I am not a fan of winter weather – the cold, the dark, the grey – and February is officially the worst month. Besides that, I’ve been kinda hunkered down for the past 6-8 weeks, working long hours, and really wanted some inspiration to tide me over until spring. Boy did Banff deliver!

About the film festival

The Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour brings Banff to audiences around the globe. Immediately after the Festival ends in November, a selection of the best films go on tour across Canada, the United States, and internationally from Scotland to South Africa to China, Japan, New Zealand, Antarctica, and points in between. Each year, the films travel to 32 countries reaching more than 245,000 people at over 635 screenings.

Host organizations in each tour location choose a program that reflects the interests of their local audiences from a selection of films on exploration and adventure, culture and environment, and mountain sports.

The proceeds of many tour screenings benefit a local outdoor program, community cause, or a non-profit such as youth adventure and outdoor pursuit programs, search and rescue operations, climbing clubs, adaptive sport programs, conservation groups, and trail maintenance organizations.

About our screening

Charlottesville’s screening was sponsored by Blue Ridge Mountain Sports, who gave away a ton of great prizes, and the nonprofit organization was the Shenandoah National Park Trust. Works for me! Now, onto the films!

Each screening has a different selection of films, spread over two nights. I’ll post some clips from some of my favorites. A few of the full films are online, but most of these I only have a promo clip. It was so cool to watch these on the big screen and hear the audience reactions, cheers, gasps, and see a few tears being wiped away.

All the films were exciting to watch, inspiring, and left me itching to get outdoors. Which is, I think, kind of the point.

Lily Shreds Trailside

The first night kicked off with a great little film about a Jack Russel Terrier named Lily. Watch this, and see if you can imagine what it would be like to live with this dog inside your house. Haha! The closing shot was of her taking a rock the size of her head and shaking it in her teeth. And I thought my dog was crazy!

The Gimp Monkeys

Talk about inspiring. These dudes are 100% badass and hereby render all your excuses totally lame and invalid. I love when one of them says, “The right attitude and one arm will beat the wrong attitude and two arms every time.” This is the full film:

Crossing the Ice

This film swept most of the awards at the Banff festival, including the people’s choice award. It is a moving story of adventure, friendship, heartbreak, and pushing the human body and mind to the absolute limit. If you get a chance to see this film in its entirety, please do. There are lots more clips from the film on Cas & Jonesy’s youtube channel, too.

Industrial Revolutions

Danny Mackaskill makes my jaw drop. Dude on a bike with skills. Watch the full film:

Mountains in Motion

I really love time lapse photography, and this film is just so gorgeously done. The Canadian Rockies have moved way, way to the top of my list of places to travel. I also really was inspired by the writing here. Watch the full film:

Wild Bill’s Run

A tie for my favorite film of the night is between these last two clips. The first: Wild Bill’s Run is an epic American folk story about a guy named Wild Bill. This dude had the idea to ride snowmobiles from Minnesota to Moscow (never mind that there isn’t actually a route that snowmobiles can take all the way through), and convinced a bunch of dudes to go with him. A crazy adventure followed, and the film ends with unbelievable stories about Bill’s “marijuana air force” and him being on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. His whereabouts are still unknown.

The storytelling in this one was just unforgettable, and the film was hilarious. Watch the trailer here:

Honnold 3.0

You might have heard of Alex Honnold. He’s pretty famous for his free soloing of huge ass rock faces – also known as climbing without a rope, harness, or any safety gear. He’d done a bunch of crazy climbing before, so he decided for his next project, he’d climb the three biggest faces in Yosemite in 24 hours. No big deal! I just loved watching him do what he was quite obviously born to do, climb up rocks like a spider crawling up a crevice. It’s just extraordinary. His enthusiasm is contagious and his lack of fear is inspiring too. Watch a clip of his improvised climbing style:

Find a screening near you

I highly recommend checking out the Banff Mountain Film Festival if you can! It’d be such a dream to see it in Banff, surrounded by the Canadian Rockies, but any chance to see these films, you should grab it. Find a screening near you, and get inspired!

Upcoming hiking & camping

After dumping from 8 inches to 5 feet of snow on central Virginia last week, the weather has been dreamy since. Highs in the mid 60s, and the sun is finally remembering to come out. Jimmy and I will be backpacking in False Cape State Park this weekend, hitting up Spy Rock next week, and when I’m in Phoenix at the end of the month for a conference, I plan on skipping up to Tom’s Thumb in the Sonoran desert. I only went on a handful of hikes last year between the crazyness at the farm and fracturing my tibia & ankle, and I didn’t get to camp at all, so I am LONG overdue. My ankle is finally at a point where I can build up some distance, and even though every step downhill is quite painful, it’s worth it to be on the trails again!

Are you planning any camping or hiking this year? Which film sparked your interest? Tell me about it in the comments!

This post is part of a series about a 30 day digital detox series I did with my friend Amanda. Be sure to click over to Out Like Bandits and read her reflections on unplugging. Click here to see a list of all my detox posts.

When Amanda and I decided to start our 30 day Digital Detox, we didn’t sign an official contract or anything, but we definitely had a verbal agreement with each other about how this was going to go. We both agreed that as hardcore iPhone and social media addicts, just cutting back a little bit wasn’t going to suffice. We would have to make some pretty drastic changes if we were going to treat this like the elimination diet it was.

