A Very Delayed Japanuary Post

We've been on the road more than we've been at home this year, and while we have loved every minute we've been with family and friends, we are really looking forward to a full summer at home in Bend. These last 4 months have been pretty hectic and rough, and though we weathered through it pretty well, we're ready for some down time.

That's not to say we haven't had the most awesome time traveling - we love, love, love Japan. This time around, we only spent a few days in Tokyo and we spent a majority of our time up in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, close to Russia. 

"I can see Russia from my hotel!"

Signs in Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean and Russian.

Hokkaido has some of the best snow (powder) in the world - or as Mike likes to refer to it, "Japow." Mike and our friends Ray, Tanya, and Josh all went snowboarding and skiing, while Bernice and I went to the Sapporo Beer Garden, sampled a couple bowls of local ramen, spent hours in a Japanese photo booth, and stuffed ourselves with Japanese pastries. Sure, they were snowboarding/skiing on waist deep, world class powder. But, I'd venture to say Bernice and I had more fun!

Mike, Tanya, Josh and Ray ready to shred! Photo by Ray Gilman.

Mike on the slopes. Shot by the professional photog - don't know his name

Bernice and I grabbing breakfast at the bakery.

The Japanese bakeries are some of the best in the world. They take inspiration from the French and the Scandinavians, perfect it and then package it up a thousand times cuter. I think I visited a bakery every single day we were in town - and sometimes twice.

yes, that's a soft boiled egg INSIDE a savory doughnut topped with takoyaki sauce.

Outside the Sapporo Beer Garden

Sampling Hokkaido style ramen with miso broth

One of the best things we found was a Japanese photo booth. There were literally dozens of them on one floor of a shopping plaza. Each booth did something different - you can dress yourself up, write on your pictures, smooth out your skin, add make up, whatever. One booth had some weird looking Barbie-doll faced girls on it. It turned out this booth enlarged your eyes. I couldn't stop laughing. Even though everything was in Japanese, we dumped 100 yen coins into that machine until we figured it out. It took us hours but it was like a trip to the gym - my sides and abs ached from laughing so hard. We looked like anime characters!

We had so much fun we had to bring the guys back the next day.

Mike is such a good sport!

We ended the last few days of the trip with a major bonding experience - getting naked together in an onsen, and then getting thrown out of said onsen. The Japanese are unrelenting when it comes to tattoos. UNRELENTING. If Japanese people can be rude, that was probably the closest we got to experiencing it.

photo courtesy of Japanistas.

We then took a once in a lifetime trip to see the snow monkeys at the Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park. Although it took us a whole day to travel there, it was well worth the trip. We got to experience the infamous Shinkasen (the Japanese bullet train) and pretty much every other form of public transportation on our way.

The snow monkeys keeping warm in the hot springs. Photo by Ashley DeLuca.

A mother and her baby crossing the river.

monkeys, monkeys, everywhere!

You think they're staying clean and grooming each other, but there's poop in that water.

Mike and I really love Japan, and I'm sure we'll go back sometime soon, since we still have lots of stuff on our bucket list to accomplish there, like climbing Mt Fuji! But for now, we are glad to be home and back to our pets. With spring in the air, we can't wait to fix up the yard and continue on creating our mini pseudo "homestead." Maybe this will be the year I actually grow some plants!

Happy New Year!

The last 2 months have been a crazy blur - we went to the SEMA convention in Las Vegas for Subietech (our first business trip ever!), made some wonderful new friends to spend the holidays with, took a little vacation to Palm Springs and Los Angeles, and then I got sicker than sick with Stevens Johnson Syndrome (don't google it, it's disgusting). I was laid up for weeks, and I'll be recovering well into 2016. On the bright side, it has given me a new zest for life, and a lot of time to reflect on things we would like to do in the new year!

SEMA is pretty boring if you don't like cars...

Red Rocks National Park - a.k.a. what I did while Mike was at SEMA.

When we first moved to Bend and changed our lifestyle, we imagined we'd have lots of land and be starting a homestead where we worked to feed ourselves. A year and a half later, we realize that our idyllic daydreams were A: unrealistically ambitious for an urban couple, and B: not what we really wanted. What we really wanted was to live lightly on the earth (as much as possible in the modern world) and to know exactly where our food comes from (grow/raise *some* of it), while living reasonably close to culture/fine dining, an airport, and a hospital. We still want to travel, play with our pets, have afternoon tea, and take naps (that last part is all me). If you own a true homestead, there is no time for any of that. 

And, we actually cannot afford a farm. Farmers are secretly rich. Seriously. Farm equipment and buildings are crazy expensive.

Homesteading: the dream

Homesteading: our reality - pets, camping, foraging, and the pear tree.

We accomplished a lot in 2015 towards our goals - we remodeled our fixer upper with all eco-friendly appliances, got the compost bins built (reducing our trash), tidied up the yard, put up a fence, and started keeping chickens. I also found all sorts of local sources for produce, honey, bread, and meat. Of course there are lots more things we can do better, and we will definitely keep trying to do so. For one thing, I'm going to can and preserve a bunch more food for winter 2016, and figure out a place to store it.

Our new bunnies - just pets, not meat.

We also added 6 new family members! Introducing LDP, short for Lou Diamond Phillips, the big dark bunny on the right, and Momo (which means "peach" in Japanese, or "dumpling" in other languages, either of which is appropriate!), our little gray bun on the left. They are in a temporary pen on some very temporary linoleum in our living room, until we can build them proper, modern living quarters. LDP is part Flemish Giant, and is larger than the kitties, which amuses us to no end.

The other 4 family members are of course, the chickens, who live in a very expensive coop in the side yard. In retrospect, however, the expense was well worth it. They've been snug, safe, and warm all winter, and while we watch those who built cheaper coops and runs struggle with snow, predators, collapses and fires, we are grateful we splurged and built something extremely sturdy and insulated. 

One major goal for 2016 - clear this demolished deck and make a patio!

What does 2016 have in store? Well, I finally got my sewing machine unpacked, so there's a world of curtains, quilting, and other things to get started on. We are having the yard excavated and spring will bring us a blank slate to begin building on. We'll be planting a new fruit tree, a variety of berries, and building raised beds from our demolished deck pieces...and then there's a patio to learn (i.e. Google how to) to pave. Not to mention gardening, round two - I hope to redeem myself from 2015's failures. While we do have trips planned, I think 2016 will be a year where we concentrate on staying home and feathering our nest. We're starting to get more involved with things in Bend, and we're meeting people with the same ideas and values that we have. There's definitely something to be said for creating a little home to be happy in, and building a community to be happy with. Wishing everyone happiness and fulfillment in 2016!

Oregon is Ridiculous.

I'd never been to Oregon, or even looked at pictures of Oregon, before I moved here last year. I think that Oregonians do a really great job of keeping this place a secret. It is just unbelievably beautiful here, and since we live pretty much smack dab in the middle of the state, we can be anywhere in Oregon in about 3 hours.

It's chanterelle season, and our schedules allowed us to plan a random Wednesday off to go mushroom hunting. This is our second chanterelle season, and we are slowly learning what type of environment these mushrooms favor. Of course, I usually get totally distracted from hunting, because the forest is just completely surreal. I feel like I'm in some contrived movie set. It's cool and quiet, there are no bugs (seriously!), and everything is soft, lush, and green. 

Imagine being completely surrounded by this, no other humans in sight.

I wish I could share the smell. Fresh, clean, totally oxygenated.

I found the first chanterelle of the season, and it was a big one! I was pretty proud of myself.

Chanterelles are a weird mushroom in that they like a little bit of sun. A lot of times we find them on slopes, or in a bare patch of ground, but always near trees, and usually in groups. They are social that way.

The un-cool thing about them is that they have these gills that just trap dirt. It's a lot of work to clean them, cook them, and freeze them when you get home (this is one mushroom that is awful dehydrated). But hey, that's better than paying $38-$40/pound for them, fresh.

Another pretty forest shot!

We met a little forest friend on the way. It's a rough-skinned newt, which are really common on the west side of the Cascade Mountains (the rainy side). They're lethally poisonous, but only if you eat them. They're safe to pick up and are super cute with orange or yellow bellies. 

Golden chanterelles - my favorite - poking up out of the dirt.

We hit up Proxy Falls on our way back to Bend, which is only accessible from late May to late October. The trail to get there is about 1/2 mile. The full trail is a loop, takes you past two waterfalls, and is only 1.5 miles in total. Completely worth it, and an easy hike.

We looped to the right, which ascends through a cinder rock field, covered in moss.

Next was an old growth forest, with a well maintained trail.

We weren't really prepared for what the falls looked like. They were STUNNING. And so much larger than we could have imagined. And just....well, magical. We were hungry and tired from hiking 5 miles that morning, and we still sat there for a good 30 minutes, just breathing it all in.

For perspective, Mike is sitting on that log at the bottom of the falls, in a dark plaid flannel shirt. You can just barely see him to the right of the middle of the picture.

The moss to the left of the falls kept making me think there was a rainbow in my picture!

Close up shot, standing under the falls.

Oregon continues to amaze us, every day. There are so many places we still haven't seen yet, but we're knocking them off the list, one by one. It'll take us at least a few years to see everything in this state, so we might be here for awhile!

The Three Sisters mountains, seen as we passed over Mt Washington on our way home.

Feathering Our Nest - With Chickens

One of my daydreams, once I had a yard, was to get chickens and have fresh eggs. If you have researched anything about homesteading, then you know that almost everyone has chickens (if not goats, sheep, cows, pigs, ducks, geese, etc.). So we jumped on the urban-backyard-farmer/homesteader bandwagon and started building a chicken coop. 

Luckily, we have awesome friends! Josh and Bernice pitched in to help us build our ambitious coop and run, which turned out being a lot more expensive and labor intensive than we realized. But it was a great lesson in construction. We situated it in our side yard, in between the compost bin and the pear tree.

Building the frame - after a whole day of digging the foundation.

Working on the floor of the coop

Harvesting pears while the guys are working on the coop

In case you're wondering how we figured out how to build a coop, we solved that as we solve all our problems - by Googling it. I researched the hell out of coops and chickens, learning as much as I could about their needs, health problems, climates, etc. After hours upon hours of staring at the computer screen, I concluded that it was well worth the $30 to pay for plans - so we bought the "Garden Coop," which you can find online. It's very well designed and super easy to alter, customize, and make to suit your space and budget. 

Mike made it all pretty with cedar siding, to match the fence.

Part of the roof and wire up, and Bernice staining the wood

We got all fancy on the inside - painted the walls a cheerful yellow and insulated them with styrofoam packing stuff (so proud of repurposing the styrofoam from all our boxes!). We also cut way bigger doors than they proposed, and laid vinyl parquet tile floors, for ease of cleaning. Turns out this was great foresight, because I clean the coop every day. I can't stand poop.

The inside of the coop after we laid the vinyl tiles and painted

Almost done! We got a proper lock for the human door and finished the roof
and the siding on the coop wall that faces the run. The chickens also get
to forage around the side yard, pear tree, and compost bins every day.

Learning about chickens has been fun and life-changing. Chickens can be nasty. The term, "pecking order" really has meaning now. Their hierarchy isn't a pyramid; it's a linear line. There is one top chicken, and everyone else falls in line below, and there truly is a bottom chicken on the totem pole. It took us a little bit of time (and some re-homing of a little tiny fluffball chicken we named "Death Metal" because she was so mean) to get the balance just right. We still have one "bully" chicken (the 2nd to last on the hierarchy), but no one is bleeding and for the most part, they like each other.

Upper left is our best layer - about 5 eggs/week. The white is the sweetest,
the silver (lower left) is the mean one, and the littlest one (lower right) is the smartest!

I'm not sure if we'll end up naming them. Chickens are weird little creatures - pretty closely related to dinosaurs, actually - and although ours are all friendly and you can pet them and pick them up, there is something really primitive and savage about them. Did you know they can cannibalize each other and their eggs? 

Regardless, we do nothing but the best for them. I clean their coop and run every single day, we spend hours playing with them in the backyard, and we sprout and ferment all their food. Everything they eat is organic, whole grains or veggies, non-soy, non-corn, and real (I don't believe in those pellets, crumbles or "feed" you buy in the store - it looks too much like kitty litter). 

Fermented grains in the jars, and sprouting mung beans, lentils and wheat.

