Happy Thanksgiving(and the snowstorm of twenty-ten)

It's the day before Thanksgiving, I'm baking one loaf of bread, a long pie pumpkin and three heads of garlic, which will also be transformed into bread before the day is through. I'm off on a road trip, or will be in a few hours, and I'm jittery with excitement, and coffee, but mostly excitement.

It snowed here in Port Angeles on Sunday, an unseasonably early storm of impressive ferocity. We got somewhere between eight inches and a foot, on the farm there were drifts as high as three feet in some places, but I'm getting ahead of myself. On Sunday we went and saw the new Harry Potter movie. It was, as we all had to assume, quite dark. I love the animated tale of the three brother right in the middle of it; thought the animation was fantastic. I enjoyed it, but I have to say that it in no way compared with going sledding at the highschool with Maggie, and Jen and Nathan afterward. That was easily the highlight of my week, if not the month.

The day afterward, however, was back to farm life, and let me just tell you, farming in the snow? Even inside of the greenhouse...not ideal. We got it cleaned out, however, harvesting the last of the peppers and eggplants, and some green tomatoes that may or may not ripen off the vine. Yesterday we finished pulling up all the fencing, and cleaning it up as best we could, and then cleaned out the chicken coop. Ah, the glamorous and idyllic life of farm folk.

I've been getting some quality writing done, I think, and I've been enjoying my time immensely. Although living in a trailer during the snowstorm has taken some of the romance out of it, it was undeniably beautiful. Some pics from around the farm(it should be interesting to see what survives this, but I've learned not to underestimate the resilience of plants).


Chickens do not like the snow:
The display garden, lettuce?:

Leeks:

Parsnips:

Brassicas:

Asparagus:
Flax:

Raspberries and Blueberries:
Leaving the Athair's the morning of the storm:



Sometimes you find beauty in the most unexpected of places, like the skin of the greenhouse the morning after:

As for my Thanksgiving plans? A rented house on the Oregon coast, with some friends and some strangers. There will be much cooking, and celebrating, and, on my part at least, being thankful for what I have, for the opportunities I find myself with, for my friends and loved ones, and for all of you who care about me and my journey.

Thanks.

Is anybody out there...

I know that you're reading this, but I've gotten almost no reply to my call for questions so I'll repeat it; if there is anything you'd like to know, please feel free to ask in the comments, or send me an email, or a text. Help me out here people. I realized based on the questions I did get, that I've talked very little about conditions on the farm, and I'll be remedying that in my next post, as well as posting a tour of my trailer, but in the meantime, since I'm on vacation in Seattle...

That's right, I have two days off in a row, and took the opportunity to get out of the rural, idyllic, Olympic peninsula, and am checking out another of those metropolitan areas that has always called to me. I'm only going to be here for a day, but as I found out in Portland, a day is plenty long enough to develop a taste for a place, and a desire to return. If I'm being honest, only an effort of will kept me from returning to Oregon...that and the four and a half hour drive. Which is a little excessive for a day trip. Not that Seattle is all that much closer.

I'll get to what I did in the Capital of the PacNorWe in a moment, but first, what have I been up to on the farm since last we spoke? Well, this week it rained. Every day. All day. Despite that fact we managed to get a lot done. We spent three days planting brassicas, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages and brussel sprouts, several kinds of each. We planted somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty rows of plants, around 1300 in all. It was a long hard week, but it's always satisfying to put food in the ground.

So to answer some question that nobodies asked...hows the writing going? Well, thanks. Since I've been on the road, I've finished three short stories, but haven't submitted nay of them yet. I'm working on the first round of editing, and it's going well. In addition to the short stories, I'm still working on the comic series I started at the beginning of April, and have just finished writing issue number six. It's going pretty well, I think. I'm getting along well with the Johnstons, we all work hard, and given my propensity for supplying them with baked goods, and their supplying me with farm fresh eggs and produce, and raw milk from a nearby dairy, we're all pre-disposed to get along.

I think it's time for me to move along, but I'll get another blog posted in a few days, I'll answer any questions that come up, and post some pics of the trailer, and share some of what I've did while in Seattle...any guesses? To finish us up until next time let's have some pictures.

The aforementioned idyllic small town(PA):


Who knew a brussel sprout could be so pretty(he's called Oliver)?:


My corn; my sweet, sweet corn:


Eggplants, recently transplanted into larger pots:


Some potato thyme bread, made from local flour, milk, potatoes and thyme(locavore what?), and the first cookies I made in the trailer oven:


Lastly, my new ride, gifted to me from a new friend, Leela. She interned with the Johnstons for several seasons, and now, with her husband, is running a farm down the road: