Playing Music Together

Saturday marked an important day for Russ and Sandy, they got married. Alyssa, Andy Wessell and Chris Hilf (AKA This Side of Eve) played for their reception. It was the first time in over a year that we've played our original music, it felt good. There's something right about playing songs that you wrote your self or with the help of your band mates. I don't know if this marks the beginning of us starting to play and write again or if it was just a one time happening. This particular line up hadn't ever really played together before. In the very early days we played with Andy on drums and our friend Ian White on bass. Later Ian played drums, then Chris Williams. Bill Adams was a key member in the band for years, most of that time Chris Hilf played bass, but for a while Jim Leofler played and later Nate Stevens. Bill's is now playing in his own band, The Red Rovers. Having Andy back felt really natural, He can learn a new song in no time, makes rehearsing sooo easy. Chris was perfect on bass as always. We only rehearsed twice, even with five new covers, pretty much all slow songs for people to slow dance to. We really are not a wedding band, but our choices of covers made it all work quite well. We did "Moon River" and a Nora Jones'ish version of "Love me Tender". We also did "I Want You to Be My Love" and "Go Down Easy" by "Over the Rhine", and a really cool version of "The Fire Theif" by Hem. In the end, it was great to play, especially with two really good friends, and my best friend, my wife Alyssa (even though she did give me a dirty look when I missed a change in Go Down Easy!)

I think, even with two kids and another on the way, it's time we begin to reinvent ourselves, just for our own love for music, and begin writing some new tunes. Many of the old songs miss Bill's harmonica and mandolin, or the songs are just not stylistically what we want to be playing. Alyssa and I have known for a while the direction we want to move in musically, I hope we can find the time to work on it play again.

Church Music, Yeah I like it

I haven't been musically inspired for a while. I think that's by my own place in life these days with my work focusing on other things and lots of time being eaten up by family stuff. We all love music and listen to lots of it, but I haven't had a CD that has moved me in a while, especially not Christian music. But, I really do like this new David Crowder album. I've liked Crowder since before he and UBC released their first album, but that last one was a bit uninspired, I thought. The new album, Church Music, is great for a couple reasons:
1. It's just fun to listen to
2. The band really moves into some different musical categories, even if disco is one of them.
3. Lyrics like "Oh happiness, there's grace enough for us and the WHOLE human race" are too rare in Christian music. Push those universalist boundaries!
4. There's actually some great electric guitar work on some of the songs, especially on God Almighty, None Compares. It really rocks, has complex musical parts and changes, lyrically its good, completely different from anything they've done before, BIG guitars.
5. Worshipful, not boring, not the normal "soft guys voice" wimpy sound that I'm use to.

Urban Homestead Additions

So over the weekend and on Monday of this week Alyssa and I built two additions for our home. On Monday, after work, I finished up a small cold frame. What is a cold frame you may ask, well it's a super mini green house, usually touching a home. I first saw a cold frame in person at Darrel Frey's Bio Shelter with fresh mustard greens in February. His frame was completely unheated except for the radiant heat that comes from touching the outside of the bioshelter. Touching our house will do the same. It's simply built of scrap lumber and a window bought from construction junction. The window is actually double pained and probably insulates better than the windows in my house. The window itself cost $10, originally hundreds I'm sure. Now we'll have fresh lettuce, spinach and other greens all winter hopefully!

Just a few days before building the cold frame we worked with about 25 other folks at Lamppost Farm for a day (actually it all felt more like play for us city dwellers). Alyssa milked a goat and we both helped, along with our friend Meghan, to build this chicken coup. We'll be bringing the coup into the city for either our yard or Garfield Farm in the coming weeks. It still needs a few more finishing touches. We love the rough cut oak, harvested locally and milled by Steve.

Earth Sheltered, Passive Solar House Visit

Last Saturday, while shopping at Tractor Supply for a new maul handle, Alyssa and I received a call from Ron Gargasz about coming out to his farm to get some beef. As you know, beef is a new food in my life. This winter we'll basically be eating beef from two local farms, Lee Scot's farm and Ron's farm. We had never been to Ron's farm before and were surprised to find that it is only 5 minutes from my parents cabin outside Slippery Rock, PA, where we were staying for the weekend. As we were pulling up to his home and farm Alyssa and I were talking about a crazy, futurist article in an old Organic Gardening and Farming magazine from 1978. The article mentioned that most houses in the future would be passive solar for heat, a place where people both live and grow their own food in the winter. It also mentioned that these houses would also be partially underground on the north side to preserve heat. Only seconds later we pulling into a long driveway where we saw a roof coming out of the ground. I was dumbfounded, we were pulling up to an earth sheltered passive solar house. Ron was extremely gracious, gave the four of us a tour of his entire house, which he built about ten years after the time the article I had read was written. This house was not only amazing in it's environmental sustainability, Ron had built a beautiful home. We left with about $100 of organic, grass fed, beef, and a big bag of potatoes for free. We also left with a renewed inspiration for sustainable living and self-reliance.

This earth sheltered house is not Ron's, I didn't take any pictures. Just thought this one looked cool, like something a Hobbit would live in, Ron's does NOT look like this one.

A Warm House?

Temperature outside 38 degrees a couple nights ago. Temperature inside at our old house, without the heat being one would have been about... 38. That house caused us to set the heat at 57 at night and 60 in the day, maybe. Our new house is about half the size. It's also insulated, a novel idea! Each room has it's own electric heat, but we are not expecting to use the electric system very much. We put in a Lopi Leyden Wood Stove in the main living area. So far I've used it mostly because we're excited to use it. A few nights ago we had it nice and toasty around 70 or so but let it go out completely when we went to bed. In the morning it was 39 outside and still well above 60 all over the house! We'll see how things go when it's 2 outside, but it seems we may be able to heat the house primarily for free or very cheaply with wood.

Autumn Locavore Meal

It's been a tough couple of months to fulfill our attempts to eat locally grown and raised food. We sold plenty of food through Garfield Farm and tried to eat local and healthy when we could, but when you move houses with your family and have a general busy summer, it gets tempting to eat chick-fil-a more that I'd like to admit.

But, things are settling down now, so we're back to having a little more time to properly shop and more time to cook. Most importantly Alyssa's kitchen is mostly done, with a new gas stove, a must have (in her words) for canning, and a new countertop that doesn't gross her out.

So, this afternoon Teah and I went out during Micah's nap, and Alyssa cooked an amazing meal, a pork apple stew. The pork was from Lamppost Farm, carrots from our home garden at the old house, sweet potatoes from Garfield Farm, cabbage from Garfield Farm, and apples from Dawson's Farm (local but bought at Whole Foods). The apples sauce was amazing, local Granny Smith Apples.

Last night was a whole chicken from Lamppost Farm which is now also going to feed us with chicken soup for about a week.

So, if you want the recipe for the stew, don't ask me, ask Alyssa, it was amazing. Props to her cooking and commitment to this counter-cultural way of eating.

The pork, which we got from Lamppost Farm and our friends Steve and Melanie, has been great. They are now raising a bunch of these little guys, though they are getting big now from what I hear. They are Hereford pigs, a heritage breed.

Garfield Community Farm Alternative Gift Giving

Here is this year's alternative gift brochure for Garfield Community Farm, a ministry of The Open Door and Valley View Church. Check it out and think about giving this year. This is our most important fund raiser of the year as we move away from foundation grants and government funding toward a smaller more sustainable budget and giving community.