Yurtville

Raleigh Twenty

2012-01-25T20:21:00.006-05:00

My 1971 Raleigh Twenty

I rebuilt this wheel with a new alloy rim laced to the original Sturmey Archer hub

The cottered crank fixed to the oh-so-cool Raleigh heron profile chainring. See those herons?

My first introduction to the Twenty was at a talk given by John Allen a few years ago who seemed quite proud of his bike and gave it a promenant place onstage alongside him

About two years ago I somewhat rashly purchased a folding bike through eBay called a Raleigh Twenty. The idea was that I would bring this thing with us on an upcoming trip to Florida as luggage and have a reasonable bicycle while on vacation rather than be victim to whatever the local rental places might have to offer.

As things go, it wasn't practical to bring the bike and I highly doubt if I could have folded the bike compactly enough to work as baggage. Also one of the crank arms had been bent in shipment; it was rideable but not ideal.

So, for the last couple of years the bike has hung from the rafters in the basement waiting...

----

I recently began a job in Montpelier that requires me to walk 4-5 blocks distance from where I park to where I work, which is just long enough to have to add time to the commute. Thinking about the situation I suddenly saw where the Raleigh Twenty could fit into my life! The next time I drove into work I brought the bike with me, conveniently folded and placed in the back of our car. Upon arrival, I swiftly removed the bike, unfolded it and biked the short distance to work. Voila!

The Raleigh Twenty gets its name from it's wheel size--a 20 inch rim. This model of bicycle was made from the late sixties up through the mid-eighties and at one point in the seventies was Raleigh's biggest seller. As modern folding bikes go it is something of a tank and does not fold all that small, but it is a bike with a great heritage and a really fun, stately, retro-groovy vibe that I am completely enamored with.

Since I've started using the bike I've been researching how to put this charming object on a diet. It weighs more then my intuition expects when I go to pick it up. Everything that might be alloy today on a bike is steel on this thing, such as the wheel rims, the seat tube, the fenders, the handlebars, etc... Even crappy bikes today have lighter components then this thing does. Steel rims, in addition to being heavy are also notorious for poor braking, so that's where I've focused my first effort at revamping the bike.

I acquired some cheap yet fine BMX alloy-rimmed wheels from a local bike coop called Freeride in Montpelier. As luck would have it BMX sizings often overlap with the Twenty and I was able to dismantle one of the rims and re-lace it with the original hub from the Twenty front wheel and create a lightweight wheel that provides improved braking surface. Having never before built a wheel, I was quite pleased with myself and somewhat surprised at how easy it is. Buoyed by this experience I carefully measured the rear Sturmey Archer three-speed hub and ordered spokes so I can build up a rear wheel with the original hub laced to a better rim.

These new wheels are a great step towards improving the Twenty's weight and stopping power. Next up will be switching out the brakes. I'm going to start with the front (since that's where 70% of the stopping power happens on a bike) and perhaps work on the rear after that.

Some people go really far with re-habing their Twentys, but I want to retain as much of the original look and feel as possible while improving the weight and function at the same time.

Sheldon Brown was a big fan of Raleigh Twentys.

Winter Riding

2012-01-07T16:09:00.015-05:00

This has been a mild winter and to my surprise I'm still riding my bike. In fact, on New Years Day I pedaled to the top of the Appalachian Gap and then back home--not something you'd ever expect to do in January.

When I lived in Boston I rode year 'round. Since I biked to work every day my ability to dial in what clothing to wear could be adjusted with small changes day-t0-day. These days I am a little less able to intuitively "know" what to wear on a chilly, cold, or really cold day.

Its been ranging from the twenties up through the thirties the last few weeks and I've found I can be pretty comfortable on my bike right down through the mid-twenties. I haven't tried biking in anything colder, at least not recently.

One weak point has been --you guessed it-- my toes. In hindsight, I should have relied on previous experience sooner, but for whatever reason, I've been lacking the imagination to try out different solutions.

My typical warm weather shoe on the bike tends to be a pair of Converse sneakers. They are great for many reasons, and recently I've been reluctant to give them up when the weather gets cold. To counter the cold I've been doubling up on the socks and then donning a pair of neoprene booties. I'd say this has worked somewhere in the range of poor-to-moderate.

Back in my Boston commuting days what I did was wear a pair of roomy slip-on loafer-ish leather shoes that allowed for a couple of thick pairs of socks without constricting my feet at all. I found this worked extremely well and the shoes passed as office-acceptable so I was good to go from bike to work.

I have a pair of similar shoes and last night I decided to try my old method. Wallah! It worked great and I was completely comfortable for the seven or eight mile ride home in the dark with temps around 26 degrees.

Beyond the question of feet, I wear two thin long sleeve wool undershirts, a sweater over that, and then always have my plastic neon yellow shell. I love wearing knickers and last night had my Ibex knickers with long thick knee socks and then a pair of corduroy knickers over those. If it were to be a longer or more serious ride, I would have had wool instead of corduroy but these worked fine last night.

Another experiment has been wearing a ski helmet and goggles.

With respect to the goggles, I didn't know my face could be so comfortable. It is though your face is in a small climate controlled room looking out on the world. The downsides were the tinted lens and the perspiration that built up as I climbed the hill out of the village. Also, I find they limit my ability to glance back over my shoulder to see if a car is coming since the walls of the goggles block that sight line. Regardless, the goggles are a definite thumbs-up.

The helmet is fun, and works well with the goggles, but seems not quite as versatile as a standard bike helmet with a hat underneath. Ski helmets are meant to keep people warm who are not necessarily generating a lot of heat and I sense it would be easy to get too warm with the helmet. It does have removable vent covers and ear flaps, so maybe taking those out and putting on a hat would be a good solution.

Its been a thrill to be able to bike right up through the fall and into winter!

Making a handlebar bag

2011-12-01T21:22:00.009-05:00

The bag doing its job admirably

Mounted on the bike

The new bag next to it's (smaller) inspiration, a worn TA bag of unknown vintage

Cutting pieces, sewing on the leather trim and attaching hardware

The bag starting to take shape

Since we finished building the house I've been able to redirect some of my attention to making bags again for the first time in a long while. Ever so slowly over the last handful of years I've been refining my skills and working out solutions to challenges that get in the way of a satisfactory result. The first bag I ever made was a replica of the Rivendell Bicycle Works 'Hobo' handlebar bag. It was a great jumping off point for me; I got all excited while I was making it knew I was on to something, but the bag itself was not going to last forever. I sewed it on my mom's portable Singer, which she inherited from her mom. Since then I've been incrementally getting better at crafting bags. The acquisition of an industrial sewing machine was a big step.

Since the summer, I've been slowly building up my bike to accommodate a traditional French-style handle bar bag. The first step included some frame repairs which allowed for installing a new front rack which in turn provided the mount for installing a generator hub powered lighting system. The last piece of this project was the bag.

Having come across a beat up old TA bag, I used this bag as a model for my new bag but sized it up to what I thought would be a useful size. I used the TA bag briefly and found it too way too small for anything other then light duty service.

I drafted all the fabric pieces on brown paper and then cut them out to make full scale patterns. I then transferred the patterns to the heavy waxed canvas that I was to make the bag from, allowing me to then cut and assemble them.

Sewing the bag was pretty straightforward and went well. The most challenging aspect was sewing the leather edge trim on. I found actually hot-gluing it in place before sewing made the process a lot more controllable and in the end made the process work pretty well.

When the bag was complete I affixed the decaleur through the leather to a strip of maple on the inside of the bag. (A decaleur is a metal fixture that attaches to the back of the bag and seats in the handlebar mount attached to the stem). With some work, the bag now sits just where I want with the bottom of the bag resting on the Velo Orange rack below it.

To my satisfaction, the sizing of the bag worked out just right. It is large for this style bag, but I see no drawbacks and only positives for my needs. It fits a lot of stuff and can accommodate most of what I'd need for almost all of my trips, be it a work commute, a daylong trip, or going out to get some groceries. The top of the bag sits just about at bar height and this to me is one of the unheralded wonders of a handlebar bag: it becomes a very effective windbreak for my hands in chilly weather.

There are a few things I still need to do, such as purchase elastic cord to complete the pocket cover closures and decide on the best way to close the large top cover through the decaleur posts. I'm getting closer to solving that.

This is the first bag that comes close to meeting my expectations in terms of quality of both materials and construction. I've whittled away at the process a little more and look forward to further improvements gained from this effort. I'm proud of this project, but aware of the shortcomings as well. Each one brings me a little further along.

Small Adventures

2011-11-27T22:05:00.014-05:00

Headed up the Shining Sea Bikeway

My route to Sandwich; the route home is on the other side

The train bridge on the Cape Cod canal with elevating center section

The Brown Jug in Sandwich. Great spot for some food and rest

Boardwalk in Sandwich. I'll explore further next time

Nancy's iPhone letting me know that the mystery sand road was cool to take

Late afternoon cup of coffee

Heading back down the bikeway with lights at sunset

Plans for the canal

We are spending the holiday weekend here on the Cape and the temperatures have been in the 60's (!). Its been thrilling to take advantage of the late fall weather down here with some time on the beach and a couple of bike rides. Today I got to go on a longer ride.

It is always with some excitement that I anticipate an extended trip that promises some new terrain and unexplored roads. From my last ride I learned an important lesson that I tried to be more careful about this time around; I did not simply print out the results of the Google Maps directions, but rather I researched the route and wrote out my lefts and rights and mileage from observation, including notes as needed about possible spots to explore.

In 2009 the rail trail that extends from Woods Hole into Falmouth village was linked up with a new section that extends the route up to County Road in North Falmouth, resulting in about 10 miles of pathway. Further up the western edge of the Cape a path runs along the Cape Cod canal from Bourne up to Sandwich -- another 6 or so miles. Between the two are another 6 to 7 miles of back roads and villages. My plan was to head up through this route, have lunch in Sandwich and then come back down through the back roads inland from the coast. This was a fortuitous decision since the wind was from the south and proved a good friend on my way north and not so bad coming south away from the water.

I have some ambivalence about bike paths, but when they are speedy and unencumbered I lose that ambivalence, and for a while I've been looking forward to exploring the canal pathway. I've always been intrigued by the canal as a man-made waterway, but have only glanced at it briefly while crossing the bridge and have never seen it close-up.

The warm weather spurred me on as I traveled, enjoying the marshes, shingled houses, fall bramble and gentle terrain. My route planning proved useful as I worked up through the roads to the canal path.

I was delighted to come upon the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge, which is a lift bridge allowing rail traffic access on and off the cape. My journey up the pathway took me northeast along the edge of the canal under the Bourne and Sagamore bridges before reaching the end in Sandwich. I don't know if it was the weather, a slight alteration in my mood, or what, but I've got to say there was a bit of a lonely feel to the canal path; not a lot of people, not a lot to marvel at, and just sort of an empty feel. Maybe it would feel different on a sunny day.

I'd done a little food research as well before this ride and knew I'd be stopping at the Brown Jug in Sandwich. A purveyor of fine foods, wines and provisions, it was a great place to catch a bite to eat. They have a great little outdoor terrace that had a fire pit burning away which I sat near. It was perfect for keeping the ride-cool down chills at bay. I even contemplated having a glass of wine with lunch but decided root beer was a wiser choice.

The ride back down took me along Rt. 130 along the eastern edge of Camp Edwards, a vast area of land dedicated to military uses. Rt.130 was a drag --no room, lots of cars. I managed as best I could until I reached the Mashpee town line when things improved with wider roads and even a stretch of bike path next to the roadway.

For many years I've questioned the presence of cell phones -- and now smart phones -- in our lives. I'm not certain that what we gain offsets what we are loose in other ways, and I'm still not certain how I feel about this. Regardless, Nancy recently bought an iPhone and I took it along with me on this ride. I can say with clarity that it was awesome to have as a navigational tool. At one point I pulled off onto an unmarked sand road to take a leak and then wondered where I was. I pulled out the iPhone and found out to my delight that I could continue on this back road and would come out near enough to where I was heading. Being able to enter into an unknown and frankly confusing maze of roads through the woods was really great. Later I was able to navigate my way home over back roads when it was clear that routes I'd chosen earlier were unpleasant, heavily traveled roads.

After a pleasant 60 miles I arrived home in the darkness happy for such a warm day in late November spent on two wheels.

Getting there on a bike

2011-11-19T19:39:00.012-05:00

Ready to roll 7:30am

The new bag I made

Crossing the Third Branch White River where the flood took out the bridge

I had just crossed the tracks moments before

Coffee, a muffin, wifi, and warmth in Randolph

Lunch spot in Sharon

Last Sunday I awoke just before 7:00am, had a quick cup of coffee and little breakfast, got myself together and pedaled up the driveway headed for White River Junction.

Nancy was at a conference over the weekend and since the weather seemed favorable I decided to ride down and meet her so we could drive back up together. The temps we predicted to be in the 50's but starting out I think they were in the mid 30's. Since I've been riding lately in chilly weather I knew what to expect and was pretty well prepared.

My ride through the Valley took me south to the Roxbury Mountain Road. I took off some layers before ascending up the hill. It was fine and felt good to get warmed up although I took a short-cut up the Old Roxbury Mountain Road and payed with some steep terrain, but it got me up there and it felt good to get the hardest part of my ride over early in the day.

I had checked out my route the night before and determined that the bridge on 12A in Roxbury was still out as a result of the ravages of Hurricane Irene, but I figured I'd enjoy the adventure of figuring out how to cross the river, even if it meant some shallow water wading with my bike overhead. It turned out that there was a bridge out on Carrie Howe Road as well. Luckily it was a Sunday, so there were no work crews about to mind my scrambling through their work site, and I was able to cross over the stream with little trouble. Coming out on to Rt. 12A I was surprised by how chilly it felt for what was supposed to be a warm day, although at this point it was still before 9am.

The anticipated washed out bridge a few miles south of Roxbury was a little more of a challenge, but I managed to get across completely dry on some temporary steel beams running just a foot or two over the clear turquoise water. It would have been bitter to fall in.

I was particularly pleased with my new handlebar bag arrangement when I had to make these crossings because I was able to simply lift the bag off the decaleur and carry it separately from the bike, insuring my stuff was secure as I moved it, and eliminating the weight and balance issues I would have had to manage if the bag were still on the bike.

My ride down through the valley along 12A was spectacular; since the bridge was closed there were virtually no cars to be seen and I had the road to myself for the better part of 9 or 10 miles. I even rode on the wrong side of the road for a minute pretending I was riding in England, although it felt weird and I quickly moved back to the proper side despite there being no cars anywhere nearby.

The cool of the morning persisted and when I reached Randolph about 27 miles into the ride, I was grateful for a cup of hot coffee and a blueberry muffin at the little cafe at the train station.

Unfortunately I was not as careful in studying my route I should have been and I missed a couple of opportunities to take some interesting back roads and instead stuck to the main route the whole way. I'll know next time to examine the choices more carefully and make some proper notes. In any event, I was able to keep to a reasonably good schedule and begin to feel the day warm up as I traveled towards Bethel, roughly half way through my journey.

I became a bit uncertain of which way to go as I passed through Bethel and tried to decipher the Google Maps bike route that I'd printed out. I followed my intuition and made the right choice, but for a few miles was sort of unclear where I was headed. At this point I was traveling along Rt. 14 south and closely following the path of the White River. The endless destruction left by the flooding from Hurricane Irene was everywhere to be seen in these lowlands. Villages emptied out, roads washed away, bridges closed, mud and silt spread high above the river's edge.

I ate one of the sandwiches I'd brought with me as I sat in the gazebo in the village of Sharon and nibbled on some other snacks, but I didn't linger as the day was turning slightly overcast and I was hoping to reach White River by 2pm, or thereabouts. I had agreed that I would call Nancy by 2:00 and my timing was looking good that I might actually get there by then, but I wanted to call anyways just to let her know where I was. I set out from Sharon and decided I'd call from West Hartford. When I eventually reached the village all I saw were flooded out buildings and the general store where there likely would have been a phone was boarded up. Concerned about not calling, I rolled on and committed to calling at the next opportunity.

