time sure does fly
i've been in lebanon oregon for the last 3 weeks working on a mushroom farm where we cultivate edible mushrooms for markets, food shares and grocery stores. this place is pretty awesome, there's 2 pack goats, tons of crazy free range chickens, 1 free range 5 year old girl, a barn full of mushroom spawn and mushrooms fruiting from bags of straw. walking into the barn there such sweet smells and its totally the mycelium!! some of the mushrooms smell and taste like sweet almonds yum!
before we got here, reading paul stamets book mycelium running, we were getting so giddy over mycelium. now that we spend almost every other day with our arms elbow deep in mycelium i figure im fully inoculated with primordia forming as i type. this fungus stuff is great! the farmers here are really nice smart people. i've been trying to read as much as i can about fungus while im here just so i can ask them all the of many questions that come up. the process here is definitely indoor and commercial, but most of it i can translate to home cultivation on a smaller scale. im more excited about translating it to outdoor cultivation and using fungus for its many functions with the earth. using fungus for bioremediation, pairing it with plants to help the plants grow and using fungus medicinally. there are just so many sweet things about fungus.
now we are waiting for the weather to get more wet so that we can explore native fungus in its natural environment.

outside of the farm we went moonlight blueberry picking, explored eugene a little, went to the market in corvallis, visited some great friends, got showered in awesome jam from everyone! went tromping through the woods experiencing nature in a whole new way (looking for fungus!! and seeing decay as life and a cycle), i went swimming in river, met guys on a zero emissions book bike tour, befriended super awesome wwoofer Alma, squeeled while riding bike down hill super fast, became belinda: ruler of the wild chickens!, and plastered a straw bale structure (really productive fun with mud). there is another week to go here, which is exciting because i get to do even more new things and sad because me and kaitlin are parting ways (but hopefully we'll meet up again some where else superfun) and we wont get to eat bountyful delicious mushrooms daily.
next stop is a nice farm close by for a little over a week, then to california to another farm.

Bye Bye Little Rascals

Well, its been two weeks since I drove Belinda down to the mushroom farm in Oregon. I've been back up here at little rascals farm in Washington and it has been as crazy busy fun filled as the first two weeks we were both here. I'm definitely really excited to learn more about mushrooms, but also bummed that I'll be leaving this farm because it has been so awesome. Vicky John and Lindsay are so kind and wonderful, they feel like family already. In the past two weeks we have made Kim chi, pickled ginger carrots, apricot jam, chevre, cheddar, paneer, baklava, zucchini bread, I've learned to knit and made myself a pair o socks, washed and carded wool, seen bunnies butchered, and seen chickens with explosive diaherra. We gazed at stars and jumped in 40 degrees blue pool spring water. We had campfire sing alongs and made banana boats which are kind of like smores on steroids. I've spent hours petting those square pupil, blank stare, ice cream sandwhich little baby goats that will let you pet them and chew on your sweater all day if you stay there. I've fruitlessly thrashed through blackberries, saw the coolest beach fort ever at sunset on the puget sound, explored pikes market, and got bollywood, napoleon dynamite, and merengue dance lessons all in one night at a rooftop party in seattle.

I leave to rejoin Belinda at the mushroom farm near Corvallis on friday and will get to learn all about medicinal mushrooms and foraging for wild mushrooms. We will both be there till the end of August, and then hope to move onto another farm closer to Portland and hopefully eventually get a job again sometime.

Woo hoo!

yes farms! yes food!

baby goats with their butts up in the air all day eating hay! chickens stealing tomatoes off the plant. going for unintended goat rides. shoveling poop hay dust for hours. making and making and making raw goat cheese. eating and eating and eating raw goat cheese. gigantic teddy bear great Pyrenees dog that wants you to love him! felted goat milk soap. surprise chicken with chicks. soft bunnies to touch while you feed them tedious bunny salad. egg hunts for acrobatic eggs. and finally identifying that putrid smell as buck goat urine!

this place is awesome! we are learning lots of different things and having a lot of fun while were at it. these farmers are awesome and they have so much stuff going on its fun to work and hard not to overwork yourself. we've been here two weeks now and it feels so short.

there are a lot of beautiful things close by too... olympic national park is amazing and only a couple of hours away! we backpacked one night in the forrest and fell in love it was great! we hiked a few miles to these natural hot springs and relaxed and got stinky in the sulphery water. we drove up to hurricane ridge where you can see so many mountains its breathtaking. even the beach ten minutes from the house is awesome, logs all up and down the beach you can climb all over, cliffs above and mountains in the distance.

