With the snow in Vermont finally disappearing, we now get to begin planning and putting in our outdoor gardens and other spaces. Fortunately, we have a lot more space to work with than we have had previously. We also have some unexpected helpers.

Does anyone remember our garden bunnies from back in Minneapolis? Our plan here is a bit like that, but, much, much bigger, in all kinds of ways.

For those who don’t remember the story of our garden bunnies, here is a refresher…

When we first put in our front-yard vegetable garden at our home in Minneapolis, we included a decent-sized strawberry patch. For the first few years of our garden, a mother rabbit liked to nest in the strawberry patch and raised multiple batches of babies every year. (Note: The Cooper’s Hawk nesting in the tree across the street was very appreciative of this arrangement.)

Many people were shocked that we let the mother rabbit and her babies stay. They were sure she and her kids would destroy our garden. Being somewhat lazy gardeners, however, we had neither the inclination nor hearts to set up an unnecessary fight with the neighborhood wildlife. So, we just let them be. We took a similar approach with the clover, dandelions and other “weeds” that tried to take over our garden.

One day, sitting on the patio, watching the garden bunnies move down a row of kale plants, we noticed something interesting: The rabbits wanted the clover and the dandelions more than they wanted the kale. They would move between the kale plants, leaving them alone, while eating the wild flowers. It turned out that the little fluff balls were not only really fun to watch, they were actively weeding our garden for us.

We found it kind of ironic that fastidious gardeners who would have weeded the garden themselves would have actually left nothing for the wildlife to eat other than the garden vegetables. Then, they would be mad at the wildlife that ate those.

The one food we planted that the rabbits would never leave alone were green beans. So, we simply enclosed those in a small rabbit fence and made sure there was plenty of wild food outside the fence to keep wild bellies full.

Now that we are in the middle of a forest in Vermont, we are hoping to use a similar approach to co-existing with our local wildlife, which includes a stunning array of predators and prey. Each night, our trail cams capture images and videos of multiple predators, with as many as 3 - 4 fox visiting any given evening. We also regularly see coyote. We have also seen weasels, fisher and birds of prey. There is a black bear that lives behind our house and bobcat have also been spotted in the neighborhood.

Suffice it to say that in this much more dynamic ecosystem, our coexistence plans are getting a little more complex. Adding to the complexity is the fact that we want to keep the large, flat area on top of our septic mound clear, without regular mowing. We had been thinking of getting chickens and goats or sheep to keep the mound from becoming over-grown. However, the volume of small, medium and large predators in our immediate environment is making that plan seem pretty challenging. So, we are taking a different approach. We are going to plant native plants that are favorite food sources for the wild grazers so that the deer, turkey and other wildlife can help maintain the site. Hopefully, that will also help keep the animals out of our garden. It’s going to be an interesting and fun project. We hope you will follow along to see how it goes.

During the bitter cold of a colder-than-usual (and snowier-than-usual) winter, wood has been our primary heat source… and we are LOVING it!

So… the weather forecast here in Vermont is looking like we are seeing the first hints of Spring coming, with temperatures getting to around 40 degrees! We’ve come through a particularly bitter winter, according to most of the locals in Vermont. And, yes, it has been very cold, with lows in the -10 range periodically (not a problem for seasoned Minnesota transplants).

As we’ve been settling in to our new home, heating with wood was one of the decisions we made to help us live more sustainably and we were really nervous about how it would be during winter.

We have a Jøtul F 500 V3 Oslo that we were told would heat our entire house. Including the basement, that we use for yoga, sauna and storage, we are heating almost 2,600 square feet. We had a healthy dose of skepticism when the wood stove sales rep assured us that a single stove would comfortably heat our house, much more economically than fossil fuel based options such as propane or heating oil. But, it does, and then some.

So far, we have used only about 1.5 cords of wood through winter, and have another cord of wood in the basement to help us get through the rest of winter. This is particularly remarkable, because we like to keep our home pretty warm. Most days, the temperature in our house has stayed a very comfortable 75 degrees F. The best part is that, because the wood stove is in the basement and it sits on a concrete floor, it heats the concrete of the foundation to a very nice temperature. It also heats the floor of the living space above it, making it feel like we have radiant heat flooring. It also makes a very cozy space for sitting in the basement that we were not expecting to be using as living space.

The burning of wood has helped us dramatically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. And, we are making plans to harvest all of the large trees that we taken down when our home site was cleared. There is enough wood piled up outside to heat our home for years to come.

This year, we needed to purchase cured fire wood, because the wood on our land hasn’t yet been processed into fire wood yet. Even still, the cost of heating with wood was minimal compared to other alternatives.

When we talk to people about using fire wood one of the most common questions people have is about the carbon dioxide emissions from wood. We will do a more detailed blog post about that later. But, the short version is this: Not all CO2 is the same. The Earth has a natural CO2 cycle that can easily sustain the burning of wood. Sustainably burning wood does not contribute to climate change, therefore. It is the burning of fossil fuels that is causing our climate crisis.