We each abused the internet in various and sundry ways, so we had different changes we wanted to make. Here’s how my rules played out for the month:

Instagram

I backed up my photos and then deleted my account. Yep, deleted the account, not just the app. The temptation to “cheat” by easily reinstalling the app was too much to just delete the app off my phone. This decision is irreversible (you won’t get your username back, either). Instagram was a big problem for me, so I felt like this needed to be done. Result: I stayed “clean” for the full 30 days.

Facebook

I deleted the Facebook app from my phone long ago and turned off all notifications, but I really wanted to withdraw for a while. The only problem was that I have fan pages that I manage for several clients, so I do have to use Facebook for work. The solution I came up with: create a dummy account (my name, but with another email address, profile not filled out) to manage the pages, then go in with my main account and make the dummy account an admin in each of the pages I manage. Then I deactivated my account. Since the dummy account had no friends, it wasn’t tempting to linger on Facebook. Result: I stayed “clean” for the full 30 days.

Twitter

I didn’t sink a lot of time into Twitter (mostly because I had followed too many people and my feed was way too much noise vs. signal) so I just decided to keep my account, set the @reply notifications to go to email, and delete the app from my phone. Result: I didn’t spend any time browsing Twitter, but did interact when I got @replies. I was happy with the amount of time I spent there.

Pinterest

Ooh, pinterest was such a big time suck for me. This is another app where I’d fall prey to the infinite scroll. I decided to keep my account since there were things I’d bookmarked that I wanted to refer back to, but I deleted the app off my phone. Result: I stayed “clean” for the full 30 days.

Flickr

I had just installed the shiny new Flickr app on my phone, but since it wasn’t part of my “routine” I wasn’t abusing it yet, only checking it from time to time. I decided to leave Flickr as is, but keep an eye on things and if it became a problem, I’d delete the app. Result: I didn’t use Flickr much, the app stayed on my phone.

Email

Email was and still is definitely my biggest problem. I check it an embarrassing amount of times per day, despite there never ever being anything urgent in there. I really wanted to limit myself to checking email twice a day, or using some of the zen habits email hacks that force you to take action right away, but I didn’t do so great with my goals.

I tried to cut back by turning off notifications, removing it from the bottom bar of my iPhone, and hiding the app icon all the way on a third screen. I did cut down on email checking a lot just by virtue of being on my phone less, but I still fought the impulse to check, and lost at least once or twice a day. I did make progress in that I stopped replying to email on my phone, and only did this from my laptop. Result: the compulsion to check email is something I will continue to struggle with until I can really ingrain the habit of only checking at certain times and keeping my inbox clean. 

Netflix & Youtube

I have this weird thing where if I do get some downtime I like to bury myself in a TV series while crafting. I like the background noise and something else going on while I’m knitting or embroidering. Netflix instant view is so dangerous for this, because I can catch up on all the old episodes of any given series, and the next thing I know it’s Sunday evening and I’ve watched 7 hours of TV. Ouch. I decided that weekly shows that were currently on like Downton Abbey were okay, but no past series or multiple episodes of any given thing. Result: I stayed “clean” for the full 30 days.

Texting

I decided that if a text conversation went beyond 5 messages, I would stop texting and call the person, both to save time and to connect voice-wise. I’m happy to say I mostly stuck to this.

iPhone Boundaries

Phones were banned in the following ways:

• No phones in bed
• No phones at meals
• No phones in the bathroom

This ended up being pretty easy because with the lack of social apps on my phone and the infinite scroll banned from my life for the month, there wasn’t much to look at anyway! I have to say, it was difficult a few times when I was with someone at a restaurant and they were on their phone but I was not. I felt a pang of, “Am I missing something on the internet?” It also magnified how annoying I found it that someone would rather stare at a screen than have a conversation with a person of my stunning caliber (heh…) and I had to remind myself that #1 – they didn’t commit to this detox, I did, and #2 – I needed to remember how this felt so I didn’t fall back into that habit once my 30 days were up.

Notes from the field

I made some notes as the detox went along, and this is from my notes on day 2: Today I have found myself opening my phone screen out of habit and just staring – like… wait, what was I doing? Why am I here? I keep forgetting there’s nothing to look at! I didn’t sleep well last night. I realized this morning that it might have been because I was anxious over not checking on things. It has subsided a bit. I am so much more productive already. I had time to read and write and clear clutter this morning. I am still checking email – not responding, but just looking.

More to come

That sums up my digital detox rules. Amanda’s were slightly different. We’ve got lots more notes on our reflections, realizations, and deep thoughts on what came after the detox. We’ll be writing a series of posts recapping some of our discoveries, and we’ll even be releasing an inexpensive workbook to help you organize your own 30 Day Digital Detox (all proceeds will be donated to a charity TBA).

If you’re interested, sign up below to get notified when one of us makes a post about what we learned during our digital sabbatical, and to be the first to know when we publish the Digital Detox workbook.

What do you think of my rules?

Would your detox look different? Were you surprised at any of the steps we took? Tell me in the comments.

This post is part of a series about a 30 day digital detox series I did with my friend Amanda. Be sure to click over to Out Like Bandits and read her reflections on unplugging. Click here to see a list of all my detox posts.

New Years Day is my least favorite holiday. I’ve never been a big partier, even when I used to routinely stay up late, and the pressure to have new years plans always annoys me. The “fresh start” aspect of the new year doesn’t capture my imagination like it does for most, although as Lena Dunham hilariously tweeted, “it’s always nice to have a symbolic chance to assess your own shortcomings.”

