Fast Forward

Truth be told, I’m tired of writing about adventures that happened months ago. I’m ready to start writing about new, Vermont farm-centric adventures. However, I feel that the past 6 months should at least be touched upon, so here’s a condensed version.

New York City was even more fun that expected. We walked all over the place, ate great food, saw good friends and took in our fill of the big city. We walked from Brooklyn to Manhattan, via the Brooklyn Bridge, went to Central Park, took the subway to Coney Island, walked all over Brooklyn, saw old friends and decided that though New York was great to visit, we definitely aren’t city people. However, we are both glad we have friends who live there, because it’s a great excuse to go back someday.

After leaving New York City, we headed south, hoping to make it to Charlottesville, Virginia to get our car fixed at the same mechanic who fixed our clutch. It became apparent rather quickly that this wasn’t in the cards. Our heat gauge was all over the place, mostly in the red, as we crossed through New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. We made it to the tip of Virginia when the heat gauge hit the top and refused to go back down. We pulled off the interstate and were lucky enough to be 2 miles away from Prince William State Park. We limped the car to a campsite and settled in for the evening. The next day we called a mechanic who sent out a tow truck. The car was in worse shape than we thought, so we ended up renting a car for the week it was in the shop and spent some time with friends in Charlottesville and then headed out to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for some rainy adventures and finished out the week in the Blue Ridge Mountains. After our car was back in working order, we headed to Iron Station, North Carolina to pick up some things from my friend Therin’s house before heading west for the holidays.

Our route west took us through Kentucky where we stopped at Mammoth Cave National Park. Here are some pictures:


After Kentucky, we headed to Wisconsin to spend 5 days with Mark’s brother Eric, his new wife Crystle and her 2 year old son Ian. We spent some quality time with the three of them and I got to see my first Great Lake. I knew the Great Lakes were huge, but until actually seeing one, I had no idea how huge! There had been a Salmon spawn sometime before and there were dried fish everywhere.





After saying our goodbyes, we struck out through Minnesota and into South Dakota. We slept at a rest stop just outside of the Badlands and went into the National Park early the next morning. What an otherworldly landscape.







After South Dakota, we crossed into Montana, landing at our friend’s Nic and Sarah’s apartment in Bozeman. We spent a few fun filled days in the excessively snowy town, cooking and eating great food, going to Norris Hot Springs, lounging and generally having a great time. Our next stop was Hamilton, Montana where we would remain for the next 4 months, kind of on accident, kind of on purpose. I got my old job back at Chapter One Bookstore and my parents were house sitting up in Missoula for most of the week, leaving their house empty for Mark and I to house sit. While in Montana, Mark did a lot of writing for his blog that he plans to turn into a book in the not too distant future. You can check it out at http://mybestfrienddave.blogspot.com He also did some embroidery work and made an excellent winged buffalo.
We spent Thanksgiving at my Cousin Alison’s house where we got to meet new baby Bennett and I finally gave him his baby quilt that I’d been working on since January, but due to my obsessively tiny stitches, it took me 11 months to complete. In my defense, it’s difficult to get excited about sitting around with a quilt on your lap, hand quilting in the Texas heat. One good thing about driving across the country is it leaves lots of free time for quilting.

We went back to Bozeman two more times to visit Sarah and Nic, our friends Katie and Audrey dropped by on their way across the country
and we spent a fair amount of time with Hamilton friends, eating good food and playing darts. Mark also went home to Colorado for 3 weeks and got in a lot of good family and friend time and went on some outdoor adventures.
The main focus of my winter turned out to be the musical Annie. Our local theater was putting it on and on a whim I tried out. It turned out to be very time consuming, but fun. I discovered a whole new group of people I never knew existed in Hamilton. I had 4 lines and a 5 word singing solo. As a homeless person and Annette the servant, I spent a lot of time on stage, but mostly in the background. While I was off becoming a star, Mark went on a bunch of hikes and went on a solo backpacking trip. He also encountered a grip of wildlife including a moose and a wolf. I made another quilt, this time for Eric and Crystle’s new baby, my new nephew, Brock.





Three days after the final Annie show, Mark and I left Hamilton. We had spent the winter applying to farm jobs all over the East Coast and had decided to spend the season at Harvest Hill Farm in Walden, Vermont. We left Hamilton on March, 17th with a month to make it to Vermont in time to start work. In logical fashion, we headed west to go east.



First stop on our eastbound road trip was Portland, Oregon. We spent a lovely week there, enjoying the spring weather, exclaiming over the flowers and spending time in parks with our friends. We also hit up some of our favorite Portland locations, such as Powell’s bookstore, Mt. Tabor, a number of our favorite restaurants, specifically Asian ones as we were skeptical of the abundance of Asian food in the Northeast Kingdom. One of the highlights of our Portland experience was seeing ‘Back to the Future’ on the big screen at Laurelhurst, our favorite beer theater. I also, personally, drank way too much good coffee. After saying farewell to our Portland friends, we headed to the Oregon Coast to visit our favorite beaches. We stopped at Arcadia, Hug Point and Oswald west, before cutting inland to spend the night in Corvallis with our friends Cosmo and Gwenn. They gave us a tour of their newly remodeled home, fed us tasty food and took us on a lovely evening walk. The next morning we continued south to Medford, Oregon to spend some days with our buddy Ross. The night we got there, ‘The Devil Makes Three’, a raucous bluegrass band was playing in Ashland. The show was a great way to start off our Medford portion of the trip. A lot of relaxing was done in Medford. Picnics were went on, hikes were taken, movies were watched, hot springs were soaked in and the balmy weather was enjoyed.

