Tell me, what else should I have done?

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"- Mary Oliver

After visiting Atlanta for almost a week, we drove southeast to the small town of Milledgeville, GA (home of Flannery O’Connor!) and have been staying on a beautiful homestead with a wonderful host. Debbie and her one-time WWOOFer/now neighbor Eyal have made us so welcome on their beautiful slice of heaven, we are yet again finding it difficult to leave. Salamander Springs is the essence of simple living. There is no running water in the traditional sense, but throughout the property are three different springs from which to collect drinking water and solar showers for washing. Rainwater is collected for dishes and there’s a solar-pump to bring it to the outdoor communal kitchen. You pee anywhere (and poo!) but if you want there is a latrine to use for the latter. There’s a huge garden that provides delicious fresh food, and Debbie ensures that the kitchen is always stocked as her number one worry and concern is providing food for all of the people who pass through to lend a hand.

The warmth and care that exuberates from both Debbie, Eyal and Daniel (another WWOOFer who has a more permanent place at the farm) and the passion that they have for every tree, plant, bug, creature on their land (except the goddamn fireants!) is absolutely contagious. Cooking over the fire every night and sharing meals with the friends gathered is a beautiful experience in itself.

And it calls into question so much of how I live my life, how I will choose to live my life after this trip is through. Debbie follows a lot of permaculture practices, but as with all methods, it’s necessary to cull what you believe are the best practices and makes most sense for you. One thing I appreciate so much about farming and gardening is that, well, it just makes sense. There’s a lot to learn, of course – which plants can survive Georgia heat, what plants will put nutrients back into the ground, what plants are perennials. But once you begin to learn a little, the floodgates open and you can file it all away because it makes sense and can be managed.

While staying at places like Salamander Springs, you can begin to call into question things you think are necessary. Debbie has a couple of solar panels and some batteries that allow us to have an extension cord in the kitchen for charging things, having a light, and playing a CD boombox. But other than that, there’s no refrigerator, no dishwasher, no cuisanart food processor (something I've desired for a long while!). All trash has to be hauled off the farm so it makes sense not to create any. We’re in the middle of the forest, so using dead trees for firewood can keep you warm all winter and provide a stovetop to cook meals.

Sitting around one night, Debbie was waxing poetic about how at a permaculture workshop people were lamenting their return to the “real world” and the host flat out told them that this is the “real world.” We’re really growing real food, really creating livable shelters, creating livable communities. What’s so real about the consumer-driven, unsustainable waste land that is created in every suburb, in every American town?

And so maybe that’s how we should think of this trip. Not as putting off the “real world,” but creating and living in a real world. There are people across America that are opting to live in this alternate world that is more real than anything you encounter in the mainstream media. And honestly, people will look at you and ask why you’re being so extreme… but there’s nothing extreme about it! If you have to pee, why would you not go behind a tree and pee?If you have to cook, why would you not build a fire and cook? It is not extreme, it's simple.

So again, as Mary Oliver asks, What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world...

Dangerous Life

I quit med school when I found out the stiff they gave me
had Book Nine of Paradise Lost and the lyrics
to "Louie, Louie" tattooed on the inside of her thigh.

That morning as the wind was mowing
little ladies on the street below, I touched a Bunsen burner
to the Girlscout sash whose badges were the measure of my worth:

Careers ...
Cookery, Seamstress ...
and Baby Maker ... all gone up in smoke.

But I kept the merit badge marked Dangerous Life,
for which, if you remember, the girls were taken to the woods
and taught the mechanics of fire,

around which they had us dance with pointed sticks
lashed into crucifixes that we'd wrapped with yarn and wore
on lanyards round our necks, calling them "The Eyes of God."

Now my mother calls the payphone outside my walk-up, raving
about what people think of a woman: thirty, unsettled,
living on foodstamps, coin-op laundromats, & public clinics.

Some nights I take my lanyards from their shoebox, practice baying
those old campsongs to the moon. And remember how they told us
that a smart girl could find her way out of anywhere, alive.

