So as part of their attempt to teach people about the slow food movement and ways to raise and eat animals and their products sustainably and ethically,  the peeps here at Geercrest are starting to offer farm dinners – with every ingredient used having been grown or raised on the farm. We were lucky enough to be present for the first ever farm dinner, more of which are to follow soon. Julien and I got to be part of the kitchen team – helping the chef, Bill out – also helping him to taste the wine that was being paired with each course. We think we did a pretty amazing job in this area…..

Thanks to all the folks out there on Facewaste or via e-mail who wished me well for my birthday!!! Julien and I had a rocking couple of days in Portland a few days before and got the drinking portion of my celebrations underway then. We returned back to the farm and did the cooking for my birthday dinner – Julien made an amazing chicken, which I didn’t partake in but believe was delicious and I made vegan chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting. It was a hit! I was pretty happy, because it’s awesome when my cooking doesn’t kill anyone – to have everyone love it and ask me to bake it again is another thing entirely. Yay ME.

Julien and I have until September together. What to do? We had the option of WWOOFing on the urban farm we stayed at in Portland but came to the unanimous decision that we already missed farm life and the wide open spaces, actual farm work and animals that being on a real farm would afford us. So we took an offer from an amazing sounding farm near Salem (Oregon), called Geercrest Farm. Geercrest is steeped in family and farming history and as well as being a working farm (dairy goats), they teach Agrarian culture to school groups and anyone who wants to get back to a slower, more connected way of life. Erica and Jim are the farm owners, and Vesper is the 93 year old elder of the farm. Kya and Hayden are the farm managers and Daniel is an intern here. They are all super amazing peeps. We’ve been here for two weeks now and it’s been exactly what we had wanted when we decided to come. We get up every morning at about 7 (ok, maybe that part isn’t the part I wanted) to do chores or milk the goats, then we have communal breakfast, work on farm related projects the rest of the morning, communal lunch again, bit of a break or more work in the afternoon, communal dinner and then chores and/or milking again. It’s pretty sweet. Does it sound pretty sweet to you? Today we have a day off dedicated solely to blog updates. Ha! The only caveat of this place is that the net connection leaves a little to be desired but I guess we are on a farm…..

Who the hell is Julien you ask?

Once upon a time my Dutch roommate and I ventured to the sleepy but magical town of Victoria, during our days off from the alpaca farm. We knew upon our return that there would be a new WWOOFing group, composed of six French boys. “We have to realise that when we meet them, they are almost certainly going to be stupid, boring, ugly, gay or all of the above”, Marlies kindly reminded me. Ofcourse they will be, how could they not be? Turns out they weren’t. Anyway….I’ve already subjected you to my diatribe about the Frenchies in a previous post, but the by-product of meeting such an awesome group of well-read, interesting, funny and saucy French men is that I got to know one of them a little better than the rest and well….here we are. WWOOFing on a farm in Oregon together. Our total time together will amount to more than most of my longest relationships, we do each others laundry and technically already live together (first in a cabin surrounded by alpacas, and now in a woodland cabin). This is hysterical to me and should be equally as hysterical to anyone who has ever met me. Kind of cool though.

So Marlies and I navigated our little detour (from Arizona through Montana, on to Seattle and finally to Portland), where I met Julien after two months (of occupying myself in other ways besides French men). Did I mention Portland is AMMMMAAAZZZIIINGG????!! I had heard all good things about it but it is so much better than I expected it to be. Mainly because it’s the vegan capital of the world!! The day after I met Julien, Marlies, him and I ventured to the Vegan Mini-mall, comprised of a vegan bakery, vegan bookstore, vegan supermarket and a vegan tattoo shop (yes – totally run by vegans but I’m pretty sure you don’t have to qualify as vegan to get inked there….). Magical. Due to a backlog of blog posts still to come, I don’t have time to list all the amazing things Portland has got going on (vegan trivia night anybody??!), so go there. RIGHT NOW.

