Tag Archives: tent

Falling out of Summer

The weather has had a pretty big change here.  As I say that Puerto Rico just experienced Irene!  So I suppose change is all relative.

Once a year Cassie and I like to camp out in our backyard in a tent that was given to us as a wedding gift.  I spent quite a bit of time camping up in the mountains when I was growing up.  While it was fun, it’s one of those things that I have done quite a bit so it isn’t something that I feel I need to do.  Sleeping outside under the stars with Cassie is a lot of fun and we don’t have to drive, pack food, pack clothes and figure out all the details involved with a ‘camping trip’.


Our Tent

I used to also camp out in my backyard as a kid and across the street at my friend Matt’s house.  It was a lot of fun and I am sure parents enjoy it because your sleepover (loud kids) is outdoors!

We figured we had better get our once a year backyard camp out done because we have entered into the Fall season (maybe not officially, but you can feel it).  The weather is cooler, the veggies are ripe and the growing season is slowly coming to an end.  We’ve been getting more food from our garden lately too.


Fruit, Vegetables and Eggs

With the change in season we are starting to think about Puerto Rico too!  I hope there isn’t too much damage to the property, but if there is we can just fix and mend like we usually do!  We really enjoy our summer here in Colorado, but the winter is so long it will be nice to have a place to go where we can plant, pick garden and camp out!

I hope all our friends are doing well in PR after Irene.  The few Facebook posts we’ve seen indicate it wasn’t too bad and I hope that is the case.  I’d actually like to be down there for a tropical storm / hurricane at some point.  Just for the experience of it.  Not a major one of course!

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Tour De Farms -Fort Collins

Britton and I went on the Tour De Farms events from the Rocky Mountain Sustainablilty group on Saturday. It was pretty fun. We loaded up the bikes in the Honda Civic and met at the Farmer’s Market in Fort Collins. There we had a discussion about local food economies and the benefits of eating organic. Then we looked around the Farmer’s Market and ate some Grand Junction peaches.


At the Farmer’s Market

From there we headed off on bike as a group to a couple of urban backyard gardens and discussed the importance of this.


In an Urban Garden

Then we rode a little more and saw a couple of commercial operations including an organic nursery and greenhouse operation that is part of a larger farm out in Wellington and a Community Supported Agriculture farm that has over 125 members.


Rows of Food with a Mountain backdrop

It was pretty cool to see over 50 people in a row on bikes going from farm to farm in a 5 mile radius in Fort Collins.


Biking to and fro

The last event at Happy Heart Farm was probably the best. We talked about the importance of transportation in the equation (biking) to reduce our carbon footprint and even had a bike courier deliver lunch from a local co-op. It was definitely a pretty hippie and awesome day. The speaker even talked about moving from a “locavore” society to a “bike-a-vore” society. Which made me think, who eats their bicycle anyway? 🙂

Even the sandwich choices were either vegetarian or vegan -that’s pretty rare. I would have liked to have seen a few animals as part of the discussion on farming -especially for the kids to play with, and maybe a little more diversity in the people who turned out for the event, but overall, it was a great way to spend a morning. And we ended up at New Belgium’s again which made Britton all the happier…


Hanging out at Happy Heart Farm under the old tree arch

When we came home, we hung out with Matt and Jamie at our house for a little while and then slept out in our backyard in a tent to complete the hippie day.


Britton by the tent

The whole day overall was yet another training for Puerto Rico. I believe there are very few organic farms or CSAs there. It would be wonderful to create a farm-stay program where people could stay at the place, work and eat. It gave us renewed vigor and strength that this is going to be one of the coolest things in our lives. We probably would do it here in Colorado except, well, we have a winter season that goes from about the middle of October until the middle of April. I am ready to live like this -well maybe not the whole tent thing 🙂 – year-round.

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