So with January 1st rolling around, and everyone on diets and all, I decided to join in the fun. My friend Amanda and I went through a 30 day digital detox for the month of January. We both looked at our lives and realized that we have a serious Compulsion to Check.

Screen time

Something started percolating in my mind when I was visiting Amanda before Christmas and heard her son Max ask, “Mom, can I use my 20 minutes of screen time now?” I almost laughed out loud at the notion – screen time. Of course it’s not healthy to constantly be staring at a screen. As a kid, my mom did the same thing – limited the amount of time we could spend with the Nintendo. Why as an adult had I not kept hold of this concept? Did I think I was immune?

As I thought about Max’s question over the next week, I examined how I was using “screen time” in my life (besides the time that I have to be online for work). I realized that there were many things I didn’t like about how I was using social media. The social aspect seemed to be missing, and I was sinking way more time than I’d like to admit into the enemy of productivity – the infinite scroll (embarrassing confessions to come later in this post).

I brought up my thoughts with Amanda, and she had similar concerns about how she’d become attached to her iPhone. We shared frustration with ourselves that we couldn’t stand in line somewhere for even five minutes without looking at our phones. Why were we doing this? And what were we doing in line for all those years before we were constantly consuming information all day long?

We came up with a set of rules, and decided to go on a full out digital detox. Our idea was to treat the month of January like an elimination diet – to figure out the root of the cause of this Compulsion to Check.

When did researching replace doing and making?

We both agreed that instead of researching all the time (reading blogs, pinning on Pinterest, gathering information), we needed to start making and doing again. When was the last time we’d actually used any of the inspiration we’d gathered online? We couldn’t remember. What I could remember was spending 20–30 minutes on an almost daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day browsing through pins on Pinterest, repinning projects, organizing ideas, yet never actually doing anything. Pinterest gave me this weird little satisfaction – like a check in the box that almost fooled me into thinking I’d been creative.

How many times had I referred back to my pins – maybe twice? The pin-to-execute-project ratio was embarrassingly low for the amount of time I’ve sunk into it.

Where are all the people?

Instagram truth time – this app totally became an addiction. I have an embarrassing confession – I’d get up in the morning, go to pee, take my phone with me, and then while sitting on the toilet, start scrolling through my feed while half asleep. 30 minutes later, I’d come to my senses, my backside numb and wondering how I got there. It’s a little scary to admit these things!

I also noticed that the subject of my photos that I share had changed dramatically. Browse through years of my Flickr account, and there are photos of friends and family, events to remember, things I was in awe of. When I downloaded my Instagram photos before deleting my account, I noticed that although there were a few wonderful memories, it was conspicuously full of photos of food I’d eaten or deliberately styled vignettes around my home that I knew would bring in “likes”. It was seriously weird. Where were the pictures of people? Amanda came to visit and we took a trip to Monticello and all I have are pictures of the garden or of food from the farmers market – no photos of us. Amanda noted something similar in her photostream. Do I really think in future, I’ll want to remember the awesome prosciutto I had? No! When I’m old, I’ll be kicking myself for not having more pictures of my friends and family. Those are the moments I want to remember!

Other offputting autopilot zombie social media moments – often I’ll sit down at my computer and upon opening a new browser window I automatically type, “f-a-c…” even though I didn’t plan on visiting Facebook! On my phone, autopilot is checking email. Swipe, tap the second button at the bottom. I have caught myself doing it many times without thinking.

The Compulsion to Check

I think the compulsion to check is unique to our generation. If we don’t check our Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, texts, and a million other accounts and apps for more than a few minutes, we feel like we’re missing something.

We have endless information at our fingertips, and we all have publishing and broadcasting devices in our hands. New content comes at us 24/7 but do we really feel connected? Are deep conversations even happening online anymore? Instead of comments on blogs or a conversation thread on a messageboard, now we get likes, hearts, retweets, or reblogs.

Instead of reading articles, we read a 140-character headline and think we are informed. I had an interesting moment when a tweet I posted became international news. I was seriously stumped when people who retweeted me were actually angry when new information came to light which made them think twice about RTing me. But they’d retweeted my post without bothering to read the article I linked to inside my tweet. Why hadn’t I checked my facts? Why hadn’t they read beyond a headline?

Before the iPhone, I had to wait a while to share a photo or look at a website – until I got back to my computer. Before that, there was nothing to wait on besides, what? A page on my Smartbeep beeper? A phone call? A letter? What had I been doing for all that time before I had a smartphone?

Will they notice I’m gone?

My immediate impulse was to make a big grandiose “I’m Leaving!!!” announcement on all social networks – maybe a cute little photo on Instagram, share it on Facebook, tweet it out. Then wait a few days to make sure everyone saw – watch the comments come in, get some likes, feel very smug at the people who are all, “I could never do that!” It was ugly, man. So I decided to just go. Delete all my accounts, delete all the apps from my phone. It stopped me in my tracks to think that probably no one would even notice I had gone (spoiler alert: I was right).

What does that say about me? That I’d likely sink 2–4 hours (sometimes more) per day into something that literally was making zero difference in the world. Something that gets me nothing on my investment except unsatisfying little nuggets of gratification in the form of likes. It’s not even authentic interaction, for crying out loud.

Digital addiction, really?

Photo credit

Like Amanda said in her post, the idea of a digital addiction is a bit silly. Doesn’t get any more first world problems than that. However, I felt like it was becoming a serious quality of life issue. When my husband and I are both sitting across from each other in a restaurant browsing on our phones instead of enjoying a meal together, something’s gotta give.

