Dog Days of Summer

I'd like to say that this summer has been full of dog days, but it hasn't; not one bit. We moved from our apartment near Ithaca to a farmhouse in the rural country of Western NY.
Once we got all of our things over to the house, we had to bring our animals. We had our dog, Brian's parents' dog (they were on vacation), and our cat, Maggie. Maggie hadn't been in a car much, so she was pretty freaked out the whole way, but we got her here safe, and without too many scratches.

It's been quite a change, and it required a lot of work. The house that we moved into wasn't finished. It is the oldest home in this area (first in the settlement), and not much has changed since then. We had to literally gut the place and start over in most of the rooms. We have enjoyed the work, but we're starting to wish we could just settle down. Thankfully, we only have trim left to do, so that won't be long. We will be adding before and after photos (we didn't get all of the before pictures, but we've got some) soon.
I'm loving living in the country again (we lived in the "country" at our last apartment, but it wasn't country to us. They don't have apartments in the real country. I wake up with the rooster every day (he's crowing right now), and I no longer sit at a desk. Oh, I forgot to mention that I left my job! Wahoo! I loved my job, don't get me wrong, but over the last 2 1/2 years, I discovered I don't do so well with the daily grind. I've decided to give farming a try.

I love it. Working on the house has left me not much opportunity to farm, but soon I'll be able to pick it up heavily. Looking forward to it!

New York, NY

Recently, my friend Emily and her partner Rebecca came to New York City. Well, with Emily only 4 hours away, I just had to go! Emily and I were roommates our sophomore year of college, and we have stayed close now for 9 years. Emily's one of those friends that I never feel out of touch with, and when we do talk after a stint of not being in touch, it's like we were never separated. She's the best.

Anyway, Brian and I finally figured out a good way to get to New York City. We stopped at the park and ride several miles from the city, parked, and took the train in. It was so much easier! And just as expensive (there's just no cheap way to get to Manhattan), so that's going to be our route from here out! It went quicker than expected, so we killed some time stewing around Madison Square Garden.

As always, we did get a little overwhelmed with the general hubub of the city and found refuge in a Starbucks. Anything familiar is welcome in a place as big as the big apple.

Then we met up with Emily and Becca, and set out for the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). We rode in a genuine NY taxi! They are amazing drivers. Seriously. I might sound super juvenile being so excited about such a simple things, but it was fun!

Here are some pictures from the MoMA. Emily is an artist, so she loved the museum. She's a photographer, and a good one. Check out her facebook page here.

There was so much stuff in the MoMA! We probably spent 5 hours in that museum, and we were going through it pretty quickly.

I look like such a country bumpkin next to those two stylish ladies.

Isn't this head cool?

Video Art...it was pretty weird stuff.

I actually really liked this piece. It represents aging, and how we are elastic to start, and we slowly sag over time.

Candy art. You were even allowed to take and eat some!

More video art, but much more understandable.

This piece of art cracked me up.

They actually have the Leatherman Wave on display there. That is Brian's favorite tool in the whole wide world, and he would definitely agree that it is a work of art.

Jackson Pollock is my favorite modern artist. Anyone else can throw paint on a canvas and I would hate it, but he has a way with it. I just love his stuff.

Emily was trying to stay out of this picture, but I got her in it! This hole in the drywall was actually supposed to be art. There's a line folks, and this piece crosses it.

I don't know the name of this artist, but I love everything he does. Always rural paintings, and the waves in the paintings are beautiful!

Monet's The Lilies. It was much bigger than I expected. This picture only captures about half of it.

VanGogh's Starry Starry Night. He's a particular favorite of ours. Brian went by VanGo growing up (short for VanGorder), so we like him. Also, his paintings are really beautiful.

Near the end my legs really started to hurt. I don't know why, but standing around in a museum is more tiring on my legs than just about anything else.

There's the clan! It was so much fun. We hung out in Central Park after the Museum. Always my favorite part of a NYC trip.

It was so much fun seeing Emily! We'll have a rendezvous soon when Brian and I make our way out west. Looking forward to it!

Graduation

 Last month, Brian graduated. He worked super hard to graduate in 3 years with a 4.0. Isn't he the greatest? Yes, he is.

Also, he is the cutest.

I kind of got a video of him walking across the stage:

Graduating from undergrad was exciting but a little anticlimactic since we've got Grad School looming in the fall, but one leg of the journey is done! The next one will be quicker atleast, and someday, yes, someday, we will be done being students.

REI Sale!

