Views from my apartment

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The person you'd like to be...

Whenever S. and I go to southern Utah, she tells me the red rock makes her feel like the person she would like to be.

I have the same reaction to the water of the Puget Sound.  I sit at a Market cafe (my favorite is the Sound View) and my eyes lift up and over the water.  I can hear the seagulls and I can smell the fish from the market.  I feel like someone who is reflective, someone who has the confidence to take a few moments to think about things and contemplate a new idea.  That ever-present push to be someplace else goes away.  I am someone who can take the time to pause for the view or look into store windows, to marvel at a small city park, or take the longer road up the side street just to see where it goes.  It no longer matters so much that everything is on the way to where I need to be, because where I need to be is...right here.

I am not sure if this is the type of person S. becomes when she hits the red rock, but I think it is, or someone very much like it.  I also think this person is not as dependent on place as I once thought.  I become this person when I am near the Puget Sound because it is here that I have always taken the time to be that person.  Since I was 13 and rode the Seattle ferry to Bainbridge in my first outings by myself, to the time I'd take as a grad student to sit in the Market and enjoy the view.  This is the place I have always come to remind myself what it is like to slow down and think, savor, recollect, and enjoy.

The funny thing is, this place could be anywhere, including my own home, if I work to endow it with that same sense of importance, the same reverence and gratitude that I reserve for this place.  Shouldn't our homes be the place we become the person we'd like to be?  Even in Utah...especially in Utah...being able to sit and gaze at Ben Lomond or Mt. Ogden, which can be done from nearly every block in the city.  Letting that vast mountain take your eyes up and over, giving you that sense of calm that you are the type of person who can take a moment to think, to contemplate, and to go out of your way to see something new in your home town.

Much of these thoughts, I think, come from reading Wallace Stegner and his appreciation for all things in the West.  An eloquent essay on Capitol Reef will be followed by an equally thoughtful and moving piece on Salt Lake City.  And you suddenly realize that the only difference between your house and a national park is that you live there.

Some people would love to have a houseboat in Seattle.  Some of those same people would probably love to have a house in the Utah mountains.

Aren't I the lucky one?

Sabbatical Officially Begins Today

I've arrived in Seattle, to start a year of re-awakening and re-envisioning my professional life. I'm here to start a new research project capitalizing on the wealth of data on extrasolar planets. I plan on writing about this to help me document my year-long sabbatical.

To help you and I remember them, here are my goals:

1. Complete new, original research.
2. Write a book proposal.
3. Renew my interest and excitement in teaching and learning.

But at the moment, there is a glassblowing studio down the street that offers CLASSES!  Must focus!  Wait, a class in glassblowing would help with #3.  Hmmmm.

Enough! To help direct my energies, I have set about to secure the necessary components of city life. In the last two hours, I have located:

1. A really good Thai restaurant.

2. A grocery store that sells "food". More on the quotes in a later post.

3. Very hoppy beer. It is the Northwest, after all.

4. Coffee.

Tomorrow morning, I plan on waking early (at 6:05, pony feeding time) to explore the neighborhood before making my way to UW for my first of many scientific meetings.  I plan to walk the 3.8 miles, weather permitting.  I need to do something to make up for the lack of stall mucking and other farm chores I usually do.

This is the strangest transition I've experienced.  This morning, Stacy and I were drinking tea while our four horses basked in the sun, our two dogs wrestled in the grass, our ten chickens rooted for insects, and our 12 baby chicks waited to go outside.  Now, a mere 12 hours later, I am listening a one poor, barking dog that has been left in the apartment all day, and I am completely alone.  No dogs to feed, no ponies to ride, no eggs to collect, no partner to share it with.

There was a time when I really thought city life was for me, but now I am not sure how people can stand it.  Seattle is a good place, far better than most, where people have gardens and go to great lengths to keep their dogs and cats in the city.  But what will I do in the morning?  Maybe I can get a part time job throwing fish in the market.  That is almost like having a farm, right?

This makes me think of S's peeps in Pasadena, who can raise enough food for 4+ people on a 10th of an acre.  Or the fact that the people of Taiwan grow a large fraction of their own produce, in the city.  Right now, there is an empty pot of the veranda of my apartment.  It begs to be filled with something living.  Maybe I'll buy some herbs to grow in it for the month I am here.

Just another year...

April 1st marks the one year anniversary of moving to the homestead. Recall, getting the farm was a five year plan. Huh.