Despite not knowing the spread of the towns in this area I knew I was getting close to White River, but I wasn't sure how close. It was with a bit of dogged hope that I saw the town sign coming up for Hartford and below it the miles to White River Junction. I was prepared for another 6 or 7 miles, but to my delight my approach revealed it was only 1 mile to town, and a flat mile at that.

I rolled into the parking lot of the Coolidge Hotel right at 2:00pm and Nancy had just walked out the door of the hotel. Our mutual timing was perfect.

So, in all it was about a 63 mile ride. I was glad to travel over new territory and enjoy an unlikely extended late fall ride.

Tweed Run NYC

2011-11-16T10:24:00.001-05:00

Tintin

2011-10-25T22:13:00.006-04:00

In less than two months a Tintin movie is going to be released and I am both excited and bummed: excited because I have been a life-long fan of Tintin and I feel protective of a cherished icon; and bummed because Hollywood is grabbing hold of this icon and I'm not sure he'll come out unscathed.

Somewhere in the mid-seventies I was introduced by friends to a comic book called "The Adventures of Tintin" that caught my attention and has held it since.

What I didn't know then was that Tintin had been around for decades, but had only recently been introduced into the United States. Tintin was the creation of a Belgian artist named Hergé who began Tintin in the late 1920's as a serialized newspaper strip. Eventually the strips were collected into book form and became standardized at some point at 62 page editions each.

Tintin is nominally a reporter, but in fact is a sort of pure-hearted adventurer and explorer who seems to find endless reason to travel to some compelling spot around the world. He and his cohorts even made a spectacular trip to the moon roughly 10 years before the historic Apollo 11 flight happened. He is accompanied by his trusty dog Snowy and often joined by the loveable but troubled Captain Haddock (known for his amazing curses, such as "Billions of blistering blue barnacles!!"). There are many other characters that are part of the work, but they are the central focus of the stories.

I love these books for a number of reasons. Maybe it is a case of the whole being greater then the sum of the parts. The draftsmanship, the artwork, and expression in the line drawings, the globe traveling range of adventure, the drama and humor, the loyalty amongst the characters. The list goes on, but, suffice to say, I get as much joy re-reading a Tintin book today as I did back in the 1970's when I first encountered them.

When Hergé died, it was his will that no more Tintins should be produced, so the story ended there, and I suppose that is probably a good thing, although it would be fun if the stories kept coming. Although this film is taken from the books, it'll be fun to have a fresh interpretation of Tintin, and from the little I've read, the reviews are generally positive (the film is out in Europe).

So, I worry that Tintin will become a mass-market commodity and lose a little in the process, but I guess the books will always be what they've always been and that won't change.

The video is a beautiful animation of images and icons from the many stories.

Boston Run

2011-10-24T20:53:00.006-04:00

This afternoon I pedaled up from Milton (a town about 10 miles south of the city) up to Boston.

I worked and went to school in the Back Bay area for a few years and for no real reason it was sort of a place to go, so that's where I went. I gotta say, there isn't any real decent way for a cyclist to get from Milton to Boston without either braving some heinous roadways or travelling through some semi-sketchy areas. Seeing as I was straddling the twilight I decided for challenging traffic rather than an iffy unfamiliar area.

I was hoping to get an impression of cycling in the city, but really didn't have time to take much in. I think I'd need a couple of days to really start to see where things are at, but even at a glance I noticed a few fun and encouraging items: A pedicab travelling up Newbury street; a vintage Peugeot set up in full mid-century constructeur-style with fenders, lights and a front rack; a delivery bike with a large cargo container; and a bunch of colorful fixies. Lots of Brooks saddles and painted fenders as well.

At the top of Newbury I saw the Boston version of the bike-for-hire scheme. My first exposure to this was the Montreal Bixi bikes and these seem to be the very same bikes, just rebranded as the "Hubway" for Boston. With their built in hub generator lights they are easy to spot and I saw a few as I biked around the Back Bay area.

I wish I got to travel further around the city, but it was fun nonetheless to drop in for a few minutes.

Warm Showers

2011-10-10T23:34:00.000-04:00

Caroline and Liz ready to head out for the day

Last night we hosted our first guests via www.warmshowers.org, which is an online hub for pairing cycling tourists up with people willing to host them.

When I first heard about the idea I thought it was cool, but it took me a while to actually get around to investigating it and signing up. Last month I received an email asking if we'd be willing to be hosts and we said yes.

Our guests for the evening were Caroline from Montreal and her friend Liz, from Amherst, MA. They spent the holiday weekend doing a tour from Burlington down to Middlebury; Middlebury to us here in Waitsfield; and then rounding it off with the trip back up to Burlington via Rt. 2 and the River Road up through Richmond. They couldn't have picked a more perfect weekend to do a cycling tour around central Vermont; the weather has been incredible and the leaves are quite something.

Caroline and Liz arrived somewhere between 5-6 and we of course availed them of our warm shower and bath, which they gladly took advantage of. We cooked up some flatbreads and they helped out and we had a nice dinner together. The cool thing is that simply by being cyclists on a trip, we've got quite a lot in common, so it was easy to make conversation.

On Mondays and Wednesdays Nancy and I normally commute to Red Hen together (I turn around in Moretown and double back home). This morning we were joined by our new friends and it offered a nice twist to our routine. It was also cool to share a bit of a trip with them.

I look forward to both hosting folks in the future, but also taking advantage of this cool resource as a cyclo-tourist. Vive la internet!

Yurt

2011-09-17T21:45:00.000-04:00

Rose and Joe, the proud new owners, helping take the yurt down

A view of our new home from inside our old home

So we found two great folks who are buying the yurt from us and rapidly making it their new home in the next town over. Without really making any effort at all we fell into contact with Joe and Rose and told them we were interested in passing on our yurt and they readily took interest.

I'd been doing some work on the yurt in July and August replacing the old rotted windows and then making a new exterior wall canvas since the old one had really started to deteriorate. Joe and Rose came over and we were able to show them that we'd done the work to the yurt that we would have wanted to do ourselves if we were going to spend a bunch more years in it.

Clearly our affections and energies have turned towards the house and we are just glad that the yurt is moving on to people who will have an active interest in taking care of it and making it their home. We're excited to head over there soon and see their progress.

Are we sad to see the yurt go? For myself, the moment of sadness came back in March or April when we moved the fridge out. That was the day that it felt like the yurt had finished it's amazing and wonderful service of keeping us warm, safe and happy for so many years. We will always be grateful to how it changed our lives and brought us together, but at the same time we are now fully invested and attached to our new home. We wish Joe, Rose, and the yurt many years of happiness!

Chickens

2011-08-16T21:46:00.008-04:00

Last Tuesday was chicken slaughtering day.

My extended family all go in on about 40 chickens that we divide between three families, resulting in 10-15 chickens each, depending on what we determine earlier in the season.

I've been involved in this process before, so it was familiar, but nonetheless it is something to behold to see a chicken go from running around to beheaded, scalded, de-feathered, gutted, and trimmed and then plunked in a rinse bucket in all of 5 minutes. In a sort of magical process it goes from animal to food right before our eyes.

I don't exactly savor this process, but I respect it and I do find it fascinating. There is something primal about death and food that is laid out to see in a way that is pretty unusual in my life, and in the lives of most people.

By evening, Nancy is cutting up the chickens and freezing them. We haven't bought much store bought chicken in the last 4 or 5 years since we started doing this.

By the way, Cindy and Ralph, the folks doing the slaughtering travel around the state with their mobile processing trailer. They were featured in a book about the local food renaissance in Hardwick, Vermont called "The Town that Food Saved" by Ben Hewitt. I have not read it, but am looking forward to doing so.

Bread and Puppet

2011-08-14T22:36:00.010-04:00

Today we went to the Sunday afternoon Bread & Puppet show in Glover, Vermont.

Bread & Puppet is a celebration of life, humanity, humor, radical politics, bread, nature and imagination all expressed in a form of theatrical circuses, pageantry, and plays. Most often, and most dramatically, this happens in the broad fields and woods of the Bread & Puppet farm in northern Vermont. Like many inspirational and creative endeavors it is hard to explain in words, but suffice to say that it, for me, is a deeply inspiring and spiritually/creatively fulfilling experience to see a Bread & Puppet show.

I actually recall going to a Bread & Puppet show at Goddard College when I was either in kindergarten or maybe first grade and mostly I remember being scared by it. Puppets can be like that. I'm sure I enjoyed it a lot too, but being scared is what I remember. It was more or less thirty years before I again saw a Bread & Puppet event.

I recently wrote to a friend about Bread & Puppet:

"I have long had an aversion to hippy-esqe stuff. I knew about Bread & Puppet for years and never went because of just that. I had no interest in this sort of dead-head event that every groovy person I knew went to. When I finally did go, almost by accident, I was completely taken by the experience. Despite what it might seem like, it's lineage is more political German street theatre; almost anarchist in it's semi-sensical political concepts. My earlier misgivings aside, I experience it as a celebration of art, life, and humanity."

Bread & Puppet is something of an institution here in the northeast, having been around for decades and still as funny, immaginative and inspiring as it ever was. Through the eighties and nineties it became something of a major destination in the summer that culminated in a large and out of control multi-day event with fields of campers. Eventually someone died, and that was the end of Bread & Puppet for a while.

But a couple of years later it started back up again as a scaled down and minimally publicized event on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons with no camping. It sort of self corrected back to a manageable size and has remained that way for the last decade or so.

There is a splendor built of simple and wildly immaginative puppets, props, songs, ideas, and costumes that brings a sense of awe and joy to my heart.

God bless Bread & Puppet!

s24o 4

2011-07-27T09:59:00.013-04:00

Dave, hauling food and Lydia

Liza and Maia

Randy, Maia, Jeremy, Sally, and Anda

For the last few years we've all gotten together for our annual s24o bike ride, usually around the time of my birthday (late April), but this spring we were snowed out and so put it off until a later date. It took a while, but we finally managed to find a time that we could all get together.

Our rides together are a celebration of friendship, bikes, food, and adventure and we always have a great time. In truth, its a bit of work to make it all happen, but its totally worth it and is always something I look forward to.

What's been really fun is to watch the steady evolution of our trips. Last year none of the kids were riding their own bikes. This year Maia and Anda both rode the 4 or so miles to our camping spot and then rode home the next morning. Actually, Anda rode the 6 miles to our starting point, so that's 10 miles for an 8 year old each way. Solveig is on a trail-a-bike and Silas is in a trailer. I wonder if Solveig might be on a bike next year...

I found myself imagining a few years down the road when maybe we could all do more of a trip together. That would be so fun.

Stencil

2011-07-17T22:48:00.002-04:00

I've been sorta working on this for a long time. I originally saw this stencil in a 1950's British Rail promotion film. On the side of the bicycle storage car was an image much like this. After spending a bunch of time drawing it in Illustrator, I finally got around to cutting it out as a stencil on some heavy plastic material.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Cycling Season

2011-07-15T21:25:00.005-04:00

It felt like I didn't ride my bike for two years as we built the house.

This year, thank goodness, is different. The embers of my love affair with the bicycle have been rekindled and are burning strong once again. I have Nancy to thank because I've joined her two mornings a week on her commute to the bakery. She bikes from Waitsfield to Middlesex, which is about 13 miles; I ride with her about half way, to Moretown, and then ride home again and in doing so build in a "ride to work" even though I am working at home most of the time.

Having this routine has ignited the spark and now I'm all wrapped up in the pleasure of being on my bike again. I love it. While we were building the house it just never felt okay to take off and ride my bike. I'm not sure why that is, but the result was that I rarely got on my bike for two seasons. In fact, I think I biked more on Cape Cod when we went away for vacation then I did here in Vermont.

Tomorrow Nancy and I are biking at least down to Rochester and perhaps farther en route to a family get together in Chittenden.

Travelling Bees

2011-07-07T22:46:00.002-04:00

This is the second year we have brought some of our hives down to Kingsbury Farm. It's interesting to have hives in different locations for the sake of comparison and it feels good to be contributing the value of the bees to an exciting enterprise. Aaron and Suzanne are enterprising folks and it's hard not to be intrigued by their efforts. Having farmed elsewhere they've said that they were glad to get to start out at a new farm and do it the way they would like based on that past experience. Its seems so far so good. They grow lovely produce and make yummy food for the Market Garden store.

Our bees did fine there last year but if I recall we brought them down a little farther on in the season so they didn't have all that much time to do their thing. We'll see how things go this year.

Farewell

2011-06-30T19:19:00.010-04:00

Today we made the decision to get rid of the Volvo 240 that I've owned for the last 13 years. Although we've been hearing for years the I-don't-know-how-much-more-money-you-want-to-put-into-this refrain, today we finally gave into a certain amount of reason that just barely tipped the scale. It felt somehow wrong to choose to drive a car to the junk yard; sort of like taking an eager pet to the vet's to be put to sleep. Shouldn't the car actually die before committing such an act? It wasn't easy, but now that it's done, I'm confident that it was a good decision.

It was somewhat surprising to me the wistfullness and sadness I felt as I emptied the car and got her ready for the trip to the metal recyclers. I admit to weeping a few times today as I thought about the many many adventures we shared together and the life changes this trusty wagon has seen me through. I've driven half way across the country in her to meet Nancy and see the Sand Hill cranes; I've slept in the back with the seats folded down flat many times on my own and with Nancy traveling or after a dance or at a summer festival (this includes one memorable night when the temperature got down to -16 degrees below zero); I lived in Northampton, MA when she came into my life and saw me through the move to Boston and then up to Vermont; I've dipped her tail into the Atlantic many times as we towed my little sailboat all over New England; I've overloaded the car with way too much heavy lumber on the roof and made dicey trips over the mountain gap; I relocated a small shed with a chain hooked to the nose... it goes on and on.

I'm fully aware that this is, in the end, just a car, but there is something I'll hold onto about this one. Perhaps as a final hurrah, her odometer rolled over to 305,000 miles as I drove her to the junk yard. One last milestone from a troubadour of a car. The earth's circumference is just under 25,000 miles which means this car circled the earth the equivalent of roughly 12 times.

Farewell sweet 240 and thanks for the miles we travelled together!

40:1

2011-05-18T10:26:00.004-04:00

These jars show the color of the syrup from our four major boils, from left to right. Typically, as the season progresses the syrup gets darker. This year our second boil was lighter then the first round, but then darkened with each successive round

Our sugaring season was a good one and wrapped up around mid-April. We made a record 12 gallons of syrup. Our previous largest take was something like 8 gallons, so we were quite pleased. I think this happened for three reasons: an abundant supply of sap, the addition of 3 or 4 great producing trees and a refined approach to boiling. Having enough sap is clearly the first requirement to being able to produce a bunch of syrup and those extra trees have been a great addition to our sugarbush, bringing our number of taps up around 35-40.

We've also gotten better at just keeping the boiling process going for as many days as needed, rather then trying to do marathon full boils late into the night. We've taken more of a "boil-as-you-go" approach and it allows us to be busy with other things while we try to keep things moving along with the boil.

You can roughly expect a quart of finished syrup for each tap and it takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to produce a gallon of syrup.

Sugaring season

2011-03-14T21:12:00.004-04:00

Today I put in roughly 30 taps and hereby commenced our 2011 sugaring season. It's been cold the last couple of weeks and in past years even when I think the sap is going to run like crazy it hasn't, so I've not felt the need to jump the gun to get the operation up and running this year. Also, things with the house are quickly settling down, so there is more time to do other projects.

Getting out into the woods, drilling the tap holes, and hanging the buckets and boiling the sap is a highlight of my year. I love it. It carries with it so many sensations of spring, the shift from winter to summer, the smell of the arch and the evaporating sap, and the long hours tending the fire all join together in a ritual that I feel grateful to do each year. There is something timeless about sugaring and the way it connects being outdoors, being active, and producing a pretty special kind of sweetener.

For a few years we tapped trees up at my aunt and uncle's place, but that required a lot of driving up a steep dirt road in mud season and in the last couple of years we've just concentrated our efforts hereabouts in my parent's woods and that's worked out pretty good. I think we have somewhere around 40 taps and buckets and I'm hoping that we'll find enough trees to use them all. I'll be going around tomorrow and putting in some more.

