© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, alternative, biotecture, buy nothing, earthships, ecotourism, energy-efficient, environment, featured posts, green building, lumber, New Mexico, outdoors, sustainable, Taos, travel, video, vigas, volunteer, voluntourism

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I ain’t gonna lie, I was scared to visit New York. Somewhere in my small-town hippie-chick psyche, I was convinced that city would eat me alive, and spit me out broke onto a westward-bound highway.

But my poverty and naïveté have never stopped me before, right? So I headed for the Big Cheese, and (thanks to good buddies Landry, YP & Eggie) found myself in safe and luxurious Brooklyn digs. All that was left, then, was for me to tackle Manhattan.

I saddled up The Navigator and hopped a subway, and soon became enthronged in the teeming masses of New York.

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Read the rest of Chicken in the City (934 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, alternative, art, buy nothing, chickens, counterculture, diy, eco travel, ecotourism, ecotravel, featured posts, freegan, green living, hiking, how-to, New York, outsider art, photography, rubber chicken, starving artists, superhero, transportation, travel, walking

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Catherine Gockley, owner of Fire Mountain Farm and Apiary, didn’t start out as a farmer. She didn’t even start out wanting to be a farmer. But once she sets her mind to things, they get done: having decided to become a grower later in life, she spent ten years learning and working to reach her goal. Fire Mountain is a beautiful example of an organic, chemical-free farm built on small acreage and with a reasonable budget— and Catherine made it all happen on her own gumption.

A bit of background: a trained geologist, Catherine worked as a backcountry ranger in Denali and Yosemite before deciding to become a grower. She found a couple of farms in the hills of California where she could work and live, picking up skills and experience from the landowners. She took a special interest in beekeeping, becoming an apiarist and even teaching chemical-free beekeeping workshops. And then she took the plunge, buying four acres of sloped, sunny property on the Pitcairn Mesa.

Catherine was my rideshare from Boulder to Paonia. I thought she was fabulous and fascinating, and I was intrigued by the idea of visiting a brand new organic farm. How do you get started setting up a small farm? Where do you begin, and where do you go from there? So I invited myself over to get a better look at Catherine’s method.

Fire Mountain Farm is small, but it’s the perfect size for Catherine: soon she’ll be able to support herself completely on this little piece of land. Here’s how she began.

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Read the rest of How To Start an Organic Farm – a visit to Fire Mountain (739 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agritourism, chickens, Colorado, community, environment, farm, gardening, how-to, organic, Paonia, permaculture, rideshare, sustainable, travel, voluntourism, WWOOF

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It started out innocently enough: it was a sunny Friday afternoon, and everybody at Zephyros was ready for a break from work. On Fridays, most of Paonia heads to Revolution Brewing. Daphne and all the interns (except Siwar, who was too young and therefore tasked with cooking dinner) hopped in the Subaru to go have a pint.

Like I said, it was a good day and spirits were high. The brewery’s yard was full of interesting people, and as we all laughed and chatted one beer turned into two.

But then the sun started setting: we’d stayed too long. We had to get back to the farm for evening chores. We motored back up the hill, arriving after dark, and powered through our work as quickly as possible. We hit one snag, however: the chickens had fallen asleep outside of their coop. Actually, under their coop.

Now, let’s talk about chickens for a second. Chickens, for your information, are stupid. Implacably idiotic, even. See video above.

Still, these particular stupid chickens had been hand-raised since they were two days old. Most of them were too young to start laying, but would be old enough soon; their (organic, cage-free, grain-fed) eggs would bring a lot of money at market. These stupid chickens were loved. They were important.

You may notice I’m talking about them in the past tense.

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Read the rest of The Great Chicken Massacre of '09 (477 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agritourism, animal, chickens, Colorado, farm, organic, Paonia, voluntourism, wildlife, WWOOF

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This is a story of different attitudes toward nature. We’ve all got our own way of looking at the natural world: some of us don’t understand it completely, some of us think we understand it all too well. Some work to preserve it, some work to eradicate it, and then there are the NARPs.

Utah Phillips coined the term: New Age Rural Professionals, “out there cruising the backroads… stereos blaring meditation music into the wilderness”. He talks about them in a song called Nevada City, California— Nevada City, as many of you know, being my home town. I grew up in NARP central, a land of rayon batik, yoga, and meditation, of Nag Champa and expensive homeopathic face creams. Earth-tone SUVs roam those hills, carrying well-meaning amateur spiritualists who truly believe that they can save the world (and achieve Nirvana) by purchasing handmade clothing imported from New Guinea. “Maybe my home costs thousands each month to heat,” their attitude proclaims, “but I recycle!”