Meanwhile – a little heads up about the managers of our current WWOOFing venue. They’re freaking awesome. Kya and Hayden wanted to live in the country so they found a farm that needed help and moved out with their adoooooorable new baby, Soren. When we needed to organise our ride down to the farm, Kya told us “Oh, I play the washboard in a band on Tuesday nights in Portland, you can come to the gig and we can take you home with us. Do you like bluegrass?”. Do I like bluegrass? Well I did like bluegrass. Now I love bluegrass, thanks to The Pagan Jug Band. Marlies was so inspired by the hoedown that she is taking her inspiration back to Holland to start a bluegrass movement. Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaa!!!! Speaking of Miss Marlies…..this is where her and I part ways. I have dedicated time on this blog to her before but I will continue here because she is truly an inspiring individual. Every day I found out something more incredible about her and our travel team adventures were the best of my life. She became a vegetarian after our time together on the alpaca farm and gets as excited about all the things that come with that as I do – food, ethics, the environment and just generally giving a shit. I have to say that seeing someone go from cooking pork chops in butter to researching every vegetarian restaurant in each city we visited was totally RAD. Marlies, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…..I love you lady xx

On the way to Montana we had dinner at a Chinese buffet. All you can eat. Lots of vegan choices. Go China. I did, however, feel the desire to eat some prawns. Let me tell you about prawns. I freaking love them. Well, I did. The thing about not having certain things any more is that…they never taste as Goddam amazing as they did when you ate them all the time. Isn’t that the strangest thing? You would think that because it’s like a treat, you would remember how amazing said forbidden food is and savour every flavoursome second of every mouth watering bite. Not the case. Almost 100% of the time I have eaten something non-vegan, either because nothing else was available or because I “really, really wanted to eat that”, it just hasn’t been as good as I always remember it being. SO disappointing. But also so awesome. My disappointment is my motivation to not stray from this path that has made me so happy. On a similar note, while everyone was having fresh goats cheese on their olive bread today (and I thought I felt my mouth watering), I had bought some vegan mayonnaise (not chocked full of shite which is amazing!), and proceeded to substitute this. I nearly lost my shit. Julien nearly lost his shit. And he’s French. It was amazing, and so much better than what I thought I had wanted. The moral of the story is…have some self-restraint and good things will come to you. We all think it’s our right to eat whatever we want every meal of the day, but we need to think about the bigger picture. If you don’t want to pay for the locally grown, farm-raised turkey…don’t eat turkey. If you know anything about fast food labour laws, or the spectacularly high injury and death rates at meat processing plants (not to mention the unsavoury treatment of all factory farmed animals), maybe you shouldn’t eat at McDonald’s anymore? Whatever. I’m not telling you what’s right or wrong. Just that it’s nice not to be indifferent. And that becoming vegan started a party in my mouth. Just sayin’.

So…..Marlies and I thought we were getting a pretty good deal by catching a ride with this character to Montana. We had said we would share gas money with him (three ways), and also the driving responsibilities. Fair deal? We thought so.

The van was awesome. Retro a-go-go. The owner of the van? Not so awesome. The first night was great – we parked in a gas station car park and climbed the fence of a motel pool, beers in hand. Sweet. By the next morning, we knew something was up. Van man had initially told us it would take four to five days to take the scenic route to Montana, and Marlies and I could spend some time during the day planning our next WWOOFing adventure in Montana. This did not happen. On the second day, we passed through Salt Lake City, and van man said “so we should be in Montana by tonight”…..um, excuse me? It’s not even been 48 hours and my Dutch friend and I have nowhere to go in Montana. Van man didn’t seem phased by this. Add to this situation the fact that he had understood that “we were paying for gas”, and tempers started to flare. I tried to maintain calm and Marlies and I just decided that we would book a hostel somewhere in Montana and go from there. To where we had no idea. So we end up in Bozeman, Montana. BOZEMAN, MONTANA. Who goes to Bozeman, Montana????!!! We do. We did. We had applied to WWOOF in Montana to about 10 different farms and guess how many responses we got? 0. None. Nada. I believe now that it could have had something to do with the fact that we declared we were “flexible vegetarians”, and were applying to farms that pretty much only raise and kill cows. Hmmmmmmmmm……anyway….Bozeman, Montana it was and with no permanent accommodation or plans. The highlight, I have to say, was staying overnight in a hostel, owned by an Australian Aboriginal who looked and sounded exactly like Ernie Dingo. Random much? When you arrive at his hostel, there is a big chalkboard that simply says “take a bed and slip $20 under the door”. He told me later that he was conducting a “little experiment in anarchy” and that “people are honest for the most part”. Interesting. Bozeman was cute, but please note the only things worth taking photos of were as follows:

So back on the Happy Oasis, we met an amazing character called Milton who helped us spray paint an old RV, thereby transforming it into a totally new vehicle (cosmetically). This was pretty much the most fun I had had at the Happy Oasis, as everyone who knows me knows that I am kind of obsessed with spray paint. Not that I use it so much, but I certainly fantasise about being the guy that does all the paint jobs on Pimp My Ride and still have future aspirations of being a panel beater. OH….YEAH.