From Oregon we crossed the border into California where we spent time in both Wilits and Ft. Bragg, visiting our friends Katie and Alex and Nora. Though wet and chilly, Northern California was gorgeous. We spent a lot of time outside, both inland and on the coast and took way too many photos.

From California we finally started heading towards Vermont instead of away from it. We spent 10 days in Berthoud, Colorado visiting Mark’s family, but on the way there we managed to hit 3 different snowstorms in 3 different states. Passes in California, Nevada and Colorado were all determined to dump ridiculous amounts of snow in the path of the poor Subaru. At least we got a break in Utah. Berthoud was nice and relaxing. We spent a lot of time with Mark’s family and friends. The time felt too short, but then again, it always does. From Colorado we booked it through Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee to make it to North Carolina in two days. We reclaimed everything we had left at my friend Therin’s and loaded up the car all the way to the front seats. Maggie still managed to find a little niche to crawl into. We spent a few days with Therin and she and Ellick even talked us into going to Hot Yoga. Mark loved it. I, however, was not cut out for an hour and a half of yoga at 94 degrees and only made it through a little over half the class before going out to sit in the lobby to avoid passing out. At least I tried.

After North Carolina, we made a stop in Charlottesville, Virgina for a few days. We stayed at my friend Jed’s house and he and his roommates were once again incredibly accommodating and fun. These southern folk know how to have a good time. From Virginia, we headed north and made it to Vermont in 12 hours. We slept at a rest stop on Interstate 93 and the next morning met up with my friend Emiko in Montpelier. Emiko and I studied abroad in Ecuador together and it was great to see her again. We went out to Kismet, a great breakfast place and then hit up the indoor Farmer’s Market before bidding her and her friend Matt farewell and driving the last 45 minutes to the farm.

Here are a sampling of photos from our road trip East:




































Next post: Welcome to the Northeast Kingdom. Get ready for some gorgeous Vermont photos!

Road Trip Edition: Chicken Slaughter, NYC and a little fender bender....

After bidding farewell to Acadia National Park, we headed south, back to Tivoli. We took a slightly more direct route than on our way up to Maine and managed to make the drive in about 8 hours. We rolled into Tivoli around 10pm and had just enough time to grab some pizza before setting up camp on the living room floor. We slept in the next morning and grabbed a cup of coffee before heading over to Hearty Roots farm to watch the great chicken slaughter. KayCee and Owen started a farm named Awesome Farm two years ago. Their farm focuses on raising lambs and chickens for slaughter. Today dozens of chickens were going to meet their end, to be sold the next day in NYC, to customers who had pre-ordered them weeks before.

When we got there, the slaughter was in full swing. Owen was in charge of the actual killing. By the time we got there, he had it down to a rhythm: pull 2 chickens out of a crate, turn them upside down and place them each in a killing cone, cut off their heads, repeat. I should note that the following pictures were borrowed from Awesome Farm's Facebook page. Thank you KayCee and Owen!

He let the blood drain out of each chicken and then placed them in the scalder. The scalder had water that was close to boiling and the chicken carcasses would spend a couple minutes rotating while their feathers loosened in the water. After their bath, they were placed in the plucker. The plucker is a crazy machine that works much like a washing machine on the spin cycle. It's a cylindrical tube about 2.5 feet across and 3 feet deep and has a bunch of rubber "fingers" that pull the feathers off while the chickens are bounced from side to side. After the chickens had been de-feathered, they were handed to Devin who was in charge of cutting off the feet and necks. Maggie was the lucky recipient of a number of chicken feet that day. At the end of the slaughter, we found her fat and happy, sprawled out on her side, a half eaten foot next to her head. Next, the chickens were passed to Dana and KayCee who gutted and rinsed the chickens before placing them in a tub full of cold water to be weighed and bagged later that afternoon.
All this equipment was rented from a farmer in Massachusetts. He bolted each piece to a trailer, making a portable slaughterhouse. It's a brilliant idea, allowing small farmers like KayCee and Owen to slaughter their chickens on site without having to purchase expensive equipment or forcing them to bring their chickens to a slaughterhouse and paying someone to do it for them. It amazed me how quickly the chickens went from living, breathing, squawking, creatures to the chicken we're used to seeing in the grocery store. The difference with these chickens, however, was that they lived a free range life, eating bugs and food scraps, wandering around in the open air before they ended up on someones plate. They lived out in a field, in portable pens that were moved each day to allow the chickens access to the freshest grass and everything that comes with it. This is not only healthy for the chickens, but for the future consumers as well. You are what you eat and the healthier a life your food led, the healthier in turn you'll be.