- Lucia Maria Perillo

From Awhimaway and it's wonders, to Nashville, to Chattanooga, to Atlanta... the days keep flying by. Right now I'm reveling in my day spent at the Botanical Gardens (thank you Simmer for the recommendation!) and still processing our day spent at the Dr. Martin Luther King National Park. We've seen Iron and Wine and are about to go listen to Horse Feathers and I am absolutely filled with satisfaction and excitement.

It's funny, how I find myself laying in Caitlin's grandmother's bed (she's had it since she was 16!) and wishing nothing more than to spend all my days lying there, out of nerves or exhaustion or simply overwhelmed by the task we've undertaken. Then only four days later, to be couchsurfing in Atlanta and taking in all of the sites and to be all wound up by the energy created from traveling and learning.

We're kind of lagging in terms of our next bout of planning, but it keeps coming together and it's becoming easier to let go of some of that ridiculous worry I carry around with me!

Here's to the Dangerous Life!

and if there's any love in me, don't let it grow

As we were helping Krista plant garlic this morning, we were agreeing how quintessentially fall planting garlic is. There's something about marking the seasons by the tasks in a garden. As the days get more crisp you find yourself composting tomato plants while harvesting as many green ones as you can find, putting in cover crops and covering your fall greens at night. It's a soothing rhythm... if something doesn't work, there's always next year.

I'm always amazed by how fast time flies when we come to a place that we just love. We've been mostly helping Krista (and Simmer, though she's been away and we've only just met her!) with their fall garden tasks and winter preparations. It's very relaxing here, compounded by the fact that I haven't been feeling well so have been taking it pretty easy and also cooking a lot of warm, comforting foods.

Making a living off of the land is difficult - I mentioned the troubles Prodigal Farms had with regulatory agencies in North Carolina. Here at Little Short Mountain, they've been aggressively campaigning to get a referendum passed to allow distilleries in their county. Luckily, on Tuesday, all of their hard work paid off! It was wonderful to be here after such a joyous victory. However, it's important to remember that the underdogs don't always win and that we still need to find ways to make starting businesses easier for those trying to undertake them.

I do have to say, deciding to postpone graduate school for a year has taken such a weight off of my shoulders. Having a precise end date to this trip was making it difficult to enjoy where I was, without worrying about getting to the next place to see it all as fast as possible before the year was over! I truly feel that letting this journey just take its course without imposing arbitrary deadlines on it will work out for the better in the end... in fact, it already is.


look at that wood-splitting action!!

i keep a close watch on this heart of mine

The ladies, ready and waiting to be walked up to the milking parlour in the morning.

Our time at Prodigal Farms seems so long ago, but really only ended just last Wednesday! Each day was filled with the brim with things to do, things to learn. Caitlin and I, after a few missteps, became an excellent milking team and loved every minute that we were able to spend with the goats.

Our hosts, Kat and Dave, have only been a certified dairy for 6 weeks, and really have only been goat farmers for less than two years. Kat was a high powered attorney in New York for fifteen years and Dave a high-end contractor with his own business - they took all of that drive and dedication that made them so successful in their first careers, and are unloading full-steam into the development of Prodigal Farms. It is a sight to behold!

Not only have they fought Homeland Security, but have also fought tooth and nail against the North Carolina bureaucracy that has made each step in their attempt to create and open the dairy a difficult and tiresome process. It shouldn't be as hard as it was for them to open and run a farm, especially if you're going above and beyond standard requirements in your desire to be excellent stewards of the land.

So after numerous delicious meals, learning how to: milk, pasteurize, make cheese, make cheesecakes (to die for, seriously, if you're in the triangle area on a Saturday morning, go to the Midtown Farmers Market in Raleigh and by yourself one of these cheesecakes... mmmmmmmm), clean and sanitize a dairy kitchen, set up and maintain electric fencing, make fried green tomatoes (yum x 20) and ultimately, develop relationships with your goats.... we left Prodigal Farms on a Wednesday afternoon to head to Asheville, NC and couchsurf for a few days to both see the area that we had heard so much about, and to study for the GREs, which, at that time I thought I was going to take.