we got a grand tour of seattle by raul (kaitlin's friend from new college). starts with pretty water tower park, then pretty rose garden, to pretty arboretum, to delicious cuban sandwich at the neighborhood troll under a bridge, to scenic drive, to scenic gas works plus lake view, to chocolate factory to dog bar to brewery to ferry then back to the farm. whew! all the while with great company and fun car dance parties. oh and it really started the night before with burrito dinner party with friends and a nice long digestive walk.

all in all this has been a great two weeks. im excited to make goats milk soap today and voyage tomorrow to the mushroom farm!!

Pictures!

If anyone wants to see all 8 billion picture of our great adventure, they are up:

http://picasaweb.google.com/117490582585814749217/GreatAmericanAdventure#

We made it!

So we took off up the California coast, spending about a week stopping at Big Sur, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Arcata, Mendocino Nat'l Forest, and the Redwoods. Of course it was all absolutely BEAUTIFUL. We visited amazing buddies and their cute little kids, and saw some of the most amazing scenery in the universe.
Next we headed up to Oregon for the silliest welcome any state could give us- the Oregon Country Fair. At what is apparently the 'mama of all hippie festivals', we saw all kinds of silly spectacles, including: all kinds of naked and costumed hippie marching bands, an accordion performance about vegetables & animals where the whole crowd was coerced into singing, spinning around, and tickling each other, stilt walkers, puppet shows, theater, acrobatics, a butterfly king, a clarinet player wearing a fez and a rat nose, a woman with a stuffed butt, men in tutus, fake elephants and dragons, old men in pig costumes, old rag time music, a herd of gnomes carrying a giant fake fish, a million naked folks, and more goofy costumes than one can imagine.

We made some great friends in eugene and portland, visited others, and then took off up to the farm in Washington. We got to the farm yesterday, thus completing the first leg of our great adventure! It has been a great success, everything has been totally super awesome and absolutely nothing went wrong whatsoever. My car didn't have any problems at all, we had tons of fun visiting friends & making new ones, saw a million beautiful places, willow only freaked out a million times, Belinda and i made it out here with out beating each other up, and none of us got eaten by bears even a little bit.

whe want to go back to quail springs!

even though we are all the way in oregon now im writing about quail springs in cali, 2 hours north of la, a wondeeful place with wonderful people. a place i could definitely see myself working well with. they are an off the grid community living, making their homes, uplifting their environment, and being really nice and fun while they're at it. they have goats and chickens and turkeys; do permaculture everything, when we were there there was a permaculture workshop for a group of maybe 15 teens. i was really happy to see the creek restoration projects and their efforts to use the water wisely for the land and themselves.we got to see many phases of natural building, meet great neighbors, swim in the pond with fish, eat native reeds, and just fall in love with it all.
thanks to chris and his whole family for having us there and sharing so much awesomeness.

Gila cave dwellings and the desert

We made it out of Texas and drove through the windy mountain desert roads in New Mexico to visit the Gila Cave Dwellings, which were absolutely amazing. The cliff was created by volcanic activity and contains the ruins of cave dwellings built in five caves. People of the Mogollon culture lived there from between 1275 and 1300 AD and it is not known why they were abandoned. The way the structures were incorporated into the natural surroundings was really beautiful and in the caves we saw 700 year old preserved baskets of corn, cave paintings, and years and years of built up soot on the ceiling from fires in the caves.

Next to Arizona where we camped in the desert and saw all kinds of wild life, like road runners and round tail ground squirrels (which look like tiny little prairie dogs). We skipped Joshua tree because it was too freakin hot and headed to L.A. for a short visit with Monica and Kim, where we walked a billion miles from Santa Monica to muscle beach in Venice, ate delicious cuban food, and watched the craziest most awesome film I've seen in a long time, Synecdoche.
Now up the California coast!

Tejas!

we spent a wonderful week in austin, its always great to spend time with mama, watching her create awesome art. we spent our days lounging at the lady house (including us two there were 6 ladies under one roof), going to the local rivers and springs, hanging out with fun friends, we got our asses kicked for free, saw live music, had girl dinner partys, hiked to caves, swam, climbed trees, and got out camped by natalina who is 9 months pregnant and amazing beyond belief - her and her unborn baby lola valiantly rescued me and kaitlin respectivly from a crazy rabid water moccasin snake that totally tried to kill us all! (lola should be born june 28!!!). we left austin at 7am, drove 13 hours to get the fuck out of texas because that place scares me! now we are just outside gila natl. forest camping for the night in new mexico with a sky full of moon and stars and a full belly. tomorrow we'll check out the gila cave dwellings and then mosey on to arizona for another day of fun car dance partys and resurrecting roadkill.