The Jøtul also has a secondary combustion chamber that burns off most of the smoke and other particulates, making it burn very efficiently. We extract more heat from every log and do not release much smoke into the atmosphere.

We have found nothing about the wood heat to be a negative. It is all good. While we were nervous about making the switch, we could not be happier with the result. Wood has proven to be economical, very comfortable and sustainable and it adds a wonderful aesthetic to our new house. The only minor issues we have had have been sourcing the wood. That was made more challenging because we had no way of knowing how much we would use through the winter and we have yet to set up an outdoor storage space for very large quantities of wood.

Now that we’ve been through the coldest part of our first winter, we have a lot more understanding about what we need and we have a lovely outdoor space that will accommodate several cords of wood. We’ll get that set up this summer. We expect future winters to be even more economical and efficient.

Anyone planning changes to their lifestyles to become more independent and sustainable should highly consider wood as a primary heat source. You will be glad you did. We sure are!

Our first winter here in Vermont has been warmer than expected, more beautiful than expected and more filled with friendship and companionship than expected. It would be total bliss were it not for the constant steam of horror coming from back in Minnesota, where our own government’s attack on our former home town had caused friends to get maced at point-blank-range, in the face for doing nothing but peaceful protest; has caused other family and friends to fear leaving their homes, even thought they are white and US Citizens. We’ve been following along with you with our hearts in our throats every day.

To those in Minnesota, please know, and we will keep saying this: if you need anything, we are here to help. We have a cozy guest room, a sauna, beautiful wood stove and a shockingly peaceful setting, surrounded by wonderful people, if you need some time to de-stress and decompress.

We’re doing what we can to support in other ways, like our recent podcast about how the entire invasion of the Twin Cities was based on a lie. Watch that here:

We’ll keep following and hope you keep warm, keep hugging each other, keep helping each other and keep protesting. You are doing amazing things. The world is watching you right now and you are inspiring all sane minds. You should be proud of what you have done so far. Love you all! Stand tall and keep it up!

Applause! Applause! Applause! (wild cheering from your fans here in Vermont)

True confession: We left our long term hometown of Minneapolis, in part, because we saw this coming. We have, for years, been predicting social collapse in the USA. The reasons we have been predicting that are far beyond anything we are seeing today from the Trump regime and their collection of sycophants. Click on the Climate Section of this website to see some of the other reasons we have predicted social collapse was coming. It is not possible to have a functioning society when large swaths of the population gobble up propaganda dished out 24/7 by the likes of Fox “News.” (It is worth pointing out when we say so that Fox has testified in court that it is not a news organization. Again, in court, they say their personalities are “entertainers” not journalists and that people would need to be morons to believe them.)

When an electorate is that far down the rabbit hole and ignorant; when so many people are incapable of showing any level of care or compassion for others in their community; when people in charge intentionally stoke fear and hatred with violent rhetoric; when a president pardons violent criminals and recruits them to service as his Gestapo, then all of the key threads that hold society together are straining or unraveling. Sadly, the situation is even worse than that.

We learned during the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder that there is a sizable numbers of alt-right white supremacists hell-bent on starting a race war in the USA so that they can try to re-do the Civil War. As we have written elsewhere, we also learned that those same people will settle for nothing less than total control of everything. If they didn’t get it, we predicted, they would initiate the war they have been wanting for decades.

That ignorant, hateful, violent and careless people would want to pick on the beautiful communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota is also not surprising. With the overall high standard of living there; the high level of education and art present in the community; the high level of voluntarism and community involvement; with the beautiful diversity that comes from welcoming immigrants from around the world, Minnesota’s “Twin Cities” represent beauty, art, education, diversity and community, the opposite of everything the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers in MAGA stand for. The Twin Cities also has some amazing intelligent progressive voices, the exact kind that drive MAGA goons crazy.

Putting all of that together made it easy for us to see that Minneapolis and St. Paul would continue to be the targets of these vile humans, which is why we chose to move to a smaller community with many of the same lovely attributes of the Twin Cities. Yet, watching the horrors unfolding in Minnesota from the relative safety of our new home brings no real comfort.

Our hearts ache watching the US Government openly assault family and friends. We are fearful for (and also incredibly proud of) those in Minnesota that are stepping up to help protect the most vulnerable people there.

Though we are not physically there, we stand with you and will do anything and everything in our power to help you. If any of you need anything, please let us know. Be strong. Resist. Resist. Resist.

To the MAGA among us, here is a message: If you continue to support the Trump regime, in spite of the rape, pedophilia, grifting, lying, cheating, killing, warring and now even attacking our own neighbors and friends then we believe you are horrible human beings. We do not mean that in a hyperbolic way. We mean rationally and objectively you lack all of the things that make people good, things like caring, compassion, honesty, empathy, thoughtfulness. You are unwelcome in any aspect of our lives. You have proven yourselves unworthy of the respect or considerations you so willingly refuse to give others. That literally makes you the entire problem with our country.

