Finishing the Long Trail (part 1)

Back in 2007 John, Kip, and I spent a few days on the northern parts of the Long Trail in Vermont.  Together we completed a couple more little sections in 2009, then last year John and I did a short run at the very southern end while helping Mom finish her LT side trail quest.

The net result was that we had completed probably the hardest parts of the Long Trail, but there was still a lot of ground left to be covered.  We decided it would be great if we could finish section-hiking the LT this summer.  With more time on my hands now, and Mom interested in coming to help with car shuttles, we set up a week of running/hiking, visiting with Mom and Renee, and exploring the southern half of Vermont.

Day 1/June 12: Near Seth Warner/Broad Brook Trail to Route 9, 12.7 miles

John and I started with a short day by ourselves.  It rained that morning but mostly cleared up by the time I dropped John off at the route 9 trailhead right after lunch.

Warm-up stretches as only John can do them:

I drove the truck up a small road to a small parking spot next to the trail.  I was happy that all worked out so we didn't have to retrace our steps up from North Adams.

Tug waiting for John to show up later:

Back on the Long Trail again!  Ah yes, I remember these rocks.

It was great to be greeted by one of Dad's signs right off the bat - hi Dad!

I did a short out-and-back south to the road that takes off toward Broad Book Trail (our loop from 2012):

Starting north for real now... crossing a powerline cut with a view of the low clouds that were lingering:

An interesting (and muddy) marsh.  John later met a family of geese and goslings in that area, so he had the better story for the day.

Although it had stopped raining, the trail was still completely wet and muddy.  It made for slow going.  Occasionally I found a short section where I could actually run, that was fun!  It never lasted.

John demonstrating what he might look like if the trail were more runnable:

After a quick "hello!" to John going in the opposite direction, I found a neat little pond with the trail on boardwalks below the height of the water.  The beavers have been really busy here.

Further along, a roaring creek.  Lovely!  And yay for not having to cross it!

A pretty flower - lots of things growing with all the rain lately.

Top of the hill before descending a bunch of rocks to route 9.  Only 557 miles to Katahdin (quite a few more to Springer Mountain)!  And no, we're not doing that (or that).

We got a camping spot with a lean-to at Woodford State Park.  That was really helpful for keeping out of the rain while cooking.  Hanging the clothes to dry was more of a pointless effort.

Day 2/June 13: Route 9 to Kelly Stand Road, 22.6 miles

Today we would see Mom and Renee, excellent!  Less exciting was the high likelihood of rain.  We left the truck at Route 9 and Mom drove to meet us at Kelly Stand at the end of the day.  At least it wasn't raining at the start.

John "stretching":

Long climb up to Glastenbury Mountain:

Helpful bridge:

The trail goes right through here, reminding me of Catskill geology:

John was taking his time getting ready, so I went on ahead for a while, trying to see how far I could get before it started raining.

Powerline view down to Bennington:

Entering the Glastenbury Wilderness:

That's it for photos of day 2.  We kept moving, climbing, passed a couple guys, and eventually there was a patter of raindrops in the trees above.  We saw moose tracks but no moose.  I didn't mind the rain at first, it was light enough to be pleasant even.  Gradually the intensity ramped up and then it was just wet.

Goddard Shelter was right at the intersection with a side trail, and the rain sounded much worse from under the roof, so it was better to just keep moving.  The fire tower, so high up into the sky, was sort of inviting except that it was in the middle of a rain cloud so we didn't climb up.

The second half of the trek deteriorated into a drenched, muddy, sloppy mess.  It just rained and rained and didn't stop.  We kept moving the best we could.  Wet, wet, wet.  There were 2 shelters on the way that were the only landmarks to work from and eventually we passed them both.  Two overnight hikers were attempting to get comfortable in the 2nd one and I did not envy them in the least.

Finally a small road crossing and then 2 more ridiculously slow miles before reaching Kelly Stand Road where Mom and Renee were waiting in a warm, dry car!  Thank you Mom!

Day 3/June 14: Kelly Stand Road to Route 11/30, 17.5 miles

Mom drove us from Woodford SP back to Kelly Stand to start the morning from there.  Much better weather, excellent news.

Good morning!

The trail was in better shape than we had anticipated.  It's amazing how it can go from streams running down the middle to mostly passable in less than 24 hours.  We did still have to work our way around and over many mud puddles.  John showed more finesse at this than I did.

At the top of Stratton Mountain.  No rain but still socked in by clouds.

Another fire tower that was missing a view (but hey, it's not raining):

It was a nice run down the other side of Stratton:

More signs from Dad - good morning Dad!

Sometimes I ask John to "do a pose or something" just to see what happens.  Sometimes the results are my favorite pictures!

The Lye Brook Wilderness section was a bit up-and-down and slow but then suddenly we were done with it.

Dancing in the sun on Prospect Rock:

Sunning himself on Prospect Rock:

Overlooking Manchester, happy for some nice weather:

We continued the last several miles on a downhill angled traverse over to the highway.

John demonstrating his rock-hopping ability for the camera:

It was a much nicer day for Mom to hang out and wait for us.  We were happy to get a motel room for a couple nights.  Camping was fun, but actually being able to dry out our clothes and shoes was better.  Thai food in Manchester was even better!

Day 4/June 15: Route 11/30 to USFS 10, 17.3 miles

It was a little chilly starting out, like normal, but we almost always started with an uphill that would warm us right up.  Renee looks like she wants to join us today:

An overview on the way up the hill toward Bromley Mountain:

A ski run to follow the last section up the mountain - that would be great except the ski run doesn't drain nearly as well as the trail for some reason.  Ah well, it wouldn't be the first (or last) time our feet would be wet.  At least the sun is shining!

Futuristic ski lift building at the top of Bromley:

View to the north where we were aiming to link up with our "previous selves":

John could nap here, of course...

Yoga on the mountain:

It was another fun downhill to Mad Tom Notch.  John was moving well and I was trying to keep up.  We climbed Styles and Peru Peaks and then descended to Peru Peak shelter.  Here we met a couple AT through-hikers and had fun talking with them about their experiences.  Good luck Inchworm and Samson!

John doing some trail clean-up work:

If I ran caption contests, I would use this photo:

Griffith Lake, very pretty this morning.  I believe John is in agreement.

My right shin was starting to ache, perhaps from all the abnormal rock-hopping and puddle jumping that I wasn't used to.  We made it up the fun little scramble to the top of Baker Peak and took a short break:

Originally we were planning to finish the day at route 140, but I was not moving very quickly on the way down from Baker.  It was more frustrating because the trail turned nice and runnable and sloped gently downhill.  But my shin started hurting more, and we didn't have an Ace bandage for wrapping it.  John ran on ahead and found Mom waiting at the next road (USFS 10).  She had been hiking in that area and was hoping to catch us in the middle of our hike.

That was really lucky, because now John didn't have to run the next section to find her.  We all decided to stop at that point and head back to the motel.  We picked up an Ace bandage and some other supplies at the store, then spent the sunny afternoon recovering and relaxing and wondering what my shin was up to.  A shorter-than-planned day was not a bad thing, after all.

To be continued...

CNYO Regaine

Central New York Orienteering puts on an interesting event every spring called the "Regaine".  It's like a rogaine where you collect controls in any order for as many points as you can get within a specified time period.  The differences are that you run it solo instead of on a team and you have to return to base camp to rest for at least an hour in between 4 periods of running in the woods.  I was excited to return to this event after having fun with it in 2011, and John was excited to try it for the first time.  It was a downer that John got sick a couple days before we started our drive back from Texas, so he was still recovering by Regaine weekend and had to take it easy.

We were returning to the same park as the Snowgaine from earlier this year, so we were quite curious how the swamps were going to play into the strategy this time.  Last time we learned to aim for large frozen-over water features, but we were pretty sure that strategy no longer applied.

The map turned out to cover a lot more area compared to the Snowgaine, including a fish hatchery up north and several points around town way south.  I opted for the standard "start out on the run" plan instead of taking an hour to strategize at the start so I wouldn't lose 2 hours of daylight later in the race this time.  We had only a couple minutes with the maps before the clock started on our first leg, and with such a huge map it was hard to really know how to approach it.  I made my best guess based on what I knew from the Snowgaine and aimed for the large swamp area to the south.  I figured swamps might be best navigated in daylight if possible, and there were a couple high-value controls there.

I started with a couple close points and did OK.  Then I began a running conversation with myself about whether to try a wide swamp crossing (I went around), whether the little logging track I was on was the faint trail marked on the map (not sure but I suspect not), and how best to approach #34 (working harder to find the more obvious east-west trail first would have been a good start).  I ended up going around a large hill-peninsula thing, mostly knowing where I was but not with enough accuracy to locate the control.  Finally I reached the southern shoreline, figured it out, turned around and walked right to it.  Could have been worse.

