Final Shots

I've finally gotten my place to about 90% of how I want it to look. Still some small adjustments here or there but overall, this is it. Take a look!

Bedroom:

Kitchen/Living Room:

My fabulous table, in three parts:

Bathroom:

The Big Move...finally

So, I made it to Austin! The trip itself involved:

• packing a huge 28' trailer, which was plopped in my driveway, angled downhill. (Thanks Pat and Dad!)
• camping out in my (old) bedroom for a few days
• packing the car with all the things I'd forgotten to include in the trailer
• driving for four days with stops in Roanoke, VA (the cool Roanoke is in present day NC, oops) Nashville, TN (lots of awesome music) Garland, TX (outside of Dallas, nothing much to report here, haha) and finally Austin, TX
• enduring a day without A/C
• lots of trips to Ikea, Target and Home Depot
• sleeping on the floor of my new place for two nights (Dad, you're a trooper)
• unloading the huge trailer in the parking lot of my new apartment...and then carrying everything up a flight of stairs. I have the bruises to prove it
• unpacking everything into its nice new organized place...ha!

Here are some pictures from those adventures. Final photos not up yet because I'm still slowing getting everything together.

First Day...with no A/C!

Bedroom...

Camping in the living room...

After the moving truck arrived on Monday the bedroom looked a little ridiculous.

As did the kitchen...

And the living room as well!

Putting all those boxes to good use.

Finally taking a break.

More pictures to come once everything gets straightened out and pretty.

Thanks to everyone who called, messaged, emailed to wish me luck on the move. I'm feeling the love!

Farming 1, Halley 0

There's been a slight change of plans - Juniper Hill was not what I had been expecting. Specifically, the vibrant community of students and farmers that I had been told to expect ended up being just two people, one older woman and another guy in his early thirties. It became apparent rather quickly that although I was learning a lot (goat milking, cheese making, edible weeds, roto-tilling) this was not the social environment I had been planning on. And that was a drag.  

So, I decided that time would be better spent back in Hudson, finalizing my Austin apartment hunting trip, talking with brokers and most importantly, finally organizing all those Roy family photo albums. (Sorry Gram!) I'm also double checking with my second farm in Maine, sussing out just how their farm works so that when I give it another try I don't make the same mistake again.

Now, to avoid those blog rants as promised, I'll leave it at that. 

Photo Post: Goats!

I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Define: Yurt

Yurt: (n.) A circular, domed, portable tent used by nomadic people of central Asia.*

My yurt. Camouflaged with dead branches and trees...

View to the right. My bed. 

View to the left. Some bikes. And the middle pole which has trusty rusty nails for hanging jackets.

And again, a better shot of the bed. The mattress is Tempur-Pedic, no joke. Super comfortable, slept well the first night. 

And roosters start at 5:30am, just fyi. 

*according to www.thefreedictionary.com/yurt

First Post!

THE first post - with hopefully more to follow. Having a blog is already creating anxiety so expect mostly photographs and very little narration. 

And I'm doing this so that I can say my grandparents are wicked cool - they read my blog!

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Juniper Hill Farm in Amherst, MA to live in a yurt and make goat cheese and hopefully learn all about organic farming. I'll post some pictures as soon as possible so check back for those. 

I've already had one request - baby goat pictures for Mina! Anything else? Leave in the comments below because that'll just make me feel special...