We're settling in in Missoula, MT, where I've come to study and practice writing, ecology, and sustainable agriculture in an environmental studies graduate program.
This summer, I spend my mornings working at the PEAS farm with about twenty other young people, and my afternoons working on a quilt of other projects.
John has moved out with me and secured a sweet job at a local nonprofit that gets high school students involved in research and field studies in Yellowstone, the Galapagos, Mexico, and Costa Rica.
We hope to spend our weekends hiking in the mountains, but so far it's been unusually rainy (my Wellies from the Grand Marais Recycle Store were well worth the quarter I paid for them and have kept at least my feet quite warm and dry in the muddy beds), so we've done things like can tomatoes (to ready ourselves for the big fall harvest ahead), make mozzarella (because it's so easy and delicious), and wait for our homebrew to be trucked out to us with my parents when they come out to visit us in July.
Every Friday, instead of working in the fields, we have a bit of classroom time about a certain aspect of farming (soils last Friday) and visit a working farmer or other member of the food system (Lifeline most recently). This past field trip was such an inspiring experience (something I tend to feel whenever visiting the homes, lives, studios, and lands of a practicing craftsperson or foodgrower).
Lifeline Produce has been functioning in some form since the late 1970's. Now run by Steve Elliot and Luci Brieger and two apprentices, they grow 9 acres in mixed vegetables, flowers, and herbs, plus 8 in hay for livestock (manure makers!), 29 acres in permanent pasture, a greenhouse, a hoop house, chickens, ewes, and a few beef cattle. Between them and a related, but separately-run dairy, stores in and around Missoula are stocked with delicious, local, wonderful food and plants. Hard work, ingenuity, and pursuing real, good things makes for a great life.
Fun!
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