On the other hand, 5 hours is not a lot of time for a big loop if I had many more issues like this.  I worked back out to a small road and debated about skipping a control or 2 along the way.  I was standing there at an impasse on this question when a guy emerged from the woods above #17.  Aw heck, it's right there, just go get it and stop arguing with yourself!  So I did.

The next couple controls went well, then I made a long cross-country attempt toward #44.  I was slow and careful until I found an overgrown road that was much easier to follow than the map indicated, so that helped me zero in on #44 without delay (also saw the same guy coming back out from that point).  I thought I had a good plan for #24 but ended up quite a bit southwest of it and marveled at my ability to mess it up while I figured out to recover.

Not a clean start, to be sure.  Argh.

I had better luck with #14 right off a road and then #61 along a rock wall.  Well, the trail to #61 wasn't obvious from the road even through I was pace-counting and really looking for it, but a decent compass bearing from the top of the hill took me right to the wall and down to the point.

There were 2 more controls in the swamps to the south and I really wanted to try for them.  Hoping I wouldn't regret it, I headed that way.  I really wanted to see this section after tromping through here in the snow a few months ago.  There are long narrow ridges with interesting shapes above low swampland, pretty fun to navigate.

In between the little land masses were short sections of swamp.  I used a pokey stick to test for a bottom and found that I could get across in knee-deep muddy water, stepping up on grass tufts and branches here and there.  That went well.  A couple more little pieces of land alternating with little swamp crossings, and I found #55 on a swamp island.  Very cool!

I thought I had time to try for #46 also.  There was major water (areas of blue) in the way, including an obvious pond with a creek coming out the bottom.  There had been mention of beaver dams in the pre-race briefing, so I went to see if there might be one here.  Otherwise I could back-track out of the area and skip #46 if necessary.

There is a beaver dam, excellent!  I used a stick to test it and for balance as I walked across.  It was really stable and I marveled at the engineering ability of beavers to create something so solid out of sticks and logs.  Well, if nothing else, I had that experience so I was pleased.

I ran around the south side of a hill and found an unmapped trail to follow.  I was getting skeptical of the trail mapping by this point.  #46 was a little ways north next to a marsh, then I continued following the trail (with one set of footprints going the same way) until it came out on a road.  That was really helpful, because a bushwhack out of there would have been way slow.

OK, time to work on getting back to TA.  I started by running up the road and jumping off to grab #63, another nice high point.  Hmm, not much time left, I began to wonder if I had gotten myself stuck in needing to get back from this part of the map.  I figured I might as well cut across the middle of the map in the direction of #53 and maybe I could bag an extra control on the way to a spot where I could run back on a road.

I moved as quickly as I could along a small trail, over a hill, across a small marsh, and over another hill.  OK, #53 is somewhere on the side of this hill overlooking a swamp to the north.  Yikes, there were a ton of little contours and drainages without an obvious feature to work toward, topped off with a bunch of vegetation that made it difficult to see very far.  Well, I had one shot at this so I estimated a distance up from the swamp and started a traverse.  I would either find it or I wouldn't... and I walked right into it!  I called that one a minor miracle.

Time to move it!  I aimed for another pond outlet where we had seen a beaver dam in the Snowgaine, yep that's a good place to cross.  No time for #15 nearby, I had to go.  I ran up to the road and started for home.  I did a couple calculations as I ran and looked for anything close by.  #35 wasn't far off the road.  As I neared it I could read the contours and see that the woods were wide open, so I gave myself a couple minutes to run in and see if I could nail it.  Downhill on a spur - there it is!  Nice one.

I ran back to TA with a couple minutes to spare, happy with my "salvage mission" after a shaky start on this loop.

Change of socks, try to rehydrate, prep my pack while also trying to figure out an overall strategy.  This map was absolutely huge for having to come back to the TA every few hours.  There were roads to get places but although I can run for quite a while I'm also not fast.  Looking at the map later, I think this course would have been really fun for a 24-hour rogaine where you had to time to explore all the edges and different areas and ways to connect them without getting pulled back to TA all the time.  As it was, it was a bit frustrating.

Anyway, no time to ponder, I had 1 hour and then I was off on a 4-hour leg.  It started OK with a couple points just to the north.  I really wanted to get up to the fish hatchery area where there were several points close together and an interesting map.  But just getting there gave me fits, with a couple spots marked "private" on the map without obvious boundaries.  I tried following the 4x4 trail but it went way out of the way, eventually taking me to the main road.