Long story short: I saw Asheville, I fell in love with Asheville and Ashevillians, and I'm pretty sure my heart is scattered in little tiny pieces all over that magical town.


Tim, Linda, Me and Cait!

Between our wonderful, kind, generous and beautiful host Linda and her boyfriend Tim; Dustin - the guy we met at a coffee shop who then took us to a friends house and then up on a hike to what we thought was a mountain vista (but was really a cell phone peak!); Rich and Greg, the brothers that we helped plant 20,000 trees in two days on their family land (and who will one day have their own Biltmore on that land!); and Alex, a queer musician we met while planting trees who shared a meal with us and her partner and made us feel completely at home and welcome in this wonderful city..... between all of these people, and the countless others that even just smiled at us as we shook our booties at the drum circle in the center of town on Friday night.... these glorious people made us feel so warm and gooey inside I think our innards turned to fondue.

Asheville just mesmerized us... and have I mentioned the food? Or the art absolutely everywhere? Or the number of successful local businesses that seem to just be thriving? And how about those freaking mountains!!! Everything about it, I just loved! Plus, Caitlin and I could hold hands! In the South! and it was great.

It was hard leaving... but onward we must go. We are currently at Little Short Mountain Farm in Liberty, TN. Attending potlucks and weeding brambles and reveling at being in a queer community again! I've just made French Onion Soup and I have to say that Kaitlin's at San Ysidro Farms was better... I'll have to get a hold of her to pass her recipe on so I can share her warmth with others!


Missing everyone who's come before and looking forward to all that's ahead!!

Carolina, one day i'll, someday i'll come home

In charlottesville to see the Avett Brothers - amazing as can be expected. Their energy, enthusiasm, sincerity is inspiring and heartbreaking at once.

Moved from Circle Acres where I'm pretty sure we became cob-enthusiasts for life, to Blue Heron Farms where we've fallen in love with warmth and wonder that exists in their community. Our wonderful host Tony and his son Jasper have made us feel at home in their home and their hospitality will forever be with us.

I'm pretty sure at this point, nearly a month into our trip, that it takes a certain kind of people to be interested in organic farming and trying to live as sustainably and without waste as possible. Those people are certainly for us.

Off to bed, to wake and drive to our next farm in the morning - Prodigal Farms, a goat dairy! Details to come, for now though, check out pictures at Cait's!

it sounds like, rockabye, rockabye baby

"i said today i am leaving, in every sense of the word - but i'm in love with your memory already, everything i've seen and heard." Ani DiFranco

San Ysidro Farms - how we'll miss it! Michael, Kaitlin, River and friends, let's not forget Rodeo, Nema, Obie and James!

From the beginning, the amazing hospitality and generosity we were greeted with couldn't have made our first stop any better. Granted, I don't think we helped much with their farming duties (and may have distracted them a bit from completing them!), but we certainly have nothing but the highest hopes for them and believe whole-heartedly that their hard times will pass and they'll be able to achieve all the goals they have for the land.

They've only been farming for less than a year and managed to start and maintain a 30 share CSA from the ground up on land that hadn't been farmed in ages! It's difficult though - between pests and droughts, farm maintenance expenses and general living expenses, it's a wonder many small farms are able to eke out a living. In the case of San Ysidro, they've resorted to jobs outside of the farm to help them sustain their desire to farm their land and from what we understand, it's what many farmers have had to do.

So why farm? When I asked Michael this question one night, he started talking very openly about how he felt it was important to eat something that's alive. You receive a life force, a certain energy when you eat fresh vegetables, and you're not strong unless you're eating something that's alive. In other conversations we had about the same topic, he spoke very passionately about how important it was to support small local farms, to allow people to live off the land and use the land in a healthy and productive way.