We took a trip to Boston recently. We do this 2x per year for one specific reason: the REI Garage Sale!!!!! Seriously, it's worth the drive. And, Boston is a cool place to visit, so we make it a long weekend.

We usually go to 3 REIs at each trip since the area REIs typically have their sales on the same day. We arrived at 5:00am at an REI we hadn't been to. It was in a large shopping complex.

There was no one else around, and there was eerie classical music playing on loudspeakers. It seemed like the perfect scene for a horror movie, but we enjoyed the soundtrack and the wait. It didn't turn out to be all that necessary to wait, but we consider that to be part of the experience.

We were hoping to get an aerodynamic car top cargo box. We're taking a long road trip this summer, and we're gonna need it b/c we're going to have a mattress in our car (car camping!). We got exactly what we wanted, and for WAY less than it would have cost brand new. Seriously these things go for $500-600, and we paid $120. Wahoo!

That find alone made the trip worth it.

We went up to the Gloucester area and checked out the Rocky Neck Art Colony.

Most of the studios were closed b/c their summer season hadn't started yet, but it was cool.

After that we went to Stage Fort Park, donned our newly purchased Vibram 5-finger shoes and rock scrambled.

We got them for $10 each, and man are they helpful in rock scrambling and such.

You can grip with you're toes! We weren't sure how we would like the separated toes, but for certain things I love them. We've been using them for swimming a lot lately (more on that later), and they're awesome! I feel a lot more secure climbing waterfalls and such.

We watched the fog roll in before we started the trek home.

On the way home, we made a stop at the Eric Carle Museum. You might wonder who Eric Carle is, but this picture should help clear that up:

Who hasn't heard of the Very Hungry Caterpillar?! Erica Carle is the illustrator of that book, and several other kids books you'd recognize. The museum turned out to be a waste of money (it just wasn't worth the cost), but we didn't know that until we were in there, so we made the most of it.

We drove the back roads for a good bit of the way back to Ithaca, and it was so much fun! We saw small towns and things that we totally would have missed if we had just jumped on I 90. I think we'll explore a little more of Massachusetts on our next trip!

Polyface Farm

One last post about our trip to Virginia. My favorite stop of the whole trip was to a "beyond organic" farm called Polyface Farm (The Farm of Many Faces).

This farm is owned by Joel Salatin. You may have heard of him. He's been featured in TIME magazine, Mother Earth News, Food Inc, and others. He manages his farm "beyond organically". An organic farm can still treat animals horribly, because organic only signifies that no "non-organic" pesticides and chemicals haven't been fed to the animals. At Polyface, Joel and his interns make sure the animals eat the food that is right for the animal (no corn for cows, for example), and they make sure their lifestyle is also as natural as possible. It's more healthy and fulfilling for all parties involved.

Here's their tour if you're interested: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/. The farm is open to visitors most of the year, so we gave ourselves a tour.

They were super helpful. We didn't burden them with many questions, but they were quick to offer explanations.

Coolest chicken coop ever! It's a trailer, so you can move it around easily.

The chickens (and all of the animals, for that matter), were very comfortable with human contact. They always came running in fact, which is refreshing.

The laying hens paired up with rabbits. He had a lot of symbiotic relationships around the farm. I learned so much.

The pigs...oh the pigs. I just love pigs. I can't wait to have some someday. These pigs were digging through compost as "pigaerators". They aid in the composting of manure and mulch while digging for fermented corn. They love it.

The other pigs were out in the woods foraging. They can clear a wood patch of all underbrush like nothing else. They were having so much fun.

There were several totally covered in mud. They excitedly ran over when we arrived, and shook their mud all over us. It was hilarious.

It was such a fun visit. I learned so much, and I plan to go back every season so that I can learn even more. Someday I want a farm like this one (but on a smaller scale probably).

Rural America

While we were visiting Shenandoah National Park, we made some other stops. We spent a good amount of time in the countryside of western Virginia (not West Virginia, just the western side of Virginia).

I fell in love with the area right away. It's very rural, but with an old-timey flare. All of the houses were old; the farms picturesque, and the animals happy. I could definitely handle more of that.

These people have it made. This little homestead was beautiful, separated by a beautiful creek from the road. This is the best depiction of my dream homestead I've ever found.

Here's the bridge and creek in front of their house.

Isn't this beautiful?!

We passed several small businesses selling "Antique" tables, made today! I still haven't figured out how to make an antique table today...

Anyway, we both fell in love with this area. We will definitely be back.