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contrasting temperatures crunch! chewy leathery dehydrated salted brined juicy

It was unseasonal. seventy degrees fahrenheit, to be precise. We spent three days packing the truck and trailer. Berta the big red truck, my ’93 dodge cummins. Lollipop red with all her dings and farts. Swear there wasn’t room for a spare toothpick back there. We set off down the driveway with John waving in the rear and the rest of our lives in the front.

We went to Middle Earth. It was my first time. Frodo and Gandalf and the Lady of Lothlorian shepherded us across the country. Dipping and dodging and cruising at 60 miles per hour, we made our way, Berta shrieking like a tank the whole time, stopping for hamburgers at every opportunity, we found our way from the precipice to our new home.

Bethel. The promised land. The source. The birthplace of the National Museum of Natural History. (seriously, look it up). The house of God. For us, God is the natural world. Ecology. God is Place. Home. Comfort. Love. Connection. A place where we can build and create vision and execute vision. Where we can build a life and a family and invite anyone everyone to join us in nourishing ourselves. To vitalize the land, to give it ourselves and accept the gift of it’s bounty. To our new home in Bethel, VT we drove 8 days across the country in Berta the big red truck.

We arrived amidst the biggest storm of the year. A fresh 18” on top of 3'. I didn’t anticipate the precipitous incline at the end of the driveway, slipped out and slipped backwards and embedded Berta the big red truck and our 15’ trailer into the snowbank on the side of the driveway. At which point we tried everything under the damn sun to liberate the vehicle so we could drive it the last 27’ to our front door. Twenty seven fucking feet. After driving three thousand two hundred and ninety five miles without a hitch. No problems. Not even diarrhea. No burglars. Not even thumbtacks and oil slicks. Until now. Twenty seven feet from the front door.

So we popped the champagne and started unloading the trailer. Carrying, armload by slippery icy armload, all our belongings, from the trailer, twenty seven feet to the front door.

It was getting dark and Mom saved the day. There’s no cell service here, and the landline was discontinued. She called 911 on the remaining phone and hooked up with AAA from there. I was devastated. The whole state of VT was going to know what a charlatan I was. Know nothing, flatlander sack of shit doesn’t deserve to be here. The steam blown off from the long trip did not smell too pleasant ya dig?

The AAA man could have been the most kind of all the humans. He backed the truck down the driveway for me then showed me how to put my tire chains on, on account of I’ve never done it before. Whereupon the AAA man saved the day.

Then we moved in and settled in and figured out how to get along with 4’ of snow on the ground. We borrowed snowshoes and bought firewood and bought internet and set up a card table in the living room next to the stove so I could work my softhands job on the laptop.

Damn near the day after we moved in, we ran into Carl at town meeting. Two days later he emailed out of the wild blue and asked if we had space for horses and I said yes, because we do. Later that week, he brought over Tom and Mike, who we boarded for about 6 weeks, he figured, until his pastures opened up and he had more space for them at his farm, just over the hill.

We had Tom and Mike until two weeks ago, just about the whole year. Which ended up being an unspeakable blessing, to get to know them individually, and to become acquainted with caring for horses and relating to horses. They gave us occasion to set up paddocks and rotate them around our pastures. To get to know our grass and our water. To begin to consider our relationship to our barn and barnyard. There are a great many dynamics on a new farm that I didn’t even know existed until Tom and Mike came into our lives.

We made maple syrup. Trekked out to the hardware store to get our supplies and trekked out to the woods and tapped five whole trees. Brought our friends from Maine out to show off all our good and hard work and they graciously, gently informed us that those were indeed not Sugar Maple trees, the kind from whose sap you make maple syrup, but rather Ash trees, from whose sap nobody makes anything.

I built an arch out of cinder blocks and bricks I found in the barn. Then I rebuilt it because it didn’t work. Then I rebuilt that one because it didn’t work either. Then I rebuilt that one because that one didn’t work either. Then we made one gallon of syrup in our two amazon.com hotel pans, with all the bugs and twigs and shrapnel of the mindmeltingly glorious piedmont spring.

It was the most delicious fruit.

Cecil plowed the parking area for us, then once the green came he plowed our first three plots. We revealed the glory beneath for the first time in at least 50 years. Could be 100. It’s entirely feasible that our flatland has never been cultivated. The Bundys were dairy folk. We don’t know much about them. Cecil grew up milking their cows and sugaring in the woods. Our driveway is Bundy Rd. And once ol’ Mr. Bundy broke his leg haying in the meadow across the stream. Otherwise, they dairied until the bulk tank rule when they got pushed out.

