Cait and Win's Grand Adventures WWOOFing USA

We found what we were looking for!!

2010-05-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

After we left Burnsville, NC we ventured into the beautiful Smoky Mountains where we backpacked for 4 days. We met up with our friends who are traveling across country as well and had a splendid time. Besides Caitlin falling every 10 minutes and breaking her finger, backpacking went really well. After the Smoky's we got in our van and headed to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We arrived at a farm called the Pickards Mountain Eco-Insitute which is an educational farm that leads workshops, field trips, kids camps and other events.

After three weeks here at Pickards we have found our community and new home. We plan to move here in October where we will begin creating a Pachamama Alliance East Coast Hub. Tim and Megan Toben, the co-founders of Pickards, are deeply involved with The Pachamama Alliance and want to turn Pickards into a Pachamama event and retreat center. We have committed to making this happen and will be living here for a while. This is SO exciting to us and is exactly what we have been looking for.

The farm provides most of the vegetables and is totally off the grid using a windmill and solar panels. There is also a well for water. Several other people live on the farm, some residents and some WWOOFers. We are in love with the farm and the beauty of North Carolina. It is soo green here with fireflies at night and hot sweaty days!

We will be finishing our trip with an internship in July for 6 weeks in Virginia then heading back to the West coast to say hello to you all before we leave again! We knew we were going to find something wonderful on this trip and we can't believe how all of our dreams are coming true. It's so awesome!

More pics.

2010-04-04T16:21:00.001-07:00

Pictures to Enjoy!

2010-04-04T15:55:00.001-07:00

Through the Winter and into Spring.

2010-04-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

We left Texas and went to Mount Ida, AR where we stayed with a couple for a week. The weather was not so great and we only accomplished a few things but the best part was we got to dig for our own crystals in a crystal mine. We moved on and stayed with a friends family outside of Little Rock, AR. (For those of you who know him, it was Larry Dean's family.) We had a great time chatting, watching the Olympics and seeing around the swampy part of Arkansas. From there went to Liberty, Tennessee where we stayed for a month and a half. Our internet was limited, hence the very delayed blog update, and phone reception was not so great either. We were staying in the back hollows of the Tennessee hills. There we got to watch the Spring unfold everyday and enjoy some time to ourselves. Our host was very friendly and giving. He has been a chef for many years and cooked the most amazing food! We met some great local people in Tennessee and put on an Awakening the Dreamer Symposium. We got to experience Nashville and see a couple concerts. This is a condensed version of Winter but it was a very long Winter and now are happy it is Spring.

We left Tennesse and finally officially made it to the East Coast here in North Carolina! We are three hours ahead of the West Coast and are up in the Appalachian mountains. It feels great to be in the mountains again and Spring is unfolding rapidly. The family we are staying with are really wonderful with two kids and two other WWOOFers. Their home is very sweet and we were put to work immediately!! We have created a potato bed, planted potatoes, planted carrots, garlic, onions, brussel sprouts, peas and mulched raspberries and cleared brush. Last week it was 80-90 degrees, which was just wonderful, and worked full 8 hour days on the land. We couldn't be happier!! It is such a gift that we get to experience this life and these people. We wouldn't rather be doing anything else.

Glass Center for Sustainability Overton, Texas

2010-01-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

Currently we are near Overton, Texas on a lovely farm. This is a 1300 acre property with a 100 acre lake and many large fields. This is the site of Daisy Bradfords oil discovery in 1930 where there is the biggest oil field in the lower 48 states. There are two and a half acres of thornless blackberries which we personally weeded and mulched. It is beautiful here and a lot of our work has to do with preparing for spring planting.

We have been on the road for 5 months now and are not broke yet! We will be continuing our journey East and hope to be in New York by July. We are doing very well and feel like this is exactly what we should be doing right now. We are now very used to life on the road and now consider our van our home. We meet very amazing people and see new and cool places all the time. Our idea of what America looks like keeps changing. We are now seeing what it is to live a self-sustaining life and that this is exactly what we want to create for ourselves. Being on the farms is a very grounded life with low stress and simple pleasures. Going into cities has become almost a shocking experience, fast and complex. It is exciting to move onto the next farm and next part of the season with its new task, people and places. We will be heading to a farm in Mount Ida, Arkansas on February 6th or 7th in the Ouachita National Forest where a lot of quartz is found. The most exciting events that have happened here was a ghost encounter and an amazing thunderstorm with tornado warnings!

