HERE COMES THE...BASKETBALL.
It has been a pretty big week here––if I am allowed the occasional understatement––and Hannah and I have a lot of news to share! First, on Tuesday of this week the Kentucky Wildcats defeated handily the Samford Bulldogs 88-50. The reason this typically irrelevant pre-conference game is of note is not Doron Lamb's superb, 26 point performance...but that Hannah and I witnessed it first hand! Thanks to the never-ending generosity of her parents, we were blessed with a set of tickets directly behind the student section––my first game of the year and the closest I'll likely ever get to talking to Coach Cal in Rupp Arena. It was our last night out before our trip to Louisville Wednesday, and I guess you might even say it was the last night before the first day of the rest of our lives. But since far too much happened this week to cover in one entry and since it's our blog and we can draw things out for as long as we want, this is just going to be the first in a series of entries about our big day. So please bear with us and stay tuned this week for a lot of great updates leading up to a lot of great news!- Jesse.
CRAFTING THROUGH THE FLU.
So I have the flu. Or had it, rather. Earlier this afternoon I ventured out of the house for the first time in days, and I feel like I am on the mend. Basically, my head does not feel like a swollen volcano of pain anymore. Progress! Of course, this is wonderful timing, because Jesse and I are getting MARRIED...in FOUR DAYS! I just can't believe it, really. All that being said, I know this is supposed to be a blog about farming, but I have had little else to do with my time while laying around sniffling and groaning this week. So today, we are going to talk about crafting.
While making plans for our (incredibly simple) wedding, I realized something: flowers are insanely expensive! Is this common knowledge? I was not aware. While trying to figure out how to justify paying for a bouquet and boutonniere that would eventually shrivel up and die, I decided to just make my own. It was honestly incredibly easy, and now Jesse and I have something to keep forever! This is a great project for a wedding bouquet, but it would also make wonderful centerpieces or just decoration for your home. The best part is that you can customize the colors to exactly what you need, because it is just made out of PAPER!
So here's the step by step:
MATERIALS:
ROSETTES:
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| Draw a spiral. |
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| Cut out the spiral. |
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| Start rolling the spiral into itself, starting in the middle. |
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| If you need to, you can secure the outside with a piece of tape or glue, so it doesn't unroll. |
CARNATIONS:
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| Cut out a set of circles, slowly increasing in size. |
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| Wrinkle up the paper circles. Poke the wooden stick (or twig, or wire, or whatever) through the biggest circle. |
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| Keep poking circles down on the stick on top of the first, getting smaller as you go. |
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| After adding the smallest circle on the top, I added a little superglue, letting it drip down the stick and securing each circle in the right place. |
PUFF BALLS:
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| Wrap yarn around your fingers. |
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| Once you have a thick amount, cut it free from the skein. |
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| Carefully slide the bunch off of your fingers. |
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| Tie it using a separate, small piece of yarn. |
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| Cut through the loops on both sides. |
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| Trim the yarn until it resembles a ball! |
NOW....
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Keep making them until you have A LOT...trust me, it takes a lot. Then attach them to your wooden sticks or wire.
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| Arrange the flowers by sticking them in the styrofoam ball. I supplemented mine with some silk flowers and rattan balls. |
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| If you are making a bouquet, you can make a handle by grouping a bunch of wooden sticks together and wrapping them with ribbon. |
TAH DAH!!!
I am really pleased with how this turned out. It was fun to make, and a welcome distraction from my sick days. I hope the holidays are finding you happy and healthy, and now I'm off to make Jesse's boutonniere!
- Hannah.
ROUGH DRAFT.
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Hello everyone, and welcome to our new blog! To all our friends, family, and future supporters, this space is a way of bringing our farm and our life directly to you. We are just starting out on this great adventure and happy to have you with us along the way!A big goal of ours is to engage the community in as many ways as possible. We plan to one day host events, workshops, and tours - this blog will be the place to announce and discuss these goings-on.But maybe that's getting a little bit ahead of ourselves - for those of you who are new to our story, here's some introductions:HIS: I was born in Colorado and reared in the foothills of the Rockies. In middle school, however, I moved to Kentucky––presumably to be closer to the UK Wildcats. After high school I tried some college but decided to dedicate my life to food and went to Louisville to learn to cook. Two years in a great kitchen there and I received an opportunity to relocate to New York with my best friend. The Big Apple treated me well and it was where I discovered a passion for naturally-produced wines. It was these wines that engendered a curiosity about farming I couldn't escape.The original idea was that I wanted to learn to grow and ferment food, perhaps even meet a lovely farmette along the way, and then one day start a farm of my/our own. Because? I wanted to eat better; I wanted to stop consuming so much nonrenewable, non-recyclable, unidentifiable everything; I wanted to make my own wines and be closer to my family in Kentucky: farming seemed like the only logical action. I'd never farmed a day in my life, however, so I needed some education to pull it off. Fortunately I found a wonderland-of-a-place called Bugtussle that was seeking interns, and I spent two full, sweaty seasons in the dirt there.It's two years later now, and everything I left the city for is approaching fruition: I got the education, the girl, and now, we've got the farm. There was just one more thing I needed to do before we left our internship for our new life as farmers. Yesterday, while picking kale, carrots and collards, I proposed to her. I asked her to marry me in the gardens of Bugtussle where we met and fell in love––my beautiful, hilarious, and hard-working farmette-turned-finacée, Hannah.HERS:Growing up, Kentucky was simply a place I couldn’t wait to be free of. I was way too big for such a small town, and as soon as I was ready for college, I was out of there. I studied painting at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Then, it was on to Italy. Next, Chicago. My plan was to just keep moving, traveling, seeing as much of the world as possible, never settling down.But it was in Chicago that I met some urban beekeepers, and I fell in love with bees. And in learning about bees, I started to learn about food. As I became more and more interested in where my food came from, I started to understand that this wasn’t just an interest of mine, but a passion. When I decided to learn how to farm, it became obvious that there was no better place than my very own Kentucky. And so, this nomadic city girl settled down on the farm––Bugtussle, Kentucky, to be exact. It was truly the simple life – we’re talking no electricity, no cell phones, no bathrooms. But while living at Bugtussle, I fell in love with the simplicity. I fell in love with the state I had so despised, with the dirt, the vegetables, the pigs, and, of course, the other intern. Jesse and I soon began making our own plans, and things just seemed to work themselves out over and over––because now, I’ve just left Bugtussle with a ring on my finger and my own farm waiting for me. It was an insane year, and an internship that was more than I could have imagined.OURS:Located about 40 straight minutes and 6 windy ones from Lexington, Kentucky will be Hannah and Jesse's new farm: Rough Draft Farmstead. It's a mildly overgrown 11 acres possessing numerous water sources, barn structures, a house and piles of horse manure. The best part––the part that really brings the dream together––is that it's family land. Hannah's family is deeply ingrained in the Mt. Sterling area of Kentucky near the farm, and this particular plot has been in the family for a long time. In fact, she lived there for a brief period when she was young, and the land possesses the spirit of her first word. They had hoped it would stay in the family, and so had we.We wanted to call it Rough Draft because a farm is a constant evolution of ideas, whims and mistakes, we hope to employ draft animals in the future, and because we're both artists willing to embrace the idea that nothing is ever perfect, it's all a draft for what's next. Using the word farmstead is intentional as well. This place will be both our homestead and our farm––keeping the two together is very important to us. We move there soon, but there is a lot of stuff to take care of first, a lot of which will be documented here.Thank you for reading, and welcome to the farmstead!
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