We found ourselves some hogs. Two of them. Cathy and Cucumber. Cathy because she’d never shut up when you came around and Cucumber because she played it cool. American Guinea Hogs. Good company. Veritable fat factories I tellya. Never encountered a lazier pig, to be right honest - they’d nap and then nap and then have breakfast and then nap for the rest of the day until dinner then go to bed. Made right nice bacon though let me tell you.

We grew food. Vegetables. The usual suspects. Tomatoes and peppers in the hoophouses we brought from Washougal. All manner of leaves and storage crops down below - spuds and squashes and cukes and onions. Flowers were new. Rita grew flowers for the wedding.

We finally had occasion to legitimize in the eyes of the taxman our commitment to each other. Which, to be quite honest with you, was made on the very first day Rita came to my doorstep. No taxman necessary. Which, to be honest, is another story for another day, so stay tuned.

Brandon came and slaughtered Cathy and Cucumber with me. I hesitate to describe the significance of his presence, for it’s magnitude. It was with Brandon that I became myself. From Washington he traveled, without his family, who stayed to take care of their promised land. We killed Cucumber first. Together. Just the two of us. Just like old times. I shot her between the eyes and up two inches, with my .22 magnum rifle, still with it’s new gun smell. We scalded and scraped her, just like old times, waltzing and scraping until our arms fell off. With great labor and purpose, we worked side by side.

Cucumber was prepared for the spit. Cathy, for the salt. Brandon roasted Cucumber for the day before the wedding fiesta. Which is Spanish for party. Cathy, we cured and hung to dry age the majority of her flesh and fat.

We were married here in our promised land. We said we wouldn’t. Promised each other we’d wait. We knew it’d happen. She waited for me to ask. When I did, last year, on CSA harvest morning, in between the kale and the mustards, she said yes. We cried. We jumped and laid in the grass even though we had a mountain to harvest and deliver. Then we knew we had to find our place. We couldn’t say yes to the taxman until we were in our place. So we waited.

But now we had arrived, so we started planning. Designed invites with a broad axe and broad fork and fancy lettering and sent them out and told ourselves we’d do everything. I’d make the plates and Rita’d grow all the food and flowers. I’d make the tables and we’d raise the pigs. We’d invite our friends to officiate and cook and be all around badasses. Then we found out how crummy it is to organize and implement a wedding. Our friends, miraculous bundles of skills and potential as they are, came through and made it happen. They lifted us and floated us and trussed our shortcomings and made our official union possible. Because without them we are nothing. And how true to discover how dependent upon your loved ones you are but on the eve of your marriage, which, as we know deeply is not a wedding of two individuals to each other, but of two individuals to a their community. To their Place. To their ambitions and intentions.

On the hillside overlooking the hills and pastures, overlooking the barn and the pond and the house, overlooking the future fruit of our labor, we were wed. Rita Champion and Andrew Plotsky and their family and their friends and their land. Beneath an arbor I had felled, hewn and joined with nothing but axes and a crosscut saw, in front of the eyes of those we love, atop the land that we have committed to, in perpetuity, we are wed.

Holy smokes the comedown. We had 20 people in the house and 30 people camping on the land. All of a sudden we were Andrew and Rita and the rest of our lives. It was quiet and lovely and daunting and we moved on and focused on being blinded by the magnificent glory of the fall.

The leaves. The breeze. The crisp. The apples. Holy marbles the apples.

We purchased firewood because my ambitions of cutting and splitting paled in comparison to the reality of the real world. But I remain optimistic. Always. Until the ol’ world proves otherwise, we must remain optimistic. This winter, I’ll cut for next year. Mark my words. And if I don’t, then next year.

I Discovered books on tape and I haven’t looked back. The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay kicked it off and ignited a desire to know about my Jewish heritage like nothing before. Went on a bender of WWII and jewish immigrant stories. Became morose. Gained a greater empathy for the state of the world. Kept stacking wood.

Finally got the wood stacked, just in time for the warmest damn fall on record. Or something like it. Just in time to resume work on the greenhouse I started building with my Dad in the spring. He and Paul came out for a weekend and we crunched and pushed and hammered and screwed and got up the frame and the roof. Ever since I’ve been installing windows and sawing siding and nailing siding and trimming out the inside. Finally got the exterior signed sealed delivered just in time for our first five inches of snow.

Whereupon I discovered, while moving snow out of the parking area with the tractor we purchased this year with borrowed money from the taxman, that nothing comes free. And that is the greatest joy. That is the source. Here on this land we have colonized with nothing other than the privilege of federally recognizable capital, we are now endowed with well more than a lifetime’s worth of labor. By which I mean purpose.

