Welcome Winter

When I say, "Welcome, Winter..." I'm trying to be sincere. However, I'm still having trouble getting as excited as everyone else seems to be about the 4-6 months of winter peering over the horizon. Mark is having no trouble getting super amped about the snow. He already bought Cross Country ski's and is looking into getting some snow shoes. He has also already been invited on two winter camping trips, both of which I have declined to attend. I am slowly getting ready for winter. I bought some heavy duty snow boots and I was gifted a pair of snowshoes by a wonderful woman at our local bookstore. A friend and co-worker also offered to give me a free snowboarding lesson. Seeing as it's been about 12 years since I last strapped my feet to anything designed to take me quickly downhill, it's probably time to give it another try.

We've been busy since I last posted. Mark and I each took a week-long vacation. Me to Montana for a wedding and he to NYC and then North Carolina for the wedding of friends Dan and Julie, who he met doing E-corps in Austin.
Most of Mark's trip was spent in transit: a train from Montpelier to NYC, then a bus to New Jersey, then he and his friend Eric drove from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. Then he repeated that in reverse. Luckily, he did get to spend some time in both New York and North Carolina, not just in transit. I had a great time in Montana. I attended a beautiful wedding of a childhood friend and her British fiancee' (now husband.) Hamilton was full of British folks and it was fantastic! I also saw a number of other friends and generally had a great time.

When we both returned to VT, we worked for a few days and then Mark's Dad and Step-Mom, Joel and Deb, came for a visit. We all had a great time touring around, looking at the leaves, making and eating tasty food and looking at pictures of Mark's new nephew who Deb and Joel had visited in Wisconsin before coming to Vermont. It was a fun visit and I'm so glad they got to see where we spent our summer and where we'll be staying for at least the next 2 and a half years. It's a somewhat arbitrary number, but we made the commitment to ourselves to stick around Vermont for at least 3 years. After all the moving we've done in the last three, it seemed like a good time to settle down for a bit, get to know a place and solidify some friendships, all things that are hard to do when you move every 6 months.















The end of our season consisted of harvesting and washing literally tons of root vegetables. 38 rows of potatoes, 12 rows of carrots, 4 rows of beets as well as a number of above ground crops all had to be harvested before the ground froze. We managed to get everything out and spent days and days in the barn, shoveling veggies into the giant barrel washer and then sorting and packing them as they rolled out onto the long tables we had set up. Overall, it was a really good season and a definite opposite experience from farming in Texas. Whereas a good 1/4 to 1/3 of our time in Texas was taken up by irrigation, we only had to irrigate once in Vermont. Whereas in Vermont we don't have the bull nettle, fire ants and rattlesnakes that abound in Texas, we do have many diseases, mostly associated with the cool, wet weather, that would never have survived in Texas. Mark and I are both very glad we ended up in Vermont. It's a pretty awesome place. Here's a photo of Me, Mark, Maggie, Bill and Brandon near the end of the season. Brandon left right before Halloween and though we miss him, Mark and I have settled nicely into life without roommates.


So, now that farming is over, we sit around and eat bonbons all day, right? Nope. As soon as the season ended, Mark started right into his new job as a seed packer at High Mowing Organic Seeds. They're a local, organic seed company, located in Wolcott. Their website is pretty great, especially if you're into farming/gardening. Just think, if you order seeds this year, they may very well have been packed by Mark.

I started off November working a few days for Bill here and there. I also started working in the produce section of the co-op two nights a week as well as working for a wonderful woman I met at Community Dinner, named Maggie McGuire. Community Dinner is held every Thursday, from noon to one in Hardwick. It's a free lunch and most of the food is supplied by local farmers, the co-op and the food bank. Robin Cappuccino started Community Dinner back in 1992 and has been spearheading it every Thursday, except for the 2 months that he is in India, working with his parents organization: Child Haven International
A few weeks ago we attended an Indian dinner and Sari fashion show benefiting the organization. It was well attended and helped to remind me what an unusual and interesting place in which we have landed.

In early November I applied for a collective position at our local co-op, Buffalo Mountain, and I was hired on the 18th. Buffalo Mountain is unlike any other place I have ever worked. It is an actual collective, meaning no bosses and no hierarchy. I'm still working in produce and now I am also the re-stocker for a large amount of the grocery items. For a small store, we manage to pack a lot of items onto those shelves! My first collective meeting is this Wednesday. I'm excited to be working in an environment where we can all make schedules and decisions that work for us, where decisions and policies are not handed down from a higher authority, but come from the folks that are actually doing the work. It's an eclectic crew of people and I'm stoked to be a part of it.

Aside from our new jobs, we've gone on a few hikes, worked on some art projects and had dinners and brunches with friends. A few weeks ago we hiked the highest peak in Vermont, (Mt. Mansfield elev: 4,393ft) with our friends Matt and Emiko.The wind at the top was incredible! I could lean into it and be held up solely by the wind pushing me back. Emiko and I studied abroad in Ecuador together back in 2004 and she recently moved to Montpelier after farming in Bozeman, MT all summer. I am excited to have her around.

For my 28th birthday, one of my favorite singers, Langhorne Slim, came to Burlington, so Mark and I headed to the big city. We had hot beverages with a friend, Mark bought XC skis, we ate great Vietnamese food and then danced our asses right off at the show. All in all a great day. Another exciting thing happened on the 1st, my friend Katie Hollingshead Meek had her 2nd baby, Asher Allen Meek. What a lovely birthday present! Here's a photo of the pillow I made for him and the two stuffed animals I made for his very proud older brother, Eli.


In other news, Mark started and Etsy shop: Mumbledown where he's selling silkscreened patches. Check it out!

Well, I'm sure there's more news, but can't think of anything at the moment. To those of you who made it all the way through this blog, thank you! Hopefully in the future, now that we have
internet at the house (!) they will be more frequent and shorter. Enjoy the transition into winter.