Some Pictures to Enjoy

2010-01-10T07:12:00.001-08:00

Big Bend National Park, TX

One side is Mexico and the other is the U.S.

Carlsbad Caverns, NM

Mora, NM (Where we stayed for December and Christmas)

Beginning a New Year.

2010-01-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

Plans for January have frequently changed and keep continuing to do so. We are still very happy and so excited for our journey to continue into this new year. Currently we are near Las Cruces (still in New Mexico!), enjoying our visit with our friend Nicole and her grandparents farm. We are getting an interesting perspective here going from a small scale intensive organic farm to a large conventional farm that sells to places like Costco, Walmart and so on. The differences are huge, not just in size but in aproach. The bottom line is the driving force. There are migrant labors, pesticides, fertilizers, packaging and distribution. To say the least we think it is really interesting and great to see where a lot of our food comes from and what it takes to get a watermelon from the farm to the store to your table.

We will be leaving soon and heading to Texas for January. We will be stopping in Austin to visit friends and then on to a farm in East Texas until February. More to come...pictures included. Internet is not easy to come by here so we are doing our best to let you know how we are!

La Sierra Farm

2010-01-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

Life on La Sierra Farm was very peaceful and beautiful. We stayed three weeks and learned lots of new things while we were there. Winston got to explore some forestry and chain saw work. We both made our first very large book shelf that hung from the ceiling. Caitlin spent a lot of time seed collecting while sitting next to the fire in the Adobe. We learned to make bread, applesauce and canning. Our time there was a very full experience of learning, working and connecting with the land and the family there. It was a lot of fun because Winston got to reconnect with Marianna and Ania who are old friends.

Christmas was very mellow with a nice gift exchange in the morning and a potluck at the Hummingbird Ranch Community. We met some really great people and were very grateful for being welcomed into their home for the Holiday. This year was our first Christmas away from our immediate families and missed them. However the journey must go on.....

Goodbye Calliope and Our Journey Continues....

2009-12-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

We finished our amazing time at Calliope Collaborative with a nice home made pasta dinner and some fun photos. We spent the last few weeks of our time finishing the roof on the cold storage house, taking care of animals, finishing some stairs and doing small projects. We learned so much from this farm and have learned many skills to take with us to other farms. We had so much fun with this family and will miss them.

Our journey has continued to Mora, New Mexico which is about an hour and a half from the last farm going North into the mountains. It is about an hour South of Taos and at 7600 feet. Currently the snow is melting from and huge storm and we are happy in a small Adobe house with a wood burning stove. We will be here through Christmas (Mexico is not happening) and possibly through January. We will be switching off and on with the two sister farms here, La Sierra Farm and the Hummingbird Ranch Community. It is a very exciting time and we are blown away by the beauty here and possible future home for us.

We will update more soon with a video summing up our last farm and some pictures of the beautiful farm here!

Building a roof!

2009-11-24T18:05:00.000-08:00

We are currently in the process of building a straw bale cold storage for the farm here. We have been busy putting chicken wire around the straw so we can mud it and building a roof as you can see above for protection. We are learning how to build a roof which is a really good skill and having fun doing it! Soon we are going to put tin on top of the wood frame and then finish mudding the straw bale house once the night time temperatures are not so cold. Below Winston is cutting the edge of the roof framing.

Beans and Veggie's!

2009-11-24T17:43:00.000-08:00

Caitlin harvested most of the beans as you can see in this picture. This consisted of picking the pods off the vines and then crushing in bags. After crushing the pods she put them in a bucket and picked out the empty pods and the remaining beans in the pods. After this she waited for a good gust of wind to come and blow the empty pod remains away. You can see all the empty pods on the ground. Yay for beans!
This is one of the greenhouses where mostly chard, arugula, collards and mustards are growing. It is luscious and green and keeps us fed every night. Every morning we open each side of the greenhouse and pull off the remay cloth so the houses can warm up. Then at night we put the remay cloth back down and close the doors to keep in the heat and the plants don't freeze. This is just one of the greenhouses. The other greenhouse which is much longer has some chard, carrots, shallots that we just planted and beets.

