Finally… I’m back

Sorry to my legions of fans for the long hiatus. I was afraid that this might happen. I’m good at starting things, not-so-good at keeping them going.
See, when I was posting a lot, a few things hadn’t happened yet: I hadn’t really moved into my office and started “working” and we still spent lots of [...]

Hot hot hot

And not in a good way.
About a week ago, okay, 10 days, we had to put row-cover over our garden to protect our plants from 3 nights of frost. We had to build fires in the house to keep warm On Friday, it was in the upper 90’s. And Saturday, and Sunday, and Monday, and [...]

There goes a whole week

It’s another Saturday, another market day. A whole week since my last post. Today I’ll work some more on my office, check out a moving sale for scavenge-able goods, and probably do our laundry.
We hosted Bekah’s Dad on Sunday and Monday. We took him to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, which is pretty super cool. It [...]

Market Day

Shopping:
On Saturday, I went into town with Nathan. Nathan is a young man who works with Michael (the Farmer) at Cornell. He is staying at Kingbird over the summer, and knows a lot about farming and this kind of life in general. On the drive in, we talked about scythes and scythe sharpening, among other [...]

Fungi Foraging Friday, Solar Stereo

On Friday morning, I puttered around, working on the house some more. I was testing my hope that I could run some of our electronic gizmos right from the battery power. But while I was hauling speakers up to the house from the car, I saw Bekah, Karma, Rosie and about 4 dogs walking through [...]

Oops, There Goes the Neighborhood

Oh, and we have new neighbors. Someone moved in between us and the nice pigs. There goes the neighborhood. They keep trying to get in through our gate, too:

These cows romp. They were so psyched by their new pasture that they tore around for an afternoon. I’ve never seen cows play, nor run around, really. [...]

Panjawasi Coming Along

I spent a good part of the rest of this last week working on the house. The house has a name: “Panjawasi” which is the name of a neighborhood in Bolivia. The creator of the house does his research there.
I designed and built some kitchen shelving, using completely re-purposed wood (a torn-apart futon frame, some [...]

The Day the Piggies Got Out, the Day the Snake Got In

Pigs:
On Monday, almost a week ago, We spent most of the day starting our garden. Bekah certainly did most of the work, with me merely assisting. We installed some of our sickly seedlings, and some seeds in rows.

At some point, when I was inside, and Bekah called out “Hey Matt, look, the pigs are up”.
In [...]

Wasail, and moving in

So, we’re back from the pagan festival. It wasn’t so pagan, after all. More like Balkan.
The details are this: there’s an apple orchard called Breezy Hill Orchards that delivers apples, cider, and pies to NYC Greenmarkets, owned and operated by a spitfire of a woman named Liz Ryan. I met her a few years ago [...]

First Day In

So we’re here.
Things went better than we could have hoped. Alvaro and Martin helped us load the truck. I’d say that the truck was 4x as big as necessary. I felt embarrassed — it’s in my genes to be the worlds’ best packer (not Packer, but packer, as in to pack a car full of [...]