Despite all this, Mike is still weirded out by the fact that the egg comes out of a chicken's butt. The first egg tasted like tuna fish because I had been feeding them tuna (high protein) to help them through molting season. After that, we switched to an all vegetarian (plus bugs) diet, and they get greek yogurt, peas, lentils and sprouted beans for protein, plus these disgusting mealworms that I've been raising in a bin - I won't gross you out with a picture of that. The eggs taste MUCH better now. But Mike still isn't a fan because now we know how dirty chickens can be, and we see how eggs are produced. I'm slightly weirded out but less so (I've eaten some pretty crazy stuff in my life), and even though I think bugs are THE WORST, chickens can turn earwigs, spiders, and mealworms into some pretty yummy eggs!

Seeing where our food comes from makes me believe that if we got more involved, like raising a pig, goat, sheep, cow, etc, it'd be pretty easy to go vegetarian or even vegan. It's so easy to eat something that's packaged pristinely in the grocery store. You never see the poop and the blood and the feathers and the fur. There's a lot of labor, and life, and sweat and dirt that goes into making a meal. If it's this disgusting on an organic-free range-happy life level, imagine how gross it is on an industrial-battery cage-stockyard level.

We've had the chickens about one month now, and our conclusion...

It's been super educational, in terms of getting to know your food and learning about the care of another animal. We'll have to have chickens for at least a year or two to "re-coop" expenses (see what I did there?), but they're relatively inexpensive to maintain, even doing all organic, non-soy, non-corn, *true* free range. I'd say that our 4 chickens probably cost about $20/month. This just about breaks even for what I'd pay in the store for free-range organic eggs ($4.50-$5.00/dozen large), but I have peace of mind knowing exactly what is in my eggs, I can control the nutritional content of the eggs through what I'm feeding the chickens, I know the chickens are truly happy, safe, and loved, and they are really fun to have. We'll see how we feel after a year! 

Living That "Bend" Life

It's been a crazy fall involving more than a few camping trips, chickens (that's for a later post), and our never ending house and yard remodel. We've been making a conscious effort to enjoy the "Bend Life," and get out there to do what we couldn't do when we were working all the time. Sometimes I still feel anxiety about not being "productive enough," or getting things accomplished around the house or yard. And I do still stress about money. But then I remind myself that our house projects will still be there tomorrow, and I can always go in to the office a few extra hours if I want. Life is short and precious, and what's important is getting out there and enjoying it!

With that in mind, we took advantage of Bernice and Josh's visit over Labor Day weekend to go camping at Crater Lake in Morty. We loved it so much, we went back the following weekend with our local friends. It's a gorgeous and well maintained National Park that is only 1.5 hours from our house, and their campground has flushing toilets, showers, a restaurant and a camp store.

Crater Lake was smoky from the wildfires. That's Wizard Island in the middle.

The smoke didn't detract from the gorgeous turquoise water!

Mike and Morty enjoying the view.

Mike purchased another vehicle, a Subaru Sambar, a right-hand drive tiny truck from Japan. It's mostly for work and has been helpful for the house, but it's also a fun little truck that we can take off-roading and camping. To say that Mike loves this truck is an understatement.

All set up with the hammock to watch the blood moon eclipse

good perspective pic of how small the Sambar is! Pic by Ken Bethe

A peek at Broken Top from our campsite

The Sambar all set up for sleeping in the back!

Snowing! pic by Ken Bethe

We were lucky to catch snow already this season - we woke up to big fat flakes! The pic above shows some of the people we went camping with; other local shop owners and van enthusiasts. I'm in the black puffy jacket and winter hat - Mike and I are always prepared when it involves winter camping, and we were toasty despite sleeping with just a tarp over us.

And since it's now fall mushroom season, we got out there for a couple scouting trips. It was gorgeous and even when we find only a few mushrooms, we still get a nice walk.

Hiking around Suttle Lake

Mountains, forests, and lakes - we never get tired of this view.

Some super cool volcanic rocks covered in moss - that's Mike at the top!

I've been watching the weather reports so hopefully I'll target the right place at the right time and we'll find ourselves some chanterelles. 

Stay tuned for our next post when I introduce our new little chicken friends!