Mudding a Straw Bale House

2009-11-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

Today we spent most of the day re-mudding a chicken straw bale house. We will finish the mudding this week and then start on the cold storage house next week. Here is a little sneak peak of mudding a straw bale house.

Herb Garden

2009-11-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

Here is a little video about the herb garden we made. More herbs will be planted when we get them!

Calliope Collaborative

2009-11-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

Our life at Gavilan has come to an end and we have moved Southeast of Santa Fe to a farm near Anton Chico, NM called Calliope Collaborative. It is much warmer here being 2000 feet lower with almost 80 degrees today! We are living in a yurt which is next to a passive solar straw bale house with solar panels and solar hot water. There is a family of 4 with the kids under 5 years old. They are a very sweet family with lots of energy and motivation. There are 6 acres of farm near the river and irrigation with goats, a pig, chickens, roosters, dogs, cats, 2 horses and lots of ducks. They have 2 greenhouses with abundance of greens, garlic, and onions growing right now. So far we have butchered one goat, (which was an experience), feed the animals, cleared weeds from the yard, made an herb garden, cleared tomatoes and tilled the ground with manure compost and planted shallots and we sheet mulched the front yard for yummy soil in the spring! We are learning a lot here and there is much more to come. We will begin mudding the walls of the straw bale food storage house next week. They are very knowledgeable about living simply, sustainably and close to the Earth and are constantly experimenting and trying out new things. We are having a great time here! More to come soon!

What we are up to on the farm...

2009-10-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Currently we are doing very well. It is getting colder and colder outside but still beautiful fall days. We recently had a thunderstorm and a couple days of rain which made everything nice and muddy. We are mostly splitting firewood for the winter, learning to make bread, cooking, cleaning and hanging out. The biggest project we have been working on is the passive solar house. We dug holes about 3 feet deep and put in the large Juniper tree trunks freshly harvested from the surrounding forest. Then we leveled them off and made sure they were straight. Caitlin made wooden pegs for keeping the structure together. We are trying to use hardly any nails. Today we sanded two more of the top beams and got extremely saw dusted!

This past weekend we made our first trip to Santa Fe, which is a very pleasant town. We have one more week here at Gavilan and then will be moving on to Calliope which is an hour and a half Southeast of Santa Fe!

Valley of the Moon

2009-10-26T17:44:00.001-07:00

One of the greatest things about this farm here in New Mexico is the amount of land they own and the beautiful landscape. About a 15 minute walk from the house there is a canyon called The Valley of the Moon. At the top of the ridges are all ruins from the Pueblos who lived here. Pottery is scattered around and some human remains. It is a very magical spot and really fun to climb around and explore. It is like a national park in their backyard with a lot of incredible energy flowing.

Chaco Canyon

2009-10-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

On one of our days off, we went to check out Chaco Canyon Historical Site which is about 2 hours away from the farm. Chaco Canyon is the ruins of the Chaco peoples who lived here 1200-800 years ago give or take. This picture is only a small portion of what the buildings looked like. Some of the big buildings had 600 rooms in them and were five stories high. The architecture and getting a glimpse of what their lives were like was an amazing experience. Basically this place was a very large city that took up much of a valley. Archeologists believe that it was the administrative, spiritual, economic center of their civilization and people from far North and South came to this site. Every building is lined up with the stars, moon and sun. Basically these people were extremely smart and advanced.

Our First Farm: Gavilan Trading Post NM

2009-10-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

We made it! We arrived here at Gavilan Trading Post on Thursday October 8th. It is very beautiful here with 989 acres to roam on and lots of livestock to feed. There are 120 goats, some milking goats but most cashmere. There are two cows, lots of chickens, cats, dogs, ducks, horses and a great family who lives here. There are currently 5 people that live here right now. They are one family and have many visitors come in and out. We took a tour of the land on Friday to see the layout and where we can go hiking. There are many Indian ruins here with caves that were used for ceremonies about 800 to 1000 years ago. We have yet to explore those areas. We are very excited to be here and really enjoy getting our hands in the dirt and milking goats! We spent Friday and Saturday harvesting the last of the potatoes and veggies and pulling out the dead corn stocks and feeding them to the goats. We eat all meat from here and all the meals are made from scratch. We are living extremely off the land at the moment and it feels really great. Here are a few photos of what we have been up to and the land. We will have more later!