When the pests overtook San Ysidro Farms, they lost the rest of the crops and therefore the rest of their livelihood. However, Kaitlin informed me that when the corn farmer down the street lost most of their crop due to drought - they were still paid in subsidies by the government. They are neither organic, nor do they sell to the local community. Does this make any sense at all?

So it is with many well wishes that we left San Ysidro Farms early this week and traveled down to North Carolina where we've been for a full 48 hours and are already a little sunkissed and sore! We've been helping Danielle at Circle Acres build her cob house (learn more here.). It's an amazing, tiring, inspiring project that even in the two days we've been working on it with her, has brought together such a variety of people, all wanting to help pour more love into Danielle's future home!

Right now, we're at a co-op in Pittsboro North Carolina that provides the locals with delicious produce and a ton of great local and organic food options. Not to mention it has a great little cafe with ample indoor and outdoor seating plus dundunDUUUUUN wireless :) Loving Circle Acres so far - great people great food and great barn that we get to sleep in the loft of! Am settling much better into life on the road and looking forward to figuring out where we'll be next. "And I will go singing, as the solitude sets in, in time with the rhythm, of everywhere I have been!"

Wherever you are, you'll always be surrounded by love

"I think it'll float, I think it'll sail , We may take on waves, hit a gale -
but considering this love, most everything says I think it'll fly and I think it'll sing." -Sarah Harmer

I thought that somehow, as soon as Caitlin and I began our journey, I would experience some sense of radical change. While yes, it's only been four days since we've been on the road - I still have this nagging sense of worry and anxiety that I'm not maximizing the use of every day. At the same time that I'm telling myself to slow down and breathe, I'm making mental (and physical) to-do lists to help quell anxiety.

I suppose it doesn't help, that today I turn 25 years old, an official quarter of a century. I keep assuring myself that I'm happy to be 25 and living a life that I'm happy to live - traveling and farming and experiencing; truth is I'm not quite sure. It is scary - who knows what could happen, both during the trip and after we've decided the trip has come to an endpoint. I've been wavering back and forth about whether it is time for me to apply to graduate school and the work that would come with that over the next couple of months is daunting to say the least!

On top of that, though, is the fear I have of the world itself. I remember my roommate Lauren and I talking about how our imaginations had the tendency to run wild with all of the things that could go wrong/all the ways people could think of to murder us (I KNOW YOU'RE IN HERE, IF YOU LEAVE NOW, I PROMISE I WON'T CALL THE COPS!). This fear comes on, unfortunately, most strongly at night. While sleeping in the tent at night on one hand is glorious, at the same time terrifying.

Maybe I've watched too much Law and Order: SVU, or just read too many crime-sensationalizing news stories; but I can't help see axe-murderers and hear criminally insane sanitorium escapees rustling through the woods towards our completely exposed and vulnerable resting space. This concept of sleeping in nature as relaxing and freeing is, at times, a harsh contrast to my startling awake at all hours of the night, certain that the acorns dropping from the trees are actually torture-seeking men, scoping us out as their next victims.

It's funny, we lock our doors and windows and install million dollar security systems, when really, at any point in time, if someone wants to harm you, they will. So how do you stop worrying about it, and just live? How do you let go?

But all is not so awful! I'm using this milestone in my life to start coming to terms with this immense fear. I'll grasp on to corny cliches, the only thing to fear is fear itself! and propel myself forward. If something is going to happen, it's going to happen. Of course I can take as many precautions as possible to prevent my demise (such as keep Vanessa, a naked lady knife gifted to Cait and I from Dave, in the tent next to my sleeping mat), but I can't spend all of my time thinking about it, fretting over it and worrying myself sick about it.

And as for my future, I have to stop fearing that as well. I know what I want to do and I just have to do it, not worry about all of the what-ifs. Plus, with the support and love of Caitlin, I think just about anything is possible.

More about farming and less about existential crises to come, I promise :)