Freedom, perhaps, is the privilege of requiring of yourself labor everyday. Not necessarily to provide all that you consume, because the 60’s proved that to be an unsustainable rhetoric. We don’t desire independence from all people and inputs, we desire interdependence of intelligent and thoughtful neighbors, community members, and regional entrepreneurs. We do not desire a wholesale solution, we desire responsibility. We desire challenge. We desire camaraderie in our struggle to make this Place a better place.

One could say that much has transpired this year, relative to the Western calendar. One might say that we arranged and carried out, with the help of so many wonderful humans, a wedding this year. That we moved across the country, to a place we’ve never been and never lived. One might consider all that we accomplished on this new land of ours worthy of note, of praise. I can’t help but agree, but only a little. I can’t help but feel like, against the context of the lifetimes of potential and desire I feel, relative to this Place, that this year was but a starting point. A touch of the index finger ever so gently to the lips, sufficiently, but not superfluously, moistening. The lapping, sinusoidal waves of candlelight flowing over the corner of the page, sitting regally atop the tome, waiting to be turned.

Now That We’re Grownups, we Fall Swiftly

Eternal thanks to Souki, for snapping many of these snaps.

A Bushy Eyed Stowaway

There is a phenomenon afoot. The stubborn crusty idealogues are growing up. Continually endowing ourselves with skills, they begin to accrue. Ever so slowly. They are gaining national renown, focusing their efforts. Farmrun is stepping gingerly over the electric fence that sits inexplicably just above ball height. Always just above. Stepping up the game. Honestly criticizing ourselves. Paying attention to the big wide world. Looking back and thinking hard. Keeping our ears to the ground with our eyes on the prize and finger on the mouse. Amidst the panopleic chaos, a clear direction emerges.

Wherein The Deluge Soaked Their Upturned Palms and Chins

There is a considerable amount of guilt in the act of procrastination. It is unhelpful to all involved, particularly oneself. Particularly, myself. Because I am generally the only one involved.

It’s entirely unproductive. Counter intuitive to the way I tend to accomplish things. Which is by accomplishing them. I’ve long believed the only way to do it is to Do it. There’s really no sense in waiting. I existed enshrouded in fear for numerous years - the stench of insecurity filling my nostrils, binding my arms and most significantly my brain - if I was not indoctrinated by the ranks of ‘education,’ I surely wasn’t allowed to be an artist. Or a woodworker. Or farmer. Or butcher. Or blogger.

If you want to learn to make spoons, quit thinking disparagingly about how hard it must be to make spoons and how you don’t have the tools and how hard it must be to find someone to teach you how to make spoons, you go grab the pocket knife you found at that yard sale, designed for an entirely different purpose, but sharpened nicely because you’ve learnt to sharpen edge tools as a result of pursuing the supposedly disconnected trade of butchery, and you grab a stick from the firewood pile, which is bone dry, not green like carving wood is best suited, and you make a really really crappy spoon. And you cut the shit out of your finger because you did that stupid thing where you stuck the knife into the stump tip first with the majority of the blade exposed because you thought it looked cool or made you feel cool or some other retrospectively naive reason and when you went to pick up the spoon you caught the edge of your index finger on the knife that looked awesome sticking out of the stump and bled all over the front porch.

But you made that damn spoon. And no one can take that away from you. And you learned lots of bloody lessons. And 3 years later, you can make spoons that look like spoons and act like spoons, and even though you still have a long way to go, other people think that the spoons you make are beautiful.

Weeks have passed since I decided I’d like to post this post on this blog. It began with ruminations on driving across the country, for the second time in 3 months. When you drive across the country by yourself and can’t figure out to keep your audiobook from deleting itself, you have a lot of time alone with your brain. And you two get to talking about things. And there’s a lot of things.

Then, when the writing didn’t happen after that, I was going to write about my first experiences in working with Fare Resources on taking Farmrun to the next level. I was going to recap the brief and wonderful history of the business and illuminate all the ways I’ve taken shortcuts and skirted elements that were hard but really would have made it a more robust business. I’d share how exciting it is to feel hopeful for the first time in a long time. The value of letting go and working towards being a less manic mother. The relief of having focus and direction.

Then, when the writing didn’t happen after that, I was going to write about my friend Nate coming up to help me cut down some big hemlock trees for a forthcoming barn floor. And when you cut down large trees with a powerful dangerous empowering tool like a chainsaw, there are a lot of large questions to consider. Like the value of sacrificing a life that’s prospered in this Place for 60 years or more, the Place I’ve just moved to and in the act of killing this glorious creature, suggest that I know what is best. That my needs supersede its.