Finally I could run better and I got myself in the area of #64.  I had a supplemental close-up map of this spot, with a whole bunch of deep depressions and strange shapes.  Just getting started took a couple tries, then I had a good point of reference and approached slowly to try and work it out.  I kept running into questions and soon wasn't sure where I was.  I would try something, it didn't match up, here's a ridge with a trail (no trail on the map), I don't get it, there's a huge depression, let's go around it.  I found another little trail, maybe one of the 2 on the little map?  I looked into a little drainage, no control.

Making this whole exercise more challenging was the mosquito issue.  Every time I stopped to look at the map they descended on me and started biting.  I tried to take quick looks and memorize what I could.  But boy, what annoying little buggers!

Down, up, back to the trail on the ridge.  I knew I was wasting so much time (and getting bitten up) but I wanted to figure it out.  I pulled out my main map and there was the trail I was standing on (it wasn't marked on the little map).  Suddenly everything was clear.  It would have been nice if this had happened sooner, but I'll take it!  I went around the big depression the other way and walked right up the drainage to the control.  I suspect I had walked very close to it on my previous pass but didn't start looking soon enough.

So there was that.  On my way up the trail to the northwest it started raining.  Then pouring.  I kind of lost it at that point.  I looked at the map to see if I should try for #47, but it was in another area full of depressions and I didn't think I had it in me at that point.  So I briefly "gave up" and started back to the TA, getting soaked and feeling like crap.

I noticed that #27 was just off to the west of my route back.  Might as well try for it, I'm here anyway.  The rain stopped and I worked my way around a big field and down to nab the control.  Funny how finding checkpoints can make me feel better immediately.

It got dark as I continued down the road.  I decided to try for another one, but with less luck this time.  I followed a creek and the edge of a marsh for what seemed like too far based on my pace-counting, but I kept running into more water pushing me in a northward direction.  Finally I found a small hill and climbed it in the dark. No control.  Out of time.  Bummer.  I'm still not sure what went wrong with that one.

Starting back toward the road I heard a rustling in a tree.  I trained my bright light on it and saw a large black and white furry animal scrambling to get up.  Skunk!  I'm outta here!  I think the skunk was also thinking "I'm outta here!" the way it was trying to get up that tree.  That kick-started my run back to the road.

I would have liked to try for another control on the way back, but I suspected I didn't quite have time.  I returned to the TA in a low mood, proclaiming that leg to be a disaster.  It only missed being a "complete disaster" by having located #64 eventually.

With my current state, I knew I needed to use my long break (5 hours) at that point.  I crawled into the back of the truck with John and went to sleep.  The whole event was now a "salvage mission" and basically I would treat it as navigation practice and long run training.

That helped me get up and get ready for my 3-hour run to town and back.  It started in the dark, a nice quiet mosquito-free few miles on pavement.  Eventually I found the turn-off toward #52 and worked my way across a small marsh to find it at a boundary intersection.  Getting out of there proved more challenging, especially when I started 90 degrees off from the direction I wanted.

Yikes, OK, recalculating.  I went south through a bunch of crap vegetation, along crappy old roads full of water, back into the rough bushes, fighting to just get out of there.  Finally I found the trail I wanted and ran around and up to a road.  I jumped off the road short of a "private" house and went down to a small lake.  It was really pretty in the dim pre-dawn light, with frogs singing away.  I found #50 with no trouble and then followed trails out to another road.

I ran up to a small cemetery to locate #36 and knew I didn't have time for the other 2 controls down there, oh well.  Lots of running, hello horses!, no traffic along the main road, good training.  Not sure if that was the most effective use of my 3-hour time block, but it was really pleasant so I didn't second-guess it.

Back to TA for my final break.  I had 2 hours to prepare for my last loop, 4 morning hours to finish this up.  It finally felt like I actually had some time to plan a route.  There were 3 60-pointers remaining and I wanted to get them all.

So I started with a long-ish road run, turned off on a trail, and headed up to #62 with no issues.  Retrace steps on the trail and road, then pop over to get #23 just off the pavement.  I debated going back out to the road to go around to #60 but decided instead for a kilometer in the woods that worked out well because there was very little underbrush in here and it was fairly easy going.  I found a trail along with several unexpected little hillocks.  Taking a guess at which one I was standing on, I took a bearing and walked right to #60 which seemed a bit more hidden than normal (although I might be remembering that wrong).  It felt like another lucky find, anyway.

Still, I didn't have much time to muck around, so I skipped a couple far points and instead ran down the road and along a trail through some wet areas.  It had been nice to run with dry feet for a while, that's why I left this part for the end.  #43 was next to a marsh, then there was the easiest water crossing of the whole race - rock hopping over a creek.  What a joy!