Here is what we took on this year:

1. Bought a new house and farm

2. Renovated the barn

3. Fenced the paddocks

4. Built the arena

5. Renovated the barn

6. Sold the old house (one year later, nearly to the day)

In most circles, that would be enough for one year. But wait, there is more:

7. S took on her first major book project

8. S started her second major book project

9. S ran the Center for Science and Math Education

10. S saved the Center for Science and Math Education by keeping it afloat long enough to get some additional funding

11. I was favorably reviewed for tenure and promotion

All of that, and we still managed to increase the chicken flock by 10, get some raised beds built, and start planning for the upcoming garden.

I am sure I am forgetting something, but it has been a very busy year. Let's hope we can settle down to a more reasonable pace!

Next step: Goats!

Sold the house today

We sold the old place today, after nearly a year. I had no idea how much that was weighing on my mind. I feel so...relaxed.

And I am all the way home.

Now, we can start moving in to the new place!!!




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Location:Bellwether

Snow today, mud tomorrow!

I woke up to a few inches of snow on the farm today, and it just kept coming. Until about 1 PM or so. In the end, we got about 5-6 inches, significantly more than the 1-3 inches predicted in the news.

And it is warm today...near 36 during the snow and now upwards of 40+ in brilliant sunshine. Immediately, I think "40 in February!? It must be something out of the ordinary" and then I look at this:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=climate+ogden+utah

and it looks like 40's in February not uncommon. If this keeps up, the snow should be gone by tomorrow. Then, mud!

Smokey escaped the yard today and went on walkabout. I only worry about this because he has a thing for chickens and I am afraid he'll go after our neighbor's ducks. Also, I worry they might shoot him if he does. So I went after him. There is nothing as maddening as a dog that looks at you, right AT you, and then runs away. Grrrr.

Captain eventually got out as well, but he came to find me instead of running after Smokey. I was very proud of him for that. I am also proud of myself for remembering that it does no good to get mad at your dog after you catch him, since that will just make him less likely to come to you next time. So, when he finally did come to me, I praised him and took him home.

And then went out and repaired the fence.

After that adventure, I got a shot of the new addition (see above).

Nearly a year...

...to the day that we first looked at our "farm". Here is a link to the first "Before And Afters" taken in early April of last year:

http://daysreprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/before.html

Ironically, the date of that post is the same day that the sale of our old house should be finalized. Amazing. When I think that just over a year ago we had planned to stay at the old place "forever" and now...here we are.

Some things have stayed the same: we can still walk to the bus stop, we still drive about the same (or slightly less) than we used to. We still knit, and bake, and make our own meals from food we grew ourselves.

Some things have changed. Most notably, I woke up this morning to find that the mother of all our beef meals this year (#6) gave birth to another calf, her 10th in a long career as a range cow. Dale stood in the barn with his binoculars to make sure the afterbirth came out ok and that the calf took its first suck "on the tit", as he says. The cow stood and mooed while the calf stumbled about, just barely two hours old.

It's raining today, and the calf and cow refuse to go in the loafing shed, despite Dale's best efforts to make it accommodating. He says "That cow would sooner fly to the moon then get into that shed". Sounds familiar...

I asked Dale if there was anything I could do to help. He says "Naw. Mostly when we try to help these things out, we just end up causing more trouble." Also sounds familiar.

So, we let her be, stood at a distance, and watched. She knows what to do.

I realize looking back on these posts, and those from S, that I haven't logged what has been going on this first fall and winter on the farm. I am sure I'll regret that later. But we received an offer on the house this week, a good one, and suddenly this block in my head, the piece of me that has been both here and there, just let go. And I realized that this last year has been very hard, and, in a way, I've been grieving for what we left behind. We put so much work into our first house in Utah. Painting and renovating the house until it was just the way we liked it, planting trees that had just started to really grow, harvesting our first few years of gardens, raising our first chickens. We did all of that, the two of us, all by ourselves. And it was a lot of work! To just let that go, no matter what we get in return, is just hard.

But now that it is going, we have our farm. Something both of us have always wanted. In the rain this morning, filling the troughs, watching the horses, seeing Dale's new addition to the herd, seeing all of the very hard work we've already got into this place (in real terms, lots more in one short year than we ever did in eight years at the old place) I realized something very important. I am never moving again. Everything we plant here, every improvement to the land, every time we amend the soil or fix a fence, we'll be doing it so that this place will be a better place in five years, ten years, and twenty years down the line. This is our farm and our home.

And I don't have it in me to leave all that hard work behind again.

So, here we are.

It rained today, in mid february. The temperature is in the 40's. The horses are outside with their blankets on, muddy and happy. The dogs are wet, filthy, and also happy. Because of the rain, I can wait another day to move the manure heap, and I am happy. And I'm finally home.