A big bonus this year is that we never disassembled our sugaring arch last year, so other then dusting things off, we can just fire it up and start boiling. If today's run was any indication, we should be off to a good start.

The Bear Story... part 2

2011-01-22T00:29:00.003-05:00

Back in April a bear came and knocked over a couple of our bee hives. It made for an exciting and sleepless night but in the end turned out okay. I wrote a full description here.

Soon after this, we went on vacation with Nancy's family in Florida, and naturally the story of how the bear came and knocked over the hive was told all around. Our niece Lydia became quite taken with the story and so it got repeated many many times. Over the course of the week it started to get a little boring telling the same story again and again, so it became slightly more embellished as time went on, adding parts like how the bear came a left a note at the yurt saying "Please come visit me in my cave".

This story really took with Lydia who told the tale to her cousins. To my delight, Lydia's mom Dana took a little video of Lydia telling the story.

Prepare to be charmed.

Two Wheels along Vineyard Sound

2010-11-27T08:54:00.008-05:00

I keep tabs on a number of blogs in which the topic, when distilled to it's essence, is about the joy of riding a bike, and today that's what this blog is about. It is with some regret that my bike has gathered more dust this year then at any time in the last ten years, so the opportunity to ride around for a while is reason enough for me to make mention of it. Building a house is an all consuming project, and time on my bike has fallen by the wayside.

It is our great fortune to spend many holidays and vacations here on Cape Cod at Nancy's family's place and this is often when I take advantage of the warm temperatures and flat terrain for some cycling adventures. Yesterday I noodled around Woods Hole and Falmouth as the sun was starting to set.

It felt great.

Extracting Honey

2010-11-22T22:44:00.004-05:00

Our stack of honey supers (the boxes are called "supers") which each hold 9 or 10 frames of honey

The extractor

Uncapping a frame of honeycomb

Two different (mostly) uncapped honey. Most likely the light one is from earlier in the summer and the darker one from the fall

Filtering the golden take

Nancy and I spent a lot of time the last two nights extracting honey from all of the honey supers we've been storing in our basement since the summer. We gathered most of this honey in early September but haven't had a chance to do the extracting until now.

The process requires having an extractor, which is a barrel on legs with a rack inside that holds all of the frames of honey. There is a crank that spins the rack, creating centrifical force that slings the honey out of the comb and against the inside walls of the extractor, a lot like the way a washing machine on spin mode gets a lot of the water out of wet clothes.

Before putting the frames of honey into the extractor you have to cut off the wax cappings that the bees put there to contain the honey in the comb. Uncapping is done with a electrically heated knife that melts and cuts as you work down the honeycomb.

After you've put a load of uncapped frames into the extractor and then spun the whole thing, the honey that got flung out slowly slides down the walls of the extractor and gathers at the bottom where there is a spigot to drain out the honey. It helps to be doing all this while its warm in order to keep the honey flowing.

We run our honey through two filters to separate out the various bits of wax and bees and other debris that would otherwise end up in the honey.

Although we didn't get as much as we thought we might, it looks like we ended up with somewhere around eight gallons of honey. With that much we'll probably sell some, give some away as gifts and have plenty for ourselves.

Mt. Pollux

2010-11-14T22:20:00.009-05:00

I spent a night visiting my friends Bill and Sam and their son August. They live in on the Amherst side of the Holyoke Range in western Massachusetts. We had a great visit that included a couple of hikes, some good food and some nice time hanging out.

On my way out of town I stopped for a few moments to walk up Mt. Pollux, located in South Amherst. In fact it is really a hill at all of 331 ft. high, but it's breadth and view lends it a majesty that is unsuspected until one arrives at the crest of the hill. I lived in this area for many years and it was only late in my tenure there that I discovered this special place. When describing it to Nancy this evening I told her I can go there and somehow sense being alive a hundred or more years ago. For me there is something profound about this spot. Had Nancy and I chosen to live in western Mass, I would have advocated for our wedding to have happened here.

I don't think I'm the only one who feels this. Tim Eriksen, an amazing musician who is deeply tapped into traditional American music has chosen this spot to record assorted videos of himself singing and playing.

This photo came with the description "Amherst, 1920's". I fancy that maybe this was set on Mt. Pollux. Even if it wasn't, it evokes a similar mood and feeling to what I experience there.

Less is More: Five days of fun at Yestermorrow

2010-11-05T23:05:00.009-04:00

Today I finished up co-teaching a class called "Less is More: Designing the Smaller Home" at Yestermorrow Design/Build School. Despite some apprehension about teaching in a new area (design) leading up to the start of the class, I had great time. My teaching partner was Andreas Stavropoulos who I really enjoyed working with and getting to know. Andreas is a landscape architect based in Berkeley, California. He's a smart and ambitious guy who has done a variety of interesting and inspiring projects and it was fun to hear about his ups and downs along the way. Likewise, it was a pleasure to work with the seven students who, in some cases, came great distances to take this class. They all worked hard and did excellent work.

Over the course of the week we went on a couple of house tours of some small homes ranging is size from around 500 sq. ft to up around 1,800 sq. ft. that included an old sugar house made into a home, our yurt, a modular house, and other variations on small footprint living. We also did some exercises to get students thinking conceptually about their project and then steadily worked towards more and more concrete presentations. Its always amazing how things seem to accelerate as the week goes on.

Among the design projects the students worked on were a couple of mobile dwellings, a Catskills get-away, a spec house for down-sized retirees, and a variety of ski-house active outdoors-living homes. It will be so fun to see if and where any of these projects emerge from dream to reality. With time, I think there is a high likelihood this could happen.

Tonight's view

2010-10-12T22:21:00.001-04:00

When I stepped out of the house this evening, this is what I saw. I love the moon and her monthly return.

Sailing on Lake Champlain

2010-09-21T22:31:00.004-04:00

My best friend Parker was visiting last week and after a few days of hard work we took the afternoon on Saturday to go sailing on Lake Champlain, sailing from the town launch in Shelburne.

Near the shore the wind is reasonably calm as there are a number of islands and points that buffet the breeze, but once out in the more open thoroughfare of the lake it got pretty breezy, and consequently kinda wet too, but mostly just fun. In my mind I think of the lake as this sort of calm body of water, but this day there were swells, waves and small whitecaps, making for a splashy ride up and a surf-y sort of ride back down the wind, riding the swells like you might on a surfboard or a kayak.

At the beginning of the summer I declared that this year I really wanted to make a point of sailing a bunch, but as it goes the house project has been very demanding and and this was the first (and I suspect) last sail of the season.

I'm so glad we got to go.

Ketchup Time

2010-09-12T17:57:00.004-04:00

The recipe

Boiling down (the lumps are bags of spice)

We've made ketchup for the last few years and are hooked on our version of this venerable condiment. Our stuff is way more rich and flavorful than your standard issue. Our tomato plants continue to provide us some great tomatoes, so we've been drying them and decided to use some up for our year's worth of ketchup.

Anatomy of a Staycation

2010-09-02T12:43:00.001-04:00

Our friend Mary from Portland is here visiting for a week. Nancy is taking some time off and this is the framework of their week.

Recent Harvests

2010-09-01T08:03:00.003-04:00

Chicken Slaughter

2010-08-17T20:43:00.006-04:00

Last week I took part in helping slaughter the chickens we collectively raise with various family members up at my aunt and uncles' house. Our friend Adam was here and helped out as well.

We've been doing this for a number of years but until now I've never been in on the actual process of gathering the chickens and handing them over to be killed. This year I had my chance. A couple named Ralph and Cindy Persons from Hardwick come with a mobile slaughtering trailer that has everything needed to take a chicken from live bird to ready for the freezer.

I've always been a bit iffy about eating meat, but I've always maintained that if we're gonna eat meat, well, we ought to be up for doing what it takes to get that meat, so in that sense I was glad to be a part of this work.

The first task is catching the chickens. You grab them by the leg and hold them upside down. Within a few moments, the chickens settle down and you grab another. Cindy said she wanted three at a time, because that the number of be-heading cones they have on their trailer.

So Adam and I brought up rotations of three chickens at a time and handed them to Cindy who placed them in the cones and with a swift action with the knife, took the chicken's heads off and tossed the heads in a bucket. Its true that that chickens continue to convulse and move for a minute or so after loosing their heads.

From the killing cone the chickens are then taken by Ralph and scalded in a pot of hot water to loosen up the feathers. From there they go into the de-feathering drum that has a series of rubber nubs that pull the feathers out in short order while the chicken bodies whirl around and around. Once the feathers are out, Ralph and Cindy gut the birds and from there they go into a barrel of ice water to cool.

After cooling for a bit, Adam and I then took the processed chickens from the ice water and transferred them to our own barrels of ice water to continue cooling. At the end of the morning's work we'd caught and killed 39 chickens that will be divvied up between three families. This year we lost a handful of birds so we won't have quite as much as previous years.

This is the closest I've ever been to deliberate killing of anything. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but it wasn't all that hard to deal with either. I guess what I was aware of was both my own sensations around the experience, but also a bit of a fixation on the the actual moment of be-heading. Every time we went to get another round of chickens I had this awareness that I was grabbing a living being and taking it to its death. That didn't feel good, but it didn't overly trouble me either.

When we eat meat, we are asking someone to do this work, whether we see it or not. I am glad to have had the opportunity to be this close to the process.

Garlic Harvest

2010-07-31T08:43:00.004-04:00

Lydia, Ella, Nate and Nancy

Last week we harvested our garlic with the help of two nieces and a nephew. Its now hanging in our sugar shack to dry.

Over the years we've slowly honed in how much we need to plant for a years worth of garlic plus enough to plant next years crop. We've been replanting from our own stock for 6 or 7 years now. I can't remember the last time we actually bought garlic.

Migratory Beekeepers

2010-07-21T22:05:00.006-04:00

The hives loaded up in Jeremy's truck ready to make the trip through town to their new spot at Kingsbury Farm

The hives at their new home

Nance watching the bees

First the good news:

We were invited by our pal Aaron at Kingsbury Farm to move some of our bees down to the farm to help with pollination. I said yes right off the bat because on some level this just feels exciting to me; we've been keeping bees for roughly 5 years now and having hives in more then one location feels like an interesting step. I'll be curious to see if a different location affects the honey catch at all. I also like the idea of having a couple of hives at a semi-public location where there might be opportunities for workshops and that sort of thing. Its fun to share our enthusiasm for beekeeping with others.

We brought two hives down to the farm early Sunday morning and decided to change the location a bit from what we had agreed with Aaron a day or two before. The spot we picked seemed to still be out of the way but was better because it wasn't under the barn roof overhang and it got better morning light. I called Aaron after we got home to mention the new spot in case it was problematic for him.

The hiccup:

The new spot is not good for a few reasons, so we are going to have to move the hives to a new spot. This might not seem like a big deal, but you can't just move a hive from one spot to another unless the new location is at least 2 miles away. If you move the hive a short distance the bees will all go back to where the hive was before being moved.

We have to meet with Aaron again and work out a new spot. That shouldn't be too hard, but the challenge will be how do we move the bees. My thought it to bring two new hives from our place down and bring the hives currently at the farm back home. Nance is in favor of doing the incremental move where you move the hive very small distances each day until the hive is in its new location. We'll have to resolve this quandary soon.

Despite this initial hiccup, I'm really excited about branching out from our beekeeping status quo. I have hopes that one day we'll produce enough honey that we could start selling it locally. I think that would be really fun.

Update:

Turns out we'll be able to keep the bees where they are for the rest of the season and then we'll relocate them to a better position next year when we bring them back again.

Velo et Vin

2010-07-18T11:08:00.009-04:00

The cupboard of a friend's grandmother's house is lined inside the doors with countless wine labels going back to the 1940's, presumably commemorating many an enjoyable evening of food, wine and friends.

Inspired by her cupboard I decided that I'd start a version of this myself but with a twist. Being --as you know-- a fan of bicycles, I thought I'd make a point of collecting wine labels with bicycle imagery. I'm not sure, but it seems that bicycle-themed wine labels have been a bit of a trend in the last few years, but the truth is I have no idea. I think its one of those things where when you start looking for something you start seeing all over the place.

Nancy and I had Cycles Gladiator as one of the wines served at our wedding. As someone said, what could be better then flying naked redheads and bicycles? In fact it was on our honeymoon in Quebec that I acquired the Nicolas Laloux label, while I first saw but did not acquire the Penny Farthing bottle up in Sherbrooke while out for dinner. I wanted to ask the waiter if they could grab it from the recycling but shied away from doing so. Not too long after I found it again.

So, if you come across a bike related wine (or beer for that matter) let me know about it, I'd love to add to my collection. What's out there that I've missed?

Wedding Fun

2010-06-24T21:52:00.006-04:00

Michael and Joanne got married last weekend at #10 Pond in Calais and it was a wonderful time. Nancy and I each had fun roles to contribute; Nancy called a really great dance that Crowfoot played, and I had the distinct privilege of rowing Joanne to the wedding where er brother Paul was at the shore, ready to escort her to the ceremony. It was spectacular weather and a very moving event.

Among the many acquaintances we made were Emma and Larry from Edinburgh, Scotland. As it turned out, they came and spent a night here in the yurt and the following morning we all rode down to town for breakfast. They are both keen cyclists and typically ride a tandem at home. While here they rented one and covered some miles in central Vermont. It was fun to spend time with interesting, kindred souls.

Yurt Class

2010-06-13T21:18:00.006-04:00

This weekend I had the pleasure of co-leading a yurt building class with Bruce Sargent at Yestermorrow Design/Build School. Our mission was to build a lightweight yurt in two days.

With an enthusiastic group of 12 students we met Friday evening for introductions, a slide show from me about our yurt building experience and a film via Bruce that shows how the Mongolians build their yurt with little more then an ax.

Saturday we got to work and were able to build the lattice wall parts by lunchtime. In the afternoon we shaped the rafters, built the ring into which the rafters meet, and the doorway.

Today we built the supports for the ring and assembled the yurt structure. Once it was standing we regrouped and formed the fabric roof and walls. With only minor hiccups we had everything together and standing by 4:30.

Bruce was a pleasure to work with and the students were all really keen on the project. It occurred to me a couple of times that "Hey, this is a bunch of fun, AND I'm getting paid to be here". Bruce has an interest in traditional style yurts whereas my focus is a little more on a contemporary version built for Vermont winters, but no matter what, the elements of a yurt are the same and we successfully covered the process in a jam-packed couple of days.

Something tells me this is going to happen again in the not-so-distant future.

One spoon to rule them all!

2010-05-24T21:11:00.003-04:00

About 12 years ago my sister Eliza gave me a really beautiful set of pewter measuring spoons along with a purpose-made mount. I've used them with pleasure for years and they have since become Nancy's and mine.

Roughly three years ago we found that the teaspoon had gone missing. Our hope was that it fell behind the counter or some other hard to reach spot and that it would show up when we finally had the opportunity to dig deep. Well, we moved the yurt last summer which required taking everything out of the yurt. No teaspoon. We began to believe it was simply gone for good. At one point I looked up the maker and found that there seemed to be no replacement.

A couple of weekends ago Nancy and I were out in the garden prepping our raised beds for planting and suddenly Nance found the spoon! It seems it made it into the compost bucket and from there to the compost pile where we let it "cook" for a couple of years. Last year we must have moved the finished compost out to the garden and spread it around.

We are very glad to have our teaspoon back.

Fun

2010-05-19T19:06:00.000-04:00

Cycling in Montreal

2010-05-04T21:03:00.014-04:00

Nancy on a Gazelle en route to the outdoor food market

Sean & Sally's other Gazelle

A poster at Velo Quebec

Riding a Bixi

The pay station

The Bixi bikes at a docking station

Cycling is alive and well in Montreal.

Nancy and I spent a couple of days in Canada recently; Nancy called dances in Ottawa and Montreal and it was a tour of sorts for us. It was our first time to Ottawa and and enjoyable experience all around.

Of particular interest to me was getting an impression of cycling culture in Montreal.

