In which our intrepid hero begins the last year of his twenties...

Well, where to start? Thanks for all the birthday wishes, and the presents, it was a welcome chance to talk to those of you who called, and who doesn't like presents?

As for my trip, well, my birthday was awesome, but if I'm being honest the rest of the trip didn't really go like I'd anticipated. Not that it wasn't fun. I enjoyed myself immensely, but didn't get the business I had planned taken care I had really wanted to find some work to do after my internship ends, and had planned on going to as many bakeries as it took to find one that would say yes...only I found one that I really, and I do mean REALLY, want to work at, and they're fully staffed.

I'm not going to let that discourage me, however. I'm in the process of writing a letter to the baker that will, if nothing else make him keep me in mind if a position opens. The bread is really good, y'all. It's the bread I've always aspired to bake, and if I manage to get a job there, I will be most pleased. I don't want you to think that this means I've given up on finding other work, but I'm going to do everything I can think of to try and convince them that I'd be a valuable asset.

As for the rest of my weekend, it was a lot of fun. I got into town late on Friday night, after a full day of harvesting produce for Saturday market. I loaded up the van, burned a bunch of new music and episodes of This American Life, and hit the road. The drive along the 101 to tacoma is really incredible, it makes me smile just thinking about it, but the rest of the ride is a little on the boring side. I got into Portland, found the hostel where I'd be staying, and ditched the van in a pay parking lot, which was the cheapest and least stressful option; parking the great green behemoth isn't easy under the best of circumstances, and parallel parking on the narrow streets of Portland hardly qualifies as such.

I hit up Powell's for the first of many times, that night; I'm literally incapable of walking past that place without ducking inside for at least a couple of minutes. It may sound silly, but it's like a sacred place for me, and I always feel better whenever I walk through the doors. I went to bed pretty early that first night, knowing that I wanted to get up early the next morning to hit up VooDoo Donuts before I went to the farmer's market. The market was awesome. I literally walked around for three hours, trying things, and having a great time. I bought bread from every bakery, cheese from Rogue creamery, some saucisson sec from Chop, and the first peaches I've had all year.

Oddly enough I didn't take any pictures while in Portland...well that's not exactly true. I took one. This, from the holocaust memorial at Washington park.

Not sure why I felt compelled to snap a pic of the creepy bronze doll, or why I chose, and it was a willful choice, to not take any other pictures. I think, if you'll allow me a moment of self analysis, that I don't want to approach Portland like a tourist, but wanted to see it as a potential place to live.

Aren't we self-aware?

I spent the rest of the afternoon hiking around town, through the northern edge of Washington Park, through the Rose Test garden, and along the streets in the Nob Hill/Alphabet district. I decided pretty early that I was going to go to diner at Castagna, which the Oregonian named the restaurant of the year. I got all decked out in the one nice outfit I brought with me, which, if you've ever seen me dressed up, you can imagine pretty readily. I hung out in Powell's until it was time to catch a cab across the river to the restaurant.

I ate my meal, and drank my snooty Belgian beer, and had a wonderful time. The food was delicious, and beautifully presented, and quite clever in the way that the best food often is. I was seated near enough to the kitchen, that I could peer, and watch as the cooks went about their business, which always satisfies that voyeuristic urge I feel in restaurants. It was the first meal I've eaten out since I left La Jolla for Washington, which is sort of setting the bar pretty high. If you're ever in Portland I highly recommend it, order the price fixe, and if you're feeling obnoxious, like I was, just let the chef choose what to feed you.

I spent the rest of my weekend visiting bakeries, and breweries, but had ruined myself for the job search by going to Ken's Artisan Bakery, first thing in the morning. It was just down the street from the hostel, and I can say beyond doubt that this is my new dream gig. They aren't hiring, and they don't do internships or apprenticeships, but I'm going to do whatever I can to convince them that giving me a chance would be a very good thing indeed. After my early morning epiphany, accompanied by a cup of Stumptown coffee(which is sold every-damn-where in Portland) a croissant and a country style demi baguette, I was ruined for my job-search. It was impossible to get excited about applying for a position at any other bakery after Ken's.

Monday morning I woke up early, got the van packed, and hit the road pretty early. Why? You may ask. Given that Portland is only four hours from the farm, I could have had a full day of hanging out in the city, but, if I'm being honest, and why wouldn't I; I really wanted to get back to the peninsula. It was pull that I felt, that I couldn't resist. I drove around Portland equivocating about doing something, but in the end the farm won out, and I started my journey back to the place, which has so quickly, and oddly, become the place I return to.

Once again I remembered that the trip up 5 to the 101 is quite boring, but once you hit that exchange just outside Tacoma, and head up the coast of the hood canal the scene transforms, the Olympic national forest signs begin to appear, and then pass with greater and greater frequency, and with each one, my uncontrollable grin widens. I got back to the farm, and felt an odd desire to grab a stirrup hoe, and kill some weeds. I'm not even kidding. Instead I went and picked blueberries with Maggie, took a short hike, and cooked dinner. It was a good way to end my vacation, and in it's way, as fun as what I did in Portland.

Some pics from the farm.

The poppyseed harvest:

Some plums, Methley(I know I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but these things are ridiculously good, and I've never eaten a plum so juicy and delicious{yes they are on a straw hat, no, you may not have pictures of me wearing said hat}):


Melons!!!! Watermelons, and Musk melons, of some sort:

Winter Squash, wheat, garbanzo beans:


The greenhouse, planted with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, sweet potatoes, and jicama:

Who wants bread?:


My hand, at the end of a hard day of farmering:


And finally, the answer to last week's trivia question. If you recall the question was, what the heck is this thing?:


In a startling coincidence, while pondering what to blog about the other night, I thought about having posed this query, and not a minute later I received the following(edited to post the correct picture from last week):

The answer? Indian pipe, corpse plant, ghost flower, Monotropa uniflora.