So we stepped back, took notes, got some clarity, and figured out a few things about ourselves along the way.

We’ll be writing a series of posts recapping some of our discoveries, and we’ll even be releasing an inexpensive workbook to help you organize your own 30 Day Digital Detox (all proceeds will be donated to a charity TBA).

If you’re interested, sign up below to get notified when one of us makes a post about what we learned during our digital sabbatical, and to be the first to know when we publish the Digital Detox workbook.

Does any of this ring a bell?

Do you feel like your smartphone is taking over your life? Have you ever felt like internet world was encroaching on real world? Could you delete all your social accounts for 30 days? Would you ever go unplugged cold turkey? Tell me in the comments.

I have gotten so excited about Christmas decorations this year! I was really inspired by living up here near the mountains, seeing all the beautiful trees this fall, and just observing all the new nature around me. My parents came to visit for my mom’s birthday, and I wanted everything to be really festive and magical for them, so I got busy and pulled the house together early this year.

I made several fresh wreaths, swags, and such. I spraypainted branches with silver metallic paint for the dining room table centerpiece and adorned them with a couple berry sprigs. I refurbished two turned wooden candlesticks that I found at a yard sale for $6. I always forget to take a before picture, but trust me, they looked gross. I painted the bottoms gold for a dipped effect and varnished the wooden top. They look great now!

I am most excited about our mantle. I just really love how it came together.

I made a birthday cake for mom – German chocolate from scratch. The recipe came from Baking Illustrated. It was heavenly.

Kyla says she hopes this December is treating you well, with lots of twinkly lights and snuggles.

Barrel of laughs, am I right? Dogs in costumes are always hilarious, but the fact that our dog absolutely loathes them makes it even more so. Sorry, Kyla.

Halloween 2012

I just wanted to show off our costumes for this year! We went to a party last weekend and had a lot of fun. We had big ambitions for Jimmy’s costume – we were originally planning to make these incredible 9-foot articulated wings out of a backpack frame (be sure to watch the video). We had the parts ready to go and ordered nearly $100 worth of feathers to cover them, and the feathers never showed up. I do not recommend ordering from Rainbow Feathers, since they charged my card immediately and never sent my merchandise! They ignored several calls and emails as well. I have a claim out on them with my Amex card. Frustrating!

Anyhow we made do with a Venetian plague doctor mask and a cape (along with all black clothing) for Jimmy.

Last year, I did a sugar skull makeup mask and the year before that I was Alice as part of a group costume, which was tons of fun. But this year I wanted to be two things: pretty (as in… not scary) and comfortable. To me this meant no full face makeup that I was paranoid about smearing and no wig. I originally worked on a Steampunk look which was going to be amazing, but it had many pieces and a huge coat, so I decided it wouldn’t be that fun in a crowded party. If I wanted to take the jacket off, it would kind of ruin the look, and I’d end up with half a costume which I didn’t want.

So at the last minute, I changed my mind and went as Cleopatra.

DIY No-sew Cleopatra Costume

I made this costume in about 2 hours. No sewing, no fuss!

Cleopatra, Queen of Denial

Headband: A piece of decorative trim hot glued on top of a piece of gold rick-rack. I then glued two strings of gold paillettes to either side of where my face would be. I fastened the back into my hair with a bobby pin. I wanted to do a cobra in the middle, but the only plastic cobra I could find was way too big and the headband would have needed reinforcing so I abandoned that idea.

Arm bands: I got gold fabric from JoAnn’s. It was a sort of gold foil on one side and a denim type fabric on the other. I measured my wrists and added 2″ to that measurement, then cut two 3″ strips by that length. I used sticky back velcro to put them on and sort of attached them at an angle so they were tight against my wrists.

Dress: It’s just a jersey strapless maxi dress I got from Target on sale last year for $5.

Belt: I measured my waist and added 4″ to that. I then cut a 3″ strip by that length. I used sticky back velcro to close it. I put that on the side where my arm would cover it. The back would have worked too but I have what we call junk in the trunk, and it wasn’t really laying flat with the velcro.

Loincloth: I traced out a long rectangle that was slightly wider on one end (okay I guess that’s a trapezoid), and used a dinner plate to trace the curve at the bottom. I then drew a black rectangle and colored it in with a sharpie. Black acrylic paint would have probably been more opaque, but I was out. I glued on rhinestones to embellish it. Then I hot glued it to the back of the belt.

Shoes: My yellow gladiator sandals worked fine.

Makeup: The key products for this look were black gel eyeliner and Make Up For Ever Aqua Cream in 11 Gold. Both were waterproof so I didn’t have to worry about them coming off or smudging. I LOVE the aqua cream and it will work on eyes, face, or lips. I did a cut crease on my eye with the gold, the liner, and MAC Carbon shadow (a matte black). I did an Egyptian eye with an exaggerated cat eye on one lid and a geometric eye of Horus inspired design on the other. I put on more bronzer than I normally would with a little blush and then highlighted my cheeks with the Aqua Cream. I used MAC Dainty Cake lipstick (a peach with gold frost) and dotted more Aqua Cream in the center of my bottom lip for a gold highlight. I drew on seriously bold black brows with the gel liner as well.

This costume was super fun, easy to make, and a big hit at the party. In the end, I was glad I went with this look! There were about 6 or 7 other steampunks there, but I was the only Cleopatra!

Kyla says, Happy frickin’ Halloween.