The day after chicken slaughter was our friend Devin's day to do the Hearty Roots CSA drop in New York City. We woke up at 4:30am and drove to the farm to meet Devin. He had been there since 3am, loading the truck with all the vegetables needed to fill the 250 CSA member shares that would be picked up in various locations around Brooklyn. The first drop was at 7:30am so we hit the road at 5:00am. All the drops were done by 10:00am. The way Hearty Roots runs its CSA is that there are 5 places where they drop the veggies. At each of the 5 locations, a few members are in charge of helping to unload the truck. They set the bins of vegetables on tables and are given a list of what each member gets that week. They load up the crates from the week before and then we are on our way to the next drop. This is very unlike the farm Mark and I worked at this summer. A large portion of our time was spent washing all the veggies we harvested, to make them look pretty, packaging them in containers, bags or bundles and then filling up all the bags that were going out each day. Then, one of us would go to the drop spot and personally hand each member their bag. Though our veggies did look beautiful, were well presented and it was nice to get some face time with our members each week, a ton of time was lost to beautifying veggies, that could have been spent in the fields...Hearty roots leaves their veggies mostly unwashed and then each member picks through the crates to grab the food they have coming each week. Though it's not as pleasing to the eye, it frees up a lot of time and energy for the farm employees to spend on other areas of the farm. In the time it would have taken Mark or me to do one CSA drop, Devin had dropped off at 5 places and we had all partook of some amazing bagel sandwiches and taken a walk in the park. It's interesting to see how other farms run their CSA's. The rest of our day in the city was spent walking around a few different neighborhoods, stopping by the store where KayCee and Dana were distributing the chickens slaughtered the day before and then going to a lovely afternoon lunch party. We left the city in the early evening to make the 2 hour drive back to Tivoli. After our early wake up, we were exhausted and gratefully fell asleep soon after getting back to Devin's. It was inspiring and only slightly terrifying to watch him drive a gigantic moving van through the tiny streets of Brooklyn. It made us think that if he could do it in a huge van, we could probably navigate those same streets in our little Subaru.

We spent a couple more days in the Tivoli area. We went on an awesome hike in the Catskills, saw the famed town of Woodstock, took in the fall foliage on back country roads and did some serious lounging before saying farewell to our friends and heading to Connecticut. In Connecticut I reconnected with some relatives that I hadn't seen in close to 10 years. After 2 days in CT, one with my Mom's cousin Dede and another with my Great Aunt Alba, we decided to brave the streets of New York City to go visit Mark's friend Sheila. We set off the morning of October 15th. The plan was that I would drive us to the city and then Mark would drive in the city. Somewhere along the route of our road trip I had decided that it was a good idea to try and drive like a New Englander. I was wrong. In Winston, CT, less than 20 miles from the New York border, I managed to rear end the woman in front of us. In my defense, it was raining and the roads were slick. I may have also been following a little closely....Her car was fine, with only a few scratches on the bumper. The poor Subaru did not fare as well. Our entire front end was crunched in on itself, but the car was still drivable. The police officer, seeing our Oregon plates, took pity on me and didn't issue a ticket. Instead of trying our luck in the city, we decided to head back to Auntie Alba's to regroup before heading into the city the next day. Though it turned out to be an expensive lesson, I finally learned that when one is from Montana, she should not try and drive like a New Englander.

Acadia National Park!

Acadia National Park!

Acadia National Park is not big, but it packs a lot of beauty into a small space. It gets approximately 2 million visitors a year and 1.8 million of them come between June and September. Being there in October, we managed to miss the crowds of people and shared the park with a minimal number of retirees and European travelers. When we entered the park, we decided to splurge on the $80 National Park Pass. The pass gets you into all National Parks, Wildlife Areas, Monuments and Federal Recreational lands for free. This proved to be an excellent decision as we used it a number of times on the rest of our road trip. We rolled into Acadia around 4pm and managed to squeeze in a short hike before sunset. Acadia was originally a get away for rich New Englanders (well, first it was home to various Native American tribes, but they left the land unchanged, except for shell heaps). Families such as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies spent time in Acadia, then called Mt. Desert Island, building large houses and carriage trails through the woods. It was on these carriage trails that we hiked. An interesting history of Acadia can be found at their website: http://www.nps.gov/acad/historyculture/stories.htm After roaming around on the carriage trails, we drove to the campground and set up our tent in the dark. Mark made dinner while I started a fire. Even though it was only October 5th, the temperature dropped into the low 40's and the fire was much appreciated. We stayed by the fire until it was only coals and then headed to bed early.

Our first full day in Acadia was spent driving around the island and taking as many short hikes in different parts of the park as possible. We brought the camp stove and Mark made mac n' cheese on the beach for lunch. Yum! The water up here was much rougher and colder than the coastal waters of Connecticut. The waves would crash into the rocky shore, sending up sprays of salt water that grew increasingly higher as the tide came in. For such a small park, the terrain was quite varied. One minute you would be driving along the coast and then the next you would be plunged into a dark forest. If you kept driving, minutes later you would be deposited on a rocky outcrop at the top of a mountain with an incredible view, like the picture at the top of this post. We continued to explore until it was too dark to see. We reluctantly headed back to camp and proceeded to have a feast of fancy hot dogs grilled over an open fire. The night was cool again and the fire was a welcome addition to the evening.

