Funky Beets

Q and I got ourselves into the beet biz.  You could say we've gone from fruit people to root people.

We wandered the streets and highways of Humboldt til we finally found the farm we were destined for in Willow Creek, California.  In Willow Creek we found out that Q is secretly a barber when he cut off Ash's hair...

...and then she left us for her homeland in the East.  Her beautiful face will be missed.

Dat face.

In Willow Creek my inner cat lady is satisfied by feline companions called Chard and Basil.  They visit me in the fields for midday snuggle sessions and tolerate my insatiable need to photograph cats.

"There's that camera again..."

"..."

"Getting real tired of your shit."

There are also chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, quails, and a pair of silly dogs who do dog stuff like eating garbage and sniffing butts.

But mostly there's lots and lots of beets!  Red beets, gold beets, young beets, old beets!

Lil baby beets

And some very trippy beets.

We also work with melons, corn tomatoes, carrots, squash, parsnips, peppers, okra, and green beans, which can be misleadingly purple.

That famous Humboldt fog usually adorns our green little valley as we work.

 Tom Robbins wrote some choice words about beets:


“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.”


Song of the Occasion:  sAuce - Humboldt Fog

Nomadism

We left Moab a few weeks ago, earlier than expected because of unanticipated antagonism from the farm owner.  We brought with us two of the WWOOFers who we met there (Ash and Rye) and left behind Lil'bird, who flew away one fateful morning on the farm.  We tried our hardest to get her back in the Rambler, but she wasn't interested in returning and we finally made peace with her escape.  We will miss the dogs, the grill, and the unbelievable geography, but not the bizarre liquor laws.  Good times were had in Utah!

Suddenly back on the road, with nowhere to go until our June 1 date with Vegas, we decided to check out the highly recommended Sedona, AZ area.  We partied in Flagstaff, which is a friendly place and one of my favorite cities, then camped in the desert for a few days to pass the time.  My fear of the desert subsided as soon as I met it.  There was no shortage of rabbits and lizards to chase and I was overcome by a very persistent poetic introversion.

Vegas needs no description... if you've never been there I recommend going before it implodes from it's own internal paradox (being the most beautiful and repulsive place imaginable, simultaneously).  Vegas makes you never want to leave at the same time as you wish you never came.  I was reunited with my brother, had my first strip club experience, mastered the bus system, and was overwhelmed as expected but glad to experience it.

After Vegas we drove all night across Nevada, and when the sun came up we were in the golden state of California.

We have been cruising around Cali, checking out the ocean, meeting people and making connections while trying to find work.  It really is amazingly beautiful and free spirited here, especially compared to Utah, although because of the amount of hitch hikers and travelers and street kids migrating through it is hard to get the free help I'm used to - bathrooms are for customers only, water is not free, and it's illegal to park the Rambler overnight most places, but something always comes through.  Last night we found a free spot to park right on the beach where we could hear the massive waves smashing and where we met a couple of fellow ramblers with a female rat who Twitch is going to get with.  The night before that we slept in a deep dark corner of an ancient redwood grove.  The night before that we were parked on a street corner in Arcata, sleeping peacefully, when a cop banged far too loudly on the door and told us to leave, so we drove to Eureka (where we were told never to go) and slept there, and in the morning we met a man with a black wolf who told us to go to Shelter Cove, which is how we ended up here.

Song of the occasion: Wick-It - Still California

Rainbow Chard Adventure Time

On our way out of Colorado I participated in a raindance with some friendly pachyderms, causing an elephantine storm which followed the Rambler all the way to Moab, Utah.

We enjoyed a few days of rain as we nestled into the surreal red landscape at our new home, Creekside Lane Organics.

Strawberry Fields (and kale forests) Forever

The farm is an oasis of fresh food, sandy soil, and fellow friendly farmers just a few miles from the touristy quicksand of Moab.  In Moab the streets are crowded by heavily sunscreened teeshirt buyers.  A multitude of desert-colored signs along the downtown strip advertise ADVENTURE in some expensive form or another, and even away from the commercial sludge there's an undeniable wind of exploration in the air.  The great red rocks are always within view, daring you to climb them.

Yesterday Q and I and the rest of the WWOOFers (a prodigious crew of huggable scamps) got ourselves all bolstered up on kale and chard and set out on a real Moab adventure.

Looks like candy, tastes like beets!

We got mildly lost in the sandy landscape and ended up in the middle of a golf course, where we scrambled up a cliff and continued on to discover both a cave AND a waterfall, plus innumerable desert treasures which filled our Montanan hearts with awe.

Song of the occasion: Avett Brothers - Paranoia in B Flat Major