My new address is:
c/o The Rehders
315 S 8th St
Livingston, MT 59047
I got to Livingston, Montana on around June 11th. Leaving Chimayo was hard, but I said my goodbyes 30 times and got plenty of farewell hugs. My mom came to visit and we drove from New Mexico to Colorado, stopping along the way wherever we fancied. I showed her the farm, and we checked out Santa Fe, Ojo Caliente Mineral Spa-aaah, Taos, (oh gosh I knew I should've written this down, I'll never keep all of this straight), The Great Sand Dunes and Salida CO, Vail, the Continental Divide (tons of snow!), and spent our last day in Denver watching the Hangover 2 and watching homeless people fight. I shouldn't have let that end on a bad note because it was an excellent trip, for more reasons than I can write here. I'm so glad that she came, and I think she enjoyed her first trip to the southwest.
After dropping my mom off, I stopped by Boulder for the morning (which turned into afternoon) visited BMoCA and saw the most recent exhibition in installation, met some friends, got lost in the ever-expanding Whole Foods, and left for Wyoming. I drove through half of Wyoming, almost got stuck with an empty tank of gas and no place to sleep (don't ever assume there will be human civilization within 100 miles of a non-interstate rd), and made it to Livingston the next day. The farm (and town) is about 30 miles east of Bozeman, and it used to be the official entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
Here I work for the Rehder family, Mark, Caroline, and their 5 year old Zach, and there are two other wwoofers. No animals, a ton of vegetables, and they even use a similar flood irrigation technique that I learned about in NM.
The town is awesome, it's tiny and adorable and has everything you could need (no chain stores!!). We sell vegetables at a couple farmer's markets (well, not yet, but when we're more ready for harvesting), the Bozeman co-op, the local Livingston hospital, a few restaurants in town, and they trade some for other things (like meat, eggs, and other goods).
One thing to know about Montana is they take their fireworks seriously. They're legal here, and for at least a week and a half leading up to the 4th of July, there were fireworks constantly going off (middle of the day and middle of the night). There was a three day rodeo in town that brings cowfolk from all over the country (Georgia, Florida, Texas, Oregon, etc), and a fireworks show after every evening, which we could see from the second floor of the barn. I was hoping to make a guest appearance on one of their bronc's but entries apparently were all full. I went to the last night of the rodeo with the other wwoofers, and after discovering firsthand that they take identity theft VERY seriously, we had a nice evening watching from the bleachers and praying that the lightning going off wouldn't strike us. We celebrated during the day by cooling off in the acequia (water ditch, it's a tributary of the Yellowstone River) and drinking PBR's on the roof of an old bus-converted-into-bedroom.
Bought my first fireworks the day after that (we were hoping they'd be on sale. they weren't). We blew up a kiwifruit, unsuccessfully tried a marshmallow (just toasted the inside), and shot a bottle rocket which curved and bee-lined it for a patch of trees and the neighbor's house. No lost eyes, no serious burns.
Other than that, there's been a ton going on, but I've been too busy reading, knitting, making a journal, and watching previous seasons of Bones on netflix to write things here. Thanks for reading!
The town is awesome, it's tiny and adorable and has everything you could need (no chain stores!!). We sell vegetables at a couple farmer's markets (well, not yet, but when we're more ready for harvesting), the Bozeman co-op, the local Livingston hospital, a few restaurants in town, and they trade some for other things (like meat, eggs, and other goods).
One thing to know about Montana is they take their fireworks seriously. They're legal here, and for at least a week and a half leading up to the 4th of July, there were fireworks constantly going off (middle of the day and middle of the night). There was a three day rodeo in town that brings cowfolk from all over the country (Georgia, Florida, Texas, Oregon, etc), and a fireworks show after every evening, which we could see from the second floor of the barn. I was hoping to make a guest appearance on one of their bronc's but entries apparently were all full. I went to the last night of the rodeo with the other wwoofers, and after discovering firsthand that they take identity theft VERY seriously, we had a nice evening watching from the bleachers and praying that the lightning going off wouldn't strike us. We celebrated during the day by cooling off in the acequia (water ditch, it's a tributary of the Yellowstone River) and drinking PBR's on the roof of an old bus-converted-into-bedroom.
Bought my first fireworks the day after that (we were hoping they'd be on sale. they weren't). We blew up a kiwifruit, unsuccessfully tried a marshmallow (just toasted the inside), and shot a bottle rocket which curved and bee-lined it for a patch of trees and the neighbor's house. No lost eyes, no serious burns.
Other than that, there's been a ton going on, but I've been too busy reading, knitting, making a journal, and watching previous seasons of Bones on netflix to write things here. Thanks for reading!