As we sit here on our front porch, surrounded by the sounds of nature and the beautiful fall colors for which Vermont is known, it is easy to forget that much of the world outside seems to be going absolutely crazy, with the USA seeming to be plunging into Civil War. Here, a family of Pileated Woodpeckers are calling back and forth as they hunt the trunks of trees for grubs and other insects.

In all candor: THIS is why we wanted to make the change to a more sustainable and independent way of living. Our well is deep and clean and delivers us delicious refreshing water. Our wood stove heats our entire home with not much wood, even down to 30 degrees F, the coldest nights we have seen so far, without even needing to stoke the fire at night. A small batch of wood and the house stays a comfy 73 degrees all night long.

Today, after roasting some organic coffee and doing yoga out at the top of the hill, we could not help but feel a strange mix of joy, relief and sadness. The joy is for the beautiful sanctuary we have created for ourselves, that we are finally settled into it and for how beautiful it has turned out. The relief is for, after predicting the kind of social collapse we are seeing happen in our nation right now for many years, we are in a place where we feel safe and peaceful. The sadness (with a bit of anger, too) is that while we tried to warn people where our nation was headed, not nearly enough listened. We would spend some time here saying, “We f’ing told you so,” except that we actually have another blog just for that, which you are free to check out it you want. That is our venting space.

Here on Our Urban Farms we will continue to focus on things that create and build community in healthy and sustainable ways, which are increasingly important things to focus time and energy on.

Today, we are celebrating having such a magical place to do that it.

Alan Rosenberg was one of the many smart and passionate people I was blessed to have worked with over the years. He was an occasional guest on the Animal Wise Radio program. He blogged as the New Jersey Animal Observer. And, as in the above image, he was a regular on the No Kill In Motion video podcast, in part because he was a genius with data and numbers. He was one of those rare individuals who could use all of the parts of his brain, the emotional and passionate side, as well as the data and analytical side, with a LOT of intellectual horsepower.

He was as nerdy as he was humorous and kind.

He helped me see different ways of looking at animal shelter statistics, which helped me to change the way animal shelters operated, which saved the lives of countless non-human beings, which, naturally, also made the lives of all of the people connected to those animals better. The impact that Alan’s far too short life had on the lives of humans and non-humans was, therefore, immeasurable.

The world needs a lot more people like Alan Rosenberg, particularly in times like these.

I recently learned of his passing and felt that I wanted to tell the world about his special spirit. Next Sunday, family and friends will gather to celebrate his life. I will imagine him smiling, laughing and getting a lot of sloppy kisses from some drooling dogs.

Those who have followed us since we were in our home in Minneapolis, Minnesota know that we have always practiced a unique way of living with our resident wildlife. We have peacefully coexisted with raccoon, opossum and any other wild creature that has wanted to live in or around our space. People thought we were crazy when we let a mother raccoon raise her kits in the Oak Tree in our back yard.

She lived there for years and we grew very fond of her. We could always recognize her because of the tear in her left ear. Rather than being a problem for our chickens, whose coop was right under her nest in the Oak Tree, she provided us joy and excitement, watching her raise her rowdy offspring each year. Just for fun, here is a video going up into her Oak Tree to find her taking a break from nursing her kits.

Other chicken-keepers were always shocked that we let her live there year after year. They insisted she would kill all of our chickens or eat all of our eggs. Not only did neither of those things happen, we are unaware of her ever taking any eggs or causing any problems whatsoever.

The same could always be said about the opossum who liked to try to find shelter under our chicken coop during the cold winter months. Many people insisted they would kill our chickens or eat the eggs, and, again, neither thing happened. Instead, they were fun to get to know and shockingly easy to manage.

At our new place in Vermont, we are taking a similar approach to living in a much larger and more wild space. Deer, bear, weasel, fisher, countless birds, reptiles and amphibians live on our land and in the surrounding forest. The process of getting to know them is just getting started as we are putting up trail cams to learn where they are living and what they are doing.

With that in mind: Meet Wasker, a HUGE woodchuck who lives in a large hole along side our drive.

As is typical when people learn about wildlife living in our yard, people have already suggested Wasker should be trapped and relocated or shot. They say he will destroy our garden and worse. As you probably guessed, we’re taking a different approach: We’ll just plant enough food for him.

More trail cams will be going up soon and we look forward to introducing you to more of our resident wildlife, like this mother deer who has been bringing her two fawns around the back of our property for a while.

This is, after all, their home, too. And they have been living here far longer than we have. It is also far more fun to share it with them than it is to try to keep them away.

On a recent road trip back from Minnesota, to collect the last of our belongings stored there, the drive felt like a returning to home, in spite of the fact that we were not yet living in our new house. The house is not yet finished, but we had already begun moving stuff into it.

Moving our memories into the house helped to make the space feel like a home. But, the fact of the matter is that it began feeling like home long before that. It really began feeling like home early this spring, when the foundation of the house was not even finished. Sitting around a camp fire nestled into a ridge of trees that run from the road down to the home site, feeling the tranquility of the surrounding forest, is when the place began feeling like home.

