Long Grey Light

Summer Solstice
This year so cool and grey

Fighting the MOOOORE Monster

When one lives a transient existence it's relatively easy to keep possessions few. If it won't fit in the van when we move on to the next farm or adventure, we don't keep it. But now, we find ourselves with a dwelling of our own again and the MOOOOOORE Monster is rearing it's ugly head. (You know that voice of American affluence which tells us we need to consume more stuff. Then we look around, we see fisheries and every other resource being rapidly depleted, and we must know that our greed and insatiable appetite for MOOOORE is to blame).
I really need to have food growing outside our apartment, so I want to go buy pots for a nice patio garden. Our dining room set consists of storage totes, pillows and blankets. I think things would be easier if we had a table to sit at. I would write more if I had a comfy desk or even a table to sit at. Dylan thinks we could organize things better if we had some shelves and wall hooks. We could go to Value Village or Goodwill and re-purpose items for these wants. But then that would be a couple hundred bucks less for our next adventure, and a hundred pounds more stuff to get rid of.
I'm reading a great book which I highly recommend. It's called "Simple Prosperity -Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle" by David Wann.
The past year of evaluating our goals and priorities and ultimately walking away from a conventional life has shown us the line between needs and wants.
So I'll take pride in my food packaging containers-turned -food- growing- containers. As I sit down on the floor (like millions of people around the world), I give thanks for the bountiful food and community and things that ultimately make life richer.

Drill, Baby, Drill!

Every time I hear about the Gulf Oil catastrophe I hear the 2008 McCain / Palin suppoters shouting "Drill, Baby Drill" . I wonder if they still think MORE OIL DRILLING is the answer to our nation's economic problems?
On the other side, those of us who know the perils of our oil addiction-What drastic changes to our lifestyle would we honestly make if it could end the insane wars (environmental and political) for oil?

Here a farm, there a farm, here a friend, there a friend.......

Now we're back on the rainy side of the mountains, learning about sustainable poultry operations. While the climate is less than ideal, the people and education are great.
A very important lesson we've been learning over the last 8 months is the importance of community. There's something very special about this Northwest food community. This year's "Farmer Fisher Chef's Collaborative" keynote speaker was Poppy Tooker from New Orleans. In her speech, she brought us to tears saying, "When disaster strikes, or things get tough, your food friends will be there to help you." This has certainly been true for us.
Thank you to all of our food friends who have been there to help us and educate us and advise us along this rocky road we've chosen!
We hope that soon we will find the stable place we've been looking for and be able to help others find their way.

Autumn 09

Well, we ARE doing the farmy stuff we've been yearning for, we just didn't end up quite where we thought we would. There's a very long story here, but to summarize, we gave up everything except what would fit in our mini-van. We had a great voyage south, planning to work on a farm in Mexico. We made it there, and as you may guess from the barbed wire and toilet with no walls, it was very far from what we were hoping for. We weathered an intense tropical storm in our tent. (Thanks REI for making good gear) We had no running water most of the time, no electricity any of the time, very limited cooking fuel. Several kilometer trek through flooded arroyo awash in every type of human and animal waste imaginable just to fetch clean drinking water and dry goods.
So now we are in NORTH North America. We're out in the country, we got to do some harvest activities on a couple farms here. We're surrounded by farms. We're hunkered down until spring.
Happy Winter Holidays to all! A huge thanks to all of our supporters who helped us get out of the city. We lost our contact book and would really like to be in touch with many of you. So if you read this, please drop us a line.

Final Hours/ American Refugees

Today and tomorrow are our last days. Honestly we are giddy with delight. We are so excited to go get on with the life we've been yearning for for so long. That's the good news.
The not so good news is that as of right now there will be no more GreenGo Food, and we will be jobless, homeless people adrift for several weeks until we reach the farm.
Looking at the cold hard facts, we are in a way American Refugees. Things are very bare bones, but there are others in much worse shape than us.
In the classic Fable The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, the lesson is that when you follow your dreams, the Universe conspires to help you. The Universe has definitely conspired to help us with our Farm Dream...we're almost on our way.
Thank You to the folks who've stopped by our Sidewalk Sale and Fire Sale to buy stuff and help us with travel $$. Thank You to our Ballard community who has been so supportive.

Everything must Go!

Part of being the change we would like to see in the world means letting go of all of the material clutter we have been collecting and dragging around, and housing for so long. Six years ago, we downsized keeping only what we could drive cross country in our small pick-up with a small trailer. Since then we've again collected a lot of stuff. Over the past few weeks we've taken massive amounts of stuff to Goodwill, but we still have lots of things which have some value and may be of interest to others.
We had a good friend named Will who we met working at Union Bay Cafe back in 2000. Will was our minister who married us, he was also a great friend, my fondest memories were of many hours spent walking around the city and parks while I was very pregnant. Will waited around to see Cypress born, then took his own life due to an ongoing battle with depression. In his "note" left behind, he left some valuable words of wisdom, as well as most of his worldly posessions to our family. When we cleaned out his apartment, we assimilated most of his belongings with ours. Much of it was good stuff which we've used, but a lot was good stuff which we have not used but only dragged around out of sentimental value. A whole set of lovely dishes, this beautiful Asian Motiff carved chess set, surround sound computer speakers.......
Outside our shop, we are having a "sidewalk sale" of sorts. We're not really selling things, but putting them out and asking people to donate whatever they feel like toward our moving fund.