KS. With Ryan's handy dandy smartphone, we found the cheapest hotel in town and booked a room.

Let me tell you about this hotel.

It was huge. I mean, it wasn't a highrise or anything, but it was definitely a hotel built for a high-traffic area. Maybe Hays has become less of a destination, or maybe people just don't stay in hotels on Christmas Eve; this enormous hotel was mostly empty. The cavernous indoor courtyards were dark and their ceilings were missing tiles. An external door, equipped with a hotel card swipe point for access, had been kicked open, leaving it unlocked and cracked. The place felt haunted, or at least seriously run down.

I know, it sounds awful so far. BUT! The room was fine. I mean, the light switch didn't work, but the lights turned on at the lamp, the bed was comfortable and clean, the bathroom functioned, and there were great locks on the door. Ryan went out to explore the hotel a bit and returned with excellent news: there was an indoor pool! And it had a slide! And there was a hot tub!

And so we went. The maintenance guy turned on the water slide, which Ryan proceeded to ride down. I soaked in the hot tub, which suffered from several design flaws but still managed to surround me with fairly hot water. The water level was too low, or the jets were too high, because the jets shot out at the level of the water, resulting in the loudest hot tub I've ever heard. The vinyl paint covering the inside of the tub was peeling off in palm-sized chunks, which meant that sometimes you felt something brush up against your foot in the swirling water.

But, hey, it was a great way to end the day. Happy Christmas Eve.

In the morning, we feasted on the strange fare of hotel buffet breakfast, hopped in the car, and got out of there.

Day 4: Hays, KS to Bailey, CO

We listened in the car to my mother's mix CDs of Christmas music, because it was Christmas after all. I repeatedly shouted "Merry Christmas!" at Ryan, mostly while he was driving.

We made it to Denver, sauntered into a schmancy hotel, asked the maitre d' for a restaurant recommendation for a late lunch, took a short walk along Cherry Creek, and arrived at the restaurant to take our seats at our reserved table. (Thanks, friendly maitre d'!) We declared this our fancy Christmas meal and left a generous tip.

Our room reservation for the night was in Bailey, CO, southwest of Denver. Lovely place. Our hosts had four dogs--four!-- and I began to think that this trip was a tour of what not to do with your dog(s). They also had a wood-fired hot tub and a sauna, which more than made up for the high-strung pups.

Stay tuned for We hit the road, Part 2! During which we... take hikes! Wear the wrong shoes! Cook pizza! Meet a man named Mystic Mike! AND MORE!

There might even be pictures!

I am leaving in a week and a day. (So soon!) I am reaching a sense of closure, which is good. It's also a bit sad, but I suppose that's the way of it.

I went down to Twin Oaks last weekend to say my farewells. I had hugs and long chats with three of my very good friends and invited them to visit if they're ever on the left coast. I had a processing date with someone who has struggled with me, which reminded me to write a note to someone with whom I had struggled.

I headed up to Takoma Park a couple days ago for a farewell dinner with my good friends from college. Everyone seemed to be going through a change or transition of some sort; I fit right in.

My mother sighs a little sigh every time she hugs me now and comments about how much she'll miss me.

Things are wrapping up at work. I have signed a "voluntary termination" document and trained my replacement. My students and I are working hard on our production of Much Ado About Nothing, which performs just before I go. They're such a joy to work with, and they're really shining through in this show. I'll miss them.

I have minimized and econo-sized my belongings. I think I might actually fit everything in my car, other than a couple boxes I plan to mail.

I am excitedly making plans about gardening, tending chickens, landscaping, and general homemaking in Washington. This may have included sending out a massive, multi-page email about starting our chicken flock, to which everyone responded by politely telling me to calm down. I am impatient.

And now I am waiting. I have many things to do, and I'm grateful to have projects to pass the time, but I am waiting.

I grew up moving. My parents were both in the Army, so I got used to uprooting (or being uprooted) every couple years. In many ways, my upcoming move to Olympia is just one more in a string of moves. In one important way, however, it is unique: this move, hopefully, will be permanent.