We found a farm!

After several months of half-assed searching and deliberating, we finally decided on a farm to work on once we get out west. Come mid July we will be working at Little Rascals farm in Hansville, WA, a small raw organic dairy farm, with goats, sheep, chickens (for eggs), a vegetable garden, medicinal herbs & mushrooms. We will be learning all kinds of cool stuff like cheese making, raising poultry, utilizing worm bins, working with livestock guardians, animal husbandry, making natural soap, shearing sheep/goats/rabbits, fiber processing, weaving/knitting, etc. We are excited!!!

Now I know you are thinking 'you two were both stinky vegans for years and years, why a dairy farm?'
Well if you ask me, if you are going to eat something you should be able to get it to your plate yourself (omnivores should be able to look at and kill the animals they eat, etc.). Since I started eating cheese again, I wanted to learn about it, see if I was ethically okay w/ dairy production on this kind of farm (I still have the same ethical issues with the factory farms where most places in this country get their milk & cheese from).
Also, I wanted too see what its like to be a part of the solution to, and not just the boycott of, our predominant method of food production and the ethical, ecological, & economic mess it has created. If we want to move back towards sustainable small scale community based food production, we will need healthy and ecologically sound alternatives to factory farm eggs & dairy.
So this is why I choose to work on a dairy farm. Well, that and the fact that goats are totally cute.

Anyways, check out their website if you are so inclined:
http://www.littlerascalsfarm.com/

We love the Appalachian Trail

We just got back from our first trip on the Appalachian Trail (Belinda & Willow's first ever backpacking trip!). It was a great success! We had planned on doing 5 days beginning at the approach trail and ending at Neels Gap. However due to Willow's pre-trip limping, & Neels Gap's closure due to bear activity, to name a few issues, we changed our plans. Day one we did a test run day hike starting from Neels Gap and over Blood Mountain. Seeing as Willow kicked Blood Mountain's butt, we knew we'd be okay doing a couple days on the trail. The next day we started out at mile one. Somehow, our packs weren't heavy at all! about 20lbs each plus food and water. We left out a lot of creature comforts: We didn't bring sleeping pads, or a cup, or a change of clothes. We opted for the tiny iodine jar instead of a filter. We saved precious ounces by forgetting the map, I mean, leaving it behind intentionally. Anyways, we felt good.
The first night we stayed at Hawk Mtn shelter, where Willow valiantly defended us from bugs all night long and earned his trail name "FLY SLAYER!!!!"
The next day was the hardest. My boots were killing me so I strapped them to my pack and went barefoot for a day and a half, which was a totally great idea until we got back to the hostel and I saw the 15 or so blood blisters on my feet. Later on I was given the trail name "Gator Foot" which I think is pretty funny, so I think Ill keep it. Belinda got the name Giggles (I wonder why?), but she might swap out if she gets a better one. We had great company at the shelters both nights, and we just love the appalachian trail camaraderie we felt. We are hooked. I can't wait to get back on the trail. We wanted to do more but didn't want to push Willow too far. Yeah and thats why we were so slow, and why we had to take so many breaks all the time, because of Willow. Hes our scape goat, I mean, our weakest link is what I meant to say. Not me and Belinda, we are total bad asses.
Oh yeah and then this one time, we had to fight all these bears off with our bare hands, no big deal.
Love,
Gatorfoot, Giggles, and Fly Slayer

and the adventure begins!

We made it out o florida safe and sound! We had a great last hoorah at ichetucknee with some of our best buddies in the universe. Thank you to everyone who showed support and wished us good luck. Thank you to those who have been great friends and helped us to get where we are now: our parents getting us started, the earth for providing us its bounty, our friends who made fun of us until we started being cool, the lunch ladies that gave us all that pizza and corn, the nannies who kept us in line and taught us how to act good, the multiple park rangers who've almost, but ended up not, fining us $500, the girls in the music videos who taught us how to dance, the bullies that dunked our heads in the toilet, wait never mind that last part.
We're currently in georgia on our way up to the hiker hostel before we spend five days on the appalachian trail. We'll post some pictures as soon as we get a chance....