So thank you Maggie, for illuminating us all.

I don't know what the future holds. At some times this bothers me more than I'd like to admit, but at others I find it wildly exciting. I'm still having fun, even on the most stressful of days, and I can't deny that this experience has changed me in profound and undeniable ways. Evidence? I spent most of my time in Powell's in the gardening section, and only ventured into the cookbooks once or twice, okay maybe four or five times, but still...

I love y'all. Thanks again for the birthday wishes and the much appreciated gifts. Each package and phone call brightened my days, and never forget that I'm thinking of you all, and hoping you're well.

And as a little postscript, in case you're worrying that I take myself too seriously, here is a camera-phone pic of myself with a patch of clover on my head:

Reinforcing the transient nature of farm life...

Bear died this week; he was eight months old, and it was a total shock to all of us. Despite the sadness we feel at his loss, life on the farm continues, and there is no time to stop to mourn him, or even to slow down.

The peas are almost gone. We have maybe one harvest left. The strawberries might last for another two, but we have raspberries coming into full swing, now:



The zucchini should be ready for Wednesday market:


Apples and pears:





Discovered this week while making a regular walking apraisal of the state of the farm, Montmorency cherries:



Ume, I think:


So as things come to an end, other things begin. It is with this in mind that I've decided what I'm doing for my birthday. I have the entire weekend off, three days to do with as I will, and I'm going to Portland. I want to spend the winter there, at a bakery by preference, and maybe I'll be able to do something else of interest one or two days a week, if I can't find a full time gig. Rather than attempt to arrange this using the power of the internet, I plan on doing it the old-fashioned way. In person, face-to-face, in the hopes that this will reinforce the seriousness of my desire to come and learn from someone who has a passion for the same things I do. [edited: to remove shameless panhandling, which turned out to be quite shame inducing, after all]

Some of the baking I've been doing recently.

Roasted beet and garlic bread, beets courtesy of the kids at the Lazy J, garlic from the Johnston's:


Some gluten-free peanut butter cookies, and an apple cake I baked for the cookbook, I'm doing recipe testing for:


In other farm-related news, I got work my first market yesterday. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. On the one hand it was a lot of fun, to see the end result of what I've been working so hard for, and on the other it seemed oddly unproductive, at least at first. By the end of the day, I had come to realize, of course, that it was anything but. It was, in fact, the very neccessary end result of all we work so hard to accomplish. It was really satisfiying to see the appreciation on the faces of the people in the community who support what we do, and it was incredibly gratifying to be able to see the relationship Christie has developed with her regulars, and it was fun to see what the other farmers had available.

It was also like a recap of the fun and adventures I've had here so far; over the course of the day I saw most of the people who I've met, or had even the briefest of tangential encounters with; from Lindsay's girlfriend and her roommate, to the lovely young lesbian who shook the shit out of me at the rock show I went to the night before market, for not dancing. It was a great opportunity to recharge and reinvigorate myself after the hard work we've been doing, and to demonstrate unequivocally that what we do has a purpose beyond supplying us with fine fresh produce.

In summation: much to all our dismay, Bear, Nick's faithful dog, is no longer with us. It has shaken us all, but there is nothing we can do, beyond being there for Nick, Christie, and Kelly. The planting and maintenance, harvesting and selling continue unabated, in fact they have accelerated to the point where I have no doubt that whatever I do after this will make me feel lazy and unproductive by comparison. It's funny, now that I think about it. Twice this week, people have asked me whether I'm finding myself suited to this life. I recall saying early on that while I was learning a lot, I didn't think I would be doing this for the rest of my life, and though I'm unsure, maybe even doubtful, that commercial farmer is in my future; the more I think about it the more I can't imagine a life in which I'm not growing food in some capacity or another. Weird, but in another way entirely comforting. I naively did not think that this journey would change me. I had no doubts that I would learn about myself in the process, but I did not think that there would be any fundamental shift in who I am. Now I'm not so sure.

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:

It appears that I am on a farm...

A wrap up of what went on in Portland for the twenty hours I was in the city. Not nearly long enough. I will be going back there, regardless of what the future holds.

The only landscape shots I'll trouble you with, though I took plenty more:



VooDoo donuts, and the infamous maple bacon log:





Powell's Books. Worth moving to this town, just for this place. I spent an hour here...OK two...three maybe, and if I hadn't been on my very best behavior I might well have bankrupted myself:



This made me smile, in a nerdy(I'm not a hippie, damn it!) sort of way:


I went to the Rogue brewery and distillery; I hadn't realized that they started working with spirits, but I skipped trying any, given that I'm not J, and wouldn't be able to recognize a fine gin if it bit me on the butt. I walked around a lot, and rode a bus, and generally enjoyed as much as I could cram in, in the short time I was there.

The drive the next day was easy, and relaxed even though since the trip was mostly around the perimeter of Olympic nation park it rained, a steady drizzle, almost constantly. It was beautiful, perhaps the greenest place I've ever been. I arrived at the farm, and it was not quite what I was expecting, but given some hard work, we're going to get this place in tip top shape before I know it. It will be exceptionally hard work, but the rewards will be well worth it.

I'll probably wait until I've done a couple of days worth of work before doing a post about life on the farm, but I'll leave you with one ridiculous image, and insist that you all feel free to make fun, harass, and otherwise denigrate me all you wish, in the comments.