The next morning we awoke to rain soaking through the seams of our supposedly waterproof tent. Not a morning person under the best of circumstances, I was poorly equipped to deal with a leaky tent before 8am. After much grumbling and a slight breakdown on my part, Mark managed to coax me into the car to go get coffee and check out Acadia through the downpour. We threw a tarp over the tent and put our non waterproof belongings in the car before heading into Bar Harbor. In town, we did a bit of shopping and then went to a coffee shop to write postcards and wait out the rain. The rain refused to stop, so we got lunch and then went to a whale museum. Finally around 2pm the sun showed it's face. We hopped in the car and raced down to the beach before the clouds came rolling back. Our plan was to do a hike that started on the beach and then worked its way up the mountain, but when we reached the trail head, we saw that it had been washed out by all the rain. There had been a fairly sizable lake just past the beach, but all the rain had caused it to overflow its banks and before our eyes all the freshwater was rushing down the beach to meet the ocean, eroding the beach along the way. Here are some photos:

We spent nearly an hour watching the beach erode. You could stand right at the edge and then step back as you saw new cracks appear in the sand, moments before another chunk would go crashing into the water. We stayed on the beach until right before sunset and made it back to the car just as the rain started up again. Not wanting to try and make dinner in the rain, we decided to head back into Bar Harbor for pizza. We got it to go and then ate it in the car. We finished the night with a few cribbage games and then crawled into our slightly soggy tent. We woke up the next morning and after checking out the weather forecast, decided that though Acadia was wonderful in nice weather, it was not as wonderful in the rain and since rain was predicted for the foreseeable future, it was time to head south again. We packed up the car, grabbed a quick breakfast of sausage and egg biscuits from the local health food store (both the eggs and sausage were from local farmers) and headed back to Tivoli to spend some more time with Devin and co.

Here are a few more pictures:

Tivoli, Portland and Norway

After two, fairly expensive, fixes the Subaru was running like a champ. We drove North, ticking off a few new states on the way. Virgina? Check. West Virgina, Maryland, Pennsylvania? Check, check and check. Since we left Charlottesville at noon, our plan was to drive until we got sleepy and then pull over at a rest stop, making it to New York the following day. Sleepy caught up with us in Pennsylvania, but all the rest stops had fairly menacing signs warning travelers that anyone caught hanging around for more than 2 hours was subject to prosecution. No matter how slim the chances of actually being caught were, we decided not to risk it and pushed on. Luckily, the first rest stop past the Pennsylvania border into New York was menacing sign-free, so we pulled over for some much needed rest. It amazed us that in a shorter amount of time than it had taken us to get out of Texas, we were able to cross through 4 states and into a 5th, and the states were only getting smaller the farther north we headed.

We woke up the next morning to more traffic than we had seen in quite a while. Welcome to New England! Since it was a Wednesday, our buddy Devin was working. We decided to check out Connecticut before heading to Tivoli. We powered across southern Connecticut in a sprint to the coast. If anyone ever feels like going on an unpleasant and unscenic drive, I recommend I-95. Fortunately, we were able to turn off of it pretty quickly, as we opted for the slower, but much more scenic Hwy 1. We found a state park on the coast and Mark got to see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. He and Maggie went for a swim as I settled onto a large boulder and watched the gentle waves rolling into shore. The Connecticut coastline is primarily made up of the Long Island Sound, so the water is much calmer than the Atlantic we would see later on the coast of Maine. After taking an accidental detour into Rhode Island, we headed west, across northern Connecticut. The leaves were beginning to change and we passed some beautiful farms on our way back to New York. We made it to Tivoli around 9:30pm and were pleased to find out that Devin's roommate KC and her partner Owen were fans of Top Chef and were about to head down to the local pizza place to catch the show. What better way to spend our first (non-rest stop) night in New York than with friendly people, tasty pizza and our favorite reality show?

Tivoli proved to be a blast. Devin had a multitude of wonderful farmer friends. The Lower Hudson River Valley was gorgeous and our days were spent driving around, taking in the fall colors and going for short hikes. Our nights were filled with fun people and activities including a spades dress up party, a goat feed (the goat fed us, we didn't feed the goat), and drinks at the local bar. After 3 short days in Tivoli, we decided to continue north to Maine.

Tivoli to Portland is 4 hours if you take the fast route. We are generally averse to the fast route, so we took the scenic route which lead us from NY, into southern Vermont and then up through New Hampshire, before hitting southern Maine. 7.5 hours and a short detour to the Maine coast later, we rolled into Portland and the waiting arms of our friend Audrey. We first became friends with Audrey in Portland, Oregon, so seeing her in Portland, Maine was awfully exciting. Two Portlands, two coastlines, one great friendship.

Portland turned out to be different, yet quite reminiscent of the "other Portland." When we first started walking around I kept getting excited by all signs and fliers mentioning Portland. I had to keep reminding myself that we were in Portland, just not the one with which I was familiar. Though it has a population of only 40,000, it is the biggest city in Maine and it feels like a proper city. It has everything you could want from a city, just on a smaller scale. It was also awesome. We ate great food, went to the beach and walked all over town. One of Mark's E-corps friends from Austin, TX was a native Maynard (Mainian? Mainite?) and after working in Texas had moved back to Maine. We spent an evening with him and his girlfriend and became thoroughly convinced that we should move to Portland immediately. However, the call of the open road was still too strong and after 3 lovely days exploring the city and surrounding area, we headed north to Norway, to stay with 2 of my Mom's college friends. They lived in a beautiful house that was backed by a 25 acre lake and they happened to be heading out of town that weekend. They offered us a dog/house sitting job and so we settled into Norway for the next 5 days. In the area they live, all the towns are named after foreign locales. Here's a picture of a sign just up the road:

And the lake that we were babysitting. Mark went fishing every day in the canoe and we had some tasty fish dinners.