As the house has gotten more finished, as we have hosted friends who have come to visit, as we have begun connecting to the amazing people here in our new community, as we have begun planting raspberries, blueberries, apples, peaches and more, it has begun feeling more and more like our home, which feels really good following a year and a half of living as nomads, after selling our house of 31 years in Minnesota, as this new one was built. It has been a wild and crazy adventure that has required us to live as minimalists. It has been a wonderful learning experience, giving us a trove of lessons we will take into the new life we are creating here. We will use them to expand our sustainable, environmentally-friendly lifestyle in the middle of a stunning maple forest.

Tonight should be the first night we get to actually sleep in our new house. Yet even with much work ahead to retrieve more belongings from storage here in Vermont, unpack, put up art work and really settle in, it already feels like home.

After posting the dramatic video of the setting of our house a few days ago, we decided to do a brief tour of the land. People familiar with our home in Minneapolis know that what made it special was how we used and integrated the various outdoor spaces around the house. Here, we have more land and more opportunity to dramatically expand what we did there. In the video below we show you the “before” version of the land, highlighting the areas we are going to change. In a future video, we will focus more on the forested areas, where there are a large number of edible plants for foraging, in addition to the garden and permaculture spaces we are going to establish around the lot. Check out the video below:

If you have never seen a house flying through the forest, check the video below to see that, along with some of the other amazing things that happened yesterday, when our new house arrived and got set on it’s foundation. There were many things that seemed impossible that we watched happen. Beginning at 7 AM (the crew started off site at about 4 AM) they delivered and set this home by about noon, in 96 degrees f heat.

There is still much work to do. There are downstairs windows and siding to finish. The last of the septic is still needing to be done. And connecting the house to electric and septic still needs to happen. Most of that should be done within the next week. So, our move-in date is getting really close. Wath the magic unfold in the following video:

Just past our soon-to-be neighbor’s house, up at the top of Hill Street in Montpelier, Vermont, the pavement ends and the dirt road starts, as do the cattle crossing signs, which is appropriate, because actual cattle crossing the road are not uncommon. We have yet to meet the cattle rancher, but, judging by the nature and condition of his/her cows, we expect they are pretty cool folks. The bovine are friendly, healthy and hearty, with a huge expanse of natural grass upon which to graze. Their lives seem peaceful, tranquil, even, surrounded by nature. They are but one of the countless examples of domestic and wild life that surround us these days as we ponder the resiliency of life itself.

Still living in our temporary apartment as we move into the final phase of construction of our new home, the garden we have is mostly in pots in our windows or on the front porch. Yet, even this small bit of growing can continually remind us of how precious and delicate yet also shockingly tough and durable nature can be.

Sitting in our kitchen window, rising up out of a shallow dish of water, is a brand new freshly sprouted stalk of celery. It is emerging from the stump of the parent plant, that had been grown and harvested somewhere else in the world (we presume, because we purchased it at the beginning of spring in Vermont). Prior to coming to our house, the original plant had been chopped, stripped of its leaves, cleaned, bagged and shipped to our town, where it sat for who knows how long in the produce department of our local co-op. Then, we purchased it and put it in our refrigerator before, eventually, deciding to use it. Because it had gotten a bit wilted, we used it in soup and jambalaya. In spite of all of that, the plant was still alive. The proof is in the beautiful new celery plant growing in our kitchen.

Meanwhile, out on the front porch in pots we have dozens of Burr Oak seedlings growing leaves after a remarkable jouney from Minnesota to Palm Springs, California, then back to Minnesota, and finally to Vermont. After having been overwintered as acorns in our fridge, getting severely infested with gnats as new sprouts, having nearly drowned a couple of times, and then (remarkably) surviving their first winter in the ground, they are growing their first leaves and are looking GREAT. (Learn more about the story of these special seedlings here.)

These and other things have us thinking a lot about the resiliency and adaptability of life and the parallels these newly emerging plants have to our own lives. We have, after all, gone through our own bit of a dormancy period, after selling our home in Minneapolis to build our new dream home here in Vermont. A year and a half ago, most all of our worldly possessions were sold or donated, or went into storage and our lives contracted. We have lived a minimalist lifestyle ever since, living in tiny and temporary places.

This spring, as we watch the surge in growth in these previously dormant plants, we can’t help but feel a common spirit with them, because our new lives are budding here, too. Our new home is nearly complete. The well for our new property has been drilled. The modular home we built is finished and awaiting delivery. And our foundation for the new home is nearly ready for the home’s delivery.

We can’t help but feel that, if we were plants, we would be getting ready to bloom after a dormant winter. We also can’t help but to think about our nation, planet and democracy itself and the challenges they are facing these days. One thing we know for certain is that if we continue to care for all of these things, they can and will not only survive the challenge, they can rebound anew, and thrive.

