Back in the Fort...

It's snowing! Spring was so far underway in all of the places we've been visiting that it's weird to come back here and find it still so wintery.

We've been back in Fort Collins for a little over a week; Korin, Brian, Charli and Sam came to visit over Easter, so there's been lots and lots of family time. Brian went back to San Francisco on Tuesday, but Korin, Sam and Charli leave tomorrow (weather providing).

Last Tuesday Sam and I went to volunteer at Grant Family Farms (a local organic farm, website here). Sam's never done that kind of thing before, and had a great time being on her knees in the dirt with the bugs and spiders. We rediscovered some sprinklers, cleared some strawberries, and were repaid for our efforts with a loaf of fresh bread and 2 dozen eggs, including a turkey egg, some nice greenish Ameraucana chicken eggs, and a couple of bantam eggs that are perfectly Charli-sized. Sam took some time to commune with the turkeys before we left. Ask her to do her turkey impression next time you see her. We now call her the Turkey-Whisperer. I'll probably spend some more time at Grant Farms this month. They're really nice there, and I really liked all the people I met.

I was finally able to play my cello again too! Hallelujah! I think that it's been about a year since I last truly played my cello, and I think that's a little too long. 5 months for the hike, then 3 months in San Francisco, then I popped a string, then when I finally tried to replace the string, I discovered that my fingerboard had shifted in some crazy way, and had to get a new bridge. So it's finally back, and in playable condition and with all its strings. I did play Eric's cello a little at LeVin, but she wasn't quite the same as Vlad (that's my cello), it's nice to have him functioning again.

We found this crazy thing online, called a Prakticello (website here), that Brent and I are actually going to try to build. It's basically a collapsible cello that fits into a case roughly 2/3 the size of a violin case. Pretty small for a cello! Of course, it doesn't resonate, because it's got no body, but you can hook it up to an amp pretty easily if you want the sound. The plans aren't here yet, but we've ordered them from the inventor, and will keep you posted as to how the construction efforts go. There are some better pictures of a finished one here.

Other things we're scheduled to do while we're back: paint the house (weather permitting), Brent has to practice about 4 hours a day (yeesh!), I have a couple of cello lessons scheduled, meet with friends, and I'm going to bake lots of bread! Woohoo!

kim

Le Vin Vineyard and Winery

We've just finished our week at Le Vin, and we had a great time! We met lots of people, drank lots of wine, played lots of music, spent a weekend with Korin, Brian, Charli, and Sam, and, oh yeah, worked a little too! Eric gave us a few of bottles to take home to share with family, and we were off on a drive cross-country back to Fort Collins. Here's the breakdown of our days at Le Vin (more or less):

April 1:
We arrived at Le Vin vineyards/winery in the afternoon. It is in hill country, in Mendcino county, pretty far off of the main highway. The property 168 beautiful acres of grape vines, olive trees, citrus trees, and an overgrown garden with asparagus and fennel, with spectacular views of the Russian River valley below. There's a room above the winery that the owners use as an inn, and a central house where Eric and Holly (the owners) and the WWOOFers stay.

Inside, the house is bursting at the seams with records, musical instruments, speakers, a grand piano, and wine. Here is a quick list of all the musical instruments I saw scattered around the house and other places: a cello, a violin, a viola, a mandolin, a harp, an electric bass, a steel guitar, at least 5 other acoustic or electric guitars, a mountain dulcimer, 2 box accordions, a drum set, 2 grand pianos, an organ, a case of harmonicas (I think about 10 of them), maracas, castanets, and a trumpet. And I didn't even open all the cases I found!

When we first arrived, there was nobody there but other WWOOFers. We took a nice walk around the property with Ben (a WWOOFer) and saw a very large wild pig. There's pig tracks all around here - they like the acorns from all the oak trees, apparently. We also saw a wild turkey on the way in. Did you know that turkeys eat grapes? Out here, people like to eat wild turkey whenever they can.

April 2:
Eric and Holly came in very late last night from pouring wine at an event in San Francisco, and we didn't meet them until today. Eric and Holly are eccentric, varied, interesting, and very sweet. Holly was one of the original creators of the Gumby television show, and has a wine label design company (she designed Le Vin's labels' and they're very nice), and Eric obviously loves music of all kinds, and makes darn good wine, too. He is constantly buzzing from project to project, and Holly is perpetually trying to keep him focused so that his projects get done. It's an interesting interplay to watch, but it seems to work well for them.

We learned to prune grape vines. Most of the pruning was done by the time we got there, but we got to see how it's done. It's really interesting how you have to visualize the entire plant and how its going to grow in order to prune - there's some real skill involved, which we don't possess.

We also finished building and filled a planter box that some other WWOOFers had framed.

April 3, 4, 5:

Brent stripped the outside of their sauna building with a pressure washer, and then spent several more days trying to repair the damage inflicted by said pressure washer. In rebuilding the front of the sauna, we worked a lot with Eric & Holly's friend, Zhdan. He's a master carpenter, and it was really neat working with him, seeing his level of craftmanship. He's also jazz guitarist and season subscriber to the Santa Rosa symphony, too. This place is full of musicians!

There seems to be a constant flow of WWOOFers in and out of this gig - more than we've met at any other location. I guess there aren't too many wineries in the WWOOF catalog, so everyone tries to come here.