The area we were in was lovely. Norway is a super cute town with a great health food store and a couple good bookstores. It was also home to the New Balance outlet and I got some new kicks for $20! We went for a few beautiful hikes. One thing we learned about Maine is that just because a hike is short, it doesn't mean it's easy. All the hikes we took ended up taking us straight up the mountain. There were no switchbacks like we were used to in the West. Here's the view from the top of Mt. Pleasant. The mountain is quite aptly named.

After the hike, we went to the best beer bar either of us had ever been to, the Horse Brass Pub in Portland, Oregon included. We actually saw someone in Ebenezer's with a Horse Brass Pub t-shirt on. Ebenezer's had the most extensive beer list I have ever seen. They even had a bottle of aged Belgian beer for $275! We opted for some slightly cheaper beers..... Here's their website if you want to take a gander at the beer list: http://www.ebenezerspub.net/ It's definitely worth a look.

Two of Mark's and my long term goals are to visit every state and National Park in the U.S. Since we were already in Maine, it made perfect sense to keep heading north to Acadia National Park after our house sitting gig was over. On October 5th, we bid farewell to the 2 goofy, chocolate labs we had dog sat, and their wonderfully hospitable owners, Kate and Glen, and hit the road once again.

Road Trip Edition: Sweet Virginia

One of the greatest rock songs of all time starts out something like this:

"Wading through the waste stormy winter and there's not a friend to help you through. Trying to stop the waves behind your eyeballs. Drop your reds, drop your greens and blues."

Whether Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote this song about a woman or the state I can't say. I'm definitely leaning towards the latter, mostly because I cannot believe the lack of songs written about Virginia. I don't think I'm alone in this feeling of being kept in the dark. Maybe Virginia, with its majestic autumn colors, Shenandoah Valley, its old friendly towns and artisan bacon is just one of the better kept secrets the East coast keeps from the West.

Supposedly the drive down I-81 from Asheville to Johnson City, Tennessee is stunning. It was a little past 9pm when we did it and Marisa and I couldn’t see a thing. We were planning on pushing through to a rest stop just outside Roanoke,VA. My good friend Dan grew up in Marion, VA so we stopped to fill up the tank there and take the opportunity to get a glimpse into his childhood. We must have taken the wrong exit to this small town because the only thing we glimpsed through the dense fog was the county jail. The most extraordinary aspect of the beginning of our journey into Virginia was the rain stopping immediately after we crossed the border. We pulled into the rest stop after midnight and fell asleep within seconds.

The next morning I woke up, used the rest stop bathroom and let the mutt out to stretch her legs. By the time Marisa woke up we were pulling into Roanoke in search of a decent breakfast and a much needed cup of coffee. Our original plan hadn’t gotten past us getting out of North Carolina's rain. Marisa was flipping through the road atlas and I assumed she was probably just looking for a National Forest we could pitch a tent in for the night. Then I noticed her measuring out the distance on the country map with her finger tips.

"New York isn’t very far from the northern part of Virginia" She said.

"Oh yeah......I guess everything is closer on the east coast, especially compared to Texas." I wasn’t really sure if Marisa was suggesting something or if she was just being informative.

"We could visit Devin," she said, her voice half joking, half quite serious.

Devin is a close friend of ours from Portland. He had been farming in the Hudson Valley of New York all summer. Originally I had my doubts about driving to New York, but then I compared it to our current plan which didn’t get us past the end of the week. I glanced at the clock and picked up our cell phone.

"Devin! Hey man, did I wake you?"

"No, no, I needed to get up anyway. What's going on? Where are you guys?"

"Virginia. What are you up to this weekend?"

"Nothing, come on up."

"Yeah?" I said.

"Yeah man, come on up."

"All right We'll call you when we get closer."

I shut the phone off and turned towards Marisa.

“He said come on up,” I said.

“Really? Just like that,” Marisa said with a smile.

“Yeah, pretty much, just like that. Devin's great....so yeah, I think this will be good. We’ll visit Devin, hit the outer banks on our way back and then buckle down and get jobs in North Carolina.”

Marisa was still looking at the atlas. “You know, it looks like Portland, Maine is just up the road from New York. We could go see what Audrey’s up to.” This time she had a lot more humor in her voice.

“Yeah, right, and Wisconsin is just another day to the west. We could visit my brother and meet his new wife.”

We stopped at a wonderful farmer’s market and picked up some sausage biscuits and blueberries. This market looked like the same famers had been coming to this exact spot for fifty years. We briefly discussed moving to Roanoke after we get back from New York. The Subaru was 1500 miles overdue for an oil change and more miles than I care to say overdue for a tire rotation .We took the car into a local place to prepare for our journey. The attendant mentioned that we are in desperate need of new tires. I pretend not to hear this for now.