After a winter in Palm Springs, California, we’re back in Vermont, preparing for our final push to getting things done so we can move into our new sanctuary at the top of Hill Street in beautiful Montpelier. Though things are still looking pretty rough at first glance, with piles of logs, rocks and tree roots scattered from the clearing and blasting work, there are subtle and exciting signs of the loveliness that is to come if you look closely. Most importantly: the raspberry plants we brought from Minnesota have survived and are budding. Those plants gave us so many delicious berries every year, we could not part with them. We brought some lovely plants with us when we moved. We could not be happier that they have survived the move and their first winter.

Just as exciting: The tiny oak seedlings from our sacred Burr Oak tree in our South Minneapolis back yard we planted look like some may have survived. They were in pretty tough shape by the time they got to Vermont. It is still too early for them to be budding. But, many of the seedlings have some really nice color on the base of their tiny trunks, which suggests there is life waking up in them. The real excitement, though, is what the property is offering up to us on its own, including thousands of berry plants, a wonderful variety of trees, and tons (literally several TONS) of beautiful gray, tan and copper-colored slate, that we will use for many things, including building paths, stairs, patio, pizza oven and hot tub. We will also be bringing some of it inside the house to make shelves; to put under and behind our wood stove, and maybe even make some side tables for our new living room.

We are excited about the slate for all kinds of reasons: it is beautiful, readily available, durable, free, and it fits well with our plans for nature-scaping our yard and decorating our new home, while helping to bring the beautiful outdoors inside.

In preparation for having a garden again this year, we have started some tomato, pepper and herb seeds, along with a couple of strains of cannabis. All are doing well.

Friends from Minnesota and California are already scheduling their visits. 2025 is going to be a really exciting spring and summer. We hope you will follow along to see how the progress goes.

On an unrelated note: during our down time this winter and with all of the craziness going on in the world, we launched a new political podcast and blog, told from the perspective of a couple of really pissed of gay guys. Feel free to check it out!

If you are like us, you don’t want toxins in your food. Hopefully, you also do not want them pumped into your brain, either. Unfortunately, much of the media we consume in society is packed with toxins that can contaminate our minds.

That is why we cut the cord from cable TV news in 2003, during the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign in Iraq. Like any reasonably informed citizens, we knew that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, and that companies like Halliburton had been pushing the Bush administration to find anything they could try to pin on Iraq so they could start a war there. We also knew that there were people in the news industry who knew this. Yet there we were watching respected TV news anchors, with specially designed and stylized sets and with custom graphics and dramatic special intro music, all stylized as though they were reporting on a football game. It was gross. The cable news organizations were helping sell a war that was based on lies and we knew that they knew they were lies. Yet, sell it they did anyway. That is why 21 years ago we canceled our cable subscription and have not returned yet.

Today, we are going through something similar with social media and we are encouraging others to join us.

You would have to be living in a cave to not know by now that the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, now called X, has become a raging cesspool of right wing toxicity and neo-Nazi shit, which have now become nearly synonymous terms. Since Elon Musk has taken over the company X has continued to degrade to the point where there are now several movements encouraging people to dump their X accounts and move to more friendly places, with names like Xiter, X-it and others. The place most people are landing is Bluesky.

For proof of that, you need only look at the following graphs.

To be totally honest, we left Twitter when Musk first took over. We could see the direction it was headed and did not want go along for the ride. More recently, we have also left Facebook, Instagram and all other mainstream social media.

We have, however, recently found Bluesky and after having been there for a bit want to invite everyone to come join us on this relatively new and shockingly different kind of social media.

One of the things X users liked about the platform was it’s openness to different kinds of content, like nudity and other adult content. Bluesky is similar to X in that way. You can post pretty much anything you want. Bluesky also provides a self-moderation tool that lets those who do not want avoid adult content to filter all such material from their feeds. At the same time, you don’t need to have Nazi hate on your feed. There are few Russian bots or right wing trolls on the platform. Even better: the platform keeps a list of such accounts and allows users to subscribe to that an other lists of users for following or blocking. We subscribe to a list of MAGA accounts and known Russian bots, which we then block with a single click. This keeps our feeds free of all of their crap. It is refreshingly nice to not see posts from bots and troll farms in your social media feeds.

Bluesky also allows users to easily create their own custom feeds to deliver content they are particularly interested in seeing, and that they can share with others who may want to subscribe to those feeds. Control of the platform is, therefore, very decentralized and users are encouraged to create and share their own experiences. This approach also allows even new users to immediately begin getting views and likes on content they create, because it is a much more level playing field where there, effectively, are no “gods” or “influencers.”

We hope you will join us over there!

In our first few weeks living in Vermont, we have been continually amazed by the culture and beauty of the place, most of which is hard to capture completely in words or pictures. We are also learning first hand why Vermont is on track to become the first US state to be recognized as an official Blue Zone, places where people live longer due to a variety of healthy lifestyle choices, particularly eating healthy food, moving their bodies in healthful ways and having opportunities to de-stress in nature.