With great fanfare, the spring of 2009 saw the introduction of the Bixi public bicycle sharing system, which is a coordinated arrangement of bicycles located at docking stations dispersed throughout the city. We spent most of our time in the Ste. Urban, Ste. Denis, Ste. Laurant area where the stations were to be found all over the place.

To rent the bike, you slide your debit/credit card in, are charged $5 for the first hour of use, and are given a numeric code. You then go to one of the Bixi bikes, punch in your number, the locking mechanism releases the bike, and off you go. The system is designed to encourage short rides; after your first hour of use you start paying $1.50 for each additional half hour, although --once you've paid your initial $5-- you can dock, go do something else for a while, go to another station and take another bike, even if its been a few hours. Your $5 is good for 24 hours.

The bike itself met most of the criteria I would expect of bike meant to meet the needs of a broad spectrum of riders in any conditions. The Bixi is an aluminum frame internally-geared three-speed. Built into the bike are fenders, a skirt guard over the rear wheel, a Shimano generator hub that runs flashing front and rear light and rear lights, an enclosed chain, a handlebar luggage rack, and a bell. All functional elements that make a bike versatile and useful. Missing are helmets, though I noticed many riders who brought their helmets with them to ride a Bixi.

Although there may be some questions about the merit of this project, the bikes are clearly being used (the millionth dock occurred about 4 months after the program began) and it does wonders for the public image of the city as a bicycle-friendly place.

Further indications of support for biking in the city are the designated cycling lanes built into the city streetscape. The lanes often operate like two-way bike roads with markings and traffic lights at intersections. They seem to have been carved out of the the space that was probably once the parking spaces along one side of the street.

Le Maison des Cyclistes

Along one of these lanes the Maison des Cyclistes caught my eye. I ventured into the cafe but found that in addition to the cafe, this was the home of Velo Quebec, an advocacy and cycle touring organization with sleek offices and a staff. There was also a small store.

Lastly, our friends Sean and Sally were kind enough to lend us their bikes for an enjoyable cycling journey to the outdoor food market north of their place by a half hour-or-so ride. Arriving at the market, we ambled about, bought some mangos, cheese, and coffee and had a great time. Sean and Sally are the proud owners of two Dutch Gazelle bicycles brought back as luggage on the plane from a trip to Europe. They are practical and beautiful bikes.

It was a pleasure to spend time in the city and witness such a thriving bicycle culture. Every street has cyclists pouring through it, every garden gate has a bike locked to it. Bicycles are ubiquitous in the city. If anything, it was remarkable how unremarkable bicycles seem within this setting; they are everywhere.

s24o Number 3

2010-04-26T22:23:00.009-04:00

The gang(from l. to r.): Jeremy, Silas (in trailer), Randy, Solveig, me, Nancy, Anda, and Sally

On our way

Randy's secret weapon

Nearing our campsite

Setting up

For the third year in a row, our close knit group of our loved ones have come together for another s24o. What's an s24o? Only the most fun thing ever! "s240" stands for Sub-24 hour Overnight. (You can read more about the whole concept here. Or read about last year's adventure here.) In a nutshell: its a quick overnight camping trip with loaded bikes.

Kids on trail-a-bikes, infants in trailers. Destination is vague, spirits are high, weather is excellent. Stuff packed in panniers, bags, and more trailers.

We were all a little slow to gather as it always takes a bit more time to pull stuff out of storage and pull some food together then you plan on, but by about 4:30 we were all joined up and ready to go (with the exception of my sister Liza and niece Maia who had to make a brief trip to the emergency room--they were able to join us later).

We arrived at our high elevation location with only a little daylight left to get our tents up and start on heating up some food. After a great meal and some treats, we all made for our sleeping bags.

The morning started with a chilly breakfast as the sun was coming up through the trees. We then all went for a walk up the hillside and warmed up.

After packing up, I had the pleasure of towing Maia home on a trail-a-bike. We both made droning sounds with our voices that waivered with the bumps in the road. Fun.

Morning breakfast

Two guys with striped caps

Our morning walk

Maia's trail-a-bike hooked up. It was really fun to ride home together. Solveig rode with Liza

All of this started three years ago when Nancy asked what I wanted for my birthday. Without a moment's hesitation I said "A sub-24-oh with Lize, Randy, Sally, Jeremy and the kids". We did it, had a great time and haven't stopped yet.

It is the best birthday present I could imagine.

Bears

2010-04-15T23:51:00.006-04:00

You can see scratch marks on the frame in this hive

Nancy, with her keen eye, noticed tracks. That's her hand next to the paw print

The electric fence--ready for nightime

Nancy and I have been keeping bees for something like 6 years. In this time we've never had a problem with bears going after our hives, despite them having gone after hives within a mile or so of where we live. Not sure why, perhaps its just been luck.

On Monday morning we received an email from the Central Vermont Beekeeping group detailing how someone's hives had been got by a bear. At dinner we were discussing this and Nancy said something like "You know, we're not immune". I admit that a certain whiff of feeling like it just wasn't going to happen to us had settled in over the years as we seemed to pass each season unscathed.

Late Monday night I had just climbed into bed and was doing a little reading before nodding off when "WHAM!" I heard a crash coming from a direction that suggested only one thing. With my heart racing I ran outside in a t-shirt and no glasses and had the briefest glimpse of something. I ran back in woke Nance up, threw on some clothes, grabbed my glasses and went back out, clinking a spoon on a metal coffee mug. As I moved through the garden I heard rustling as the bear moved into the woods. When I got to the hives I could see that the bear had pulled one hive over completely and was just starting to pull things apart when I scared him away.

Knowing the bear was gone for the time being, I suited up in my bee veil and went back out, only to discover that in fact this hive was dead. Not because of the bear--hives die and this one wasn't able to hold on all the way through the winter. As it turns out, this was probably a good thing in that the bear alerted us to his or her presence before doing any damage to a living hive. Fearing the bear coming back, the best I could do was gather all the wratchet straps we own and strap the hives together as a unit so if the bear came back and knocked over another hive, it would likely hold together like a big box rather then a series of stacked units. This took some work, but I managed to strap all six hives and carried away the dead hive. Nance and I laid in bed and considered everything we might be able to do, but for the moment we had done our best. It was with an anxious ear that we fell asleep sometime after one.

"DAVE, THE BEAR!!" I shot up in the thickness of dream turning to panic. Nance had heard another crash and we knew the night's work was not over. This time Nance went out with a pot and banging away cried out "Go away you bear!!" (Nancy had to comment on this: For those of you from our Bowdoin days, this was a familiar, yet little twist on our "Go You Bears" rallying cry!) Once again the bear departed. This time the bear had knocked over two hives that were very much alive, so we again donned our bee gear and went back out to stand the hives up. Luckily the strapping worked pretty well, so the hives were mostly fine. That said, its no fun to be messing with mad bees in the dark with one flashlight and a general feeling of bewilderment. Again we crawled into bed and decided we could only hope for the best. By this point a few birds were starting to sing, so we were hopeful that dawn might carry us through without another incident.

The morning showed that the bear had not returned.

Despite a very full schedule related to taking down the garage we knew we had to erect an electric fence before the next night. Among my errands, i stopped at the local farm supply store and bought everything we needed to put an electric fence around our apiary. Just as the sun was going down Nancy, our neighbor Erika and I finished installing the fence. Nancy took some raw bacon and clipped pieces of it to the fence with clothes hanger clips to bait the bear to get a most unpleasant zap. Knowing we'd done our best, we went to sleep with our finger crossed.

To our relief, there was no sign of the bear returning that night or any night since.

Bears are hungry at this time of year, so we know we need to make it into the late spring when the danger will really be past. If you are wondering, bear around here are generally black bears and present no significant threat. Of course I wouldn't want to challenge them or threaten them.

Dancing

2010-04-11T21:30:00.008-04:00

Nancy, Joanne, and Aaron

Germaine firing up the fiddle

The all-comer's orchestra at the Chestnuts dance at the Grange

Dancing

On Friday Nancy called the Burlington Queen City Contras dance with Joanne Garton and Aaron Marcus playing. It was a really nice dance and went smoothly. We've helped to organize this dance for about five years or so and its been heartening to see it become a healthy flourishing dance over time.

There is a woman named Germaine Leclaire who has been the person stationed at the table taking money and offering stories of her life for twenty-five years. At the break she was given a plaque and a big thank-you from the dancers. Later on she played a few of her favorite tunes on Joanne's fiddle. Germaine was born in Quebec and married a farmer from Charlotte.

Saturday we went to special dance that featured what are known as "chestnuts", which means they are older traditional dances--often dating back to the early days of American history or even earlier. These dances tend to a little less aerobic then modern contra dances, but have a charm that is really a nice to experience now and again. The band was an all-comer's event and they sounded great. Rebecca Lay came and called the dance on short notice and did her usual excellent job.

Lastly, Nancy called another dance this afternoon here in town as a benefit for the school. I've gone with her to many of these events, so I opted to remain at home and continue work emptying the garage. I did show up for the lasagna dinner afterwords though.

All in all a fun weekend of dance and music. Good stuff.

My brand-new very old bike

2010-04-05T23:21:00.008-04:00

The bike, sans front fender

The inspiration, viewed at a recent conference

Today my brand-new very-old bike showed up, thanks to UPS.

The bike is a 3-speed Raleigh 20 (twenty being the diameter of the wheels). It is a folding bike and I saw one a couple weeks ago at a bike conference I went to and knew in a moment that I wanted to find one for myself.

Nancy and I are joining her family in Florida soon for a vacation, and rather then casting my lot to the humiliation of whatever the rental shops have, I thought it'd be great to bring a bike I already know, hence the Raleigh 20.

I've only just had a chance to look it over, and, despite some problems in shipping, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. There's a lot I'll do to upgrade it as I can, but for the moment I'm glad I got it and I look forward to some fun times riding it and the option of bringing a bike with me when I travel.

Nancy's Bicycle Tool Bag

2010-03-26T23:40:00.006-04:00

I made this last night for Nancy. What you can't tell from the photos is that it's divided into three smaller pouches where it folds into thirds.

My inspiration came a couple of days ago when Nancy and I were getting ready to ride to work (I ride halfway with her and then loop home, while she continues on) and it was apparent that she didn't have a tool kit, so I decided I needed to rectify the situation.

This little tool bag is step one.

Next up is collecting the proper tools and a spare tube.

See more of the bags I've made here.

2 1/4 Gallons of Gold

2010-03-14T23:37:00.004-04:00

Today we finished off the syrup from the sap we'd been boiling for the last few days. Its a little bit of a process because we actually lift the stainless steel pan off the sugaring arch (the barrel stove) and then empty the near-syrup into pots which we bring inside to boil the last few degrees.

The temperature at which the boiled sap becomes maple syurp is 217 (at our elevation) and just as the syrup is nearing its finish point it characteristically goes into a frothing boil of millions of tiny golden bubbles, which can be calmed by waving a wooden spoon with a little butter on it through the foam. As soon as we hit 217 we then pour the hot syrup through a double filter, consisting of a synthetic changeable filter and a wool hanging filter. There is a sand-like substance called niter which needs to be removed in this process along with any other debris that might have made into the syrup. We hang the filter from one of the roof cables in the yurt and I stand on a chair and do the pouring. The filters fill up quickly, so for the first minute or two the syrup pours through quickly, but it slows down as the niter builds up.

I wasn't really paying attention to how much sap we'd collected, so I wasn't really sure how much syrup we'd end up with. To my delight, we finished off with a little more the 2 1/4 gallons. That means we boiled somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-100 gallons of sap, collected from roughly 30 taps.

The weather has been a little too warm over the weekend for much sap to be flowing, but we're hoping for some cold nights to get things moving again.

Boiling

2010-03-11T21:53:00.006-05:00

Today I had irons in a couple of fires. I finished setting up the sugaring arch, fired it up, and tended it all throughout the day. Meanwhile I was in the house trying to make headway with insulating the basement.

The day went well, and as I write at almost 10:00pm we're still boiling away, though we've stopped feeding the fire. I'll tend it for a while longer and then fill the pan as full as I can with cold sap and it'll simmer overnight. We'll fire it up again in the morning

I love sugaring. Love it.

Sugaring Time

2010-03-05T21:34:00.005-05:00

Nothing gets my heart racing like walking into the woods, tapping a maple, hanging a bucket, and watching the sap start to flow on a warm spring day in early March.

In past years we've done a bunch of sugaring, but passed on it last year due to... I don't quite recall. There was the sense we were too busy, so we skipped it. Well, were busy this year too, but I don't want to let another year go by without doing some sugaring.

This afternoon I loaded up my pack basket with a cordless drill, a 7/16" bit, a pile of taps, a stack of buckets, a hammer, and some lids. As soon I saw the first drops of sap start flowing from my first tap, my sense of excitement just soared. Sugaring is sort of like gardening; you work with nature to create a food, gathering the raw material that gets transformed into the divine sweetener known as maple syrup. Its magic, its exciting, and a really fun process to take part in.
Sugaring also connects me to a long regional history. Sugaring was done by native Americans and has continued over the centuries. There is something so cozy and special about the warmth of a sugar house with the pan steaming like crazy and the warmth of the arch warding off the outside cold.

When I was a kid, maybe 13 or so, I decided I wanted to try making maple syrup. I tapped a couple of trees and gathered a few gallons of sap. I then set up a couple of cinder blocks on which to place a large pot over the little fire I got going. I remember laying next to my set up, soaking in the smell of the fire and the spring earth, anticipating that this big pot of sap was actually going to turn into syrup. It was a special experience. As it turned out, the fire was not nearly strong enough to make much boiling happen, and eventually we brought the pot inside and boiled it off on the electric stove. I think maybe I made a quart, but that experience instilled a love for this process that still alights in me today.

In past years we've tapped upwards of 40 taps and made close to 8 gallons of syrup. We tapped a bunch of trees on my aunt and uncle's land in Fayston in addition to trees nearby where we live, but this year we're just tapping close by; it saves a bunch of complication and driving across the Valley in the middle of mud season.

One of the things Nancy and I let people know we wanted for wedding gifts was sugaring buckets, and one family in particular, the Conly's --who are backyard sugaring devotee's themselves-- came through with a pile of supplies. At this point we are well equipped.

Over the next few days I'll set up our sugaring arch and storage barrel so we'll be ready to boil when we've got enough sap. I'm grateful that I get to take part in this springtime ritual.

My Mud and Snow Milk Bike

2010-03-03T20:59:00.004-05:00

I acquired this lovely bike a couple of years ago as a frame with just a front wheel and some otherwise respectable parts. Its a Panasonic mountain bike frame and was a garish green and yellow with something like "Montpelier Parks" hand painted across the top tube.

Since then I gave it a cheap but effective paint job, switched out the handlebars and break levers, added a rear wheel and installed a respectable Brooks saddle. Oh yeah, I also added a nice set of SKS fenders to round out the effort. The bike is currently wearing a set of studded Nokian tires for rides on snowy nights.

If for some reason you've followed this blog over the months you'll know that biking around the corner to the nearby farm to get milk for making yogurt is one of my favorite activities. In the past I would hook my bike trailer up and then strap the 2 gallon milk bucket to the trailer. That worked, but I thought I'd be cool to come up with something a little easier and maybe more streamlined. To answer that need I created a small wooden rack that mounts over the rear bike rack I have in place on the bike. The bucket fits neatly in the circular opening and I just run a strap over it to insure it stays in place and it all works quite well.

I've since decided that this rack is actually rather clunky and overbuilt, so I've schemed out a much more elegant and minimal version. I've cut the parts and they are just sitting there in the house. I just need to assemble it. Version two will be a significantly more elegant solution.

I love this bike. It's reminiscent of a three-speed in feel with mountain bike gearing to haul up steep hills. The one change I need to make is installing a slightly taller stem to raise the bars up just a little more.

Fun.

Bowl of Soup

2010-02-16T22:19:00.006-05:00

I made dinner tonight from a soup recipe we enjoy quite a lot. Cannellini beans, squash, onions, bacon, garlic and sundried tomatoes. Its supper yummy.

As I was chopping away I looked down the ingredient list and realized that with the exception of some of the beans, everything was something we grew or -in the case of the bacon- purchased from someone who raised it locally.