It wasn’t until we pulled onto the Blue Ridge Parkway that Virginia showed up on our radar. The mountain views have so many layers. The first layer is filled with all the reds and yellows of Appalachian fall. The furthest layer is covered in a oceanic blue haze. Everything in between blends gracefully from focused to blurry. Just as were falling in love with Virginia, the car began acting a little strange. It had a lack of power going up the hills. We chalked this up as the car being tired from the long drive out East. Luckily, there were plenty of places to pull off and let any driver that wanted to go more than 20 get by.

We stumbled across a little dirt road. There were old farmhouses on the side of the road and deep pine forests. We were exploring camping options when I noticed a trailhead sign. We decided to stretch our legs and let Maggie run around. The sign was labeled with the legendary AT symbol. We had come across the Appalachian Trail which for me was kind of like going to Mecca. I’ve done trail work before and Marisa and I have been talking about hiking the AT in its entirety for years. I can’t even express the feeling of walking on a trail that goes all the way from Georgia to Maine. Comprehending that distance on foot is truly mind blowing. The trail is part of the reason we’ve traveled to the Southeast. We walked up and down the trail a bit and it was nothing short of gorgeous. I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods of the Rockies, Cascades and the great Northwest but this forest had a totally different appeal. I dunked my head in a cool stream and we went back to the car fully rejuvenated.

As Marisa started her driving shift, things seemed to get much worse with our car quirks. The tachometer was all over the place and the steeper the hill, the more we began to think, “we’re not gonna make it…” The Subaru was struggling, sometimes at less than 5 miles per hour. I was constantly checking for a pulloff, possible places to spend an indeterminate amount of time. We checked the atlas and found a rest stop on I-64, just outside of Charlottesville. The only reason we decided that this was our best option is that it seemed to be the only sure route anywhere that was primarily downhill. I took over as driver and forced our poor car the extra 6 miles to the I-64 on ramp. We coasted to the rest area. I have to say this was the most beautiful interstate rest stop I had ever seen. We even saw a Peregrine Falcon while we were walking Maggie. I popped the hood and pretended to know something about mechanics. Everything looked alright, so I shut her down. Originally the game plan was to hang out at the rest stop until Monday morning and then coast into Charlottesville and find an honest mechanic. The problem was it was 4pm on a Saturday when we made it to the rest stop. We had a stove and plenty of pasta, but after we noticed the security guard giving us funny looks while we were preparing dinner, we started to get the feeling it might be a long 40 hours. We informed Devin of our dilemma via cell phone and had Marisa’s parents, Warren and Peggy, do some research on the Car Talk website for us. After dinner we played a game of cribbage and crawled into our sleeping bags shortly past sundown.

The next morning it was painfully obvious that we couldn’t live at the rest stop much longer. I scrapped plan A and immediately decided to coast to Charlottesville. Marisa wasn’t ready to be awake when I headed for town, but I hadn’t gone a morning without a cup of coffee in 2 and ½ years and didn’t want to find out how strong my caffeine addiction had really gotten. Charlottesville is an amazing small city. Brickwork covers everything and Main Street is covered with thriving, locally owned businesses. We ate breakfast at a little café that reminded us of Portland, Oregon. I ordered the special and I still think about it to this day. It was an egg in the hole with farm fresh pulled pork covering the top of it. The pork was from Polyface Farms, featured in Michael Pollan’s book, ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’. We explored the pedestrian mall downtown and discovered the visitor’s center. Marisa grabbed a bunch of maps of the area and the nice man behind the counter let us know about a KOA campground just outside of town. He also confirmed that the mechanic Peggy and Warren had found for us was great and his own mechanic as well. After checking out the restaurants and markets we were pleased to discover that this part of the Shenandoah Valley has a solid local food movement. If you go to the Chipotle mexican restaurant (the fast food chain) all the pork comes from Polyface farms, some of the best meat in the country, and even the peppers and onions are often sourced from local organic farms. There were a number of other restaurants and stores we passed that proudly listed the local farmers they bought from in their windows.

In a matter of hours we had accidentally fallen in love with Virginia and we owed it all to our broken down vehicle. Being a child of the west, I was swept away by the area's history. The Shenandoah Valley was pivotal in the Civil War. There are battlefields everywhere. Thomas Jefferson’s house, Monticello, is just outside Charlottesville. We walked Maggie for hours in what we later began to refer to as the “Maggie Mae Pees Across America” tour and then caught a movie downtown to kill the hours before dark. The car managed the 7 miles to the KOA campground. It was mostly downhill through rolling farmland. The Charlottesville KOA is truly beautiful, despite their blatant misspellings of Kabin, Kampground, Kamping and Kamp which nearly drove Marisa insane. At the KOA there is a small trail that leads to a pond and a variety of mushrooms peek their heads up through the leaf litter that covers every campsite and the forest floor.

Marisa called the mechanic the next morning to see if he worked on Subarus.