We are also coming to have an increased appreciation for our new home town of Montpelier, Vermont, which looks like it could have been lifted right off a model train set and brought to life.

Montpelier

One day we were out on a hike and started up a conversation with a friendly woman out walking her dog. Like many people here, she moved Vermont from somewhere else. When we asked her what brought her here, she responded without hesitation, “The food.” She then added, “Oh, and the culture, and the nature.”

Montpelier is at the epicenter of the Vermont farm-to-table scene, where much of the food is grown organically and sustainably. There are no McDonald’s in Montpelier (the only state capital without one), or Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC or other fast-food chains, either. There is a Domino’s Pizza and a Dunkin Donuts on the outskirts of the downtown area. In spite of the void of junk food, this smallest of capital cities in the USA, by population, has a thriving restaurant scene where they serve up some amazing grub and some spectacular locally brewed beers that are so good that we recently spoke to one visitor who went out and purchased some extra luggage in order to fly as much of it home as he could. Recently, we were sitting on the patio of a local eatery and we realized there were more restaurants within view than we could get to in several months.

Speaking of food, the Hunger Mountain Co-op and the weekly farmers market sell some of the best foods, which has been making our home cooking fun and delicious.

People here extend their love of good foods to the way they feed their pets, too. And, the sheer number of happy, healthy pups you see when out and about is pretty remarkable.

While our new home is being built, we are living in a cute, little apartment right in the heart of the town; yet, no matter which direction we walk we can be in the middle of nature very quickly.

Hubbard Park is operated by the City of Montpelier and includes more than 7 miles of hiking and ski trails. We hike there almost every day and sometimes twice per day.

There are two independent book stores, at least one of which hosts regular book club and author events. The first event we attended, we got to meet Sy Montgomery and Matt Patterson, the best selling author and artist responsible for Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World Shell by Shattered Shell, a book that has touched us more than we can say.

There are also two movie theaters, a play house, and several live music entertainment venues. With a full calendar of events happening in town, just steps from our door. Add in everything that is going on in all of the small surrounding towns, like Barre, Middlesex, Waterbury, Plainfield and others, and there is always something going on just minutes away.

Surrounding Communities

While Montpelier is the least densely populated city in Vermont, its sister city, Barre (pronounced “berry”), is the most densely populated. Located about 6 miles to the south and east from Montpelier, Barre’s primary industry is granite cutting. It includes an LGBTQ+ center, an opera house and what’s boasted to be the world’s largest zipper. To the south and west is Middlesex, read crossroads kind of town (at the intersection of Highways VT-100 and US-2) with one of the most interesting food and entertainment venues we have encountered: Camp Meade.

Camp Meade, as the story goes, began as a WPA camp for workers during the 1930s. A multi-purpose event venue, Camp Meade is home to a central outdoor stage/performance space, connected to a large green with various tables and benches for seating. Food, beer and wine are available, including pizza crafted in a huge turtle-shaped wood-fired pizza oven. The green is surrounded by a number of artist studios that include a stained glass artisan and a metal worker.

Camp Meade is also home to Yoga Lab, one of our all-time favorite yoga studios, where Mike will begin teaching yoga on October 6! The Red Hen, a local bakery featuring an array of delicious breads and a wonderful coffee shop. A thrift store and a wine and beer shop round out the fun things to see and do at Camp Meade.

Traveling west from Montpelier, through Middlesex, the next town over is Waterbury, home to Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, and a number of great shops and eateries.

To the east, Plainfield and East Montpelier are two of the small towns just outside of Montpelier and home to a favorite, quirky spot: Fox Market & Bar.

Between Montpelier and these surrounding communities, there is always something going on. One of the biggest challenges is keeping track of it all. Montpelier ALIVE keeps a very active calendar of the events in its namesake municipality and some of the events in nearby communities. However, to keep track of all of the things going on nearby there are nearly a dozen community calendars to check. It seems like there is always something going on.

Burlington

For those times when you want a more up-tempo, urban vibe, Burlington is about a 35 minute drive from Montpelier. It is the largest city in Vermont, tucked along the shore of Lake Champlain.

A beautiful, urban and progressive city, home to the University of Vermont, Burlington offers a vibrant night life, amazing food and picturesque scenery. The Church Street Marketplace is a fun, pedestrian space, where you find street performers, food stands, shops, bars, restaurants and other performance venues.

A short walk from Church Street, you will find the Burlington Waterfront Park, with walking and bike paths, a science museum, Amtrak station, more restaurants and a variety of events, like the annual Pride Festival.

The waterfront vibe is more mellow than Church Street and it is where you get to see spectacular views of the Adirondack Mountains and eat some freshly caught fish. Lake Champlain is home to 93 different species of fish that enjoy life in the lakes shockingly clean water, due, in large part to the area’s environmental ethic that prizes clear, clean water.