Then, when the writing didn’t happen after that, I was going to write about when Carl came over and harnessed up the horses, and took them for their first drive, individually. The inspiration I felt in having a friend, mentor and peer in Carl and in the horses themselves. The enormously life-giving experience of inspiration. It’s magical rejuvenating qualities that are nothing short of a divine gift, because it is not always present.

Then, when the writing didn’t happen after that, I was going to write about that clam sandwich I ate at the snack shack in Jericho, because I didn’t even know that clam sandwiches were Things. And I was going to write about how it went surprisingly well with the vanilla milkshake.

Then when the writing didn't happen after that, I was going to write about when I made 274 naturally leavened sausage buns for the incredible farm family & community with which we've been blessed in neighboring Barnard. I probably would've explored the glory of the Feast & Field market - a weekly market they run at their farm - how every time I've been there have been at least 60 people, all locals, gathered, in front of the live music that rotates weekly, playing lawn games, purchasing tacos or cider or vegetables. I probably would've told you about how I spent 14 hours, from 10 pm - 12 pm, baking in our friends' restaurant kitchen, Pane E Salute, and I'd tell you about how many times I screwed up. Like when I took a catnap and let the dough proof out of it's container all over the floor. Or maybe I'd even tell you about when I accidentally doused the pilot light in the oven when I put in the first batch of rolls and didn't realize it until an hour later when the temp was dropping and how I fell into an existential pit of despair when the pilot light wouldn't relight and right after the moment I knew the world was going to end, the pilot light, that little jerk, like some wise old man, chuckled and told me that you must release control, have faith, and not give up so easy, and the flame burst back to life, returned from the other side.

Then, when the writing didn’t happen after that, I thought about how I wasn’t writing about those things. And I kept taking pictures of fun things, then thought about how I should write about that.

Then I said fuck it, I’m going to make a post.

And then I did the blog.

From the belly of spring, they were thrust into the belly of spring.

It was sort of like learning to walk again. It had been a lifetime since I walked on top of 3 feet of snow. Which is to say, it’s difficult. Step crunch sink, hand on knee, thrust, step crunk sink. Repeat. After three minutes of walking, the depression would sink in. Worthless, out of shape, I’ll never see the land.

The way things work, necessarily a function of geography, climate, species composition, cultural practice, not to mention things like icy-ass roads, tend to be different in different places. This place, central Vermont, it turns out, is quite different from western Washington. There is a lifetime of strategies to learn, and the curve in the first two months has been steep, to say the least. There is a gait for every season. A pace for the hills, one for the valleys, one for the cities, and one for every gully, knoll, stream and hollow in between.

As the snow melted, the mud came, a new phenomenon, no less sparkly. Our first glimpse of the ground. As the mud dried, the grass came out, and with the grass, the hustle has kaboomed. An explosion of life - just now we experience the fruitful growth - leaves, blossoms, flowers, salamanders, peepers - the long awaited evidence that endless days, sore backs, bonfire feasts, jello arms and knockout zombie sleep is on it’s way. The Source once again reveals itself to us ever doubtful hopeful simple humans.

All is extreme in the land of the northern hills. I’ve realized as recently as yesterday, 85 degrees and full humidity, swimming pool brow and burning calves from walking up the hillside for the 7,000th time that day, I am not a half asser. Never have been, in this lifetime. It happens now and then, but how great if all we can endeavor, we intend to do it full-assed. All the way. 108%.

This place, the central vermont hills, they ain't no halfass hills. Everything it does, it does all the way. Cold snowy winter. Hot humid summer. Water everywhere. Songbirds in droves. Firework autumnal leaves. Every season so intense it’s greeting is occasion for debaucherous revelry, it’s departure ushered with pleasure to move on to the next. Each marked by a gift of nature and culture, reinforced by the joy it will bring. Sap harvest and sugaring in transition of winter - spring, frantic groundwork and preparation for from spring - summer, hunting and harvest summer - fall; woodfires, sleep, skiing and logging in the winter, to name but a short few.

It’s intensity begets it’s value. In it’s extremity, it is dynamic, diverse, and excessively beautiful. It attracts weirdos of the highest caliber. Crazies that go all the way. Dive in and don’t look back. That are hardy and resilient and convicted. People that live here want to live here and value all the magnificent diversity - of the topography, of the climate, of the wildlife, of the culture, of the edible landscape - cultured and wild, and of the emotions that result from such an intense Place.