So what did we learn at the Happy Oasis you ask? That Arizona is awesome, that Ted is Mr. Wilderness and can do anything relating to that title, that I hate mice who keep me awake all night (and so those ones need to die), that people have a range of human emotions for a reason (it’s a big responsibility to be happy all the time if your name is Happy) and above all – that Marlies and I are destined to be friends forever. We go together like wine and chocolate. Thanks for the good Prescott times kids!! Ted and Liza you rock the monkey, see you again!

Backlog, backlog, backlog!! As usual…..my blog posts come later than they should but..busy, busy, busy! Farm life has beckoned me once again so I am currently residing on a farm in Oregon with a very nice French boy. More on that later. Meanwhile…..tales need to be told! So back to the Raw Vegan Retreat and the world of Happy Oasis…..Marlies and I thought it a shame to be so close to the Grand Canyon and not venture there with 17,000 other tourists, so we rented a car, booked a hostel, passed through Flagstaff and went to find out what all the hype was about……turns out that it looks exactly like the postcards…big and wide. Apparently the average Grand Canyon tourist spends 17 mins of a 4 hour visit to the canyon actually looking at the canyon – the rest is spent walking, talking, eating and riding the ridiculous bus system. Marlies and I  averaged slightly more than this I am sure, as we didn’t eat anything and the only time we spent speaking was to bitch about the ridiculous bus system, but boy did we spend a whole bunch of time on the bus. Anyway…..I think in retrospect, we would have preferred to have camped there and actually hiked down into the canyon, as it is pretty spectacular – just not when you are crammed next to a bunch of A-typical American tourists. How could I have forgotten my bum bag?

Flagstaff, however, was amazing!! What a sleepy little town of awesomeness. Lots of vegan options, art and a super sweet hostel. Marlies and I went to a romantic Thai dinner – 100% vegan, then on to a bar that was offering a magical $1 drink special all night. Needless to say we had quite the number of drinks for not much cash and ended up dancing with a group of Navahoes all night. Pure gold! The white folks at this particular bar didn’t like it too much but holy crap did we have fun! We also had a chance meeting with a guy who owns a van (a particularly awesome GMC van of the A-team variety), who told us he was heading to Montana in a couple of days and could give us a ride if we were interested. Were we interested? Up until this point Marlies and I had been flying by the seats of our pants, so we thought, “screw it, Montana it is”. We thought for sure there would be WWOOFing opportunities in the middle of cattle country……

Journey into Arizona! Marlies and I caught a rideshare from LA with a super nice guy called PanPan. Very interesting and well traveled for an American (I find generalising saves time and effort). He did however, have a strange obsession with Disney songs – not really my deal but he and Marlies got on like a house on fire. So we get into Prescott, and the “Guns are why America is still free” sign is our welcoming party. Nice! PanPan rightly reminds us that we probably won’t have such a stellar opportunity to see the real America this close for a long time, so we decide to check out the gun store. It was exactly what I had imagined it to be – awe inspiring and scary as hell. We asked a lot of questions and got the very best of racism, fear and ignorance as appropriate answers. AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! So we started to think that maybe we had made a wrong decision in regards to Prescott, but as we passed through the downtown area, we saw a lot of uni students, people in the park playing guitar and art galleries, so we knew it wouldn’t be all bad. This town actually has an awesome vibe.

So, now we have had just over a week here. AMAZING! We arrived last Thursday at the Happy Oasis which is owned, conveniently, by Happy Oasis! Yes, that’s right she’s a real person – albeit a little crazy. But that’s what all the cool kids are! A little crazy! Marlies and I were skeptical about a raw vegan retreat initially – not the raw vegan part, but how much work would need to be done in someone’s house – but we trekked on anyway and arrived to this….