What did you dress up as this year?

I have searched for well-made, casual, stylish leather boots that would fit my wide calves for years. Literally YEARS!

Wide calf boots are easy to find, but they are usually made of cheap leather (or worse, plastic/PVC), have elastic inserts that look terrible and are visible from the outside, or are just not stylish or look too dressy.

Girls with wide or muscular calves, search for legit boots no longer. The Frye Veronica Slouch boots are gorgeous, exactly the style I was looking for, and fit like a dream.

I have wanted a pair of Frye boots for years. They are well made, stylish, and trendy while still having classic elements. I coveted these boots on Zappos so many times, but the shaft measurement said they were 15″. The Frye site says 14 3/4″ shaft circumference. My calves are 18″ so I never even bothered.

I recently was in Nordstrom and was going to try on some of the shorter boots. The shoe guy suggested them to me. I told him I doubt my calves would fit, but asked him to bring me a pair just in case.

I hiked up my jeans and tried them on my bare calf and they fit wonderfully! I was wearing these same skinny jeans in the pics above, and decided to try to fit the jeans inside the boots. They fit inside with still room to stick a finger or two in. I wear a size 9 1/2 so that might be the reason for the bigger shaft. On the Frye site it says that a size 6 has a 14 3/4″ shaft so ladies with smaller feet might not have as much luck.

I love that they are slightly slouchy. The round toe and the buckles look just right. And they are *SO* well made. The leather smells magical and they are soft and comfortable right out of the box. I got them in dark brown, but they come in several finishes. I really want a black pair too! I am saving up for those.

Yes, these boots are an investment item (read: expensive) but I have no doubt that my cost per wear is going to be super low on these. I will be wearing them with leggings, dresses, tights, and jeans.

So happy I found these. Seriously, if you have wide calves, they are worth ordering from Zappos, even if you have to return them. Free shipping both ways. Try them on. What do you have to lose?

Locally grown cherry tomatoes at the Charlottesville farmers market

It’s no secret that I’m passionate about local, sustainable food and humane animal agriculture. I’ve posted about local farms, I’ve talked about my own foibles with gardening and raising chicks, I’ve interviewed sustainable agriculture legend Joel Salatin, Jimmy and I even pulled up roots and moved to the middle of nowhere with the intention of growing our own food. So when I hear about government officials targeting small farms, it gets my britches in a bunch. Bigtime.

I found out about the government raid on Quail Hollow Farm through a post at Nourished Kitchen. I look to Jenny’s site for information on traditional foods, and have long admired her outreach programs like the self-funded WIC program and real food pantry. When I saw this post come in through my email, I was saddened, and I was furious too. Sadly, it’s one of many stories like this, where a family farm is targeted by an overzealous government official. Read and watch about the raid on Quail Hollow Farm’s private dinner event for their CSA shareholders:

Despite hiring a professional chef, despite using licensed kitchens and on-site preparation facilities and despite holding a private event for her guests, Laura and her farm were targeted, and the health inspector even deemed her professionally prepared, organic and farm-fresh foods unfit for her guests, her family and even her pigs – insisting that they pour bleach over the meal and suggested that she go buy food from the grocery store to serve her guests.

Roasted tomatillo salsa I prepared from locally grown produce and canned in my own kitchen. ILLEGAL AND DANGEROUS

There’s something very broken about a system that calls genetically modified organisms, high fructose corn syrup, chemical additives, and food dyes safe, but considers farm fresh eggs, grandma’s fruit preserves, and fresh raw milk a criminal health hazard.

The reality is that farmers and outreach programs like the ones I mentioned above can be shut down in an instant by the overzealous whim of a government official. In Laura Bledsoe’s account of the night they shut down the dinner for private guests, she recollects that even after the health inspector forced them to pour bleach over their fresh, professionally-prepared food, after she called the police on the farm, even then she still couldn’t give a the cops a reason why they should write up a citation to the farmers. But, the night was already ruined, and hundreds of dollars of gourmet food was in the trash. Ridiculous.

It comes down to personal freedom

A delicious and beautiful ginger pineapple beverage at the Charlottesville farmers market

Whether I want to eat a box of chicken McNuggets or chow down on a locally-raised, free-range roast chicken should be MY CHOICE. Not the choice of an overzealous government official who chooses that moment to enact an arbitrary decision. It should be my inherent right as a human being to choose what food I feed myself, my family, and my animals. I think the fact that a government bureaucrat can step onto my property and tell me that I can’t serve food I have grown and prepared myself to my private guests is wrong. It’s unethical. It’s scary.

Does this story upset you? I think it should. Your right to support family farms, small businesses, artisan producers, and to choose what you feed your family is at risk. Even in America, we need to fight to keep our personal freedoms. Fight early, and fight often. Here’s how you can help.

Join the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund

Jimmy and I are both members of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. This organization provides legal support for farms and ranches that have been targeted in similar raids as the one Laura experienced last fall.

Some of the children my mom taught in our home school studying the human body – we created each system as we learned about it. Here’s a skeleton and some guts we created out of papier-mâché, glue, glitter, tinfoil, fabric, and who knows what else. Later we crafted and then put muscles and skin on top. I loved my home school education.

