portland to washington to portland to bainbridge

Michelle and I were in Portland for a few days staying with India and Julian, then we went to Pendarvis farm were I made my last entry. After pendarvis we went to Washougal Washington and stayed with Paul. Paul is a yoga teacher and a health researcher, he also has an acre homestead. He is really into health and was on a 5 day cleanse while we were there. He eats very simple foods and is very cautious of what he puts into his body. Paul hates packaging and tries not to buy anything that can't be reused or recycled. He says he goes to the dump every couple of months to bring a small bag of trash. A lot of people I know fill up many barrels every week that goes straight to the dump, not Pauly!! There was a mother and son woofing at Paul's place, Heather and Damian. Damian was the smartest most observant ten year old I ever met. Damian and Heather gave us a ride back down to Portland and dropped us off at a cooperative living house that we got in touch with through couch-surfing. We stayed with them for 3 nights in their backyard in my tent. Most of the yards in Portland don't have manicured lawns but instead they chose to create edible landscapes. On some of our walks we would pick fruit from the bushes and eat plums that had just fallen from the trees. as your walking along the side walk you will see benches made out of natural materials at the ends of people yards for people to sit at, and at a few of them there our books tucked away. Portland was great, for a city. We met a lot of really cool people. one of the people we met told us we should stop in Olympia on our way north. she had a friend in the city who she got us in touch with and we stayed with her for 2 nights. when we left Portland we were waiting on the side of the road for the bus with a sign we made which said Olympia. We were waiting for the bus because our plan was to get dropped off downtown closer to the free way. This lady named Leah literally came through the bushes behind us and said, hey do you need a ride. So we hitched a ride with her. I sat in the bed of her truck with her dog Bob. We stopped by her house for a few minutes so she could get a few things. She had a really beautiful small scale intensive garden.

I thought Olympia was kind of quiet. I liked walking through the woods there, and the co op food markets were nice. Shelly and I went to a fancy restaurant and split a plate of salmon. It was the first time we have had fish since we left home.

Then we hitched a ride out of Olympia but it wasn't as easy as most of our hitching. We waited over an hour for a ride but eventually got picked up by Andy. We could have taken the city bus from Olympia to Seattle but we didn't . Andy brought us into Seattle where the ferries were. Michelle and I payed 6.50 to take the ferry over to Bainbridge Island Washington, a perfect day to be on a boat. what an adventurous day. We were on a boat!!!! So the ferry landed and Jessie, an intern at the farm we are staying at now picked us up and brought us back to the place. Chuck owns the land. he has a real nice house and an acre of land. The farm is called The Old Mill Permaculture Center. It is in the beginning stages but they are moving quickly. We made a few raised key hole beds and have done a lot of transplanting in them. Michelle and I built a compost bin with a few old pallets.

Chuck doesn't live here on the land right now. He has property a couple miles down the road. He bought this land on foreclosure for cheap and is fixing it up real nice. he has big plans for this place.

tonight i was sitting in my room and chuck knocked on the door and asked me to help him with some bees. he had just gotten some bees from a friend and needed our help to carry the boxes to the other side of the property and set them up. Every day here there is a noticeable difference from the day before.

Also, big news, big big news. I haven't eaten any meat in at least 4 years except for fish, and my my reason for not eating meat was mainly because the horrible way animals are treated in slaugher houses and what not. i wouldn't get into that though. but i have been thinking about eating some meat but only if i know where it comes from and know that it was raised in a good manner. also, if you eat meat, you should be able to have the nerve to kill it and pluck its feathers and slice it open and take out its organs. so chuck has a friend who has a rooster. chuck got the rooster at night while it was sleeping. he quickly grabbed its neck and whipped it around to break the neck and give it a quick death and then he chopped off his head. blood poured out and he hung the body on a tree. after some of the blood drained out he put the rooster into a thing of hot water for a minute so the feathers would come out easy. we all took part in removing the feathers. i watched carefully as chuck sliced open the rooster and gently removed the organs. then he took the bird inside and watched it to get all the blood and poop off. now the rooster is in the fridge waiting to be cooked for tomorrow nights party. i might try some.

it is almost time for michelle and i to go back home to the east coast. we are both excited to go back, see our families, and do some gardening and biking, cooking, and nothing at all. where going to miss the west coast but will be back soon.

here are pics. there not in order. some of them are from portland, some are from washington

the seguls flying along side the ferry to bainbride island, washington

i sat in the back of the pickup truck with bob the dog. leah picked michelle and i up in portland and gave us a ride to olympia, washington
while in olympia, we were craving fish so we went to a really over priced restaurant and split a fish dish.
here is the artesian well in olympia. that is where everyone goes to get there drinking water. the writing on the wall says it's been flowing since 1914
me in front of the capital building
this is an average yard in portland. not much grass but lots and lots of vegetation. food not lawns :)
more segul pick from the ferry
a passion flower growing in portland
michelle picking blackberries while out for a walk in downtown portland
chocolate. sorry mom
the 2 of us have been flossing every day now.lately

this is paul. he is awsome! we stayed at his place for a week. we were both sad to leave, especially michelle.
michelle the bread maker

this is pauls house. he built most of it by himself
michelle and i went to visit my friend brooke in portland at pendarvis farm. shelly and i played some ping pong and i beat her. but only once out of 20 or so.
this is julian and india. we stayed at there place for a couple nights in portland. they are friend of stephanie who we visited in corvallis. julian and india have a parking lot for a back yard so they made this planter boxes
portland is this city of roses. lots and lots of roses here at peninsula park

this is stephanie. we met in the corps

Corvallis, Portland and more

A lot has happened since My last posting in Winston at Oh My Gato farm. A lot.

Anthony from Oh My Gato has a friend named Keith who lives a bit north from Winston. Keith injured his back and needed some help in his garden. Michelle and i spent 2 days at Keith's. We did some weeding and mowing around the garden. We set up our tent in the garden. His garden was set up really beautifully. The raspberries were perfectly ripe and the peas tasted so nice right from the vine. Keith is a bread baker and has a clay bread oven that he and his wife built. One of our nights there we baked a few loaves of natural risen sour dough bread and pizza. Keith's wife and son live in Germany and they come to visit every so often.

From Keith's house we went north to a community called Aprovecho in cottage grove. Keith gave us a ride there. Michelle and I were wondering around Aprovecho and we met a really nice young couple named Brad and Heather. We ended up having lunch with them. They cooked on something called a rocket stove, which I plan to make when I get back to the east coast. Its a super efficient way of cooking that uses very little wood. After our lunch we set up our tent and then met back up with Brad, Heather and a couple of their friends and we went for a long, long hike through the woods. My words and pictures can't describe how beautiful it was out there. We saw big bear tracks on the paths we were walking.

The next morning we packed up early and wondered how we were going to get a ride into Dexter were Lost Valley education center is. I was sitting outside on a bench and I saw someone driving down the hill and I went running down as fast as I could and waved my arms to stop them. I caught them just in time and asked him if he could bring us into town . I think his name was Chris. He waited for Michelle and I to get our things and he brought us into town and dropped us off by the on ramp.

Michelle went into a cardboard dumpster because we wanted to make a sign saying Eugene which was close to Dexter. After she spent all that time sitting there making the sign we didn't even have to use it, because when we were walking back to our spot by the off ramp i stuck out my thumb and the first car to drive by picked us up.

We spent most of the day at Lost Valley. They have a lot of permaculture courses there and do a lot of other teachings. The plan was to pitch a tent there and go to Eugene the next day, but they charge money to pitch a tent even though they have 90 acres of land so we decided to hitch a ride into Eugene. We called a friend of a friend and asked if we could spend the night there. They gave us directions to there house but we ended up getting confused and getting dropped off to far away from there house, luckily Brad, a really nice guy picked us up and gave us a ride all the way to the house. Brad was going way out of his way for us, we told him he didn't have to but he said that if his he didn't bring us to where we needed to go his grandfather would come out of the grave and smack him. If we had to walk it would have taken over 2 hours and that would be no fun with our heavy bags.

We got to the house in Eugene and met with all the 6 or 7 people that live in that house, nice people. We ended up spending a week in Eugene. The first couple days we did a lot of walking around. We spent 2 nights at an Eco village right in the city called Matreya. Matreya is located on 5 lots, a little less than an acre. a few different family's live there and share the land. It was beautiful, they have many natural buildings and every spare part of their property is filled up by gardens. They let us stay in a cob cottage.

We went back to stay with the people we stayed with those first few nights and a bunch of us ended up going to the cougar hot springs. We all got naked and hopped in the hot hot hot water. The hike through the woods to the hot springs was a mile long, there were 5 separate pools, one below the other each getting a bit cooler as they went down. It felt so nice to sit in them and watch the sky and the trees. We ended up staying at the hot springs until 2:30 in the morning before we went back to the camp site.

From Eugene we went to Corvallis, where we met with my Americorps friend Stephanie. She's awesome. We stayed with her for 3 nights. We went swimming in the lake one day, another day when it was so hot we drove to the coast with her and 2 of her friends. When we got to the coast the temperature dropped. We were all in shorts and short sleeve shorts and everyone else there had on coats. it was so cold, but Stephanie went in anyway. I went in up to my ankles and that was good enough. Across the street from the beach there was a candy shop. They were closing up and gave us a bunch of fudge and popcorn for free. There was a sign that said you can sample the taffy but just one per customer. I thought it meant 1 of each flavor.

Michelle and I planned to go to Portland and Stephanie said she was going up to see some friends so we were able to get a ride with her. We stayed with her friends India and Julian. They are such nice people, it would be nice to see them some other time. They have an apartment and concrete for a back yard so they made these really cool bamboo pot holders and filled them with potting soil. India, Julian, Stephanie, Michelle and I all went to India's parents house for a party. Stephanie and Julian played piano and we all played scatagories.

Now we are at a farm called Pendarvis just outside of the city visiting my friend Brooke who I met in Americorps. This place is very open to creativity, they have so many instruments and art everywhere you look. Tomorrow or the next day we will go back into the city and hang out for a few days ( if we can find a place to stay. We are looking on couch surfing)

A lot more has gone on but I am so sick of writing. I'll try to get some pictures up soon.

Michelle and I finally got to play ping pong.