cinco acres de amor

MAS*H

2006-12-02T13:33:00.000-08:00

in the future......married to wendell.....yellow ford ranger pickup....apartment.....44 wombats live with wendell and i......we wear fuscia tux's......everyday.......we have a nino named incarnacion......often honeymoon in vicenza.......currently resides in British Colombia.

thank god i'm a country boy

2006-10-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

You can do whatever you want to do
Wherever you want to go its up to you
And wouldnt it be fine
Following your heart, playing your own part

You and me out on a farm, let the sun be our alarm
Kickin off your shoes, doin what we choose
And wouldnt it be fine
Knowing that your mine anytime you want to be

But I dont want to own you
I just want to hold you
I dont want to need you
I just like to see you smile and stay for awhile

And if the times get rough, being free might be enough
To see us through the storm and keep our feelings warm
And wouldnt it be fine
Looking back and knowing that we helped each other find

You can do whatever you want to do
Wherever you want to go its up to you
And wouldnt it be fine
Following your heart knowing from the start
Its up to you

-John Denver

memoirs of a stable boy

2006-04-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

my dear friend buddy. You can always count on buddy for a good game of fetch

a forbidden romance

some of my co-workers

I'm really anti-huge trackers, but man it was really cool to drive this bugger.

ode to my honey part 2

2006-04-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

i didn't see any pelicans

2006-04-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

last saturday i sea kayaked for the first time. I just finished a four day "intro to kayaking" course offered for a fee of $5, held in my college's chlorinated pool. It was not a very fun or picturesque intro to kayaking. So, my roomy Adam and I got invited on a kayaking day trip to visit the Squaw Bay Sea Caves of the Apostle Islands with our buddy (whos name is also Adam). I was a little hesitant to tag along. I've only paddled the friendly warm waters of an indoor pool and the thought of capsizing into 35 degree lake Superior in early April seemed a bit iffy to me... and cold... iffy and cold. I figured i'd be a fool not to see a bit of the Apostle Islands before my time at Northland ends, and I wanted Rachel to think I was brave, so I went with.
The Sea Caves were no disappointment. The cliffs that rise above the sea caves are this deep, rich, red color. Ol' scraggly trees, reminiscent of bonsai, grow at the peaks, with roots that seem to dissappear into the rock face. The ice has only recently begun to break apart and melt, so we were paddling past chunks of beautiful turquoise ice. At the end of the day the sun was warming us and the winds began to die down, so we decided it would be worthwhile and exciting to practice tipping our kayaks and escaping underwater, only to resurface in order to scramble back into our boats again. So we did this and damn it was cold. We had wetsuits on, but still, it feels like your head will explode while your underwater.
That night I found myself wondering if it would be possible for mutant sharks to adapt to Lake Superiors fresh-water, gorging themselves on the abundant smelt populations. That was a scary thought, and i think its possible. Im hoping some whales will take a liking to fresh water rather than sharks though

ode to my honey

2006-03-23T20:11:00.000-08:00

oh you beautiful sphere of goodness, you are an earth unto yourself!!

-Rachel...about an orange

healthy clothes are hard to come by.

2006-03-18T21:32:00.000-08:00

I've been realizing lately how difficult it is to buy anything that wasn't produced by destructive means or raised inhumanely. I'm frustrated by the fact that there's so much mystery behind almost every piece of clothing, food or other merchandise you could find in a store today. Take a simple cotton T-shirt for example. Where was the cotton used to make it grown? and who grew it? and what are their farming practices like? How many pounds of pesticides did they dump into our earth to "help" it grow? I read recently that one t-shirt made from industrially grown cotton is the byproduct of about 2/3 of a pound of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
"In the U.S. in 2000, 84 million pounds of pesticides were sprayed on the 14.4 million acres of conventional cotton grown in the country, ranking cotton second behind corn in total amount of pesticides sprayed."
- www.newdream.org
That pisses me off. Why don't t-shirts have that kind of stuff printed on the labels, right after the washing instructions. I heard Michael Ableman, an organic farmer and activist, speak recently about this labeling issue. He spoke about his frustration with the hassle involved in organic certification for farmers, how you end up spending a lot of time keeping extensive records of what you planted and where and what you did to your land and why, not to mention occaisionally having inspection agents snooping around your farm questioning your every move. His take on organic certification for the sake of having a "USDA CERTIFIED ORGANIC" label on his veggies is "Don't put an organic label on my food, put a skull and crossbones on that other stuff.!"
I only have one t-shirt thats made from organic cotton, and I bought it at an organic farming conference. It's not like you can walk into urban outfitters, marshall fields, a thift shop or wherever you shop and find many organic clothing options. When I hear "organic" only food comes to my mind, it's just starting to hit me that even the clothes we wear can be produced by destructive means. Healthy clothes are even harder to come by than healthy foods.
Does anyone know of any stores that sell clothes made from organic products? I'll be on the lookout and post anything i find that seems promising. Thanks for reading my rank too.