To be right honest, I didn’t know this was going to turn into a love letter. Or is it a proposal? A pitch? Since the path has emerged, I will open the shades and let you know that I think you should consider moving to central Vermont. Specifically, Bethel. Barnard would do. Tundbridge is nice too, I hear.

All I’m saying is think about it. This is a place that is on it’s way up, with an incredible history, spectacular infrastructure, waiting to be rehabilitated, and a strong rallying cry of support from folks who want to see movers and shakers take this emergent youthful nimble agrarian economy to the next level. You will have comrades here.

For the time being, we’ll be here, sounding the crier’s bell, gathering at every occasion, putting in the work on the land and in the community, joining forces with those neighbors and visionaries who’ve begun laying the tracks for hard working forward thinking skill driven folks to join up and move the whole damn train forward.

In the Soupy Womb of Spring, They Emoted Superlatively

Hard As A Rock, Soft As A Feather

There are mountains upon hills upon streams upon meadows of potential in this new place. Our Place. All is possible and nothing certain. It contains the universe, the entirety of history and the rest of time. The curves will be steep and long. There is much to learn. It is becoming ever more apparent that patience is a difficult quality to maintain, despite previous meditation. I have found myself reminding myself, trivialities and materials aside, along with excellence and empathy, it is patience towards which we perenially aspire.

In The Wake Of Dawn

If I’ve learned one thing in the course of doing a few things in this short life, it’s that it is much easier to not follow through than to follow through. Chaos is simpler than order, it requires only that we not do anything, wherein the universe steps in. Luckily, thankfully, easy street is not our destination.

I couldn’t be more pleased to present the third in a series that will ideally persist in perpetuity, announcing the coming of spring, and corresponding to the rest of the natural world, the re-opening of Hogstone’s Wood Oven. The restaurant has spent the dark damp winter months gestating, calculating, planning and organizing a growth pattern, ever upward, for the coming season of sunlight and bounty.

Upon the original eve of Hogstone, three years ago in a Rainier tinted, whiskey soaked haze of pizza and scribbles, Jay and I decided we needed to produce a general smattering of propaganda, At the time it would be pizza propaganda, but as those like us tend, the vision has grown exponentially, and become more intense, complex, and commensurate with our evolving personal, professional and spiritual philosophies. The more you learn the less you know, so keep polishing the rock.

In researching and ideating for this poster, I began with a fundamental desire for simplicity. I knew there would be words - one of the most exciting elements of this poster series for me is the occasion to put on my poetic hat once again, so long neglected, dust flecked and sticky from something I spilled so long ago it’s precise nature has even slipped my mind. Probably coffee.

I knew also there would be illustrative graphics - the last two posters have gone down a similar path, leveraging the Hogstone mythology we’d rudimentarily devised in the beginning. The pigasus with garlands and banners and black and white watercolors. Each time allowing me license to grow and expand thematically, stylistically and play with that which would make the posters most excellent in their message.

Spring. Rebirth. Rejoice! Awaken. Simple. Majesty. Alchemy. Perennial, infinite cycle. Wisdom. Humility.

I considered flagship species, beacons of springtime. Nettle, spring onion, crocus, cherry, considered what their role in this poster could be. Perhaps they could play a prominent role, whereupon I discovered an illustration by P.J. Redouté that, among mountains of botanical illustrations available on the internet, sounded bugles in the distance with rainbows floating from the nostrils of mountain goats skipping daintily on precipitous ledges.

This illustration, published in 1808 as part of a magnificent collection, Les Liliacées, is not merely a depiction of an onion, it is allium embodied, it’s spirit and symbol - a portrait of simplicity itself, which sacrificed not one strand of the elegance that accompanies such a magnificent form.

Sitting there, ears tingling, I positively could not get beyond the stark and enveloping beauty of this masterpiece. It arrested me, rendered motionless, hands to face, brain ringing with camaraderie, feeling supported in a mysteriously and warm manner, feeling vaguely as though I could barf or melt at any moment without notice.

The illustration is visually and symbolically flawless. To the farmer, chef, and gastronomist alike, the allium is fundamental. It’s simplicity and importance cannot be overstated. They are bold and delicate, temporal and ubiquitous, magical and mundane. They are a foundation of cuisine - they are flavor themselves, not representable by a lexicon of others. They are harbingers of spring and the bounty to come, similarly, they are a foundation upon which a dish, a cuisine is built. Simple. Inexpressably elegant.

After allowing the illustration to let me know it was the show, I moved on to the prose, taking great compositional and stylistic inspiration from a cool tiger image I found, also thanks to the internet.