In October, my boyfriend, Ryan, bought a house and land with a couple of his best friends. (Their names, for the purposes of this blog, are Em and Dee. They have a little girl, whom I will call Mini, who turned one year old this summer.) The land is six and a half acres in Olympia, Washington, a mere twenty minute bike ride from downtown. It is mostly flat and open, with a forested ravine on one side, a few established fruit trees, and a couple redwoods. The house is over one hundred years old and will need a lot of work, but it's full of character and will ultimately be Em and Dee's. Ryan and I plan to build our own place in another corner of the property.

Em, Dee, Mini, Ryan, and I are starting an intentional community. We are putting down roots in a serious way.

To put it briefly, I am moving out there to be the change I want to see in the world. (Thanks, Gandhi.) The change that I want to see involves connectedness, both to people and the natural environment. The change that I want to see involves relationships and trust. The change that I want to see involves roots, seasons, and growth. The change that I want to see involves, well, staying in one place for a long time.

I have wanted these things before. I've lived in an intentional community before. I've tried putting down roots before. Will this time work out any better? All I can do is plan as well as I can, cross my fingers, take a deep breath, and jump.

Am I nervous? Yes, absolutely. Am I excited? Yes, absolutely.

There are things that I'll miss here: my parents, my job, my coworkers, my students, my fitness classes, my favorite restaurants, etc. I'll miss the things I can't bring with me, the things that won't fit in my car or in the few boxes I plan to mail out. I'll miss the tree outside my bedroom window and the familiar plants in the understory layer of mid-Atlantic forests.

I've been saying my farewells to these things. I've announced my departure at work and have made good progress on the "Things Ms. Joanna Does" document to inform my replacement. I've gone on solitary hikes in the Shenandoahs to squeeze out my last few drops of Virginia wilderness. I've had many long hugs with my mother and father. I've sold or donated a remarkable portion of my possessions.

I'm ready to go.

December 20th will be my last day of work. A couple days later, with many goodbye hugs and the thud of a car door, Ryan and I will be on our way. We will begin a journey that will take us on adventures I can only imagine: from one coast to another, one life to another, one step at a time.

I went to a presentation today about keeping backyard chickens. Over the course of an hour, I learned only two facts. Although I was not thrilled with the amount of new information trickling into my head, it was comforting to find out that I already know enough about chickens to learn little from an hour-long presentation about them.

Let me tell you a few things about chickens. (Disclaimer: I don't have any just yet. As soon as I get out to that other coast, I am building myself a flock ASAP. In the meantime, allow me to share my book learnin'.)

First of all, chickens are birds. That makes them rather different from you and me, in that they're not mammals. They're also different in that they're pretty dumb. Luckily, this means they have fairly simple needs.

Chickens want to eat, drink, poop, sleep, peck, scratch, and lay eggs. They also want to not be eaten.

Let's go through these ornithological desires item by item. How can I, the backyard chicken keeper, see to each?

(Answers after the jump!)

"You should be an author."

"You should write, Joanna. You really should."

I can't remember the first time I picked up a pencil. Probably by the second time, though, my mom had started saying this stuff. Probably by the third time, I'd started brushing her off.

Today, something remarkable occurred to me: my mother might be right.

Not only might my mother be correct about my writing, but I might actually have something to write about.

People like stories about love. People like stories about other people taking chances, growing, learning new things, and finding themselves. People like back-to-the-earth, homey, crunchy granola sorts of stories.

Good god, that's my life. Or, at least, it's about to be. I hope.

I'm going to try updating this thing more regularly. I'm going to try to take more pictures with my fancy new camera (thanks Dad!). And maybe, after a while, I can lump it all together and make something more than a blog out of it. That'd be cool. In the meantime, dear reader, you can hope to hear more from me.

Posts that I intend to eventually be part of this bigger thing will be tagged with "love and lettuce" for navigational convenience. You can expect them to be a little more focused. Rants, lists, and rambles may be left untagged; I might not want to publish that stuff later, but I need to put it down somewhere.

Expect to see some changes 'round here.