We’ve only been living in Vermont a few weeks and these are just some of the things we have taken in already. Whether you want to hike, swim, bike or ski, or even if you just want to enjoy some fresh food, Vermont has a LOT to offer.

The Greater World

We are, it should also be said, a relatively quick (and cheap) train ride to New York City. Boston is also nearby. And, Montreal is so close many of the signs and brochures around here are bilingual English/French. Burlington International Airport is human scaled and easy to navigate while offering direct flights on several airlines to destinations across much of the country.

If you have never been, Vermont is a must-visit place. We’d love to have you join is for a bit! Come see us!

This morning, during our walk, we snapped this picture of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, (in the distance) one of the many historic and beautiful buildings in Montpelier, Vermont. It is a building that is very near the center of Vermont’s capital city, and just a few blocks from our apartment where we are staying while our new home is being finished. What you can’t see in this photo is that just below the trees, is an artsy and thriving population and all of the roads and infrastructure to help them easily move about. You can’t see all of that, because they are all under the canopy of the trees that the College of Fine Arts rises above. This is one of the many spectacular views we have when we take any number walks, in any direction, from our new pad. The walking and biking options here are are many and delightful.

We are enjoying the walks extra because it has been a while since we have been able to enjoy a nice, peaceful walk. During our packing, moving, driving across the Eastern half of the USA, moving all our stuff, either into storage or into our new, temporary, tiny apartment, we have not had much spare time for biking and hiking. As we are settling in more, we are exploring more biking and hiking options. From our new place, we can take nice, flat, easy biking/walking paths, including along the river. Otherwise, if we want some hill climbing, we have every option for different levels of challenge. All are beautiful.

The food scene is insane here. One of the first things we did was join the local co-op, including their biking incentive program (which offers pretty nice discounts for anyone who arrived by bike). We have also shopped the farmer’s market. The restaurant and bar scene here is also quite lively and rich. The local library is a one block walk from our apartment, and features a nice collection of materials, a professional staff and beautiful early 1900s historic building. The local bike shop is also a 1 or 2 block travel away and offers help to customers looking for anything from biking, running, hiking or any number of other outdoor activities.

Visually, Montpelier, Vermont looks like it could be a classic, model train layout that has come to life. Yet, while the town looks old and quaint, it has amenities you would expect at an international City, like amazing food, coffee and restaurants.

We are still settling in, getting back to our normal daily routine, even though it kind of feels like we are on a wonderful vacation. We have to keep reminding ourselves that this is our neighborhood now. This is a lovely vacation that does not end.

Call them like karma, or maybe like the circle of life, either way, we are celebrating the beautiful raspberry plants we grew in our garden for many years. As we make our final preparations for heading for Vermont, one of our last tasks was to get some of the plants from our old garden. Fortunately, we had shared them with many neighbors, family and friends and were able to collect some lovely plants to bring with us.

During our last trip to Vermont, we planted some raspberry seeds from our garden. Given the challenges of germinating raspberry seeds, we don’t have high hopes of them growing. We are, therefore, thrilled to have some robust plants to take with us on the road trip. Our property there has a good number of free-range raspberry plants, so we are confident these will take off once they are in the ground.

We wish we could bring all of our family and friends with us on this adventure. Since we cannot, we can, at least, bring some of our favorite garden plants!

It is a dream that has been years in the making and the final phase has begun. We are actively packing for our final move to Montpelier, VT, where Our Urban Farms will have a stunning 1 acre lot filled with trees, sun, stone and wildlife.

As we pack our things from our temporary housing in Saint Paul, we are filled with a mix of emotion. For the last week, we have been through a string of goodbye gatherings with family and friends, where we have celebrated good times from the past and cried about the upcoming separation. At the same time, we could not be more excited about the adventure ahead.

Site work at our new home at 606 Hill Street is going well, though complicated by the rugged rock and slope of the land, both of which make the place really beautiful, where we see deer, bear, weasel, fisher, red squirrel and countless species of birds.

For those we have not been able to see in person, we wanted to share some information about our new home and hope you will visit to see the very special place we are building.

Our new home will be located near the top of Hill Street, a hill that we affectionately call “The Big Ass Hill,” on the south side of Montpelier, Vermont’s capital city. The hill is used by the active biking community there to train for hill climbing, an activity we are both eager and a little afraid of, given the length and slope of the hill.

Our 1 acre lot of maple forest is surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest and farmland that, due to Montpelier’s zoning and the rugged topography is unlikely ever be developed. Our home is in the middle of a forest oasis within walking distance of a beautiful city filled with art, culture and delicious food. Note: Montpelier frequently appears on lists of the most beautiful towns in the USA.

There is also a lot to do in and around Montpelier, including world-class biking and hiking. There are also stunning gorges and swimming holes and scores of tiny surrounding towns to visit that have an earthy, hippy vibe. In the winter, there is skiing in nearly every direction. As a result, we are excited beyond words for the adventure that awaits as we begin our exit from Minnesota, with a huge thank you to everyone here who has touched our lives and made our time here so full of love, light and fun. We hope you will continue to follow our adventure and pay us a visit if you are ever heading toward Vermont!