The words strive foremost to allow the illustration take precedence. It's beauty cannot be described. We strive, with the words, to reflect the feeling of the first peek of green foliage emerging from the soil, the first taste of the spring onion, the reverence we feel of being a part of the process, and standing in proximity to the deep cycles, the wisdom the spring onion brings of elder knowledge from the soil. We hope the words can sum the experience of joy and reverence that accompany the spring, as we move forth into the revelrous insanity that we all know is nigh, but just can’t help our egregious excitement, as the snow melts, the grass peeks, and the forest comes to life.

#hogstone's wood oven

Fogcatcher

You're plopped into a field. Pearlescent grass, glazed with dew. Encompassing fog. Bleeding incongruous horizon sweeping 360, 720, 1080 degrees. All of them. Maybe you fell from the sky. Or slowly became aware. From nothing comes everything. Waking from sleep. Or was it the other way around? The topography is minimal, just that damn grass. An endless indefinable sea. No form, no limitations. It is voluptuous. Intoxicating.

Which way is forward? What is progress? Efficiency? To what end do we displace our bodies, our intentions, through space and time?

Luckily, I've had a handful of new projects start up and old ones regain momentum that have begun to serve as my lighthouse, bathing us once again in the inexplicable elixir.

In spite of moving far far away, I feel only excitement for continuing to build relationships and collaborate with the remarkable humans creating and filling remarkable roles out here on yonder coast.

The cherry on top of the cupcake on top of the mountain of oysters on top of the terrine is that a new super secret project that's been in the works for a long time has finally begun to blossom. Actually it's more like germinate. The super secret project has germinated. I'll be working with Erin Benzakein, the brilliant farmer florist and marketing mastermind of Floret Flowers, to create an unparallellably beautiful, eye meltingly glorious Thing, the nature of which we're not quite ready to announce.

More generally speaking, there seems to be an incongruity in the spectrum of visible light. Despite the blurred horizon, there is clarity. Oppressive darkness and beams of light. New chapters and fresh words seeping into familiar themes. There is that place just inside your ears that tingles with glee simply at the prospect of potential.3

The Grand Confluence

I could bore you with all the bullshit. Lord knows there are truckloads. The petty trivial accomplishments we overcome daily monthly yearly. Particularly at this time, the most wonderful time, we feel compelled to yell from the mountaintops how wonderfully circumspect we are, from the thrones of our scummy couches through the loudspeaker of our mind numbing pocket computers.

We slyly demonstrate our ageless wisdom, the sensible patient selves we’ve become through this last revolutionary denomination of time. The times that were good the times that were bad the times that helped me grow I was sad I was happy I was heartbroken I was in love I was in mourning I had gas I got a puppy. Don’t be fooled, I am no exception. I reside in the sea of jerks that makes up this here internet.

For the most part our aggrandizing proclamations make me want to barf everywhere. As do most things end of year holidays. But I don’t want to barf on you. Because that would be gross. And logistically improbable. And just really gross.

Yet, I’ve slipped into the trap. That one where we judge and wag our fingers and assume and think highly of ourselves even more highly than the people who we disparage because they think highly enough of themselves to recap their years in public. So who’s the jerk now? The answer is that it’s me. I am the jerk in this scenario.

By this point I'm sure wondering why I’m soaking up your precious internet time like a nice moist piece of bread with crusty crust, scarpettando some kind of rich unctuous tomato sauce or clammy buttery wine drippings or maybe even like the fatty scrappy crispy bits at the bottom of the roasting pan and when you bite into the bread it’s crispy and juicy and salty. Oh man.

To be honest, I’m right there with you, trying to make sense of the world. Trying to make sense of these very words, this blog, this empire. I'm trying to make sense of the media we consume in social forums and how I consume and contribute and how it interacts with interactions we facilitate as humans in the presence of other humans. I’m trying to figure out how to express my love for people and how to say goodbye. I’m trying to figure out how to fit my life and belongings into a box and I’m trying to figure out patterns of migration and how human nature intersects with the brass tax of daily responsibilities. I’m trying to figure out how to remain creatively inspiring to myself, how to derive satisfaction from what my increasingly conventionally capitalistic businessman brain considers making a living. How do dollars relate to fulfillment, satisfaction, creativity and reality? How do I want them to? I’m trying to figure out how to continue to challenge myself, how to feel with my heart what is the most honest and weird and convicted and freaky self I can be, not for you, but for myself. I’m trying to figure out how to properly sharpen my bent knives and grow grass and manage time and I am continuously wondering what is health? Me and my big fancy brain, we’re trying to figure it all out, right now.