Traveling to New Mexico to WWOOF

2009-10-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

After much festivities we finally hit the road on Sunday October 4th at around 4:00 pm. Our first stop was in Santa Cruz visiting a friend and stayed the night there. We got up early the next morning and drove 8 hours straight to the Mojave Desert. We arrived late in the day but took in the beautiful desert with Joshua Tree's, Yucca and Sage surrounding us.

We got up with the sun the next day and drove straight to the Grand Canyon. Here we awed at the sight for a few hours. The Grand Canyon is very grand indeed. This was Winston's first time seeing the canyon and Caitlin's second. It was on Winston's list of things he wanted to see before he died, so he can check that one off now. We stayed in a campsite nearby and we were welcomed to the site by a herd of Elk in rutting season. This was quite the surprise and absolutely amazing. There were maybe 15 females and babies with two 6 by 6 bucks. It just so happened this was all taking place right in our campground so we spent a while in the van waiting for them to move on. We got some great pictures and footage on video. We will post the video when we have better internet later.

On to Baker City we go...

2009-10-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

After Ashland we went to Eugene and then on to Baker City in Northeastern Oregon. Caitlin spent time visiting with her family and we went to her childhood cabin on The Snake River which borders Oregon and Idaho. Here we laid around, boated, swam, fished, target shooting, campfires and had ridiculous conversations. The cabin may not be around much longer so we cherished this moment very much. Caitlin wrote a nice little poem while sitting in the hot cabin swatting flies.

"The Snake"
What is this river you call "the Snake"
that winds and flows and rattles with shape
I leave a child wandering here
with mystic eyes and laughs of cheer

The snake is calm but angry too
with devil life beneath the blue
I left my friend here that I once knew
She was sweet and compassionately true

The sun is hot and the air is dry
a hammock blows in the windy sky
the bees are busy and here comes a fly
as I swat the life out of the little guy.

After we left the river we went to Caitlin's grandmas house where Winston got to really know Georgia. She is 87 years old. We left Baker and drove 12 hours to San Francisco where Caitlin's cousin got married at City Hall. We had a great ceremony and reception at the Caballo Point by the Golden Gate. A party followed the next day in Oakland with friends and family. It was very beautiful and lots of fun!

Vincent Van GO!!

2009-09-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Check out our cool van!!

Our Journey to Oregon

2009-09-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Etna was great, wow what a place! Friends, fun, water holes, skinny dipping, music, drinking, forest, mountains and lots of laughter. Right now we're in Ashland, OR visiting Winston's Dad. On Saturday we saw a play called Equivication at the Shakespeare festival which was fantastic and Sunday we celebrated Win's Dad's birthday with the fam. We'll be here for the week then on to Eugene to see Caitlin's sister and some Friends. Then we're on to Baker City, OR to see Cait's Dad's family and maybe do some boating, and camping.
Now your probably wondering to yourself, this doesn't sound like a lot of WWOOFing to me. Well, you'd be right. We really needed to see our fathers before we left, we won't be around for Thanksgiving or Christmas and we had to store our stuff somewhere. So it was off to OR first. Plus we're having such a great time. At the beginning of October Caitlin's Cousin is getting married in SF so we'll roll through town quickly then its off to NM to do some WWOOFing. WOOHOO!

The Journey begins........

2009-09-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

Here we are on our first stop....Burning Man!! We spent one week covered in dust and having a wonderful time meeting people, seeing amazing art and enjoying our time off after packing our house. We love the community that is created at Burning Man, everyone is looking out for each other and people care. Its an example of the way the world could work. We took our van out for its maiden voyage and it rolls like a champ! It is comfy with all its accessories and serves us very well. We have decided to name it Vincent Van Go. We have returned and are in the process of dusting off. Next stop is Etna up in the Trinity Mountains to spend some time with our good friends and then off to Oregon we go!