The localvore concept entered our lives a few years ago and after first assuming that "we already did that" we started looking more closely at what food we consumed that was either produced or was grown locally. This started a fundamental shift that made us more closely attuned to examining just where everything we eat and drink comes from.

What caught my attention this evening was how, without any conscious effort, our dish was almost completely local. This is not special and I'm not trying to say its even that big a deal, rather that I find that this little calculation happens almost as a habit most of the time, and has really for the last few years, with pretty satisfying results.

There's pride and satisfaction in a meal like this, and I feel lucky that we get to make the choices we do when it comes to food.

Here's the breakdown:

Bacon -- from Helm, the Frozen Butcher, northern Vermont
Onions, garlic, butternut squash, and rosemary -- grown by us right here
Chicken broth -- made by Nancy from the parts left over from chickens we co-raised last summer
Cannellini beans and navy beans -- some we grew, some are from unknown
"Sundried" tomatoes -- we grow and dry tons of sungolds in our dehydrator
Salt and pepper -- from parts unknown

If you've read this far and are actually curious about the recipe, here you go. Try it. You'll be psyched.

2 thick bacon slices, chopped
2 decent sized chopped onions
6 garlic cloves(or more!), minced
3 cups chicken broth
4 cups cubed and peeled butternut squash
4 cups cannellini (white kidney beans), undrained
a cup or so of sundried tomatoes, otherwise diced tomatoes in juice
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

Sauté bacon in heavy large pot over medium heat until crisp, about 4 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Add chopped onion and garlic to drippings in pot; sauté until golden, about 10 minutes. Add chicken broth; bring to boil. Stir in butternut squash, 1 or so cups cannellini with liquid, drained tomatoes, and fresh rosemary. Puree remaining 2-3 cups cannellini with liquid in processor until smooth; add to soup. Cover and simmer until butternut squash is tender and flavors blend, about 15 minutes. Season soup with salt and pepper. (Bacon and soup can be made 1 day ahead. Wrap and chill bacon. Chill soup uncovered until cold, then cover and keep refrigerated. Rewarm bacon and soup separately before serving.)

Garnish with chopped bacon and serve. Or just chop up the bacon and put it in with everything else, but don't leave it out!

We got this recipe from Epicurious and have modified it slightly since.

A short, sweet movie about love and bicycles

2010-02-08T14:04:00.001-05:00

Bicycle from Steve Blanco on Vimeo.

Tweed Run

2010-02-03T21:26:00.012-05:00

A year or so back I learned about the Tweed Run. Here's the concept:

"The Tweed Run is a group bicycle ride through the centre of London, in which the cyclists are expected to dress in traditional british cycling attire, particularly tweed plus four suits. Any bicycle is acceptable on the Tweed Run, but classic vintage bicycles are encouraged. Some effort to recreate the spirit of a bygone era is always appreciated."

This just seems so fun to me. Combining the pleasures of beautiful bikes, vintage fashion, and a leisurely group of fellow riders. I don't pretend that life was necessarily better in the old days, but I certainly think there were some things going on style-wise that's its a shame to have lost. Wool, leather, canvas, wicker, steel, silk...

Turns out Tweed Runs are turning up all over the place, including Boston, but I didn't catch wind of this until after it had already happened sometime last fall. Maybe the next time around.

I think what's so fun about this is that it humanizes riding a bike and makes it playful, in total contrast to the pretension of "performance" get-ups and it appears to me that there is enough creativity going on to keep this business from becoming too pretentious itself.

Goofy? Even a little embarrassing? Sure. Fun? Yep.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

300,000

2010-02-01T22:55:00.005-05:00

Yesterday the Volvo turned over 300,000 miles. We were driving back from Boston and making guesses the whole way about where we thought it would actually happen. Its sort of insignificant and yet cool.

When I was researching what car to buy back in the mid nineties, I talked to a guy at Performance Motors in Hadley, MA --a shop that just worked on Volvos-- who said if I took care of it it'd go to 300,000 no problem. Well, he was right. I feel like this car has done it's work and everything from here on in is gravy.

In fact, my odometer was busted for about 6 months a few years back, so in actuality, this car has long since hit this milestone, but hey, it wouldn't work to take a picture at, say, 298,742 and say I think this car is really about to hit 300,000.

Let's hear it for the Volvo 240!

Goodbye Motion

2010-01-17T21:32:00.000-05:00

Recently our dear friend and companion Motion was put to sleep after a long and sweet life.

Motion came into our lives without us quite realizing it until one day it was clear that he had weaved his way into our home and our hearts. We became a little family of sorts.

My sister Anna got Motion when she was 9 years old--about 15 years ago-- and he was her dog for many years until she went away to college when my mom and stepfather became his primary guardians. For a good many years Harley (my other sister Louise's dog) and Motion were a pair, both on the dog run and just in general. Harley was sort of the dumb bully while Motion was sort of the silent sweet one.

We came along in 2003, moved onto my parents land and built the yurt. Shortly thereafter Nancy started taking the dogs on walks in the warm months and on ski excursions in the winter. The dogs loved it and thus began an informal borrowing of the dogs from my parents. Nance would call Felton up and say "Release the hounds!" and they'd come running up to the yurt, all excited and ready to go. Over time, Motion made a habit of just coming up. I don't remember when he first actually spent the night, but somewhere along the way he started spending most of his time with us. We took him back down to my parents each day so he could get his meal. Most evenings, he'd come right back up after eating, announcing his presence with a good scratch at the door. "Insistafoot", we'd call him as he'd scratch two or three times if we were slow to let him in.

Over the last few years this became the routine. Motion basically stayed with us but went back down to the house for meals and when we went away on trips. Coming back from a trip was always a moment of joy for us because Motion would be there hanging out under the the garage overhang waiting for us to show up. He'd be all excited and hopping around running back and forth to the door when we got out of the car.

As time went on it was clear that Motion was getting old and slowing down. His legs were stiffer, he didn't travel far, he was graying, and, towards the end, he was loosing control of his ability to "hold it". In the last 6 months or so we could see that the end was not so far off and were reluctantly preparing for the day when he'd be leaving us. His departure came more swiftly then we were prepared for owing to many hands being in on his welfare.

We mourn his loss and remember and honor a great great friend who gave us so much pleasure and joy. He was a part of our lives, our home and our daily life. Many many nights I'd crawl into bed and just be taken by the immense sense of love and comfort I'd feel with Nancy with on one side of me, and Motion on the floor on the other side. What a safe, warm, loved feeling.

We did our best to celebrate and love Motion. We're grateful for the richness he gave to our lives, and we miss him dearly.

Rest in peace dear friend.

Sign Project - Update

2010-01-16T11:47:00.003-05:00

Update 1/16:
After I posted the previous blog entry, friends started writing in saying that they'd noticed that "Captial" wasn't spelled right. At first I didn't even look because there is sometimes a discrepancy between "capital" and "capitol". When I actually looked at the photos I couldn't believe it. CAPTIAL in black and green! D'oh!

Yesterday I went over to the grange and fixed the sign.

Glad that's done!

Sign Project

2010-01-06T21:29:00.006-05:00

Painting the edge

Affixing the vinyl lettering

Cutting the vinyl backing

Complete

For way too long I've been trying to complete a volunteer project I committed to way way back. I offered to make a new sign for the Montpelier Captial City Grange, of which we are members via our involvement with contra dancing.

When I finished college I was unsure of what I was going to do and came up with sign making as something to pursue. I talked to various sign makers and somehow started to line up a few projects. I got the basics under my belt and then my focus drifted elsewhere. Nonetheless, its handy to be able to put together a sign and so it made sense to do one for the grange.

The pictures show a bit of the process. I haven't seen it hanging yet, but look forward to doing so soon.

Jeremy

2009-12-13T21:19:00.006-05:00

Jeremy doing his thing in the wee hours

Jeremy and Anda

I've been thinking about our friend Jeremy's daily commute on his bike and realized how inspired I am by his example. He does in deed what I would probably only pay lip service to if I were in his shoes.

Jeremy is the pastry chef at the Red Hen Bakery and arrives at work each morning somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 AM. He then works a (sometimes more then) full day and heads home.

The bakery is just shy of 12 miles from his home and he commutes each way by bike every morning and back every evening. That's nearly 24 miles a day, much of it in the pre-dawn darkness.

I think what I find most impressive is that he does this at such early hours. Maybe its a matter of adjusting to a schedule which then becomes normal, albeit earlier then average, but I imagine waking up at say, 3:00 and thinking "Hmm.. I could get up now, get ready and then bike in, or I could sleep an extra 45 minutes and then drive in...". It takes a strong will to forgo that short term indugence for the slightly less immediate sense of fun, adventure and good feeling that comes from a hearty ride. I should mention that Jeremy is the father of a 7 year old and a 5 month year old and that his commute often involves arriving in time for the hand-off of the kids when his work day is done and Sally's work kicks in. No schlumping in the easy chair with slippers and a pipe for this guy. I should also mention that he is no zealot out to change the world or convince everyone to do it his way; he just does his thing and lets his actions speak for themselves. No righteousness from this guy.

A hundred times I've found myself on the edge of the decision: "Should I ride, or should I just hop in the car and get it done quickly?" In virtually every case that I've decided to ride, I wind up feeling so glad that I made the effort and overcame my hesitancy. I feel rewarded for the decision every time and I remember that it feels harder and colder thinking about it then it does doing it. That said, I once read Grant Petersen saying that you should never ride if you don't want to, and I've taken that to heart. Its not an obligation, its a choice.

There have been a couple of periods in my life when I commuted by bicycle every day, day-in an day-out. In both cases it was about 6 miles each way and I loved it. I really miss that daily experience in my life and look forward to when I have it again, whenever that might be. My work these days is the house and lately I've ridden my bike so much less then I'd like.

I guess I've been thinking about this because Jeremy has just stopped biking to work for the season in the last week or so since the snow has arrived. If there is anyone who would make excuses for why they can't ride to work, have 'em look at what Jeremy does and then decide if its really too hard. I deeply appreciate his example and the humbleness with which he does it.

On a related note, I want to tip my cycling cap to Lize and Randy at Red Hen for rewarding employees who had the top miles accumulated cycling to work at the bakery. Jeremy came in first with somewhere over 2000 miles for the year.

Dang!

Composted Memories

2009-12-05T16:23:00.009-05:00

The various cups, plates and cutlery from our wedding going in the compost pile, June 2007

Nancy here.

Just as the snow started to fall today, I got to a project that has been on the list for some time: the annual emptying of our big compost bin. This led to sweet memories of our wedding two summers ago. What's the connection, you wonder?

The 2009 compost bin still has some room, but sometime in January the active pile freezes and then the bin fills up fairly quickly. So each fall, we empty out the compost that is two years old and prep a bin for the next year. By April the new pile is usually quite high, but then it thaws, heats up and sinks.

I was curious to see what would be in the 2007 pile as we had filled it with compostable plates (cardboard), cups (made of corn), and forks (ditto) at the end of our wedding weekend. We were informed by Aunt Joan that she had heard that these cups don't break down and that as a corn-based product, they aren't such a bargin for the environment. So... I can report that after two years of composting, I didn't find any paper plates. I did find cups and forks on the outer edges of the pile where things don't always heat up to 130 degrees. The found cups were mostly in stacks, though a few singletons were also present. In the middle I found a few remnants of the rims of the cups suggesting that the rest of the cup had successfully decomposed. I think in total, there are about 30 cups and 15 to 20 forks -- which is far fewer than went in to the pile.

Compost coming out of the pile and going into the cold frame today

The composted material was looking pretty good. In some years, the saw dust that we use as humanure cover material is still fairly present in the dirt, but by and large it was well rotted and gone in this pile. I put wheel barrow loads of the black gold in our cold frame and on the strawberry patch and rhubarb bed.

I'm being followed by a Moonshadow

2009-11-29T22:34:00.010-05:00

La Lune

110 North out of Chelsea

Yours truly

The stone carver statue in Barre

Long exposure view of the traffic on I-89 and Rt. 2 from River Road

Sunday afternoon I drove our Volvo down to Chelsea, Vermont for some expert TLC. I was a bit anxious because Chelsea is quite a distance from here and my plan was to bike the roughly 45 miles home. With guests here this weekend, I wasn't able to head down until the afternoon and by the time I'd arrived and was ready to pedal out, it was about 4:00, maybe a little after. These days it is dark before 5:00, so most of my ride home was in the dark. I find there is a fine line between excitement and fear and the prospect of doing a 45 mile bike ride in the dark on my own through some very rural areas of Vermont; it is both tantalizing and a little scary, though I think it wouldn't be as compelling if there wasn't an edge of fear around it. As often happens with situations like this, once I'm out there and engaged, I'm just psyched; I'm rolling along, I'm warm, I'm making progress, and I'm seeing and experiencing a million little memorable events that make it so worthwhile. I'm riding my bike and going on a little adventure.

The trip was great, with a slight chill, but I was comfortable for the first couple of hours. There's a big hill out of Chelsea and into Washington that warmed me up nicely. At the top I put my cap back on and zipped up for the ride down the other side. Coming down the long hill into Washington village, I started to wonder if my headlight was a bright as it should be, so I stopped at the little store in the village and bought some new batteries, and found the lamp light much brighter. (I dream about bikes and bike parts and building up a great bike some day, but this little episode reinforced the wisdom of purchasing a dynamo hub sooner rather then later. A dynamo hub is a small generator built into the hub of the bicycle wheel which powers the lamp mounted on the bike. You always have a source of power for you lights, and the light produced is impressive.)

I felt progressively chillier approaching Barre. Usually downhills are a welcome rest, but this night they were more a source of feeling cold, so I found myself semi-wishing there wasn't such a long decent to Barre. Not wanting to stop, I decided I'd adjust to warmer mittens, shoe covers, and wind shell once I reached Montpelier. I stopped at the Hunger Mountain coop in Montpelier and was pleased to find that they have a free phone, which I used to call Nancy to let her know where I was; that I was doing fine; and that I was continuing on my way home, most likely with a stop in Moretown to visit Liza and Randy.

With a slight haze, I had moonlight all the way.

Leaving Montpelier better dressed for the cold, I rode River Road from Montpelier to Middlesex and only crossed paths with one car. River Road follows the river and is a great dirt road just out of town. It was a nice quiet interval on the trip. The traffic on I-89 and rt. 2 is pronounced when witnessed from the vantage point across the river.

By the time I was rolling through the flats in Moretown I was warm again. The slight incline along the Mad River was enough to turn the tide; off came the mittens and outer shell. I stopped at Lize and Randy's for a nice visit and a little nibble, and then continued the last few miles home.

I never feel so grateful for home as the times when I come home tired, maybe cold, probably hungry and just so glad to see my sweetness.

Blue car blues

2009-11-20T18:04:00.007-05:00

When I bought my Volvo 240 wagon with 165,000 miles on it about 11 years ago, the guys at the local Volvo repair shop said "It'll go to 300,000 if you take care of it."

We'll the car is now at 297,000 miles and I think it would be a not fully accurate to say that "I've taken care of it", but I have invested a lot along the way and the car has been a good friend in return. This car has seen me, and us, through many miles and many adventures, from solo trips with my little sailboat in tow to Welfleet on the Cape, to romantic camping accommodations with my future wife, to escape-the-city trips out of Boston, to doubling as a can-do utility vehicle with hay bales on the roof and excessive amounts of timber weighting down the lot.

Its a truly great car, and if I were the king of car manufacturers, I'd decree that the Volvo 240 should be built and made available in perpetuity, with the one qualification that it aim for better gas mileage. They stopped making the 240 in 1993. A sad passing.

If all this sounds like an obituary, it might be, but then again it might not. For the last three weeks the car has been sitting in our yard, parked askew with a flat tire. For months, the shifting has been a bit rough, and reverse was getting progressively harder to engage, particularly for Nancy. One morning, Nance was having trouble getting it into reverse and I strutted out and thought I'd get it in gear as I always seem to have been able to. Well, this time was different. I couldn't get it. I tried and tried, even going forward onto the lawn a bit to see if that loosened things up--to no avail. Since we couldn't get it in reverse, we would need to tow the car backwards if we wanted to get it out the driveway.