You see, chaos reigns in this particular frame of time in the world to which my eyeballs grant access. It’s not peachy. It’s not fine. It’s a firestorm of opportunity, fear, dread, mayhem, absurd fits of happiness and chasms of doom and doubt, plenty of pirouettes, hair twirling, axe swinging and that move where you hop a little then punch downward and lunge till your back knee hits the dancefloor while dipping your head then you explode upward towards the heavens and it’s all shooting out of an angry dragon’s mouth and it has fart breath and daggers for teeth. But the dragon is also wearing a saddle. A shiny new leather saddle that looks really nice especially from a distance and you can tell it’s going to fit real nice but it’s also probably going to hurt like hell breaking it in.

If we’re to use the crass punctuation mark of the calendar year, one could say that the occurrences that transpired were magnificent. They possessed magnitude, in and of themselves, and for those involved. Geographic displacement, death, metaphorical births, milestones, and lots of other vaguely meaningful verbs that will imply but not too much that significance has transpired.

It would be mightily presumptuous to declare it the most momentous, but this great transition which looms is certainly a part of the cream that has risen to the top, amidst the rest of the milk, scum, twigs, curveballs, rocks, doodoo molecules and miscellanous bacteria, fungi and organic matter all mixed into the milkshake of the year.

We are moving to the great northeast. New England. Central Vermont, to be more specific. Rita and I and Stitchdown and Farmrun, we’re all packing our bags and seeds and edge tools and relocating to a nice piece of land on which we’ll pursue our greatest dreams and aspirations. To listen and observe, cultivate and illuminate. If all goes well, in perpetuity.

Holy crap there I said it. It’s happening now. Except that maybe it won’t because in my experience confidence has a way of going smoosh. Like that time I said I was going to run across the country, but then didn’t. And then that time I said I was going to make six episodes then only made three. And that time I said I was going to blog more, and then pretty much didn’t.

I learned in college that using big words makes you a smart person, particularly a good writer. If I was more smart, I figure I might have bigger better longer stronger words for the difficulty of countering your inertia to travel up an entirely new tributary. Arduous, onerous, grueling, elating, mysterious, demanding, tragic, exhilarating, invigorating, heart breaking, dramatic, exasperating, titillating, dumbfounding, supercalifragilisticexpialidosiousing. They all pale. It is a grand confluence.

It has been difficult to consider leaving all that we’ve built out here in this pacific corner, to say goodbye to the friends and family for whom we have such deep underground cavernous rivers of love, with whom we have marched side by side in support and camaraderie of our respective pursuits of purpose, skillsets, goodness, toil and significance. Despite these tragic repercussions of moving far far away, excitement supercedes.

Thanks to the glories of the strategies humanity has devised for communication and collaboration, namely these here tubes, airplanes and this thing we used to call the telephone, we do not say goodbye, we say ‘until next time.’

Because to be right honest, there is just so much to be excited about. Like maple syrup. And deciduous forests, winter and so many more centuries’ worth of old tools and antiques. There is great empirical potential - to gain stewardship of a piece of land, to practice so many avenues we’ve only been able to pursue theoretically. There is great opportunity for collaboration and connection - to become reacquainted with friends from a previous life, to connect newly with the hordes of rad hard working people out there, and to prospectively serve as a bridge, to connect the east and west coast families and help foster the Doing of more cool things.

I was going to try to be concise. I told myself I said Andrew, keep it short. They’re busy and no one is so amused by yourself as yourself. I told myself I said Andrew, try not to postulate too dramatically. Don’t conclude universally. It’ll sound trite and disingenuous. Implicate, don’t extrapolate.

But then I got on to rambling and ranting and I got to feeling pretty overwhelmed by this whole situation into which we’ve got ourselves nestled. Not insignificantly, the fact that I am sitting here, in front of this gleaming screen, once again, announcing a major change in my life. It’s got me thinking about this blog and Farmrun and you, most significantly I’m thinking about you. Because you’ve been here with me, for a long time. I’m thinking about you and me and everyone we know, because you give Farmrun purpose.

You are the subject and audience. Client, vendor, friend, collaborator, idea generator, sender of really mean spirited but lamentably on point and eventually helpful criticism. You’re a Doer, maker, an inspiring human. The whole point of Farmrun, as I recently re-learned when writing about the store, is to foster the prosperity of the agrarian renaissance. Which is you, and me. It’s Us. We.

We work inscrutably long hours at what we love in solidarity with each other for all of these crazy things we believe in. We work to derive personal satisfaction, we work to support ourselves, we work to support others, we work to create a more equitable and beautiful universe.