The FTCLDF is similar to the Home School Legal Defense Association, which advocates for parents’ rights to direct their children’s education and keep their freedom of choice with regards to schooling. Even as a kid, I knew how important the HSLDA was. My mom, a college-educated teacher, home schooled my brother, sisters, and me, and taught a few other friend’s children in our home. I remember the times we were harassed by government officials about zoning regulations and the “traffic” our tiny school of 15 kids in our home was causing to the neighborhood. It was comforting to my parents to know that there was an advocacy group dedicated to protecting their right to direct our schooling and advise them on their legal standing.

In the same way, the FTCLDF advocates for the rights of small farmers, fights for freedom of choice for consumers, and keeps an eye on government officials who would do damage to these small businesses by harassing, raiding, confiscating equipment and food, and throwing farmers into jail.

Right now, they’re holding their annual fundraiser, and donors can receive select gifts –  a Weston A Price Foundation Tee-shirt, a copy of the book Folks, This Ain’t Normal, the film Farmageddon, and a limited edition lithograph of Early Haymaking in the Ozarks. For a donation of  $250, you can attend a farm-to-table event at Joel Salatin’s legendary Polyface Farm.

Thomas Jefferson used strong words in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

Swarms of officers, indeed. If local food, sustainability, and freedom of choice are important to you, please consider joining the FTCLDF today. Even a small donation can help.

Passionate declarations about personal choice are going down in the comments. Leave yours.

The last couple weeks at the farm, the garden started producing like crazy. I was so bummed to basically abandon it, especially after all the work we did, but it had to be done. We got a lot of great zucchini, green beans, and good lord, TONS of cucumbers. I pickled about 30 pounds of cukes, a couple gallons of green beans, and froze lots and lots of zucchini. When we left, there were baby melons and the tomatoes had just started producing. If anyone wants to do a drive by, you can harvest our stuff!

We packed up the farm and after several mishaps and some funny farm-style craziness (seriously, I’m going to write a short story about our time up there at some point), we got to our new place without much incident.

Oh, except one incident:

The great busted ankle of 2012

July 7 was my friend Genevieve’s wedding. The wedding was beautiful, I was a bridesmaid, and about an hour before we were supposed to walk down the aisle, I fell in a ditch and badly sprained my ankle. Fun times. I limped around on it that night and by the next day I could not move! I was in bed a few days and on crutches for a week before I could put any weight on it at all. Did I mention the farm house had a ladder instead of stairs? And the only room with air conditioning was up there? Haha, it was a comical and dismal couple of weeks. Jimmy was a saint and basically packed the entire house himself. I don’t know what I would have done without him these past few months. He is a good man.

Anyway, flash forward to this week – the bruising went away and the swelling went down (mostly) but I still couldn’t walk more than about a quarter mile without it seriously hurting. I finally ponied up the money to go get an x-ray (I’d been avoiding it because I don’t have health insurance) and sure enough, it’s fractured. And I’ve been walking on it and moving and all that garbage for about 6 weeks. Ha. The doctor says I’m to wear a brace and supportive athletic shoes (fashion!) for six months. Oh, and stay off it as much as possible. Try not to walk around. Oh, and get physical therapy if you want to keep your range of motion.

I’m bummed. Did I mention I don’t have health insurance? PT is expensive, and not being able to walk around my beautiful new neighborhood like I’d want to and not being able to work out very much at the amazing powerlifting gym I found is a bummer. I am trying to keep a good attitude and actually follow the doctor’s instructions, but I hate my brace and I hate athletic shoes. Bright side: I can walk, it’s not broken, I can still swim and all that good stuff. I am typical – I want there to be a fast fix (cast, surgery, pill), instead of 6 months of disciplining myself to stay off it and do boring physical therapy and not go hiking. But, it is what it is!

Polyface Farms visit

My goodness, Jimmy is adorable. We spent two days at Polyface Farms for their intensive program, learning all about their methods, what they do, sustainability, and humanely raising animals for food. It was a great experience, but only a week after my sprain, and we hiked several miles each day. The seminar was from 7am-9pm each day. It was hot and it was definitely intense. Joel Salatin is an intense dude, and the firehose of information was overwhelming.

However, being there was priceless for me, because Jimmy got to see and experience firsthand what I have been really invested in for years. He got to understand sustainable food, what a farm can look like, what animal husbandry and intellectual agrarianism means in real life. Telling your partner that something is important to you is all fine, and they might absorb it and even be on board, but getting them to experience it and really latch on to something like that is wonderful.

It was odd, still living at the farm, but knowing that we’d be moving in a few weeks – when people would say, “So, tell us about your farm…” and not being sure what to say. We explained the situation a few times, but met confused looks and “Oh, what a shame, so you’re not going to be farmers after all?” so many times that we just stopped explaining.

I am glad we went – although if anyone is considering the Polyface intensive seminar – I recommend that instead you thoroughly read Joel’s books, and then go to the farm for one of their Lunatic tours. You will get all the same information and the experience will be a lot easier to handle, in my opinion. And a lot less expensive.

So, now we’re at the lake. Lake Monticello, which is outside Charlottesville. We’re in Fluvanna county, about a ten-minute drive from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. The house we’re renting is really great, we’ve got wonderful trees all around us, a fireplace and a woodstove, and it’s a quiet neighborhood. We’re a five minute walk from the lake, where we can swim and lounge on the beach. The only down side of the house – there’s nowhere for a garden because of all our shade. I already miss having a garden, I don’t even have herbs in pots or anything. So, I’m still trying to decide whether I want to try to find a space nearby for a community garden type situation, or if I just want to support a farm next year and join a CSA, and frequent the local markets.

