New wheels

Got a new bike.


Wasn't crazy about the color but loved the feel.

So we gave her a custom sticker job!
Totally decimated my sticker stash, but it was worth it.Thanks to Essam and the boys at Orange Peel.

The Cacklin' Hen Farm

We have a name for our market garden project. And a logo too. If you want to hear the song we named it after just press play on the music player in the side bar. It's an old fiddle song and traditionally features clawhammer banjo.

Spring Blues

As the spring equinox approaches, hope for another bottomless powder day starts to fade. While most of the rest of the world is rejoicing at rising temperatures and thawing yards, dreaming of golf games and dirt biking, hard core ski bums across the land slide into a deep funk. Don't get me wrong, I love spring skiing. I can't deny the joy of skiing corn snow in a t-shirt, or how how good PBR tastes after said corn skiing, but these things do signal the beginning of the end. There just aren't words to describe the melancholy that I feel knowing that I'll soon have to wait months for first tracks and face shots. Call me crazy but I just love the snow, the cold, the wind, the winter time. With time the pain will fade to a dull aching, but the longing will never go away.

Ome

Took a trip down to Boulder to the Ome factory.

I wanted to buy a banjo for Jenny. Unfortunately Ome doesn't really make entry level instruments. Why is it that you're always drawn to the most expensive thing on the wall? They did carry a couple of Chinese made entry level banjos and said they would take it back in on a trade-in in the future. We had all but decided to buy the Chinese one when our conscience came to the rescue
Here we were at the factory of one of the premier banjo makers in the world, and we were going to buy a mass produced Chinese POS.
We compared the sounds and there was no comparison.
So we are now the proud owners an Ome Banjo! Pricey but worth every penny. Ours is already a collectors piece as it is a prototype for the new Woodsong model now being offered. Only 12 were made, each one different. This one has a really warm sound and feel and a very clear tone. It is #5536. That means it the 5536th instrument made by Ome. They make around 100-150 instruments in a good year. Thank you so much Chuck and Tanya for showing us around and being so hospitable to a couple of hill billies.

Out

Been spendin' a bit of time in the canyon lately. The trail to storm watch.Girly Turns.Upper.
Below the beak.
Moon over upper.Peering down from above keyhole.Below keyhole.
Wet point release on southside.
Headed back in.

Mail and Reference

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."-Gandhi. Just got a package in the mail. It's like Christmas all over again.
Our seeds form Botanical Interests have arrived.
186 total packets. Makes my back hurt just looking at 'um.
Been beefin' up garden reference section of our "library". I call it a library 'cause we have so many tomes that all of our book shelves are overflowing and there are volumes stacked all over. Ah, so many books, so little time.
A couple of new books on marketing.

A couple of used reference books.



And of course the Almanac.

Man of Constant Sorrow, My Life and Times by Dr. Ralph Stanley

The year is 1935. In the backwoods of the Virginian Blue Ridge mountains a congregation of Primitive Baptists gather in a small country church house. At some point in the service, elder Lee Stanley lays a hand on his eight year old son’s shoulder and asks him to lead the church in the hymn “Salvation, O! The Name I Love.” In a high lonesome voice that would become synonymous with bluegrass the youth belted out the first line of the song. As the congregation chimed in little Ralph Stanley knew his voice was a gift from God. With his brother Carter they would go on to define the sound that we know as Bluegrass. In his newly published autobiography "Man of Constant Sorrow", (Gotham Books, 2009) Dr. Ralph Stanley candidly retells his life story in his own charming and colloquial words. Ralph is one of the last progenitors of bluegrass left with us and this glimpse into a lost world should be poured over and cherished. *****