happy St. Paddys day all

2006-03-17T22:12:00.000-08:00

happy St. Paddys day amor. Ooofh!!! te amo!!

sorry ginger

2006-03-17T22:09:00.000-08:00

a shepherds life for me

2006-03-17T22:03:00.000-08:00

thats not very nice

2006-03-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

if i had sheep i would be nice to them.

mmm figs

2006-03-04T20:39:00.000-08:00

where are all the dan k paks?

when i was a kid i used to think fig newtons were disgusting, but now i think theyre great. even just plain ol' figs are real good.

the magical fruit.

2006-03-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

they say beans are the magical fruit. I think kumquats are. I think there needs to be some stricter criteria than whether or not a fruit makes you toot.

what the crap

2006-02-15T23:06:00.000-08:00

Mountain Hardwear just released a new line of ultra-padded-police-dog-training-suits, guaranteed to protect your from the fiercest of bites in the coldest of temps! Comes in a variety of bright colours that even your colourblind dog will appreciate! Will Steger most likely has two! Get yours today!

amo los aves

2006-01-11T17:11:00.000-08:00

nomads

2005-12-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

i long to be a nomad

JIVE TURKEY

2005-10-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

dan is a jive turkey because he never posts. now I have to post for him- muhhaaaaaahahahah. I love my jive turkey.

2005-10-05T01:31:00.000-07:00

Here i am blogging in the wee hours of the morning. I've just eatin a whole tub of ben and jerrys "fossil fuel" ice cream (filled with petrodactlys, stegasaurouses, and Ben Harper's jurassic wife, whats-her-name, all sunken and buried-like in prehistoric tar-fudge.) I took Ben and Jerry's suggestion and let out my inned paleantologist. yum. I woke up to the sound of the rain this morning and tonight I am falling asleep to it as well. I spent the entire weekend with my love and best friend Rachel and it was soo good for my alma. It'd been a whole month since I'd seen her last, and the week leading up to our weekend together had been a hard one. We spent hours the other night just reading to one another about farming and the Mayan people. I won't get into all the details of our weekend and my love for her (because chances are if you're reading this you're not interested...unless you're Rachel-then you already know and also know how difficult it is to put valid words around strong emotion.) I love that girl so much. This is just a blog to let you all know I'm still alive and kickin. I'll try to post again later this week with some beefier (or veggier-if you will) thoughts.

"to lead a better life

I need my love to be here

here, making each day of the year

changing my life with the wave of her hand"

-the beatles

my grandmother slept on a bed of hay

2005-09-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

My good friend Adam and I walked out to the field behind our college tonight. The land is owned by a farmer and is about 3/4 of a mile off of campus. We set out at about 6:30, with enough light to notice the native plants and grasses that distinguish the area. At the place where the narrow dirt path we took meets an open field, we saw two deer. They kind of watched us for a while and then made some strange deer-bark noise that apparently deer make (this was new to me.) Adam and I crawled up onto seperate hay bales and busied ourselves with our books and tobacco pipes. This is only the second time we've been out to the field in the month since we've been here in Ashland, but it was well worth the time we spent there. If I was Sigurd Olsen I'd call it my Listening Point. Maybe I will anyway. Dusk is my favorite time of the day, especially during the fall when you have to wear clothes made of wool. Makes me want to wear Mukluks too. Really all of this is to paint a picture of the place I was blessed to find myself reading from Wendell Berry's book -"The Art of The Commonplace." I'm sure Rachel (probably the only one reading this, so I might as well say "you") would agree that the place you read a book can really determine how it will affect you (Leaves of Grass.) You just can't read nature writing in the bath tub (I tried it once, it's no good.) Anyway, Wendell Berry is my heroe. He's a farmer, writer and poet. In the chapter I read from tonight, he talked about how we have failed to make America our home. We live here and do busy things on this continent, but it's not a home in the way it was to the indigenous peoples. I dunno, I'd just encourage everyone to spend some time in nature this week, whether its your backyard or a statepark. I won't try to use this blog as a soapbox, but I will say that you'd do yourself a favor by reading some of Wendell Berry's writing. Anyway, I think I'd like to make a mattress out of hay. Sitting on that haybale was really warm and soft. I thought of my grandmother, who grew up on a farm in Nebraska- sleeping on a bed made of hay. In 80 years, it's amazing how far we've come, or fallen.