The Saturday morning farmers market is awesome (another post coming on that soon), and there is no shortage of wonderful local producers. We even have two mini farmers markets outside our neighborhood each week. We love Charlottesville. We’re really happy here. The house still isn’t really unpacked, but we’re working on it, and I’ll post more photos when things are better settled.

Kyla is watching for you. When are you coming to visit?

I have some sad news, friends. On August 4, we will be leaving the farm and moving to the Charlottesville area.

We are so disappointed that things didn’t work out here. The main reason we are leaving is that we can’t get a reliable Internet connection at the farm. Before we moved, we called Comcast to make sure we could get a high speed connection here. They said yes, and so we packed and headed up. I make my living online and need a high speed connection to do my thing.

After fighting with them for 2 months, we finally were told no. The best we could do was satellite internet (our connection got an F- on the speed test). The connection isn’t fast enough for me to do what I need to do, and especially not to use Skype, which I use with every client.

I’ve driven an hour and a half round trip to Winchester (nearly every day) to sit in a coffeeshop or library and use WiFi. Which of course costs gas, time, and money. I can’t justify the expense of renting office space and paying for a high speed connection in town just to be able to make money. We’re losing money being here, and so we’ve decided to cut our losses and move on.

We were most sad to have to give up the chickens (did you know that landlords laugh in your face when you ask if you can keep chickens at their property?). Besides really loving the little guys, we spent hundreds of dollars on chicken stuff in the weeks before we finally made the decision that we’d have to move. But you know what? Things have worked out. The chickens went to our favorite local farm, a multigenerational family farm on 550 acres in West Virginia. We buy all our beef from them, and they are just wonderful people. The chicken coop went to an ex-Navy guy who’s trying his hand at growing his own food. And the electric poultry netting and solar energizer were picked up today by an older lesbian couple who raise “illegal chickens” as well as alpacas in the mountains outside Winchester. I love the farming diversity we’ve discovered up here.

So now, dear friends, we have the daunting task of repacking all our things and moving during the hottest month of the year. To top it off, on Saturday, I fell in a ditch and badly sprained my ankle. I can’t walk on it, and am learning how horrible crutches are. Did I mention the house here has a ladder instead of stairs? Goodness, it’s been a trying few months. We’re a little tired, more than a little hot (went through that heatwave without air conditioning), and really disappointed.

Here’s the but…

But, we’re also very excited about relocating to Charlottesville. We love that area – it has country charm while still being a happening city. There’s a vibrant local food scene, an awesome yoga community, and hiking and outdoorsy stuff galore. I know we’ll fit right in. We are going to be renting a house in Lake Monticello (the lake is awesome, and we’re only 15 minutes from Cville). The yard is too shaded for a garden (with the exception of a few pots on the deck), and no chickens are allowed, but I’m thinking that just because things aren’t going to look the way I thought they’d look at the beginning of this year, that doesn’t mean anyone’s failed or that anything is wrong.

I may try to start a community garden in the (very suburbish) neighborhood. Bring a little local food flavor right to our own front door, and maybe a little education to some folks in the meantime. I’ll definitely get to start teaching yoga again, and taking classes, which I’m extremely excited about. I’ll have access to a pool and a gym again so I can start working out around other people (which, I’ve found out, is something I really need). And we’ll be closer to both our families, and in a place a little more convenient for friends to visit. Isolation is fun, but then it isn’t after a while.

Big changes are ahead. Better things are around the corner. Stay tuned, folks.

When I was about five years old, we lived in south Georgia and kept a small flock of backyard chickens. We weren’t in a rural area or anything, a lot of people in our Lake Park, Georgia, neighborhood had some sort of animal they kept for food or milk or eggs or whatever. I remember one fall afternoon our next door neighbors slaughtered their hogs. My dad went over to help them. They hung the carcasses up on the swingset to drain the blood. Back to our chickens.

My 4-year old sister Heidi and I would go out to the coop and collect the eggs every day, and bring them back in to mom. One day, as I rounded the swingset to open the door of the coop, the mean-ass rooster jumped off the top of it and spurred me right in the neck. It knocked me to the ground and scared the crap out of me. He went into the stew pot that night. To this day I have a scar, two tiny white spots. Looks like a vampire bite.

At some point the time came to cull our flock. My dad and the neighbors killed and processed the birds. My mom and Heidi were inside the house, crying. Apparently I was running around the house with the neighbor’s boys with blood smeared on my face, feathers in my hair, making the “Indian” sound. I remember laying my head on the stump in the front yard and one of the kids pretending to chop it, like dad did the chickens. Later I remember a bunch of the birds in the freezer, neatly plucked and cleaned, in a knotted pillowcase.

It’s one of my favorite, most vivid memories as a kid, macabre as it might seem. One of the things I was looking forward to most about living on the farm is that we could now have our own small flock of chickens. Monday, June 4, we got a call from the post office – our chicks had arrived!

The Small Scale Poultry Flock - my "chicken Bible"

Did you know they ship baby chicks through the mail? Just before a chick hatches, it absorbs the entire contents of the yolk. In a natural hatch with a mother hen, it can be as much as three days between the chicks that hatch first, and their slower brothers and sisters. The yolk is enough nourishment to let the early hatchers wait up for the late hatchers. Breeders and commercial hatcheries take advantage of this period and ship the chicks overnight just after they’re born. We ordered 50 chicks of mixed breeds, but straight run, through McMurray Hatchery.

