CurtBlog

Ever since we moved to Vermont, I’ve been a little better about keeping this blog updated.  It seems like most posts have to do with all the reasons we moved to Vermont.  This includes having more room and eventually land to do the things we want, including more gardening, having animals and just having more capacity to grow our own food. I think blogs work best when they have a theme.  When I first started blogging, it was fine to be all over the map and that still works if you are a celebrity/super interesting person.  But most blogs I read regularly now have some sort of focus, whether it be farming, sustainability, a technical topic, movies or theology.  I like this because I generally know if I go to that blog, I’ll find something of interest on that topic.  And if occasionally a post isn’t on that topic, it’s usually something else interesting that the blogger is into and I don’t mind. With all that said, I’ve decided to set up a new blog specifica... [More]

I’ve been wanting to start learning how to make charcuterie (sausage, cured/smoked meats, bacon, etc.) as part of our overall trek towards growing and creating as much of our own food as possible.  We also may raise our own hogs at some point.  I got the Michael Ruhlman Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing book for Christmas and have been going through that for ideas.  I also bought Home Sausage Making: How-To Techniques for Making and Enjoying 100 Sausages at Home which is interesting for the sheer volume of ideas. Although vegetarian sausage?  I don’t think so, at least not for me. I’ve been talking to a couple local pastured pork farmers about getting the raw materials.  The other night I took a trip over to Maple Wind Farm, about 20 minutes from here.  I picked up a whole pork belly that was just beautiful, a little over 8 lbs. and nice and thick.  Also grabbed two smaller pork shoulder roasts, which are really nice for making s... [More]

We are very excited this year as we go from the shaded 100 square foot garden patch (behind our friends’ house in Chicago) to a full-on 2000 square foot "real" garden.  There is some shade around the garden, but I think we’ll get plenty of sun for a lot of the garden. I think this is approximately the same size as the garden we had at our first house when I was a kid. We’ve already planted a patch of garlic (it gets planted in the fall just before frost really starts).  Will be cool to see how that works out.  There is also a few plants of asparagus already planted.  We have several compost bins/piles going, as well as some leaf mulch breaking down over the winter. During this time of year, the days are short and it’s pretty dreary.  But the bright spot is receiving all the garden catalogs, allowing dreams about the summer.  This year we are trying some new catalogs. We’ve bought a lot from Johnny’s in the past and we st... [More]

The rest of our year mainly revolved around settling into our new home. I decided to stay with Clarity Consulting and work from home, a decision that is working out fairly well so far.  It’s definitely a bit of an adjustment, but it’s great having no commute, eating lunch with my wife and now having time to spend with our little one here and there throughout the day. When we got here, there were still some parts of the garden going from stuff the previous tenant had planted.  However, most of the garden was overgrown with weeds and about half the garden had nothing in it.  There was one raised bed already in place.  We like raised beds, particularly for square foot gardening, so we threw together another one with some scrap wood that was lying around.  The soil in the garden is amazing, due to years of amendments done by our landlords of compost and manure.  We gradually got all the weeds pulled out and planted some stuff for fall.  Our landlord let ... [More]

We had signed up with one of the bigger Allied affiliates in Chicago to move us to Vermont.  They seemed to have pretty good reviews, although in doing research it just seems like very few people have great experiences with cross-country movers.  I saw several suggestions in moving forums to just “sell all your stuff” and buy it again in the new place.  I guess that might make sense if you are in your twenties, but we had spent years collecting books, beer-making equipment and other specialized stuff.  So I wasn’t going to do that. Allied was supposed to move us on August 10th, a Wednesday.  They said they would give us exact details once they had a truck scheduled. As the day approached, I called to confirm and they said they still didn’t have the exact details.  Finally I called them the day before and they told me they hadn’t yet identified a truck or driver.  I asked them what we were supposed to do since we had a lot... [More]