So we left it there. In the meantime, the rear right tire went flat and we just got used to it.

Today, finally, Joe and I towed it back enough that we could point the bow up the driveway and park the car out of the way. Now we can go somewhere if we need to, as long as there is no backing up required. The tire is still an issue. The next move is to get it to a garage and see if maybe, just maybe, this car is worth getting to 300,000.

A day on a bicycle in Boston

2009-11-01T22:40:00.009-05:00

Nancy had a day of work in Boston on Friday and I had the day to myself to do with whatever I wanted.

Having brought my bike, I parked in Cambridge just down the street from the new community center that replaced the old VFW, home to Thursday night contra dancing in Boston. The new building looks cool and was as good a starting point as anywhere. I headed into Harvard Square and then up Mass Ave towards Central Square, basically keeping an eye out for a non-corporate morning coffee place to settle into with the New York Times. Passing through MIT I crossed the river and headed down towards the South End. I knew I'd found the right spot when I came across the South End Buttery. With a neat little breakfast and a cup of coffee and settled into a window spot and indulged in a couple of hours of in-depth reading.

From my morning coffee I headed toward the Downtown Crossing area and searched around until I found Windsor Buttons, where I checked some cool sewing stuff, but walked away with some Bee buttons for Nancy.

Back up through Back Bay, I crossed back over the river and headed to the MIT press bookstore which is always a treat. I didn't buy anything, but enjoyed browsing. From there I went to the Cambridgeside Mall and bought a watch strap and some socks, having left the key in my bike lock while I was wandering around inside. Doh!

From the mall I headed up to Central Square, got a sandwich at the 1369 cafe and then crossed the street to browse around at Rodney's Bookstore. This place is extensive, but for whatever reason, I was challenged to find anything that really caught my attention. They have a really cool selection of vintage posters that are fun to check out. At this point it was getting on in the day, so I made a brief stop at the Broadway Bike School just to go in and check out the used parts and just be there for a minute since I think its such a cool place. Up through Harvard from there I then zig-zaged through Davis and Porter Squares and made my way up and around to the Fresh Pond area where I returned to the car.

It just felt wonderful to be on my bike for the first time in a long time and to enjoy the warm air, the fun of just wandering, and the invigoration of riding in the city amongst the lights, cars, cyclists, signs, sounds and traffic. Its a wide awake feeling that you just don't get around here.

Extracting Honey

2009-10-14T18:07:00.007-04:00

On Saturday afternoon we decided deal with the super of honey that's been sitting in the middle of the yurt floor for the last month or so. (A "super" is the name of the stacked boxes that you see when you see a beehive.) Our pal Rebecca, who is thinking about getting bees, was here for the night and together we cleaned up the extractor and the various implements needed, such as uncapping knives and buckets and got set up. An additional crucial element in the process was heating up the yurt into the high 80's to make sure the honey was flowing easily.

The first step is uncapping. This means cutting off the thin layer of wax capping that encapsulates the honey contained in the cells that fill up the honey frame that we take out of the super. We have an electric knife that facilitates this, plus we have an "acoustic" one that just cuts with the serrated blade. Despite past experiences, the non-electric knife seemed to be as effective as the electric one.

Once the cappings are cut off the frames of honey we put them in our extractor, standing up with their broad side facing the wall of the extractor. When the extractor is full we put the top on and spin it, just a like a washing machine spins the wash to remove the water. It doesn't take long before the honey all flings out to the wall of the extractor and then runs down to the bottom. There is a spigot at the bottom of the extractor and once all the frames have been spun out on both sides, we open the tap and let the honey flow out through a double screen to remove bits of wax and dead bees and whatever else. Its an awe inspiring moment to see the golden flow pour out.

After that we take all the equipment outside and let the bees do all the cleaning. It takes very little time for word to get out and a pile of bees are gleaning any remaining honey. We got roughly 30 pounds of honey from this one super. There is the potential to get upwards of 100 pounds of honey per hive if everything works out just right, but so far we haven't come close to that. Maybe next year.

Musical interludes

2009-10-05T18:11:00.021-04:00

Saturday night Nancy and I went to a 20's themed birthday party. Everyone was dressed for the occasion and it was easy to feel in the mode. The highlight of the evening was the musical entertainment. The hosts had seen these musicians playing on the street in southern France about 10 years ago, loved them, and always hoped to see them again on their occasional trip back to France. By chance they did encounter them again last year, and as a treat for the party, flew them over for the event. I don't know the name of the band, but they consisted of a soprano sax, clarinet, banjo, and bass, and they played, to my ear, a variant of gypsy jazz. I am not highly schooled in the subtleties of the the various jazz idioms, but this sounded pretty Django Reinhardt-like, but without guitar. In any event, they were tons of fun and we had a blast dancing to them. While they are here in Vermont they are playing a couple of gigs at other venues and I'm looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow night at the the Langdon Street Cafe.

Sunday our friend Joanne came over to check out the house and play a little music. Joanne and I met through Yestermorrow and she recently received a degree in architecture, so she had a fairly informed curiosity seeing the house and the various features, design decisions, etc... After our tour we sat down to play some music and had a great time, as always. I find my ability and my willingness to take little musical risks increases slowly but steadily, and that feels great. Making music is right up there with cycling, great food, hanging with my sweetness, dancing, and sailing. Food for the soul.

Applesauce and Olives

2009-09-30T21:05:00.004-04:00

Our late season preserving continues with making a batch of applesauce made from the apples we gathered from around the property. There are thousands of apples and we spent an hour or so last weekend collecting a nice haul. Tonight Nance borrowed my mom's Squeeze-O to grind and smush the steamed apples into sauce. Its amazing how yummy and easy it is. Nance has been the project master while Joe and I have been employed cranking the Squeeze-O. Our friend Carlene gave us some applesauce she made which in turn inspired us to give it a go.

A few nights ago we spent some time cracking green olives that were sent from California. The olive season is in the fall and you can buy them fresh and uncured and then cure them yourself, which we've done for the last couple of years. Again, Joe and I were put to work with some little wooden mallets I made just for this project, cracking each olive. Once the olives are all cracked, the bucket they are in is filled with water and then the water is changed every day or so for a week, give or take, to remove the bitter flavor. Eventually they are stored for the long term in a salt brine with olive oil.

Recent Harvest

2009-09-23T21:18:00.009-04:00

We went away last weekend and there was a frost in the forecast, so we harvested a bunch of stuff we didn't want to lose. Beyond what's shown in the photos we've got piles of onions, celariac, canned tomatoes, shallots, a bunch of herbs, potatoes, tons of basil (that is now pesto), carrots, squashes, and countless other excellent items that I can't recall at the moment.

We grew pie pumpkins for the first time this year. That's the orange/green squash-like stuff in crate on the left. The bin on the right contains our haul of sweet potatoes. We are particularly excited about the sweet potatoes since we've learned how to do a better job of keeping them warm and moist under plastic and row cover. Last year's take was okay, but nothing like what we got this year.

The garlic has been hanging to dry since early August. We took it down and cut off the stems. All told we've got about 40 pounds or so. This should last us through next spring with enough to plant this fall for next year's harvest.

Nance holding a couple of peppers.

Tomatillos.

We decided to go after some of the wild apples available all along the property line. They don't look very good, but boy, some of them are super yummy. We plan to make apple sauce with them.

A pile of sungolds. We slice these in half and then dry them in the food dehydrator. Yum.

Cyrus Pringle

2009-09-15T20:45:00.010-04:00

There's big excitement around here lately regarding the advent of locally grown and milled white flour which my brother-in-law Randy is completely excited about.

To fill you in: Randy and his wife Liza (my sister) are the owners of the Red Hen Baking Company in Middlesex, Vermont. It has long been a hope that there could be wheat grown locally that would meet the complex requirements needed to produce a local loaf that could meet or exceed performance expectations. Red Hen incorporates Vermont whole wheat into its breads (sourced from Gleason's Grains), but there is very little (almost none) in-state production of white flour. Three years ago, a farmer in Charlotte planted 30 acres of red winter wheat as a test plot with the intention of milling the wheat into white flour. The first two years, the wheat was tested and found to lack enough protein for bread baking (protein gives a loaf its loft) so the wheat was sold as animal feed. Borrowing a technique used by wheat growers in Quebec, in this third year the wheat was harvested early and dried under controlled conditions. In the hot and dry Kansas climate, wheat can dry on the stalk in the fields. Not so here. This third batch of wheat was tested and found to have promising results. Within a week, Randy was experimenting, using the white flour to make bread. He was heard to utter these words: "giddy with excitement." Once some of the logistics are worked out (and there are surprisingly a number of them), Red Hen plans to roll out a new loaf made from 100% VT wheat.

Stepping back slightly: there have been efforts to find or develop a variety of wheat that can do well in the short, damp growing seasons of Vermont. UVM Extension Agent Heather Darby found heritage wheat seed (in a seed bank in Washington State) and she's been working with several farmers to trail and cross breed these wheat varieties that were in significant use in Vermont 100 years ago when the state was known as the bread basket of New England.

Once we find a suitable wheat, there is the need to have the milling infrastructure available to then turn Vermont wheat into white flour. Small farm-based mills exist that do a good job of milling whole wheat flour, but to get a white flour, a large "industrial" mill is required. Fortunately, Champlain Mills, an organic mill, is located in NY on the western shore of lake Champlain. There is no in-state mill that we know of that can produce white flour in volume.

Some of the heritage wheat in the field trials was originally developed by Cyrus Pringle (no relation to the familiar Pringles chips) who was born in Charlotte, VT in the 1800's. Pringle was a botanist and wheat breeder who cross bred potatoes and apples and became notable in his field. Beyond this, Pringle was a Quaker. He was drafted into the Union army during the Civil War and refused to participate in military duties. This led to harsh treatment; he was granted a reprieve from President Lincoln.

Randy's been searching around for a suitable name for this new loaf of bread and was familiar with Cyrus Pringle from a presentation given by Heather Darby. Randy then put it out there to family and friends and a number of possiblities have surfaced: Pringle's Pride, Cyrus' Honor, Cyrus Pringle, and recently, Pringle's Progress.

Jeremy's chicken coop

2009-09-15T19:22:00.005-04:00

The other day we had breakfast with Sally, Jeremy, Anda and Silas to celebrate Anda's birthday and just visit. It's always great to see them and if we don't get the opportunity to "recharge" by hanging out once in a while I start to notice.

Anyway, Jeremy built an excellent chicken coop that I thought I'd post a few pictures of.

It's a double decker, with the bottom open to the earth and an "upstairs" where the hens roost at night and are protected from rain and weather. Jeremy has cleverly designed a small trap door that becomes a ramp when it is opened via a string from the outside. This lets the hens travel down to the bottom area. Feeding happens on the second floor and foraging and fertilizing happen downstairs. There are access doors along the side and a cleaning and egg gathering door at the end.

I very much admire the combination of function and design happening in the triangular shape --with neither being sacrificed, as far as I can see. The coop is moved twice a day around the lawn to keep fresh foraging ground available to the chickens and fertilization (in the form of chicken poop) spread out around the yard.

Lately...

2009-08-30T19:48:00.007-04:00

The big event recently has been the house, but I thought it'd be fun to post a few photos of some non-house stuff we've been up to recently.

This is Joe's home while he's living here during construction. I helped him set it up and I think it's the coolest thing.

Here's some of the tomatoes Nancy canned this week. The final count: 35. Go Nance!

Here's our good friend Damon May who came for a quick overnight visit. He did a quick tour up Rt. 100 on his beautiful mid-eighties BMW.

On Saturday we spent much of the day watching Ted Kennedy's funeral Mass and burial via webcast. It was a moving, inspiring tribute to a great man.

Late Season Blight

2009-08-22T21:32:00.009-04:00

We found evidence of late season tomato and potato blight in our garden early this evening. We are in good company as the blight has impacted farms and gardens throughout New England this year. We've been hearing of others who have lost their much loved tomatoes too early in the season to enjoy a single juicy red ripe delicious beauty. This morning at the farmer's market, we talked with a farmer who lost his entire crop overnight earlier this year. He repeated what we've read in the paper; that a large supplier out of Alabama sent diseased plants north this spring supplying big box stores with starts. Unsuspecting gardeners planted these starts and then the rain started, and continued to fall for much of June and July creating perfect conditions for the blight to spread, and it has spread far and wide.

This topic has been filed under "really interesting" in our minds; we've discussed it at length. It illustrates interconnected issues including global warming, industrial agriculture vs buying local, and crucially, will we be eating tomatoes this year?

In response we cut off all of the greens from our potatoes and put them in plastic garbage bags. One plant was all mush and stunk! Another had a large patch of spore underneath the leaves. Otherwise the plants seemed okay and we hope we caught it early enough to save the tubers (the disease is systemic so it moves from leaves to stems to tubers/fruits). We removed two tomato plants and carefully removed impacted leaves from others. A Cornell website suggests that if we stay on top of it and it is sunny, we might be able to nurture the plants along. We'll see. We are very lucky in that a lot of our fruit is ready to pick and we have plan to can tomorrow.

Shining Sea Bikeway-Build it and they will come

2009-08-19T07:42:00.010-04:00

Nancy and I spent a few days on the Cape last weekend visiting her family. We were lucky to have some really nice weather which led to some great time at the beach.

Just about a 1/4 mile from the house is the Shining Sea Bikepath, which runs from Woods Hole up to North Falmouth for a total of about 10.7 miles. The path was built phases. The first section ran from Woods Hole to Falmouth village and was built in 1975 for a total length of about 4 or so miles. This section runs on old railbed through some stunning coastal scenery with glacial ponds on one side and Vineyard Sound on the other.

Short sections have been added periodically and sometime in the last year the path was extended by another 5 or so miles, again on old railbed and this section is largely in coastal forest with a few beautiful views out to Buzzards Bay. As bike paths often do, it finishes of with a dull thud in North Falmouth.

I've never been all gaga about bike paths for a variety of reasons, but I have to say that I was truly impressed by just how many people were out there the afternoon Nancy and I rode the path with her parents. It strikes me that people want to ride bikes, that they enjoy riding bikes, and that they will ride bikes if and when the conditions are present that the feel safe, able, and comfortable. Sometimes I'm amazed at how much people are even willing to be a little heroic in order to ride a bike; I see folks with their seats painfully low, or riding with knobby-tread tires on smooth pavement -- things that work against feeling good on a bike, and yet they persist out of some desire to simply be on a bike. There was almost a highway quality to the numbers of people out on the path and I was impressed and left with a hopeful feeling about human nature.

Blueberries

2009-08-11T21:58:00.007-04:00

Sunday, Nance and I drove down to Sunshine Valley Berry Farm in Rochester, Vermont to pick blueberries. The day threatened rain, so we tried to get up and go. We've been really busy with the house and work and all sorts of stuff, but getting our berries for the year is important to us.

We are reasonably good at tracking things like how much we picked the year before, so we knew we needed to pick somewhere in the range of 18-20 quarts of berries. We freeze most of what we pick and then use them up slowly through the year. In fact, one of my most favorite treats is a little of our yogurt with a few blueberries and some of our maple syrup, so I eat the majority of them. Our haul was pretty impressive --19 quarts all told-- but picking didn't feel ponderous; the bushes were full and it was easy to gather up big full ripe berries pretty quickly. When we got home we left them out for a while before freezing them to let them sweeten up a bit more.

We spoke with Rob and Patricia, the owners at Sunshine Valley, and they do a sort of work trade for berries in the spring. If you come down and help out, you get some experience pruning and shaping the bushes and earn a discount on the berries once they come into season later on. We're going to put that on our calendar.

Back here at home, we have 8 blueberry bushes that we planted 3 years ago. They were a present from Nancy's dad Lou and this year they are really starting to show their stuff. For a while there I was a little over eager with mulching and as a result kept down some of the new growth that was trying to come up. I've amended my ways and the bushes are all looking pretty good. (See the picture above). So far we've gotten 2-3 quarts here at home with a bunch more still to come. Its exciting to watch them come along. We look forward to expanding our fruit trees and bushes over time.