It is not singularly, but in large part for these reasons, my great love and admiration for you, that I intend on continuing to fire the Farmrun furnace full steam ahead. We have all of the ideas for what to do next. So many schemes and plans and absurdly lofty ambitions. And the greatest excitement of all is that we have so much time. All of the time.

We’re going to take our time and grow organically, sensibly. We’re going to make more instructional films, narrative films, and start creating custom posters and designs for the sake of themselves. We’re going to write more, take more photographs and share them all right here. We’d like to collaborate more. We’re going to create a space for gathering - for commerce and feasting and creativity. A retail space with butcher shop / sandwich counter and farm stand corner and event space for film screenings and art and office headquarters. We’re going to grow seed garlic and potatoes and raise Gloucester Old Spot hogs and Devon cattle and make potato chips fried in lard and tallow, flavored with our garlic and herbs. We’ll cut hay and grow forage. We’ll feed our animals grass, shear our sheep and spin our wool. We’ll have wood fired pizza and bread at our CSA pickups, we’ll roast whole hogs to celebrate times of abundance and invite everyone to share in it. We’ll use our team of suffolks to log our forest in the wintertime and use our small mill to create custom forest products, then we’ll take the team back in the spring to gather our sap and make all the maple products. We’ll heat ourselves thrice with the wood from our forest, and with it we’ll make spoons and ladles and bowls and cutting boards and furniture. We’ll fell and hew our logs and we’ll timber frame our structures. We’ll stay connected, we will not eschew the time in which we live or sensible labor saving technologies. We’ll take the best of backwards and move forward. We’ll pay attention. We’ll listen. We’ll thank the sky for our water and the earth for our soil and do everything in our power to take care of them so they’ll take care of us. We’ll find ways to share all the we produce. We’ll have dinner parties. We’ll work as hard as we know how to preserve traditions that are worth preserving, capture voices and history that deserve to be shared, and we’ll work even harder to remain humble and strive for excellence in all that we do.

While the simultaneity of joy and despair remain expressly confounding to my simple brain, I feel confident that epic collaborations, projects and potential lie ahead. If you’re out there in the homeland, central VT or greater New England, let’s jam.

*photographs shot by Souki Mehdaoui

Still Life with Hogstone

It is a joke. A metaphor which plays on opposites. See, life has been anything but still since last we spoke. There is new construction, omnipresent timeless questions, holes burning in various kinds of cloth, stretched with varying degrees of tension over varying spans of empty space. There is pain, lots of potatoes, fog, transition, so many cuts on so many fingers it is almost too humorous even to mention it. Limitations, constraints ever amorphous, ever morphing, lurking in the shadows waiting to be tripped over. Or to trip. I have been finding it easy to become frustrated with the universe for shoving lessons in my face, when really the feeling I should be feeling is something like gratitude. I find it a sincere challenge to find patience and humility while engaged in this game of chess where time seems to be on the side opposite mine.

#hogstone's wood oven

The Glorious Burden of Mobility

Whew

Yesterday was our first CSA harvest out yonder at Stitchdown, the sake of the silence around here. Seems as though much of the computer time has been transformed into outside time of getting things done over these last few months.

On the roster of occurrences to share and develop astute critical analyses in the form of the written word and photographs are: the process of building a timber framed structure, starting with felling; death and place; the fluid spiritual nature of this farming enterprise; long term eyes; supreme uncertainty, decision making, and their role in pursuing prosperity; the value of expending energy building boxes for your CSA and other collateral improvements upon one's' brand identity; estate sales; and, last but not least - why is salad?

For now, here are some pictures of CSA day.

#stitchdown farm

Cornerstone Farm

Family Reunion

"The auction itself is pure poetry."

-Lynn Miller, 2013

Film to follow, shortly.

#Small Farmers Journal

Shouting From the Mountain's Shadow

Here is more info, for you and / or your friends, grandmothers, tuba instrucors etc etc etc who live in or around Portland Oregon.

#stitchdown farm

Transpiration(s)

One thing out of the lots of things that I like about growing food are the daily accomplishments. Little snippets of purpose. Every day, every hour there are tasks on which you are making progress or sometimes even completing.

We all know that there is no back cover. No true Ends, everything is in progress always though sometimes, many times, we become lost in semantics, syntax, and shiny objects. All is shifting, indefinitely malleable. While we have lofty goals for One Day, we take pride and derive great joy from building fences, hoophouses and acting on our high falutin' romantic unrealistic dreams of felling and hewing trees to timber frame a washing station / shed for our interim farmstead.

The following are snapshots of some occurrences that have recently occurred.

#stitchdown farm

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