American Gothic, Sans Pitchfork + Rotting Watermelon

Upon arriving at the farm a little over two weeks ago we were introduced to our humble travel trailer and its sole farm-surviving tenant, Chris. He was 20 years old, stood about 5'9", skinny with black hair. We found out he was a vegan and immediatly asked why. He replied, "I don't know." This seemed a little strange as usually vegies and vegans are fairly militant about their reasons; Kelly and I loked at each other and shrugged it off as shyness Chris was a nice enough fella, spending most of his time sitting in front of his Mac playing video games, only leaving the trailor to work.

He barely ever said a word. When he did it was always awkward. It was as if he couldn't communicate on a human level. Usually his words were in response to a question. Juliana asking if he would like to come to the bars with us, for example, elicited this response, "People are overated, but thank you." An insult and a thank you in the same sentence, strange. For being a vegan he had the worst diet I have ever seen. He sustained himself on white rice, beans, Doritos (not even sure those are vegan), and Veganaise. And he complained he was feeling sick almost every other day, hmmm could it be a lack of vital nutrients Chris?

Then there were the weird noises he would emit every now and then in response to everyday events. They can best be described as a half scream-wail, something like that of a banshee. One such instance involved him making falafels, the only real cooking I ever witnessed from him. He was frying them in a skillet with olive oil that was smoking, turned up a tad too high. He would throw one in and the resulting grease splatter would burn him all over. He would emit his high pitched wail-moan and dance around like a twit for a couple minutes, at which point he would take the falafel out and repeat the whole process including the song and dance. Kelly and I watched in shocked silence from ten feet away. He repeated said process about twenty times. Kelly finally walked over and told him the oil was too hot, he gave her a blank stare.

The culmination of his dramatic madness took place when we finally got him out of the trailer and into town to do a little shopping. There were thunderstorms that day and Kelly and I thought it would be a good idea to make Mojitos as we couldn't work and would be stuck inside all day. We told Chris we were going and, surprise, surprise, he decided to come with us. With our errands almost done, all we needed was club soda and Bacardi, we saw a liquor store with a grocery store right next to it. I went into the liquor store to get our supplies while Kelly and Chris headed to the grocery store. (Speaking of the grocery store it was called Aldi and turned out to be a food stamp grocery store, avoid at all costs, now back to the story). I came back with the booze and as I approached the car I saw Chris coming from the grocery store with two shopping bags and carrying a watermelon that looked like it was covered in soap.

On the drive home Chris started talking. "I love it when grocery stores don't have trash compactors"...confusion from the front seat..."You can find so much perfectly good food in the dumpster, I lived off of dumpstering for a full year when I dropped out of high school and hitchhiked around the country." Stunned silence from the front seat for the rest of the drive home, the dumpstered watermelon continued to ooze the soapy substance, clutched tightly in Chris's hands in the backseat. And yes he ate a handful of it while I watched in terrified awe, before deciding to throw it away because it "might" be rotton. (Everything else he got was also from the dumpster.)

Alas, Chris decided to quit earlier this week and now Kelly and I have the trailer to ourselves. Bon voyage my dumpstering friend, I hope you find what you seek.



Work on the farm has been hard. Lately we have been stringing tomatoes and pulling garlic. Our newest job is to find and execute the mighty tomato hornworm caterpillar. They have been destroying the tomato plants. The only upside is that they make a satisfying crunch underfoot. It has been deathly hot out. Lucky for us there is a great swimming pond on the property, 30 feet deep with a weedless clay bottom. It has also served as our shower, even though we have one in the trailer.

We have been working hard but we have also been playing hard. Last Thursday we went to the city of Culpeper's monthly festival with a kick ass little bluegrass band by the name of Seldom Scene. I proceeded to get a little too tipsy at the Irish pub afterwords losing track of Kelly and getting a ride home with a dude I met at the bar. Next week is the fourth of July and on the 5th Kelly, Brittney and I are driving down to Asheville, NC to see the Smashing Pumpkins at a 900 person club. They are letting people bring in as much audio and video recording equipment as they would like so hopefully I will have some good shots of Billy and Co. rocking the begeezus out of us. Until then may there be peace, love and ROCK for everybody. Dan Wilder - Culpeper, VA



P.S. It is good to see more people responding to my blog, if you are reading it please subscribe and post to me in responses, my cell phone sucks out here so it is a good way to communicate.