The mosquitoes were still out in force (and they didn't seem to give a darn how much DEET I put on my arms) so I tried to keep moving and keep swatting.  I made a brief detour to a little island in the swamp too early, corrected my mistake, and continued on to find the beaver dam with #65 on the other side.  One more beaver dam crossing (and back), and the 60's were complete.

Now for a few small points on the way back to TA.  I climbed a hill and followed a road and over to #19 next to a pond.  Back around to the main road and finally I would get a chance to get #31 that I had been eyeing most of the race.  Just as I had suspected, it included another beaver dam crossing that was easy but took a couple minutes.  Not something I would have wanted to do in a hurry in the middle of the night, so I was glad I hadn't gone down the hill to try it at the end of loop 2.

#31 done, back up the hill to the road, then across to climb up to #12 in the woods.  Back to the finish line - I was so ready to be done!  I about had enough of the mosquitoes and mud and swamps, certainly I got my money's worth, plenty of good orienteering and running training for one weekend.

One last surprise... Two top navigators battled it out for the lead spot, with Joe Brautigam scoring just a few more points than Andreas Wibmer.  They both completed an amazing percentage of the course.  The rest of us were a ways behind, however somehow I managed to come out at the top of that pack for 3rd place overall again?!  I'm still really not sure how that happened.

There is one more event in the CNYO "Trifecta Cup", a rogaine in July that John and I will be running.  I'm currently in 2nd place in the standings, but if Joe (who is leading) shows up it's all over.  Maybe I can get top female  :)

As always, lots of fun running around in the woods, that was quite a challenge!

Trip to Texas

Wow, I'm pretty far behind on my blog stories.  A lot has happened this year, much of it unexpected.  The saddest event was losing my Dad.  Everything else pales in comparison, and that has made it easy to take the other things in stride and run with them.  For example, IBM recently made some cuts that included the last few months of my planned 3-year position, so I'm suddenly free to do other things this summer.  Immediately I knew I wanted to join John on his trip to Texas around Memorial Day.

It was such a lovely trip and we got to visit with many, many people that we have been missing during our temporary stay in Albany.  John's family in East Texas, folks in Austin and San Marcos, and a bunch of fun adventure racers at the Too Cool "Spread Your Wings" race at Camp Eagle.

I was really lucky to score a volunteer job with Art and Robyn for the race - thank you guys!  What a fun place to run around.  It turned super interesting when we awoke in the middle of the night before the start of the 36-hour race to a huge storm - pouring rain, big thunder and lightning.  What the heck?  There had been zero mention of this in anyone's forecast, but the dang storm showed up and stayed all night and morning.

Camp is situated out in the middle of nowhere down a dirt road that tends to wash out when there is a lot of rain.  So that happened.  Most of the 36-hour racers were already on site, but the "bus them to Junction" plan was out the window.  The camp people and race directors reworked the course to figure out a way to salvage the event.  The prologue was really wet, but eventually the rain stopped and the road was fixed and reopened.  By then the 36-hour teams had left for a long bike leg, and the sprint and 12-hour teams started arriving.

With all the craziness, it's amazing that Art and Robyn were still able to smile for the camera:

I got a job running an overnight remote transition area for a trek in the middle of the long bike leg.  One of the highlights was driving through the "safari" section of a ranch next door to get there.  There were all sorts of unexpected animals like different kinds of (possibly African) deer and antelope.

And buffalo:

The teams didn't see these, too bad.  They trekked around the "normal" woods and eventually got back on their bikes to return to camp in the morning.  A beautiful moon came out and it was a great night to be outdoors.  I even got a little sleep.

Congratulations to all the teams who came out to Camp Eagle and made a solid effort at the races!  I didn't see most of the finishes, but I know the muddy conditions made things pretty tough.

I then got to tag along up to (and down!) the Mega Zip 3000-foot zipline flight.  Now THAT was awesome!!

Just have to get up to the tower to get started...

Video from Robyn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Ndid02Pqc

Other fun activities included picking up checkpoints in South Llano River State Park and helping Scott with this year's murder mystery.  The whole weekend was amazing and I'm really glad I got to go.

Back to San Marcos, then back to East Texas, then we got into the truck and drove it back to New York.  We're back to a 2-car family  :)

The hardest part of the drive was noticing things that we would have liked to stop and check out, but we couldn't because we had a race to get to.  We don't normally just drive straight through entire states.  Of course I started a list of the things we will have to see when we return.  I'm especially looking forward to exploring Tennessee.

