Petrified Forest is a pretty neat little National Park! We spent the first half of Monday exploring the colorful petrified wood and the rainbow-striped hills. This park was small, which y’all know I prefer, and packed a punch. For others like me, who don’t know much about petrified wood, it comes from ancient trees that have turned to stone! 200 million years ago, a tree might fall into a river. Over time, changing water levels…
I write you today from the road, per usual. The difference, though, is that we are not headed to another farm. Though we will never stop learning, we have officially finished the “internship” portion of our adventure! Over the past four months, we have lived at, worked on, and learned from 4 very different farms. Starting with the 166-acre, multi-family operation in Canada and ending with a 9-acre goat dairy in Arizona, we have collected…
This past week was pretty low key so this will be a short post. We completed our morning and evening chores each day, per usual. AC worked with Annabelle to muck stalls and rearrange the office. I made a few trips into town this week because I needed a more reliable WiFi connection for a couple of meetings. The farm has WiFi, but it’s slow at best. Not quite reliable enough to host a client-facing…
Y’all, its been a while since I shared an update–my apologies! Now I understand how some folks make a blogging their full-time job. Anywho, here we go… Saturday afternoon we headed into Phoenix as our last stop before heading to our next farm stay. I found this bar/restaurant that focused solely on mead, and since AC has talked about possibly making mead on our farm one day, I decided we needed to do a little…
We arrived at our third farm stay on Sunday, about midway between Santa Cruz and Monterey. We were greeted by Lorraine, our host, and her boyfriend, Ben. Lorraine gave us a quick orientation of her setup, then we unloaded the truck and settled into our bedroom. We’re in an actual house this time so the temperature is much easier to regulate than the yurt we were in at our last stop. The rooster, however, is…
This past Sunday was sheep shearing day! It was an adventure, to say the least. After AC and I got back from church, Andy (sheep shearer extraordinaire) arrived and we geared up to help wrangle sheep. Andy set up shop on some plywood that we put down under the lean-to end of the barn. He hung his shearing rig, which was surprisingly small, from a hook on the wall. Meanwhile, Samantha and I got to…
It was another fun-filled weekend in Oregon! The week was pretty typical with the exception of AC’s run-in with a yellow jacket nest as she was cutting down blackberry bushes. She got stung on the finger and one arm before she made out of the berry patch. Then, when she got to the yurt, one got her on the other arm. As she was heading to the main house for ointment, one got in her…
Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel, went to mass and then headed to Albany, OR for lunch with one of AC’s former Texas colleagues, Joy, who now works at Oregon State. Albany had a cute little downtown with restaurants, shops and boutiques. We wandered around for a bit while we waited for our table. We spent several hours visiting with Joy and discussing national parks. Joy, like us, loves traveling and hiking, especially…
Our first farm stay has come to a close and we could not have asked for a better experience. The Paradise Valley families welcomed us with open arms and taught us so much. From answering our endless questions to letting us join in on valuable hands-on experiences, Karla, Olivier, Paul, and Hiedi were patient and good-humored throughout our stay. Here’s a recap and some of the highlights from our stay at Paradise Valley Ranch:-AC got…
I cooked our rabbit tonight! I used this recipe with 2 small changes: Watch below for the verdict… Until next time, Charli