Day: November 11, 2009

We arrived yesterday afternoon at Blue Heron Farm, our next woofing (wwoof.org) destination. The farm consists of a number of households who share a common vision. This vision includes a desire to live sustainably.

Morgane and Jasper, the resident five year old, started playing and didn’t stop. With duct tape and cardboard boxes, they built forts. This morning, they continued, making the cat her own fort.

It’s been raining heavily since we arrived, really heavily. Good thing for our rubber boots.

I think we’re going to learn lots while we’re here. Today we helped make a giant mosaic covering the floor of a small room. Ghis and I put the grout in the cracks and tonight I helped polish for a few hours. I have always wanted to do mosaics, so now I’m learning how. Lost of sweat, for starters!

Tomorrow we’ll see what other tasks we can do. We are also planning to attend community dinners and maybe tour some other farms. There are some people who live nearby in a teepee and there is a farm that is growing rice.

So much to see, so little time.

Our host, Tony, has sweet potatoes grown right here and this morning I tasted some sauteed greens that were very tasty. Also discovered that apples are getting more expensive – it’s too warm here to grow the kinds that store well. We may also learn to make milk into Kafir which is like yogurt, but drinkable.

We spent a little time exploring “old” New Bern. We found out that it is a lot nicer than “new” New Bern. Bern means bear and there are many painted bears around downtown. There are also churches with loud bells that ring more often than every hour.

Morgane and I met two nice ladies whose job it was to paint the fire hydrant. They were painting it to look like a woman. We watched as they asked someone to sketch in the eyes for them.

People were very friendly as they seem to be everywhere in the south. Ghis finally got our phones working so if you want our phone numbers, you’ll have to write us.

We briefly visited the closest town and it seems there is a lot of interesting stuff to see. There is a biodiesel plant near here and a lot of things related to the sustainable movement.

A few last pictures from the beach…