Jane was one of these poor souls: a woman who’d come to Colorado from the East Coast with money to burn and a bevy of health issues. There in the bright yellow sun of the North Fork valley, she’d found Life Force (“and oh, Jessica,” she told me, “it saved my life.”)

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Read the rest of The Dandelion War, a Cautionary Gardening Tale (1,003 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Colorado, environment, flowers, gardening, Paonia, water

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Yes, that’s right: it’s time to talk about irrigation! WHOO exciting! IRRIGATION YEAH!

Okay, calm down all yous. It may not be the most fascinating topic, but it’s more interesting than you think. And it’s necessary: in places like Paonia, which gets less than 20 inches of rain a year, it’s next to impossible to farm without using irrigation. Zephyros Farm sits below Landsend Peak, which is covered in melting snow. But how does that runoff get to these fields, and what happens to it after that?

Well, I’ll tell you.

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Read the rest of Things I Learned: Flood Irrigation! (650 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agritourism, Colorado, education, farm, how-to, organic, Paonia, reuse, voluntourism, water, WWOOF

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FUN FACT! Hummingbird Moths are a type of Hawkmoth, which means they’re relatives of the Death’s-head Moth (below). Anyone who’s seen Silence of the Lambs knows what those fantastic creatures are all about, amirite? But despite their dastardly cousins, Hummingbird Moths are pretty and happy, pastel, slightly oversized harbingers of spring.

Death’s-head Hawkmoth, originally uploaded by Trevor H

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© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Colorado, environment, hawkmoth, hummingbird, insect, nature, outdoors, Paonia, phenology, spring, video, wildlife

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]]> http://uprooted.jessicareeder.com/2009/04/its-a-bird-its-a-moth/feed/ 1 http://uprooted.jessicareeder.com/2009/04/things-i-learned-get-good-boots/ http://uprooted.jessicareeder.com/2009/04/things-i-learned-get-good-boots/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:27:23 +0000 Jessica Reeder http://uprooted.jessicareeder.com/?p=627

So there I am, walking through slushy snow. Colorado in springtime, you know. It’s 70° and there’s fresh snow on the ground, and underneath that a muddy stream flowing off the Flatirons. But my feet don’t feel a thing, because I’ve got good boots.

WRONG.

What sucks is that these are actually very good boots. I’ve had friends recommend Harley-Davidson boots to me for years. The uppers are beautiful, in perfect shape, and since I oiled ‘em they’re proving to be completely waterproof. They’ll last a long time in all sorts of weather. Too bad the soles are made out of some kind of low-quality rubber, and sometime while I was wandering around the drylands, they cracked in half on BOTH feet.

So now the soles are mended with Shoe Goo, a temporary fix but it’ll get me back to California. Next time I’m near a phone, I’ll call the Harley Davidson HQ and see what they can do for me. These boots are not even four months old, and granted, I’ve worn them every single day to climb mountains and stomp shovels and kick all kinds of butt… but still. Wet feet suck.

Now I pass my hard-earned knowledge on to you, friends: if you don’t want to be tromping around in a slushy puddle of your own socks, don’t get no Harleys.

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, Boulder, Colorado, environment, featured posts, hiking, nature, recreation, review, snow, travel, water, weather

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© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, biotecture, earthship, featured posts

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Bottle Brick Bathroom, originally uploaded by Earthship Kirsten

If you’ve been following my Earthships adventure, you know that it is actually possible to build houses using garbage. Can and bottle walls—literally walls made out of mud or cement, with cans or bottles set like bricks—are one of Mike Reynolds‘ time-tested innovations, a building technique that can have amazingly artistic results.

Can/bottle walls look and act like normal walls, except that they can’t bear heavy loads. They’re much, MUCH faster to build than tire walls, but don’t have the benefit of thermal mass. In Earthships, they’re used for room dividers, garden walls, and other non-load-bearing verticals. You can literally learn how to make one in five minutes; they’re cheap as free and extremely easy to put up. So, here’s how!

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Read the rest of Things I Learned: Can/Bottle Walls (873 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: art, biotecture, buy nothing, design, earthships, garbage, green building, how-to, New Mexico, recycling, reuse, sustainable, Taos, volunteer, voluntourism

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