“Subarus? Yeah, we work on Subarus all day.” Yet another reason that Charlottesville feels so much like home. I thought we weren’t going to make it up 4 or 5 of the hills on the way to town, but luckily we did, although I’m sure we made a dozen people late for work in the process. The guy behind the counter was a real character. He was decked out in brand new Washington Redskins gear. He at least had the hat and jersey and may have been wearing the pants too, it was hard to tell. We gave him the keys and then carried on with the “Maggie Mae Pees Across America” tour. We explored Charlottesville some more while we waited for the damage report. We were downtown when we got the call. “Your clutch……it’s bad. You got a bad clutch.” Just like that. The way he said it was hilarious, which was great, because the $700 it would take to fix it wasn’t funny at all. We were issued an old blue Volvo to borrow for the night. The thing had 294,000 miles on it and it felt like it took a full 10 seconds to cross an intersection. It did manage to get us back to the KOA in one piece, and that was the important part. After eating some veggie bratwursts, we fell asleep in our tent.

We spent the next morning checking out the surrounding area. At the time we were convinced that we wanted to live in Charlottesville. The countryside was phenomenal, especially with all the fall colors. Thick woods, small farms, old red barns, the whole place felt so timeless. For a brief moment we thought about giving up the New York trip and staying there, but since all our stuff was (and still is) in Therin’s crawl space in North Carolina we figured Virginia would still be there when we inevitably came to claim our possessions. We grabbed some tasty Thai food and our newly functioning Subaru and headed north to New York.

Road Trip Edition: On the Road Again

Marisa and I hit the open road towards the middle of September. Farming in the Texas hill country has taken its toll in more ways than one. Working outside for the summer with more than 70 days in a row over 100 degrees definitely wasn't a highlight. Texas hill country hadn't seen such a brutal summer since 1929. Lucky us. Neither of us were particularly heart broken to find our selves untethered. It wouldn't be polite to get too far into it. However, I will say this, the farm we were employed by has become far uglier in reality than it appears in photographs. We loaded our poor 95 Subaru legacy to the brim with everything we own. A sewing machine, 3 re-curve bows and arrows, half a dozen finished and unfinished art projects, our little cattle dog Maggie Mae, a big box of fabric, boxes and boxes of books, cookware, bags and bags of clothes and camping gear. First stop was my good friend Mikal's in Austin for a couple days to pay our respect to an amazing city and say goodbye to some friends. We partook in some authentic Mexican food and imbibed a few Lone Stars for old times sake.

The car handled like a tank with all the extra weight. We spent most of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama listening to old "This American life'' episodes and trying our hardest to ignore the random grinding, popping and clunking sounds coming from the front wheel on the passenger side. It sounded worse in the early hours of the trip. I glanced at Marisa to see if it woke her up, then told myself that if it wasn't loud enough to wake some one up it probably wasn't bad enough to worry about too much. By the time we got past Atlanta and into South Carolina the noise was unmistakably something that had to be addressed. We were on our way to Iron Station outside Charlotte, North Carolina, where Marisa's friend Therin has been living. The basic game plan at this point is to move somewhere in North Carolina but the details are still to be determined. Neither one of us had ever been to the Southeast and all we know is the farming is good, the Appalachians are amazing, the outer banks are awesome and Asheville is a nice place for people like us to hang out.

Twenty-seven hours after we leave Austin, we roll into Therin's driveway, relieved that the car didn't break down in the middle of our journey. It feels great to straighten our backs again and get outside of the car. I'm amazed that our wheel didn't fly into a ditch in Georgia with everything else close behind it. Therin takes us out for dinner in Charolette. We do laundry for the next 2 days while watching 'Top Chef" marathons and commencing a general regrouping. Things we need to do:

a) Get the car fixed
b) Locate a town to live in and a house in that town to occupy
c)Get jobs

Sounds simple enough. We figure we have a couple hundred miles left on the axle before the sound manifests itself into a roadside tragedy. The decision is made to go check out the scene in Asheville and get the car fixed there. We unload everything into Therin's crawl space. The idea is to get settled in somewhere then promptly return for our stuff. We bring enough cooking and camping supplies to spend a couple nights around Asheville. At the last moment we grab our social security cards in case some one feels obliged to hire us immediately and some contact info for an honest mechanic we looked up on the car talk web site.

The drive through the mountains is gorgeous. The trees are just beginning to change into their fall colors and even the interstate rest stop is breathtaking. We pull into Asheville and it's a lot bigger than it was in my head. I was expecting old timers playing banjos on unpainted wooden porches on every corner. For lunch we found an all you can eat Indian buffet. It was delicious. The characters downtown and in the restaurant seemed all to familiar; like people we'd met in Austin or Portland. The couple dining next to us even asked if I was the guy that had moved next door to them a couple weeks earlier. I guess I looked familiar too. Where are the accents the boiled peanuts and shirtless overall wearers? Ashville is what some of our friends refer to as a circuit town, meaning a city that attracts people that are drifting from state to state. Places where misfits fit in and it's completely acceptable to have face tattoos and ask for spare change outside any locally owned coffee shop in town. For example: Austin, Athens, Arcata, Boulder, Madison, Eugene, Portland etc...Asheville is fun and beautiful, but we were feeling like we had been on the circuit a little too long. It is nice to not be the only long hair in sight, but this just wasn't what we were searching for. Problem is, we didn't know where we were looking for.

