Grace in small things #2

1. Our friend Large turns 30 today.

2. Breakfast this morning was leftover meat and potatoes cooked in a cast iron skillet with an over-easy egg on top. Oh, and some hot sauce to boot.

3. I have Jason Collett's Hangover Days stuck in my head.

4. The laundry is all cleaned and folded. Well, sort of.

5. I started reading Jose Saramago's The Cave. The main character is a potter, which is why I'm reading it, and so far it's a little gloomy but wonderfully written/translated.

Have a safe and happy new year, everyone.

Grace in small things

We've become distracted. And rightfully so. All that's going on in the back yard is some sleeping garlic and trying to keep a lonely chicken company. A good bit of our time has been spent developing classes and saving cash for the beta of Future House Farm.

It's looking like Future House Farm will happen in two, hopefully not three, stages. Stage one will most likely be something small. If we can find a three bed, one bath, on a tenth of an acre, we'll consider it a success. Afterwards, we're hoping to move again in about three or four years with equity and more loot to put down.

There will be a garden or two this year squeezed in between the move. This will be a fine lesson in container care. If we move by early June we will still have time for tomatoes and peppers, and Spring and Fall crops will be a cinch, but in different yards.

In the mean time, the blog must go on. There is always something happening here, but it has been difficult to frame it in a way that is relevant for the blog, yet doesn't seem like a collection of disjointed yammerings. Thankfully, a few weeks ago Kelly from Her Able Hands announced that she would be participating in 365 days of Grace in Small Things.

Essentially the project is to take a moment, over the course of a year, and notice the little things, or big things, that make life kick ass. These little things don't have to be from the day of the post, nor are they in any particular order. So here we go.

1 of 365

1. Coffee made in a French press.

2. First pot roast in our new Le Creuset dutch oven.

3. Digging for carrots in cold mud.

4. Listening to Mike Lange call a Pens game.

5. Frozen chocolate chip cookie dough.

Country Mouse

Last week I heard a clip on NPR about drawbacks some newer museums have been experiencing with the design of their buildings. Apparently the problem they're having is that the celebrity architects brought on to draw up the buildings are using the space to showcase their abilities rather than showcase art. The example they used to explain what they meant by "celebrity architects" were the Guggenheim Museums. To be quite honest I didn't know there was more than one.


The Guggenheim in New York City is just another example of why I think Frank Lloyd Wright is the shit. I've been to Falling Water an number of times, so I know how well he works with space, but damn did he do a fantastic job on this museum. Simply put, it encourages exploration. We constantly found ourselves peeking around corners and leaning over edges. Each space felt private, but aware of the whole. It was like we swam through the seven floors without ever leaving the first.


And then there was the art. Never have I been to a museum with a series of collections like this. I think the only permanent exhibit is the Thannhauser collection, which is an impressive mix of Picasso, Manet, a Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and many others.

The show we were really interested to see was the Catherine Opie collection. Her exhibit is political, tender, violent, and by far the most beautiful collection of photography I've ever had the joy to see in person.


We did do some other things. Mainly we avoided midtown Manhattan; that place was a mad house.

Beef and Vegetable Broth

After all was said and done we managed to fill four and a half one-quart yogurt containers. We gave it a taste and agreed that it is in desperate need of salt. I didn't add more than a smidge and may add more when we actually use it for soup. My old man over salted everything and I vowed not to make the same mistake.

Shoot

The garlic we planted a month ago is beginning to sprout. We went to a studio show hosted by Nell (my ceramics instructor) and used the travel opportunity to pick up a bale of straw. Hopefully tomorrow we will cover the garlic and post about Nell's chickens and our new pots.

One from the Vault

I Married a Vegetarian

Meg's reasons for vegetarianism are not for the rights of animals (well sort of), but more for reasons concerning her health and the health of the environment. Recently we purchased a quarter of a cow from a farmer Chris and Jude know and...


Meg has had her first burger in eight years.

Baby

This little lamb was cute, cute, cute. Smelled like sheep shit, though.

Sheep Swarm

Jude warned us that the sheep would stampeed into the barn after he fed them and opened the gate. They certainly did. It's too bad I couldn't capture the sound as well—sheep are loud.

I put my camera on the continuous shooting mode and barricaded myself behind a fence. I converted all 86 photos into a .gif file with Graphic Converter, which is an excellent (and free) photo editing program for Macs.

Chris and Jude's Farm

This one may take a few posts.


For Thanksgiving we went to my stepsister Chris and her husband Jude's farm for dinner.


They own about 90+ acres in Western PA and they live off every foot of it.


One of their main exports is lamb and wool.

Jude was nice enough to give us a tour of the place and Meg took some fantastic photos as we made our rounds. Once we have an opportunity to sort through them all we'll be sure to share the adventure.