Champlain Valley Folk Festival

2009-08-03T20:55:00.014-04:00

We spent this past weekend at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival over at Kingsland Bay in Ferrisburg, Vermont. Kingsland Bay is a lovely site on the shore of Lake Champlain and the CVFF is an excellent event that is a highlight of our summer. For us it as much a social get-together as it is a music and dance event, not that the music and dance are anything less then wonderful. Having attended much larger festivals that are similar, we've come to really appreciate the CVFF for its scope, its setting and the slant of performers one is likely to encounter. My perspective is that "folk" is almost a little misleading; I'd almost call it more of a "regional traditional" festival, i.e. lots of Quebecois performers as well as bands and players from all over the world, but not so much of the typical singer-songwriter lets-all-sway-together kind of stuff. Maybe its just that I sorta pass that stuff up, but I think there is less of that typical folk stuff, and I'm glad for it.

A highlight of the weekend was going for a swim au natural around midnight after the Saturday night contra dance. Crowfoot played the dance and they rock, so we were all sweaty and ready for a cool dip to top off the night. So, a pile of dancers all descended down to the pier and jumped in, while an improptu session of fiddlers and other players provided accompanyment. Camping is just a short walk away, so we were back at our tents and cozy in short order.

Unfortunately Sunday turned rainy early on in the day. The rain didn't really stop anything from happening, but it always puts a bit of a damper on things.

A few highlights for me were: Dancing to Crowfoot, watching Reveillons! perform, seeing our friend Joanne Garton dance and play, and hearing Tim Eriksen play for the first time in a few years. I also joined in on an Irish session and had a really good time. Sometimes sessions can be a bit overwhelming, but this one felt good.

Garlic Harvest

2009-07-30T22:23:00.006-04:00

Today Nance harvested our garlic, that fundamental element of so many meals. Its beautiful stuff and will last us through to next years harvest, including enough seed to plant in October. We've planted successions of garlic year to year from our own seed for about 6 years now, so it feels like our garlic is really becoming of this place, a terroir fixed to our land, unlike the other items we grow that are from seed that could be from anywhere. I find that aspect of the garlic particularly satisfying.

If you've never experienced fresh garlic, try to. Its nothing like the stuff in the store. Its damp, soft, robust and oh so pungent.

We used to dry our garlic on racks, but since I built the "sugar structure"* a couple of years ago, we hang it on nails off the rafter ties. I must say I am in love with the beauty of the garlic hanging in this delightful little building.

*The sugar structure is what we've sort of awkwardly named the little post-and-beam open building I built initially as a covered platform for our little maple sugaring operation in the spring. Since then its become much more: an excellent place for meals, a laundry clothes line hanging location (the line is strung through the rafter ties), a bee equipment storage area, and just a nice place to sit, have a cup of coffee or hang out.

Vermont Beekeepers Summer Meeting

2009-07-26T12:10:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I attended the Vermont Beekeeper's summer meeting, which was held here in Waitsfield. The meetings are informative, the pot-luck lunch truly tasty, and I always come away reinvigorated to do better at our beekeeping work. Its a neat little world to be a part of. I tip my bee veil to Gib Geiger and Kim Greenwood for all of their hard work organizing the whole thing.

Yurt Move - Interlude

2009-07-12T21:48:00.008-04:00

Robin McDermott and Ray Mikulak, known throughout the region as the goddess and god of the Localvore movement here in Vermont, stopped by last weekend to drop off an amazing meal of pulled pork sandwiches, salads, and homemade ginger ale. While they were here, Robin shot a little video. Here you go:

Yurt Move - Part I

2009-07-08T22:15:00.017-04:00

On Sunday, a group of friends gathered to help us move the yurt. Our plan going into the day was to elevate the yurt and build a structure underneath on which to roll the whole thing. After some discussion and looking at our options, we made the decision to take the yurt down and then consider our direction once we only had the deck to deal with. Having made the decision, everybody went to it, taking down the yurt in a few hours, just as its designed for. Robin and Ray's lunch was a welcome break!

The challenge then was how to move the deck. It's 24' feet across and fairly heavy. Our friend Aaron had lent us his tractor for this effort and just when we were getting ready to do the big pull he showed up, just back from a weekend away. In the end it came down to overcoming inertia with massive mechanical force. The tractor was able to haul the deck over to it's new place as we continued to put rollers under the deck beams across the lawn.

Once the deck was in the new location it was a matter of jacking it up and leveling it. That took some time and we finished off the day here with a great dinner of grilled chicken and salad that Mom and Felton cooked up for us.

At the end of the day we were just floored by the generosity and dedication of everyone who gave up their day to help us. It struck me that our smart move was inviting people who we had great confidence in to help us with this challenge. With us were Taz, Adam, Kristin, Joe, Alan, and Aaron. Suzanne, Maria, Lola, Jeremy, Liza, Maia, and Solveig all showed up to add moral support.

Midsummer

2009-06-28T15:54:00.015-04:00

We've been working on many things: house, garden, bees, bike rides, work, and whatever else in these long days of midsummer. Its an abundant and special time of year when the world just seems full and at ease.

The garden is at its best, full with garlic scapes, strawberries, greens, chamomile and so much more either here or steadily growing. This has been the year of "zero tolerance" in the weed department. Jeremy came up and tilled a perimeter band around the whole garden, which we'll do again in a few weeks, and we've been steadily pulling and mulching the zones within the garden to keep out the stuff we don't want. Its always an effort, but we've made good progress in defining things and taking advantage of our available real estate with in the garden edges.

We received our septic permit from the state which is a major step towards breaking ground. The next item to fall in line is the building permit and we are hopeful that it'll be a quick turnaround. As soon as that is in place we schedule the digging to being and get moving with the whole process. Its been a long push and in some ways it hasn't even begun. We continue to chip away at the questions and get a sharper and sharper focus on exactly what it going to happen when and with what, etc.. its been a little like peeling an onion in that there are always more layers of information to define and make decisions about. Today we went to visit an acquaintance's house that I've found particularly inspiring for many of its qualities. It's modest size, its thoughtful details and the creative ways in which the owners have gone through the process of building.

We are up to nine hives altogether at this point with varying degrees of strength among them. Just this afternoon we checked the hives and were a little distressed to see evidence of chalkbrood. From what we can tell this is not devastating, and often clears up on its own, but it is still a concern. There is a good chance the state bee inspector will be coming for a visit this week and we look forward to seeing what he has to say.

Last week Nancy went up to Craftsbury to visit a friend and I decided to ride up and meet her there. It was just about 60 miles and it felt good to get there. After some visiting, we drove to Hardwick and had an excellent dinner at Claire's. It felt good to ride some distance, see the countryside, and as always, have a little mini adventure just by getting somewhere. Last night was similar; Nance called a contra dance over in Bristol and I biked up and over the gap to meet here there. I love biking up the mountain. Its not so much hard as it is a slow steady constant decision to keep at it. Very rewarding.

Next up is moving the yurt. We've been moving out steadily in the last week or so. If we can we'd like to have the yurt in it's new location by this time next week.

Overnight Moonlight

2009-06-07T19:52:00.023-04:00

Scene I: Two happy, somewhat chilly, cyclists lay on the ground somewhere in the wilds of Elmore, Vermont at about 1:00 AM gazing up a nearly full moon through wispy clouds, amid noteable silence. Soon they remount their bikes and continue on their night journey.

Yesterday morning, Jeremy and I decided to make good on the idea of doing a full moon overnight ride. The plan was for Jeremy to meet me at the contra dance in Montpelier around 10:00 PM and head out northwards on a semi-defined 90 mile route that would have us rolling back into the Mad River Valley sometime in the morning. Maybe we'd get breakfast at the Green Cup as the rest of the world was just waking up. We knew at the least we wanted to ride until we witnessed the dawn.

That was the idea, and pretty much what we did. Temperatures were forecast down to around the mid-thirties and we were prepared with mittens, layers, wind shells and hats. It was chilly at times, but what was most impressive was how warm the hill tops were and how cold it was in the valleys. Being that it was almost a full moon, we rode many miles with our headlights turned off, mostly just turning them on when the infrequent cars passed.

Scene II: Cyclists notice the curious installation of small solar powered LED lights adorning a few headstones in the occasional cemetery. Ensuing discussion of death, compost, and what the recipients of those lights might think.

After miles of wilderness through Elmore, we rounded over to Morrisville and appreciated the 24-hour Cumberland Farms where we bought some food, filled up our water bottles and used the bathroom. Feeling refreshed, we decided to pedal down to Stowe and then angle northwest up and over Smuggler's Notch. As we approached Stowe clouds were evident and it was clear we were going to lose the moonlight. Given the impending loss of light, we decided to adjust our plan to just stay on Rt. 100 and head back to the Valley.

Scene III: Roughly 3:30 AM, on deserted streets. Two cyclists come to a complete stop at the stop sign in Stowe village, under the watchful eye of the local law enforcement.

It wasn't long before I was grateful for having decided to amend our route as a bit of fatigue started to set in. The clouds had fully obscured the moon as we cruised in to Waterbury, where we had another food break and rest and noticed the first signs of sunrise over the eastern horizon. Chill and weariness were taking their toll, but we soon warmed up again as we headed up the Duxbury hills.

Scene IV: 4:30 AM in dim morning twilight: One weary cyclist looks over at nearby pond and asks the other cyclist if what he's looking at is one of those cutout silhouettes of a moose. The other cyclist looks over and says "Yeah, it is." A moment later the cutout starts moving up the incline of the bank.

We got home shortly after 5:00 and were pretty much silent towards the end, as talking required too much focus and attention to manage. Despite our tiredness, we both agreed that we felt good. Tired, but not wasted.

Scene V: One cyclist does a sudden quick dip to the left and is back right in a second. Its acknowledged that he nodded off for a moment.

It was a real joy to spend this time with Jeremy as we talked and rode and enjoyed the darkened countryside. There is something magic about getting in sync and pedaling for miles in both a private and shared experience of light and dark, warmth and cold, energy and fatigue, effort and rest... when I quietly stepped into the yurt this morning I felt immense gratitude for Nancy, Motion, and home. I also swore I wouldn't need to do that again soon.

Even now, from this short vantage point, it doesn't seem so bad.

Wood & Steel

2009-06-01T09:46:00.014-04:00

In junior high I took guitar lessons for a while and gained a basic ability to play chords and a few songs. It was fun, but it never really went too far.

Fast forward to the late mid-nineties and somehow the desire to play the guitar again was clear enough that I went out and bought one.

Largely influenced during this time by the guitar playing of Luka Bloom, and soon after, my discovery of contra dancing and the traditional music that is basis of the dance, I started moving in the direction of learning and playing traditional/Irish/celtic music. I discovered the deep and shimmery sound of the DADGAD tuning and made it mine. Over the years there have been periods of domancy, but the guitar has basically been a constant friend since I started playing again. The guitar hangs on the wall of the yurt next to the bed and is close at hand.

I'm not a natural when it comes to musical ability, but I'm not a disaster either. I've found through the years that I've developed an ear, some technical facility, and a rudimentary understanding of musical structure. The progress is slow, but it is there. One of the most satisfying steps in this process was starting to accompany tunes by ear rather then by relying on books or written-out chords. When playing by feel/ear I find that my approach is more confident, sounds better, and is actually sort of easier since its coming from within me rather then from an outside source. I also remember the structure of what I'm playing more readily then I would if I'd played it from a book. It is my suspicion that playing this way engages a different part of the brain.

Some of this progress is due to the generosity and patience of my friend Joanne, who, among her many talents, is a stellar fiddle player. When we first started playing together I was just feeling my way and she was willing to stick with it, despite my baby steps. Over the years Joanne has been something of an informal music teacher in that she's helped me hear things out, explained musical questions, and made informed suggestions that are usually quite helpful. Beyond that, its always just felt fun and comfortable playing together and that may be the most important thing of all. I think feeling safe when doing something creative is crucial, and Joanne has always been a sport, even when my portion of the musical offering has been a little weak.

When a tune comes together with other musicians and I feel sure of where I'm headed, its one of the most exciting experiences I can imagine. It just makes me really happy in a kid-like excited way.

The picture shows Joanne and I playing during a very snowy weekend trip Nance and I made to visit her and her fiancee Michael up in Montreal a couple of years ago.

Making Yogurt Revisited: The Journey

2009-05-19T22:52:00.010-04:00

A few weeks ago I posted about how riding to a nearby farm to buy milk from which we make yogurt was one of my more idylic experiences. I love the simplicty of the bicycle ride, the integrity of the milk, the pleasure of buying from a neighbor. It may be fantasy, but it feels like living in another era. Who knows, maybe its an era we are moving towards...

Anyway, I thought it'd be fun to show a few photos from my little trip:

Making a Split

2009-05-19T22:11:00.008-04:00

Today we made a split from one of our strong beehives.

We have currently six hives, some of which are doing pretty well and a couple of which are weak. A hive's natural instinct is to dramatically build up the number of bees in the hive throughout the spring. If the bees start to feel too crowded, they develop a new queen and then send her out with a swarm. Swarms are basically a colony that cleaves off the main hive and start a new hive.

Swarming is great for the bees --its how the reproduce-- but it slows things down for the beekeeper. If the hive swarms you are left with a diminished hive. Whats worse is that sometimes hives swarm multiple times.

That's where making a split come in. A split is a sort of artificial swarming process managed by the beekeeper. Essentially it means taking frames of brood (fertilized bee egg) from a strong hive, plus a frame each of honey and pollen and putting them in a new hive box, called a nuc (short for nucleus, since it is the nucleus of a new hive.) The trick is that you put the nuc box above the hive you took all these frames from with a queen excluder between them. (The excluder is a wire grate sized such that only worker bees can crawl through, exluding the queen.) That way, the worker bees can go up and tend the brood, but the queen is kept with the original hive.

After 24 hours, you just take the new box off the top of the hive and place it on its own. Presto, you've got a new beehive. The nurse bees tending the brood will stay with the nuc. You have to wait about 5 weeks or so to verify that the new hive has successfully produced a new laying queen.We can confirm that when we see new egg hatched in the comb. We might make a couple more splits from other hives, depending on how they build up in the next few weeks.

The photo above shows the split housed in a nuc box placed over the hive from which it came.

Mad Bikes

2009-05-05T21:38:00.004-04:00

For the past couple of years I've been involved with a bunch of bike related organizing here in the Mad River Valley. I got started by organizing "Bike-to-Work/School/Market" days concurrent with National Bike-to-Work day. That led into joining a fledgling group organizing around transportation issues here in the Valley called Valley Moves. One of the projects to grow out of Valley Moves is a free bike program, which had its trial run last summer. There were some hic cups, but the project was as successful as could be hoped.

Thanks to many volunteers, the Mad Bikes are out on the street once again. I find myself drawn to the project despite my uncertainty about what it achieves. At the very least, it puts our area on the map as a bike supportive, bike friendly place.

Last evening I spent a couple of hours tuning up some freshly painted bikes, numbered them and then put them out on the racks around town.

The one in the photo is my favorite. Eminently practical.

s24o

2009-04-27T09:05:00.009-04:00

Last spring Nancy asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Without hesitation, I said "I want to go on a s24o with our friends". This gut response was right on. We put it out there, everyone was gung-ho, we made it happen, and it was a blast

So, this year we went for it again. My sister Eliza's family, our pals Sally, Jeremy, their daughter Anda, along with Nancy and I all got together for an amazingly fun overnight camping/biking trip, known as an s24o (pronounced ess-two-four-oh, which stands for "sub twenty-four hour overnight"). The concept is to gather with friends after work, bring the minimal amount of stuff you need to camp out for a night, head off somewhere not too far way to camp and have a great time. The point is to do an adventure that can all happen in the span of less than 24 hours; make it manageable, have fun with a minimum of required prep, and be able to get back to your responsibilities without having to take time off. In reality, we've put more organization into these overnights then one might otherwise do because kids are involved coupled with a desire to live it up with our meals.

The magic of the event is the almost palpable sense of adventure that kicks in as soon as we gather. The kids are all excited because its something that is fun for them, but also because they see all us adults similarly excited about the trip. There's gear and stuff, taking pictures, getting ready, camaraderie, and nice spring weather. Its easy to feel good with all this in place.