Straight run means if you order 10 chicks, you get 10 unsexed chicks. You might get 10 pullets (females), you might get 5 each, you might get rotten luck (if your goal is eggs) and get mostly cockerels (males). You can order just pullets or just cockerels, but I specifically chose to get straight run. I’ll quote from Harvey Ussery‘s book, The Small Scale Poultry Flock, as to why:

Since the majority of hatchery orders are for pullet chicks only, it becomes impossible for hatcheries to sell the unwanted cockerel chicks – however many “cockerel specials” they offer. It is simply a fact of life in the business, therefore, that excess cockerels are killed, by the hundreds of thousands – by conveying them alive into a high-speed chopper; with “controlled atmosphere killing” (using carbon dioxide, argon, or nitrogen); sometimes by simply dumping them into a barrel and leaving them to suffocate. The reader may well choose otherwise, but my choice – since learning that pullets-only orders necessitate the treatment of living creatures like so much disposable garbage – has been to make straight run orders exclusively.

Having both cockerels and pullets means that we will keep some birds as egg layers, and the rest of these (mostly cockerels) will go into our freezer for meat. We will raise, care for, feed, shelter, and then kill and process these birds ourselves. Several well-meaning people have already lamented over these birds’ “murder”. I will be writing in the future about “eating cute baby animals” and why we are choosing to raise our own meat birds. It’s easy to go to the supermarket and buy a boneless, skinless chicken breast for 99c a pound without even being conscious of what happened to the animal you are about to eat. However, once I learned about the insidious industry that is factory farming, where horrific practices like the ones done to the baby chicks I’ve described above happen everyday, I do my best to only eat animals that were not treated like garbage. I choose to eat meat, and so the decision to go the extra mile and give animals the best life we can (even the ones we choose to eat, ESPECIALLY the ones we choose to eat) to my mind, is the more ethical choice. More on that later. Back to the chicks.

Teaching the little guys to drink

They came packed in a box with holes in it. They were LOUD. We brought them home and one by one, taught them to drink water by dipping their little beaks until we saw them drinking and swallowing. Then we released them one by one into a large plastic tub lined with pine shavings. Lisa and Anne-Marie were here visiting and we all had fun handling the chicks, snuggling them a bit, and teaching them to drink. They started eating right away, and contentedly pecking and running around the makeshift brooder.

Is there anything more adorable than a baby chick? Soft little puffballs, high pitched peeps and tweets, and in so many colors. We have chicks that look like chipmunks, baby penguins, little yellow easter chicks, one with a black mohawk stripe, gray squirrels, and more.

Pasty butt!

Day 3, we had a minor setback known as pasty butt. Sometimes, when chicks are stressed (like from being shipped in the mail), they’ll get runny stools. The poop will stick to their down, and get bigger as the chick poops and more accumulates. Since chickens only have one pee/poop hole (the vent), if you don’t correct the problem, they can actually die if the dried poop blocks the vent and they are unable to poop. I noticed a few pasty butts and immediately separated 19 of the 51 chicks. I spent an hour gently cleaning the poop off. I consulted a couple chicken sources and decided to feed some plain yogurt and put a bit of apple cider vinegar in their water. By the next morning, no more pasty butt!

The chicks get fresh green forage every day, and treats like fruit that’s past its’ prime. Their favorite treat in the world is mealworms. They literally go into a frenzy when we sprinkle mealworms on top of their food. I can’t wait to see them outside, catching bugs. I’ve caught a couple catepillars and grasshoppers and tossed them inside, and they are absolutely ravenous for them. We plan to start a mealworm farm to provide fresh treats for the birds. It’s totally easy and you pretty much set it and forget it.

I swear they grow by the hour. Their wing feathers keep getting longer, and they have the cutest little tails now. Tuesday night, we had a pretty big thunderstorm roll through, and the power went out around 7pm. Normally I wouldn’t care, but the chicks have to stay at a consistent 90 degrees right now, and no power means no heat lamps. Jimmy and I went into the basement, and they were huddled in a little quivering, fluffy mass. Not a good sign.

We covered them with a small quilt and Jimmy lit his propane camping heater and placed it in the brooder. We caught the few chicks that were still running around, and put them under the quilt. We spent the next 5 hours in the basement, camping out in the dark with the chicks, adjusting the quilt, putting them back underneath, and making sure the heater didn’t fall over and start a fire. The chicks slept like little babies, a cute little peep escaping from the brooder (the odd snore escaping from Jimmy) as I read Game of Thrones on my nook. Finally about midnight the power came back on. I left the quilt on them for the rest of the night, and we got some sleep of our own.

Today we took the chicks outside for a “walk” so they could get some sunshine and scratch and forage. Ready for some cute chicken action? Watch!

We’ll be building their portable coop soon (copying Joel Salatin’s design for putting chickens on pasture), so I’ll be posting about that when it happens. Everyone will live together in the portable shelter (getting a fresh patch of grass every day) until it’s time to cull the cockerels. Then the laying flock will go into a different, to-be-designed movable coop with nesting boxes, and will get to free-range via electric poultry netting.

Chickens have been nothing but fun so far. Well, except for having to clean the bedding out of their food and water twice a day (silly chickens). I know more challenging chores are ahead, but being a chicken mama sure is fun.

Are chickens right for you?

Does your town allow backyard chickens? They make less noise than a parakeet, will give you free fertilizer for your garden, fresh eggs every day, and are endlessly entertaining. They’re great animals to have around kids, too. Why not see if you can keep a chicken or two?