We explore the surrounding landscape and settle into a state park outside Brevard for the night. Falling in love with Appalachia is easy. I saw 20 different kinds of wild mushrooms in the first day. It was so nice to get out from underneath the cruel Texas sun. This little corner of North Carolina seemed fitting for us on a scenic level. Marisa really appreciated the change of atmosphere and being back in proper woods. The air felt like it had more oxygen in it, like being back in the North West.

After a night in the woods, we headed back to Asheville to suck it up and deal with our car problem and spend another day walking Maggie around downtown. The nice lady at the front desk refers to customers like us as gypsies. The people that don't have an address to write down on the form or a work phone number. She didn't seem too surprised by our predicament. We weren't the first drifters to break down on this part of the circuit. There were a few hours to kill while the car got worked on. Our first stop was the local library to take a glance at Craigslist, just to make sure there weren't any amazing job opportunities in the area we should jump on. Next, we searched the area for a slice of pizza and a couple locally made beers. Fortunately, we found a brew pub that had an 'all you can eat slices' deal. Asheville seems to be the home of the killer lunch buffet. Who knew? The waitress called us out on being out of towners. Maybe it was how long it took us to select our I.P.A' s.... She offered us her back yard if we wanted to pitch a tent until we found a place. She also gave us some tips about a national forest nearby where we could camp for free.

Dark clouds filled the sky as our cell phone rang. Our car was ready, thankfully. It was five o'clock on a Friday and I'm not sure what we would have done if hadn't gotten fixed before the shop closed for the weekend. It cost us around 800 bucks to silence the Subaru and ensure our own safety. The credit card took its first major blow since we got it, but at least we were racking up frequent flier miles! As we where heading south to our new potential home in the woods, the sky grew darker and darker and the rain came along with it. We cautiously cruised down the forest roads that were more mud than dirt at that point. I cursed the crappy windshield wipers and made another mental note to replace them soon. It was nice not to worry about the wheel falling off out on those country roads. Marisa and I discussed the possibility of setting up camp for a couple weeks while we figured out what we wanted to do. The camping was free so maybe we could cut our losses from the mechanic bill. Finally we found an open campsite about 10 miles down the road. It was perfect except for one thing; it was downpouring so hard we couldn't imagine putting up a tent.

The sun set and the rain started to come down in buckets. We busted out our battery powered lantern, a deck of cards and the cribbage board. The rain let up a little bit around the time Marisa beat me for the second time. I made my move quickly, setting up the tent, putting on the rain fly and getting our thermarests and sleeping bags in, all seconds before the rain came back in full force. It was trampling down on me by the time I got back to the driver's seat. I could tell by Marisa's expression that she was having her doubts about our new living arrangements. Even Maggie had a look of discontent in her eyes and on her muzzle. I reached into the back seat and grabbed a newspaper off of the stack of free press we had been accumulating to start camp fires. I was in the midst of explaining my new idea to Marisa when I reached the weather section.

''I was thinking since we don't know exactly where we want to live in North Carolina anyway, maybe we should explore the rest of the state. Maybe find somes town where it's not raining like this."

I think she could tell by my face when I looked at the paper that the news was bleak.

''Well?'' she said.

''Well, paper says heavy rains all across the state until Tuesday and it looks worse on the coast than it does here." Imagining losing a hundred more cribbage games while being a prisoner of this car for 4 days didn't sound great. Not to mention most of our food has to be cooked and Marisa will never let me use the stove in the car.

''What about Virginia?" I asked

"Paper says it's not raining in Virginia."

We looked at each other, nodded ever so slightly, raced into the pouring rain to take down the tent and then hit the road for Virginia.

North Carolina!

Hello friends,

Well, a bit has changed in the last 2 weeks.  We had planned on staying on the farm through the fall season, but were informed while we were on vacation that the farm budget was not large enough to keep us on staff.  As we no longer had a job and consequently a place to live (that's the problem with living where you work...if you don't have a job, you don't have a home), we decided to pack up and move to North Carolina.  When we first decided to move away from Portland, our original plan was to go to NC, so it seemed like a logical place to go after being unexpectedly and unceremoniously let go.  After a few days in Austin hanging out with friends and saying our goodbyes, we drove our fully loaded subaru 1200 miles in two days across the south to the lovely east coast.  Having never been to the south outside of an airport I was excited for the drive.  Louisiana and Alabama were both much prettier than I expected.  Mississippi went by in complete darkness, so I can't really comment on the landscape.  Georgia and South Carolina both went by quickly and had a surprising amount of trash on the highways.  Then, we reached NC.  We came in through the bottom, western corner right into the Appalachians and they are gorgeous!  Our last few days have been spent in Iron Station, with my good friend Therin.  Tomorrow we take off for a couple week trip to explore the state and figure out where we want to live.  Chances are we'll end up in Asheville, but we figure a little exploration is in order, just to make sure we end up in the most awesome place possible!  We'll certainly keep ya'll updated on our whereabouts and life plans as we figure them out.   

Oh, as an addition to our 'Organic farming just got a little more dangerous' post, our friend Adam's hospital bill came to $16,000!  Each bag of anti-venom cost $3,000 and he had to have four bags.  His ER bill alone was $4,000.  The scary thing is, his snake bite was supposedly a mild one.  Wow.