Leveling the Playing Field

I'm always up for a great TEDTalk, this is one of my favorites. It's worth watching, it sheds light on a view that I'm passionate about; simple living, empowering citizens to control their future by giving them the information to design and build their own homes. It's a great piece with some fantastic information available....plus the guys name is Alastair!

http://www.ted.com/talks/alastair_parvin_architecture_for_the_people_by_the_people.html



Busy week at the farm...we planted approximately 7000 pepper plants of our many different pepper varieties. This took 8 of us three full days and involved row preparation (300' long rows), laying out drip tape (irrigation), weed barrier, plastic mulch (that clear stuff you see), organic natural fertilizer, and someone following behind the transplanting to water in the plants to make them feel all comfy in their new environment. In all, it ended up being 10 full rows of pepper varieties!

These pepper plants were started from seed only 3 weeks ago and set up in small 4" pots in our propagation hoop house. The propagation tunnel is where the magic happens...here the plants get coddled, mostly by Anne, so they germinate in a timely manner so that we can transplant them into the field at just the right time. Farming is so scientific!

The crew working hard and systematically

One stink eye and three butts. Hens laying eggs in their boxes.

Looking south towards the high tunnels; some fine front porch living!

A Week in the Life

Pretty typical week on the farm, people always coming and going, which always makes it interesting here. We had a group of students on Tuesday and Wednesday from Tillamook Preschool at the farm, 3-5 year olds! They were here to plant pumpkins and then in the fall they will come back to harvest them when they are big, orange and pumkiny. Not being much of a kid guy, it was actually pretty enjoyable and certainly entertaining. We broke off into a couple different groups; I went on a snake hunt with the first group on Tuesday...and kids LOVE snakes to my amazement! It was cool and chilly but sure enough we did find snakes in our compost piles, they fearlessly handled the harmless garter snakes. We also had the tractor out for the kids to explore, this was my duty on Wednesday. Kids are amused by the simplest things, a light blinking or the color of the tractor! The innocence of it all is what was the most refreshing I guess.

                                                        Hellians arriving

                                             

                                                         snake charmer

                                              look ma and orange tractor!

Saturday I worked the Hollywood ( a neighborhood in Portland) Market. I enjoy the social interaction with the customers and it's a great way to familiarize myself even more with or enormous variety of vegetables that we grow here at Gales Meadow Farm.  The pic below is just a sampling of the variety we have at GMF...right now it's all about our tomato starts. We always have chicken and duck eggs available and now is the season for delicious garlic scapes, shallot and elephant garlic buds. Sometime soon I'll be posting my 'best of GMF' which will consist of a variety of pics I've taken since being here in September.

                                                        

I did get several runs in this week too, three 8's and today I did a 12 miler,,,for those of you who don't know, when I have free time I ALWAYS find time for running. It's just one of those things that I absolutely cannot do without, it grounds me, it's my therapy, it challenges me, it feels good! Kind of like this super tasty local beer I just discovered at the market today....enjoying this Invasive Species IPA right now thinking about how grand life is these days and thankful for all of it!

PDX Food Cart Tour

There are certain idiosyncrasies people associate with particular cities. Here in Portland it's biking, the great outdoors, craft beer, beards, flannel, music, rain, hipsters, kale, unfloridated water, bridges, the serious alternative underground scene that isn't so underground here, but there is also the great food options available here in PDX. More specifically, the plethora of food cart options all over the city; about 500 food carts to choose from and satisfy every palate.

http://www.foodcartsportland.com/ 

Saturday I was joined by three friends, who I convinced to tag along for my food cart tour.  We had such a great time, albeit cloudy, cool and sometimes raining. The first stop on the tour was Wolf & Bears in SE. It sounds like a gay nightclub, but its actually a Middle Eastern inspired food cart with a nice varied menu. Josh went with the traditional Falafel and Ron, Rory and myself had the Sabich, which is an Iraqi-Jewish traditional breakfast pita wrap of hummus, mango pickle puree, sliced hard boiled egg, diced onion, cucumber and pickles, cracked pepper, parsley and salad greens topped with tahini sauce and olive oil. It was creamy, full of flavor and just delicious, the perfect way to use an egg and the perfect start to the tour.

The second stop on the PDX FCT was the winner of Best Food Cart in Portland, the Peruvian food of La Sangucheria! Hands down my favorite cart yet in Portland. Josh and I both got the Chicharron, an enormously huge and tasty sandwich of deep fried pork, sweet potato fries, honey and onion sarza. If you're in Portland, you owe it to yourself to try this one on, plus the people watching is over-the-top entertaining around this part of downtown.

Dessert seemed appropriate to end the tour, as if there is ever an inappropriate time for sweets! The Pie Spot was a cart but has gone to a brick and mortar set-up, it was pouring out pretty good by this time so we spent almost an hour and a half here enjoying the sugar coma and the company under dry cover. I had a mini pie of chocolate and peanut butter and a lemon cranberry scone. Everyone seemed to enjoy what they got here, another tremendous food stop in PDX!

Thanks again to Josh, Ron (Train) & Rory for joining me, it was a real fun day and it was better because of you guys!

Nostalgia for the future

This weekend in Damascus, Virginia is the annual Trail Days event to celebrate everything and everyone great about the Appalachian Trail. Jeremiah Johnson and WolfPack, both who I started and finished the PCT with last summer as well as AT thru Alums from class of '09, are attending and updating me on the happenings. Damascus, Virginia is a great town for this event, it embraces the hiking culture and welcomes hiker trash with open arms. The trail goes right through quaint little Damascus and everywhere you look it's AT this or AT that, it's well deserving of its moniker as "Trail Town, USA."  I have yet to attend the Trail Days event, but it's on the to-do list.     http://www.traildays.us/

So of course, with Trail Days this weekend and starting the CDT with Safety Officer right around the corner I'm feeling nostalgic. Here is a pic of Safety Officer and myself in Damascus, Virginia when we hiked the AT SOBO (southbound) in 2011 at one of the must-stop spots while in town, Quincey's Pizza. You can see we have our rain jackets on, we ended up taking an extra zero day here in Damascus, yay more pizza and beer! It's tough enough to leave a fantastic trail town like this, but when its raining...ZERO!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

We had one of our delicious customers come visit the farm today! This customer buys ALL of our organic mint that we grow here at the farm, which officially adds up to a crap-ton of mint.

All 16 employees of local Portland based Ruby Jewel came out to our farm for a farm walk/tour and a huge pot luck. The weather was perfect for it and we all enjoyed the day while eating great food and of course, finished off the meal with fantastic All Natural Ruby Jewel Ice Cream. I had their Butterscotch Pecan Cookie with Honey Roasted Banana Ice Cream (see pic below)...yes, it tastes as good as it sounds!        http://www.rubyjewel.net/

I just finished up my day by working on some CDT logistics, tonight was the not-so-fun task of splitting up the many maps to go in their respective drop boxes. Things are progressing nicely and I don't feel overwhelmed at all; maybe because I started planning in January or maybe because this is my third thru-hike and I should have this shit down by now! Probably both.