inspiration

Nearly six months ago, I moved away from the big city. Seldom have I longed for the restaurants, bike lanes (paved roads, for that matter) and friends, despite the fondness for them that I had developed. I now call this place home—the vast, wide open skies and rolling hills of North-Central Wisconsin—and I couldn’t be more sincere in my love and appreciation for where I live.

Mostly, it’s because I have learned, experienced, and accomplished more things recently than during any other time since childhood. In fact, it often reminds me of that period of my life: constant discovery, invention, failure, and recovery. Never, though, has my learning been in such a different area of knowledge: mostly farm related. I have also learned a lot more about food, programming, and design (three things I love, but already knew a lot about).

To give you a taste of my current life, here’s what I did over the past 2 days:

1. Tweaked the Barn Dance poster
2. Cooked a big pot of really delicious soup
3. Weeded a 300-foot bed of carrots, three rows deep
4. Integrated a client website with several social media plugins, including a language switching feature (between English and Arabic)
5. Read a book, the subject of which I am not allowed to disclose
6. Helped dig a 11′x12′ hole for the foundation of a wood-fired brick oven that we’re building over the next several weeks, pictures to come (the plans for which I modified to make a 3′x4′ cooking area)
7. Wrote an article for the farm newsletter, entitled “Who’s the Sauce?” (hint: not Tony Danza)
8. Learned a new song on guitar (Home, by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes)

Since moving here, I’ve also:

1. Driven a tractor
2. Produced maple syrup, from tapping trees to cooking down
3. Learned to drive stick shift
4. Built websites for several clients, with more lining up
5. Learned Drupal enough to build high-end, custom website templates and integrate modules
6. Become proficient with jQuery
7. Cooked for 50 people (with a little help from my friends)
8. Learned an incredible amount about organic and sustainable farming
9. Learned to run quickly through the woods
10. perfected my bread recipe
11. handled bees
12. pulled ticks off a dog
13. chased pigs and cows back to their pastures
14. picked raspberries
15. cooked meals with freshly picked produce
16. learned to become part of someone else’s family
17. helped with wine-making
18. harvested wild ramps from the woods
19. loaded hay into the barn
20. learned how to fingerpick on guitar
21. made nearly 2 gallons of raspberry jam
22. greatly improved my ping pong and pool skills
23. learned more about state and local politics than I ever expected to
24. hung out with a toddler, witnessed him seamlessly attach an initial fricative to the rest of a word which he previously pronounced in a toddler-variety of English.
25. butchered chickens

I’m sure there’s more that I’ve forgotten, and even more to come.