David, Josh, Sam, AM and Co.- "Casa Bonita, Casa Bonita." It is a great regret that I never made it there. Pulp Fiction is one of the best and it must have been great to watch The Wolf fix things amidst the rocks. It is great to hear from you guys and I am glad that you didn't drown Dave. Be careful. I miss you all so much and can't wait until we meet again, for now we will just keep it virtual. Peace.

Jim, Catherine, Josh and the rest of the Reuter clan- Thanks for reading, it means a lot. I can't wait to hear about Danny's China children's show, maybe it could be our big break. We might be holding Reuter/Wilder Hollywood soirees in no time. And yes Jim maybe I am too hard on religious people but when there are congressmen on record supporting the execution of every atheist when the Christian Reich, err I mean Right takes over it is hard not to be (see Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion). I love you guys and keep the comments coming.

Tomatoes and Garlic Everywhere, and yet I Dream of Wind

It has been awhile, the reason being that I have not had internet access. This all changed today when I dug a trench to our trailer at Campi Di Sogni farm, connecting ethernet from the main farmhouse; we also have Direct TV, ahh roughing it. Yes, we finally arrived at our destination and we have officially become farmers for the summer, tomato and garlic famrers to be exact. But more on that later. I have to elaborate on the time lapse between posts first, as so many fun and interesting things have happened. This could get long and unruly.

Immediatly upon arriving in Charlottesville, VA we attended a good ole fashioned crawfish boil at a farm, hosted by Montessori parents, that Wendy was sure we would love. She was right, more than right, she was spot on. Everyone camped out so there was much drinking and partying to be done. Kegs of beer, wine, a gigantic party tent, non-stop live music from local bands, a bonfire, 200 hundred people, crawfish, shrimp, a midnight old time music guitar lesson with the lead singer of the Guano Boys (Thank You Chris), new friends, soon to be in laws, and my trusty slackline even made an appearance to the joy of the hoards of Montessori children in attendence. Thank you Andrew and Leigh Ann.





We then spent a week kick'n it in C'ville watching Kelly's little bro and sis, Hanna and Nate. We went Climbing with Brittney in the Blue Ridge mountains, a 5.6 trad crack climb. It was fun but made me miss Boulder. While driving through the deep forest trying to find the route we saw a black bear. And then while hiking back down I got sidetracked in the woods and, hearing something behind me, turned around and found that I was being stalked by a mountain lion. The damn thing was about 15 ft away and when I turned it must have realized that I was too big to attack - I watched as it bounded across a clearing away from me, quick as lightning and as silent as a ghost. I was shaken for the rest of the day and could not help but wonder what would have happened if it had been stalking someone a little smaller than myself, say Kelly.





It was all leading up to a week on the beach on Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Kelly's father Cory had rented a house on the beach and wanted to show us a good time. Recently, he has taken up the sport of Kiteboarding and was totally amped to teach us how. For those of you who don't know, Kiteboarding is basically wakeboarding behind a giant parasail-type kite. He taught us and I must say every other sport I have ever done seems lame by comparison. I know why I have been snowboarding all these years now, it was just training for this sport. Snowboarding, downhill skiing, wakeboarding, surfing, windsurfing, etc, are complete utter wastes of time when you could be spending your time doing this. If you say otherwise than you have not tried it. For those of you in Colorado now scoffing at this bold statement, I beg of you to get into snowkiting, you can do it on skis or a board. Never again will you have to pay for a lift ticket as the kite can carry you up the mountain and then if you like you can use gravity to get down, although once you feel the wind I think you will opt for a combination of the two. Near the end of the week I was finally starting to get a hang of the kite (which is the hardest part) and I had figured out how to get 10 to 15 feet of air just by flicking the kite around to create upward lift. It was spectacular and so were the resulting crashes, I have yet to land a jump, but the feeling of floating under the kite was worth minor injury. Luckly the pros were in town and we got to watch them ride in the big waves on the ocean side, where they were consistently landing 30 foot airs. I am now a wind fiend.






Now here I am sitting in our luxurious travel trailer on the farm after a hard days work. It has been a little over a week and my body already aches from the labor. But at the same time I have never felt so completly satisfied with a job. We have a roomate named Chris who is probably one of the most "interesting" people I have ever known, I already have bizarre stories I will share about him in upcoming posts, get ready to have your socks knocked off. He is at the beach for a week giving Kelly and I a reprieve from his drmatic escapades. The farm is great and Juliana the 24-year-old farm manager is quickly becoming a good friend. Posts will be be more frequent now, hopefully daily or everyother, same bat time, same bat channel. Peace from Culpeper, VA. Daniel Wilder