One last Waffle House stop (the northernmost Waffle House in the world!) and then we were back in New York again...

Challenge Nation - Baltimore

John and I recently did a Challenge Nation urban race in Baltimore.  It was our first race in that city, and it was something new in a couple ways.

The clue sheet was rather different, for one thing.  Many of the checkpoints were not actual locations, but scavenger-type challenges.  Hmm, not exactly our forte.  I guess we should work on that!

One of the "fixed location" clues was this giant ball that you can spin at Ripley's Believe it or Not - cool!

Hula hoops at the time capsule - also cool:

We found an old-style parking meter where you can drop in coins to help the homeless - an excellent concept:

Now for some tougher ones.  First was easy, as this very nice policeman was posing with any team that asked (with our lopsided "Charlie's Angels" stance):

We glommed onto a couple other teams taking a mock wedding picture (someone had a flower??) in front of the USS Constellation:

Teams were using the outdoor amphitheater at the waterfront as a "theater" to reenact a scene from an Oscar-winning film, in this case Titanic.  We traded photo-taking duties in exchange for our picture.  Someone was very creative in coming up with this pose (it wasn't us, you can be sure of that).

Now we needed our picture with an image of any president that is on Mount Rushmore.  I had this idea that the Washington Monument at the top of the hill would be perfect for it.  Heck, you could see it from all the way down at the bottom of the hill at the waterfront.

Well, theoretically it was perfect.  In practice, taking a picture from a distance of a grey statue on a grey day with grey clouds behind it, well, that doesn't work with a little camera.  At least we couldn't see it on the camera review screen (which is what matters at the finish line).  So we spent a few minutes running up a couple blocks, trying again, running, discussing, getting a little sidetracked with a separate question, running some more, finally agreeing that this photo better work because this is taking way too much time:

That's not completely what lost it for us, but it is #1 on the list...

OK, let's see what we can salvage.  We returned to the CVS on Light Street that we had visited pre-race and met the same really nice man working there who helped us find a postcard to mail.  Thank you sir!

And there were plenty of US mail boxes around:

Our crew came up with a barber pole - nice!  And it's so cute too:

John with his Texas drivers license:

Another photo with props (I'm a fan of props) - pretending to have a pirate fight with another team at the Shot Tower.

It wasn't a huge surprise that we didn't place top 5, but our fumbling and bumbling kept us out of the top 25 as well.  Congrats to all those teams that knocked these clues out so quickly!

We did accomplish a race in a new state for us, so that's something...
http://www.kipley.com/marcy/race_locations.html

And it was fun to explore Baltimore, especially along the waterfront.  Always neat to see new things.  Thank you to Challenge Nation for organizing an urban race here!

Visit to Polyface Farm

We recently had the incredible opportunity to visit Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms - huge thanks to Kathy for finding this place and figuring out that we could all visit on a weekend tour.  We are big fans of Joel and his family's ways of farming and also of their efforts to promote local food and change the way people treat animals.  Joel's book "Folks, this ain't normal" is full of thought-provoking ideas on possible changes everybody could make (and it is an excellent audio book that Joel himself reads).

Gathered with Bob, Kathy, and Kathy's Dad before our tour of the farm:

We were all excited to be there:

"Support your local lunatic farmer"

We met some rabbits who were interested in any blades of grass we felt like poking in their cages:

The least friendly animal on the farm must be this "Guard Goose"

Getting ready for a hay ride into the hills:

The man himself - Joel is an excellent speaker and super friendly too.

John and I followed the hay ride on foot.  Here is John wondering what I'm taking a picture of:

Everything was so very green:

Talking about the "pigness of pigs" at the half-acre where the pigs were currently rooting around (before being moved to stir up another part of the woods):

The field with the broiler chicken cages.  Previously the cows had been through here, then the Egg-Mobile (the egg-laying hens), now the broilers in staggered pens.

Talking about cycling animals through the field and how it produces rich grass and healthy animals:

Demonstrating how the cages are manually moved each day for fresh grass:

We were the first group to tour his neighbor's land.  Joel and his family are just starting management of it and are working to reduce erosion and improve the health of the grass.

The "Pigaerator" where the winter cow manure is combined with hay and corn and then turned into compost by the corn-happy pigs:

Heading back to the main house and barn:

Piglets are so cute!

Joel hung out and answered questions for as long as anyone wanted to stay and talk - we loved every minute of it.

Adoring fans  :)

That was certainly a recent highlight for us!