We also remember Kamala Harris being on the right side of history back then as she worked to help protect our right to marry twenty years ago. The clip below is not from 2004. It is from 2015, after the California gay marriage ban was struck down. In it, she is ordering clerks in California to immediately begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. Her tone of celebration, after nearly a decade of working for equality for all people, is obvious in the clip. After having just returned from Vermont, where we had our first wedding (a “civil union” only recognized in the state of Vermont) and seeing Harris as the presumptive nominee for president is making us smile broadly today. Watch the clip and enjoy! From the bottom of our hearts, we thank Harris for being a true public servant who has a long and dedicated career working for all people.

Our time in Vermont was amazing! Though the situation was challenging, with washed out roads, flooded AirBnB rentals and limited time, we had a wonderful experience, planted our trees, some herbs and greens on our land and met with our site crew to work out the next details.

From Vermont, we headed to Pennsylvania for George’s mom’s 93rd birthday! We had a great time seeing family and spent a good amount of time floating in George’s sister’s pool to escape the 100 degree weather.

Being closer to his family will be another of the great perks of our big move, that will be happening very soon!

Dear President Biden,

I am taking my time this July 4 not to celebrate the birth of our nation but rather to write a letter to you to beg you to take the urgently needed dramatic action necessary to save our country from falling into a theocratic autocracy. You took an oath to defend our nation and constitution from enemies, both foreign and domestic. Terrifyingly, it has become overwhelmingly clear we are being attacked by both, working together, to destroy our nation from within.

I write this believing two things at one time: I believe you have been an outstanding president and that you have been too slow in recognizing the dangers to our nation from which you are supposed to protect us. Your accomplishments in your first term as president have been breathtaking and remarkable. You turned our economy around with blazing speed. You got infrastructure done. You have restored faith in our nation with our allies around the world. You have rebuilt bridges many people thought were destroyed forever… both literal bridges that carry cars, trucks and trains over otherwise impassable territory and also political bridges with partners around the globe, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yet, in spite of these and many other accomplishments, you have been painfully slow at recognizing the growing threat to our nation from extremists who seek to dismantle our laws, regulations and norms so they may take control for the enrichment of themselves. Your hand-wringing about issues like court reform and others, which progressive voices saw as requiring urgent action before you even became president, has, unfortunately, contributed significantly to the crisis currently facing our nation. If we had addressed court reform when we knew we needed it, and if we had had an attorney general that was willing to take action to hold those who have attacked our nation accountable in a more timely fashion, we would not be in the situation in which we find ourselves today.

You were able to achieve your many accomplishments because you are a pragmatic and thoughtful leader. However, your slow and, some would argue, dismissive approach to things requiring urgent, immediate and dramatic action is largely why the USA is under threat today. Our adversaries literally believe, and say out loud, that you are too good of a man to fully use the powers recently granted to you by the United States Supreme Court. You can neither buy into that argument nor fulfill it as some kind of prophecy. You cannot play by the rules you think should be in play. You need to play by the rules that are set for you. You know our adversaries will be playing by these new rules, and if you fail to embrace them, you will be failing to fulfill your oath of office. You will be handing the keys to the Country to our enemies.

You have important decisions to make on two fronts: As a campaigner and president.

To sell yourself as the person capable of leading our nation in this emergency you need to immediately and strongly articulate the scale and scope of the problem facing this nation and describe what you are going to do about it. As the president, you need to immediately begin using the new powers given to you by the US Supreme Court in order to protect us from our enemies. You have 4 months. A long, slow, methodical approach isn’t going to cut it. If you do not, the accomplishments you have achieved will be wiped out by memory of you standing by “being a good man” while predators destroy our nation.

(Note: Help send this message to President Biden by sharing this with your family and friends.)

From downtown Montpelier, Vermont, if you drive south on Hill Street, up we have affectionately been calling “The Big Ass Hill,” about 2,000 feet from the Winooski River, you will see a small cut in the trees going off to the left. That is the beginning of our drive to Our Urban Farm. The drive dips down, curves to the north, then back east, around a granite ridge covered in trees. Behind the ridge you will find a cozy home site, tucked into the forest and surrounded by a wide variety of trees and the sounds of nature and wildlife.

It is only 1 acre of land. Yet, having come from a tiny Minneapolis city lot, it seems spectacularly spacious, amazingly private, peaceful and blissful. The garden space alone is larger than our entire former lot, forest surrounding it. Yet, it is a very quick walk down Hill Street (the equivalent of about 3 city blocks) right into the heart of Vermont’s capital city, with amazing restaurants, markets, bars and shops.

A beautiful, private garden, surrounded by forest has us thinking about World Naked Gardening Day, a global event that happens the first Saturday in May every year. It’s a pretty cool homage to our physical and spiritual connection to the Earth, and it is dawning on us that we will be able to fully participate in coming years.

We are looking forward to it.