Both years we've kept the ride manageable since we're hauling a lot of combined luggage between kids and stuff. That said, we've found some really great spots that feel really far away but are not more then 5 or 6 miles from whichever town.

Saturday morning started off with rain, which was a little worrying but proved to be inconsequential. My thought went to the large percentage of leather Brooks saddles amonst us; I worried we'd be abusing our soaked seats on the return trip. As it turned out, it didn't rain as much as it seemed from inside the tent and within an hour of getting up the sun was streaming through our campsite, warming us all and drying out our stuff. More good food and coffee put us in good shape for the ride home, which included a stop at a great yard sale.

This year lived up to the enjoyment we felt last year. Friends and family -excellent spirits one and all-, some rugged riding, beautiful locations, and great food. I can't imagine anything better for my birthday.

file:///Users/dave/Desktop/Petersen_S240s.pdf

Making Yogurt

2009-04-23T22:50:00.006-04:00

One of my absolute favorite things is to ride my bike about a 1/2 mile from here with an empty 2 gallon container and buy milk from the farm around the corner. This used to be something of a quasi-legal purchase, but now it is pretty much legit. The issue is that the milk being sold is raw milk and there is a limit to the quantity that can be sold from the farm its self. Anyway, the pleasure is in the simple and direct trip to the farm, buying wholesome milk and bringing it home. Elementally good stuff.

When I get home with the milk we make yogurt. If you've never made yogurt it would surprise you how simple it is: Heat milk to 190, let it cool to 110. Put in a jar and add a tablespoon of live culture yogurt, keep it warm (we put ours in a cooler with a hot water bottle) for about six hours and presto, you've got yogurt. We make about two gallons at a time and it seems to keep just fine, in part because the heat of the milk creates a slight seal when its put in the mason jars.

You can use the last of your current yogurt as starter for your next batch. I've always hoped that we could get to a "multigenerational" iteration, but we seem to frequently finish off one batch and then need to go out and get a store bought variety to start the next batch.

Spring Rides

2009-04-19T22:05:00.004-04:00

Last evening I rode from home here in Waitsfield to the contra dance in Montpelier. It felt great. In fact I really felt like I was just getting into my stride as I was rolling into town. I saw wild turkeys, dead deer, live deer, hunter-y looking guys watching deer, ducks, and the Mad and Winooski rivers. It was really pleasant.

Apparently I left my rear light on because an announcement was made at the break at the dance saying how the typical routine is to mention that there is a car in the parking lot with it's cab light on, but in this case it was a pleasant opportunity to announce that a bicycle rider had left his or her light on.

This morning, Jeremy, Anda, Nancy and I met and rode down to Moretown to Lize and Randy's to celebrate Maia's birthday. It again felt great to be out on bikes with friends. I spent a bunch of time this spring cleaning and revamping the drive trains on both Nancy's and my bikes. The pay off is in the clean smooth quite pur as we rode along. There still a little tweaking to do, but for the most part the bikes are in good shape. I need to fix the pannier that I made for Nancy as well.

So, great friends, great place to live, a little beekeeping, great dance, solid bikes, family celebration, nice weather... I can't ask for much more.

Contra Dancing

2009-03-30T08:50:00.006-04:00

Contra dancing is what brought Nancy and I together. We first crossed paths at Falcon Ridge and then met again at a chance encounter at a coffee shop a hundred miles and a day away.

I got the contra dancing bug about 11 years ago. I was living in western Massachusetts and was somewhat reluctantly dragged to a contra dance. To my surprise that evening was something like falling in love for me. I felt a powerful draw and knew I had to keep doing this. The music, the community, the sense of history, the simple steps, the general sense of shared enjoyment, and the fact that this was people making their own entertainment in a porous arrangement of musicians and dancers.

I became a full-on dedicated dancer for many years; driving to festivals and weekend events, not to mention getting to local dances on a steady basis. In the meantime, I became friends with many 0ther dancers, steadily became better at dancing, and came appreciate the music more and more. I wouldn't say that dancing became the center of my life, rather that it filled out and enhanced my life. It offered a missing part that I'd never quite know wanted to be filled.

Soon after Nancy and I got together, we moved up to Vermont and soon became involved in the dance scene up here and in short order had assumed shared responsibility for organizing the Burlington Queen City Contras dance with a number of other folks. I've now been the booker for that dance for about six years and Nancy is the president of our little organization. Its been a tremendously rewarding experience to nurture what was a fairly weak dance into an event that has vibrancy and an invested community of regular dancers. Helping put on the dance has deepened my relationship with contra community; I'm in touch with musicians, think a lot about how to improve the dance, and put a lot of volunteer effort into making it all happen. We don't travel so much anymore to get to far away dances, but we're out at Montpelier and Burlington all the time.

In the last couple of years, Nancy has been learning to call for dances (all contra dances are "called" by a person who teaches the dance and prompts the moves once the dance starts). She's gotten really good at it and is increasingly more comfortable on stage. Its been a joy to watch and it sort of amazes me to see her up there doing her thing.

My sense is that people perceive contra dancing as a relic of the past, which it certainly can be, but for me it is a thriving and evolving creative form of expression. Contra dancing has tremendous power to bring people together in a unique environment that fosters a special brand of fun and creativity.

The video clip is from a dance at Montpelier. Will Mentor is calling and Beeswax Sheepskin are playing. The band playing played at our wedding dance--it rocked!

Inspiration

2009-03-26T22:56:00.025-04:00

These two videos are a two-part British railway promotional film from 1955 depicting a group of cyclists taking the train out to the countryside for a day of adventure, food and fun.

The story depicted in these films epitomizes the glory of riding a bike for me: a spirit of exploration, camaraderie, travel, and going at a pace that feels good; a celebration of fresh air, the landscape, the weather, challenges, friendship, and the satisfaction of a rewarding meal after the day's effort. In the post-war era before the car became ubiquitous, this sort of outing was not unusual. You might suggest that its a bit nostalgic, but I think there's something to be taken from this example that contrasts with with contemporary notions of what it means to ride a bike. There's no proving anything.

Last year's Tour de Farm in Shoreham was not unlike this cinematic story, at least in spirit: a day enjoying food, bikes, beautiful country, friends, weather, and a great meal at the Shorham Inn to top it off. I'm already looking forward to this year's ride.

The bikes in these films have luggage, fenders, lights to meet whatever the day (or night) may bring. On top of that, you'll notice some very stylish and comfortable clothes. Its also worth calling attention to the very fact that these folks can easily board a train with their bikes. That's what we call multi-modal sustainable transportation nowadays.

Enjoy!

House 2.0

2009-03-22T12:04:00.005-04:00

We've started a new blog focused primarily on our house building process. You can check it out here.

We'll continue to post here, same as usual, but the house is a big focus and it makes sense to start a separate blog for that process.

Life amidst cold

2009-03-12T22:34:00.008-04:00

To my utter delight, there are little green shoots of something coming up in the cold frame.

Rather late last fall I scattered seed of various hardy early season plants such as mache, spinach, and, I think, mesclun mix. My plan being that when the light gets strong enough and the temperatures start to moderate that they'll germinate and start growing when it feels right.

After a couple of months of total darkness from snow cover I shoveled off the cold frame sometime last month and have been trying to keep it clear since.

A week or two ago I opened it up to see what there was to see, and lo and behold, there are little shoots coming up. I won't know for a while what's they are; for all I know it may be some hardy weed, but I suspect it's something we are going to be happy to eat. If we get some early season greens I'll be more then happy.

There is something magical A.) about the fact that seeds sense when it is time to commence their journey towards the sun, and B.) that with the use of a cold frame you can make this bit of magic happen when it would otherwise be impossible, and lastly C.) that the thing that grew from the seed usually gives you a ton more seeds to repeat the process.

I might be tempted to think that growing would start to become routine after doing it for a bunch of years, but there is something that is always exciting about the advent of new life humbly but determinedly reaching towards light.

Guest Bike

2009-03-03T19:55:00.010-05:00

I'm currently visiting my friend Parker in Santa Monica, having left Nancy in San Francisco two days ago to continue visiting friends and family there.

Before we flew out, I was somewhat anxiously looking on the LA Craigslist for a suitable bicycle to buy that I could ride while visiting. I found a couple of fun bikes, but something was feeling a little bit chaotic and ill conceived about the plan. Parker also pointed out that it'd be something that he couldn't maintain responsibility for should his living situation change. He also suggested that there was his aunt's bike on hand already which I was free to ride. Half jokingly, I quipped "Don't even mention that thing!", with a vague memory of a clunky ill-fitting, poorly outfitted, and semi functional old bike.

On a previous trip out here I sent my bike ahead of my arrival in order to have a familiar set of wheels to get around with. It cost about $40 each way and in the end felt worth it despite the expense - we had some fun adventures in the mountains and up the coast. Since then, the costs of shipping have gone up and the effort of disassembling, packing and shipping feels cumbersome, not to mention wasteful.

Having abandoned the buy-a-bike scheme as not right, I figured we'd work something out or just not bike. In fact, Parker's aunt's bike has served ably as a guest bike for my visit. Its a Schwinn Mesa Runner, a no-frills old "hybrid" that has been surprisingly suitable and fun. It wins little in terms of style, but it works well and it has proved to be versatile and comfortable. We've gone rough riding in the Santa Monica mountains, traveling through the LA streets for errands, and its just been a fun experience. Discovering that it has some LED lights in addition to a rear basket was just icing. Its great to get over a little of my bike snobbery; bikes are bikes, and of course they vary widely in purpose and quality, but on an elemental level the bicycle is a beautiful machine with an inherent elegance that is unassailable.

The experience has led me to thinking about guest bikes.

In my perfect world, it would be customary to keep an extra bike (or two) on hand for guests. In many cases this happens already because people often have an extra bike hanging around by default. In the same way that it is customary to keep a guest room, friends would feel comfortable knowing they have a reasonable set of wheels waiting for them while visiting. For all I know there may be a "guest bike" movement afoot already; if not, here's putting it out there: Consider keeping an extra bike on hand for guests, or make arrangements to borrow one.

Fall Sailing Trip Revisited

2009-02-23T09:30:00.000-05:00

This video is a little snippet of the sailing Parker and I did last October on Cape Cod. In this particular clip we are sailing around Pleasant Bay in Chatham. It's a little outdated at this point, but what the heck. For the most part we had great fall weather and got to experience some pleasurable sailing without any serious mishaps. The boat held up just fine and we left feeling excited for the next adventure.

Our original plan was to actually sail around Cape Cod, but as the time arrived, it was more and more clear that we'd be biting off more then we should. In the end we did lots of little sails that included sailing up through Woods Hole against the tide. The passage through Woods Hole is famous for it's powerful currents; being in a small boat with a good wind we were able to sort of skirt from nook to nook and sort hopscotch across currents and plan our next move. It took about two hours to travel the 1/4 mile through the hole. The fun was in the unlikeliness of doing what we did.

The one regret is the anxiety we put Nancy's parents through. They were our hosts and were reasonably concerned for our welfare given the season and the short days and such. Its one thing to know you are fine despite the fact you are still sailing in the dark, its another thing to communicate that to your worried hosts! Next time I'll do a better job of that.

Parker and I have always bonded around this sort of adventure, and our experiences last fall only whet our appetites for more, be it on bikes, in a canoe, or on a sailboat.

Motion

2009-02-19T20:09:00.001-05:00

When my little sister Anna was still a kid she got a puppy, who she named Motion. That was back roughly 14 years ago. Anna is no longer a kid, and Motion is no longer a puppy. He is now a benevolent elder in and around our home. Strictly speaking he lives next door at my parent's place, but he spends copious amounts of time up at our place. We've come to love him completely. He's a sweet dog and it is bittersweet kind of love because he is quite an old man, though he still has the spirit of a happy teenager.

We have a littany of names that we seem to call him. They vary by the day, the mood and the season, as well as any particular activities or events. These include Moesh, Smoesh-Dog, Super Dog, Moe, El Moe (said with a deep Spanish accent), Super Moe, Moesh Dog, Super Smowsh, Moeshfoot, Mudfoot, Snowfoot, Snoweater, Super Sniffer, Happy Dog, Bomb Dropper, Scratchfoot, Super Sleeper, Waterdrinker... you get the idea.

All Hail Lord Moesh!

One Car

2009-02-11T23:01:00.007-05:00

Nancy's old Subaru bit the dust a little over a month ago while we were traveling on our way back from Christmas/New Years on the Cape. The Subaru was a great car that served us well, but it didn't add up to put in the repairs, so we had it hauled off to car heaven.

That means that we now have one car, my trusty 1990 240 Volvo wagon. (Pictured with Nance amidst the splendor of the Nebraska praire about 6 years ago.) It has 287,000+ miles and it and it still runs just fine. It looks pretty rough these days with missing bits of trim and rust creeping about, but it runs reliably.

That means we are now a one car family. This situation has worked out well so far since I've been mostly focused on house stuff and Nancy frequently commutes with a regular arrangement to work. Not having a car at hand all the time has encouraged me to do a bit more cold weather biking then I'd otherwise do, which is great.

It'll always be a fascination of mine to envision that we could live without a car. I read about folks who do it in urban areas and I feel envious. Living in a rural area with steep terrain and serious winters tends to work against that possibility, but it is a compelling dream nonetheless.

When the Subaru died we had a discussion about whether only having one car could work and in the end it we concluded that just because we might have two cars does not mean we have to use both of them, but the option is there when we need it. While this is true, having two cars encourages the temptation to avoid creative solutions to getting around, and its those creative solutions I'm curious about.

I'm not sure what we'll do in the long term, but for the moment, one car is working pretty well.

No car? Well, that's another story.

Bees in Winter

2009-02-03T12:06:00.011-05:00

Like most living creatures, bees need to go to the bathroom, at least occasionally. In order to do that they need to leave the hive. In order to leave the hive it needs to be somewhere in the range of 40-45 degrees.

That can be a tough set of criteria here in Vermont.

Yesterday was the first day that temps had moved above the 30's since Christmas and the bee's took advantage of it. You can see in the second photo the little yellow splats. Well, that is what you think it is - in bee colors.

When it is cold the bees cluster in a ball shape in the hive in order to maintain a temperature in the upper 80's. Its amazing that with minimal-to-no insulation a bunch of bugs can huddle together and keep themselves warm and healthy when temperatures can reach as low as the 20's below zero.

We have 7 hives, and it is always an anxious wait to see how they are doing come the early warm spring days when they start to fly again. From walking by and listening close with our ears we can hear that all the hives are well with one exception that seems to have died. Thats unfortunate, but not unexpected. Come a warm day, we'll take the food reserves (honey in the comb) from the dead hive and parcel it out among the remaining hives.

House Plans

2009-01-26T13:05:00.004-05:00

We've been living in the yurt for about 5 1/2 years. Its been an excellent experience from the very start; we wanted to create a place quickly that would allow us flexibility in the future. In that respect, it is just what we've needed. We've learned a lot: how little square footage can work, what sort of space feels good, what we appreciate about the land we are on, etc...

In the last couple of years we've been working on plans to move on from the yurt into a permenant home. I've spent the last two summers working on building crews in order to feel comfortable building our place. I've learned a lot. There are certainly areas I'll want help with, but I feel pretty comfortable with process.

Our site is not ideal; the land slopes gently downwards towards the north and there is the garage and breezeway which sit squarely along the south edge of the property sort of claiming the best southern exposure. I've struggled with how to best work with what we have and there doesn't seem to be a really great solution, just the best given the elements in place.

As it happens, Nancy's uncle Dave gave me a day's consultation/design work with an architect friend of his as a Christmas gift. We have plans for him to come up from Boston in a couple weeks and walk through the challenges with us, and we are grateful for the opportunity.

Despite not having the site stuff nailed down, I've been working on plans given certain assumptions about where we might site the house. Things could change, but it feels good to be working on the house design. We've lived in 480 sq. ft. for a long time, but there are shortcomings to our present situation that we can address with the house. It feels good to be working towards making this happen.