Korin, Brian, Charli, and Sam came up - we went wine tasting, had a lovely picnic, and spent the night in Geyserville with them. The next day, we all went up for a wine tasting at Eric and Holly's vineyard, and received the royal treatment from them - a wine tasting with 9-10 different wines, several kinds of cheese, olives, and their home-grown olive oil. Holly gave Charli a Gumby book to take back with her, and Charli enjoyed chasing the little dogs (Jackie and Toby) around. Oh, and Korin and Brian bought some wine too. After they left I helped Eric plant the planter box we had filled before. We planted some strawberries, tomatoes, and other little stuff.

In the evening, Eric got out his cello and played some classical style duets with Brent. Recently he's been mostly doing pop/rock type stuff. He had a great time!

April 6, 7:
This is our last day here, and most of it was spent trying to undo our damage to the sauna. Zhdan came back to replace the trim and one rotted out panel on the sauna, and Brent and I scraped and brushed until the wood looked like it might hold paint again. This is as far in the sauna's rehabilitation we can go though. Once Eric and Holly got back from their errands in town, Brent and I picked up and drove to Korin's in San Francisco. We spent the night there, then left early in the morning to drive back to Fort Collins!

We got back to Fort Collins at about 2 am on the 8th. Brent and I agree that it's nice to be back somewhere familiar, where we have our own space, and we don't feel like we're trespassing in someone else's home. Though we had such a good time at Le Vin, we're already considering going back for a while at harvest time, in the fall. That should be fun!

kim

Singing Goat Farm/Homestead - part 2

Day 2: Turkey day! We "helped" (read, "watched") Irene and her husband, Breeze, slaughter 3 turkeys. By turkey #2, we were able to get our hands in there a little, helping with the plucking and gutting. We learned about turkey anatomy, and why it doesn't make sense to keep turkeys longer than 8-10 months. Also, another set of twin lambs was born today, bringing the current count to 9. After Brent played with the community orchestra the other night, he's become a part of Olea's (Irene's daughter) homework. Her music teacher (who is also the conductor of the orchestra) says that they must play together for at least 15 minutes every night.

Day 3: Went into Hoopa with Irene in the morning so she could introduce us to her friend Spencer. Spencer has a fruit and berry orchard: raspberries, white nectarines, apricots, pluots, a small market garden, and some other really interesting sounding things that I'd never heard of before. We helped Spencer take care of some irrigation chores, and weeded his peas for him.

Day 4: Made a simple goat cheese in the morning, helped Irene re-erect and check the electric fencing around the animal pens, and retrenched a little stream that was making a mudhole on their property. In the evening, Olea and Irene treated us to a small concert featuring Irene on the Gaida - a Bulgarian bagpipe. Olea also showed us her Godolka, which is an odd looking Bulgarian violin.

Day 5: Milling day: Breeze and his neighbor, Dan, spent most of today milling logs for Irene's barn. The logs are all from trees on their land, and they're hand-milling with chainsaws. It's a slow, laborious task. At the end of the day, I think that they had about 6 nice, new logs, which were still going to require some refining the next day. Whle they were working hard, Brent and I were moving more firewood to the new woodpile, which is getting bigger and bigger. Later in the afternoon, Breeze, Brent and I went mushroom picking looking for black chantrelles. Brent is a mushroomer extraordinaire, he found more than Breeze and I put together and doubled! Extra bonus, tonight we had a big turkey dinner - one of the 3 slaughtered on day 2! I even contributed with 4 loaves of fresh bread! Delicious.

As an aside, I mentioned the wandering gangs of chickens earlier. As a completely logical consequence of this, I found a random clutch of tiny, bantam eggs under a tarp this morning. So cute!

Day 6: We woke up really early this morning so we could accompany Irene on her morning rounds. Brent milked the goat! Later, Dan and Breeze milled more logs, and finished the previously milled logs. It's Saturday, so Galen (Irene's youngest son) was around most of the day. We finished digging out the stream and directing it across the property. Breeze lit a big brush pile in the morning, and we babysat it with Galen, then he helped us put in some steps down to the sheep pen.

Day 7: Brent was feeling a little weird today, so he spent most of the day just sort of laying around or practicing. But I had a great day. Irene and I sheared the boys today! That's the angora billy goat and the chocolate colored ram. It all went very well, the clippers are sort of scary, but there was only minor blood, and no gore. Irene freaked out a little when the billy tried to pee on the clipped wool though. There was a pot luck dinner at Irene's neighbor, Nancy's house tonight, so I made some more bread and we all trooped up there for a ginormous dinner. Brent and I stayed a little later and played a dice game called Farkle. It's funny, I remember playing the same game with Korin!

Day 8: Today Irene had school all day, so she was going to give us the day off. We said "no way!" and went down to work at Spencer's place instead. Afterward, we discovered that the library isn't open on Mondays, so we sat outside on the concrete and pirated wireless and power.

Day 9: Our last full day here, we sheared some more sheepies. Ladies this time; one who was sort of bitchy and twitchy, and got a couple of good clipper knicks because of it. And one other who was so mellow and sweet, she got extra grain because she was so good. Since this is our last full day here, Irene and Olea tried to teach Brent some Bulgarian folk tunes after dinner. They sounded really neat! Brent and I also decided that we were going to kidnap Bowser, their dog, but they said that they needed to keep him. pooh. We aren't very good kidnappers.

Anyway, a great time was had by all! We did end up going through Etna to go down to the winery, but I talked Brent out of the Marble Mountain Marvel for the second time. What's wrong with me??

kim

p.s. - here is a series of turkey pictures you'll all enjoy...