Needless to say that we were pretty stoked at our choice of WWOOFing destination at first glance! The photos don’t do it justice – it really is a little bubble of paradise in the middle of the desert. Unfortunately, I am so behind in my blog posts, due to 8 hour work days  (what did I say about lack of work??!), obligatory pool dips every half an hour, amazing conversations with the many incredibly interesting roommates here and hitting up the raging nightlife of Prescott every few days, that I won’t be able to go into too much detail right now. But let me say this….it has definitely been an experience! I wouldn’t say that Marlies and I have learnt too much about organic farming from this place, but what I can say has been beneficial is my understanding of the differences of human relationships. I would like to think that I am pretty fine tuned anyway, when it comes to being empathetic to peoples situations, environments and tendencies, but there are so many people here that are both impressive and totally fucked up that I consider myself even more adaptable after being here. OH! And let’s talk about relationships with animals! GODDAM! Marlies and I have been living in the basement, which is actually the best room in the house, but as you can imagine in the desert in a room with not so much security….we have made a bunch of small and furry friends. The first night we were here we discovered a mouse trying to eat my (reserve) chocolate. Bastard! It actually got into the top clothes drawer and started going for gold with my Lindt bar. I decided that was war, so we promptly set up some mouse traps and have been finding an average of one every two nights frozen in motion. DIE SUCKERS! The other night I heard a cry of horror from Marlies, who had found a huge ass centipede on her shoe. I was all running around it, taking photos up close until Ted (wilderness man extraordinaire) came in and told us that we had to catch it because (a) they are quite deadly here and (b) they move like the wind. That shut me up and got my feet off the ground pretty quick. The same night I heard what sounded like a massive fat person coming down the deck stairs eating an apple and snorting at the same time. This actually turned out to be a family of wild pigs (Havalenas?) outside our window. A whole family of them! There is such an abundance of wild animals here it’s crazy – so on one hand, I have had almost no sleep for a week, but on the other hand, when will I get to be this close to Arizonian nature again?

Wilderness man extraordinaire Ted is one of the radical roommates that lives here. He goes to Prescott College and studies really cool shit like “wilderness therapy” and “hiking ridiculous mountains with very little equipment”. Ok, so I am sure they have a more higher education sounding name for those classes, but basically he could live in the wilderness by himself for the rest of his life and be fine. He is, however, a social butterfly and willingly took us out on the town a few times, as we had to make sure we saw what Prescott had to offer in the form of music, beer and locals. The best music was the Rockabilly band we saw last Friday night, the best beer was served at the Raven Cafe and the best local was the 65 year old cowboy who walked past, got a good look at my boobs and then said “Maam…that’s a pretty tattoo you got there”. It doesn’t get any better than that! Ted’s passion is rockclimbing – it’s definitely not mine. It was fun, but I much prefer the coming down part to the going up part. I might try absailing when I get home…..

So! All in all, a good time is being had by all. Not so much organic farming, but we have watered the garden, entirely reorganised the basement and painted an RV. Everyone knows how much I love spray paint, so this last chore was especially exciting for me! We are headed to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon for a couple of days…brace for photos and comments of awe and wonder!

Ok, so I have been SO lazy. I know. Literally since I arrived in LA I have been totally unproductive. But I figure since I have been SO productive for almost my entire “holiday”, that I deserved some rest time. So I have been chilling with the (awesome) San Pedro relatives for the last couple of weeks or so. My cousin Will took me to a Chivas soccer game and I have to say, with all the spirit of the world cup going on – I am OFFICIALLY a soccer fan now. Who knew?

Also got to celebrate the 4th of July in the good old U S of A! Wow, they REALLY get into it here. I got into red wine and fireworks. FUN!

Marlies (alpaca farm roomie!) came up from San Fran to meet me, meet the rels, lose the world cup and for us to plan a road trip to Texas. Things, however, did not go according to said plan and we decided we didn’t want to waste money on car rental. What to do? What to do? WWOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFF! We stayed a little longer in LA than anticipated – just long enough for us to be offered an amazing house to house-sit, meet a very interesting freelance programmer/sailor who bought us dinner (thanks Josh!) and to work on our tans. Also during this time we negotiated a new WWOOFing address. ARIZONA HERE WE COME! Comments I have had in regards to this decision include “carry a big gun”, “carry your passport” and “why the fuck would you want to work in that heat?”. All very positive! Anyway, we have decided to settle in the land of Happy Oasis. Happy Oasis is a raw vegan retreat in Prescott, owned by a lady (conveniently) called….Happy Oasis! Are you game?So….on with my WWOOFing adventure I go people…wish me luck! Later Los Angeles….thanks for the good times!