terra madre wrap up

today, all i can do is laugh as i realize how impossible it is for me to share my terra madre experience with you in any sort of coherent or informative manner.  it has altered my life, my point of view, and my future course as a farmer, entrepreneur, and activist in deeply personal ways—in ways that shall not be understood in a blog post anytime soon.  this first attempt at wrapping up last weekend will flow from brain to finger with passion—yes—but with directness—not.

Click to read more ...

ciao!

 

with just one day left before we leave for italy, all hosts of different things, to-do’s, and tasks are simply falling out the back end of my head.  plop.  if it’s not a thought about italy, it’s not a thought i can hold.

for me—and i’m sure many—vacations are always unique.  i become filled with an energy so refreshing and powerful—simply strolling arm in arm down a random back street feels like ecstasy.

the trick is to capture this feeling.  to identify it, capture it, meditate on it, and channel it whenever you’re mind is present enough to do so.  vacations are a reminder of how carefree and amazing the most simple things can make you feel.  and afterwards, your ability to understand enjoyment has expanded permanently that much more.

i’m not sure how much content will be added to the website while we are in italy, but with terra madre, and everything else italy has to offer, i think there will be some pretty blog-friendly goodies, and i might find a minute to share (maaaaaybe).

and so with that, dear reader, i bid you adieu.  great treasures and wonders lie just ahead on the horizon.

talk to you soon,

jared

Cease and desist

today the piglets approached me with a cease and desist letter for im high on cooking. turns out they’re in talks with nbc for their own spinoff blog, and they’re lawyering up. the letter describes me as a talentless hack, accuses me of intellectual property theft, and claims that on a percentage basis “cute posts about the piglets accounts for the largest segment of my website by over forty percent more than its nearest contender—dumb jokes.”

terra madre & italia

like a magnetic beacon at the end of an impossibly long tunnel, terra madre is actually approaching.  thoughts, which have remained in the stratosphere for the last four months—as animals died, as the summer never stopped, and the piglets were born—thoughts which seemed surreal are now here.  we leave for italy in five days.

let me back up. 

Click to read more ...

Hug me

with the temperature hovering near the fifty yard line most evenings, and the mornings holding their chill, berkeley’s new piglets are resorting to increasingly desperate tactics to hold the heat.  pictured here is a technique common in underground japanese grapple wrestling, and is one known to maximize internal power and heat. 

pick a size, any size

what began as an unintentional experiment-piglets being birthed in general population—has turned out to be a great success.  the tamworth/berkshire crosses which were born a couple weeks back are not only healthy and happy, but are completely socialized into the herd after just two weeks standing up.

although they still spend much of their time milking and napping with their mother, they also spend part of the day on their own—foraging and mimicking anybody willing to be near them. 

they nose around at the slop, sniff the earth, and find choice shady spots.  they are learning to be pigs, just the way they should.