Cape Lookout Hike

After a six day work week (perhaps the largest check I’ll have ever earned), this Sunday my Wife and I finally got out and took a hike we’ve been thinking about for some time. Cape Lookout juts west from the main coastline just north of Pacific City and offers some amazing viewpoints. The trail was a moderate two and a half miles one way, although the poor condition of the trail in places made the hike take nearly three and a half hours.

The trail was a bit soggy in spots

The trail was a bit soggy in spots

but the sneak peek views from the side of the cape made it all worth it

but the sneak peek views from the side of the cape made it all worth it

My sweetie with her new dreads and tattoo

My sweetie with her new dreads and tattoo

We had a wonderful time

We had a wonderful time

We couldn’t have chosen a better day. Chilly when we started, yet warm and sunny the rest of the way. Afterwards in Pacific City we waited nearly an hour and a quarter for lunch at the Pelican Pub and Brewery. Their award winning beer (I got a nine piece sampler) made the wait worth it. A fantastic day.

Book Review: Farm City

Currently I’m on a reading Binge and thought I’d put my thoughts down here.

FarmCityFarm City, The Education of an Urban Farmer. by Novella Carpenter

This excellent memoir is the story of a young woman who moved to the Oakland Ghetto and started farming on a vacant lot next to her apartment. In the inner city she grew vegetables, raised bees, rabbits, poultry, and eventually even raised two full sized hogs. I found myself rooting for her ever step of the way. My mouth watered as she described the turkey dinner she made from Harold, her first turkey, and my eyes got moist as I shared in the loss of her flock to stray dogs.

The book is at once a description of the joys, heartaches, and challenges of Urban Farming as well as a fresh look at life in the inner city. Choosing to share the bad, but emphasize the good, Novella shows that in the midst of an area riddled poverty, injustice, and bullets from last weekends’ shooting, people still share meaningful community. It is this community that she comes to love and care for, bringing fresh produce to the neighbors, the monks at the nearby temple, and the Black Panther Literacy group. she writes:

The production of food is a beautiful process. Germination, growth, tending, the harvest— every step a miracle, a dialogue with life. But after th
e 100-yard diet was over, sharing became the main point for me. I could have hoarded all the food for myself–processed the tomatoes into cans and pickled cucumbers. I would have had a groaning cupboard of homegrown food. But then I would have eaten alone.

I highly recommend this book.  Novella also blogs @ http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/