House. Done.

We have moved into our house!

It's still a work in progress but we are there and love it. The screened in porch is my favorite part so far. I love starting my day eating breakfast on the porch--watching the neighbor's horses in their fields and the hawks soaring overhead. The night sky is another nice part...as is the fabulous kitchen...and the huge shower...and the master closet...I guess we're enjoying the whole thing.

We are currently accepting reservations for the Provence Room (so named because the walls are a soothing shade of lavender). Please let us know your expected dates and we'll let you know the rate. We accept the following forms of payment (and are open to other suggestions): locally raised bacon, beer from the New Belgium Brewery, shiitaki mushroom logs, and willingness to be my running partner.

Sorry no pictures right now. We'll post some as soon as the boxes are unpacked and out of the way.

Looks like we're moving on to Plan B for the farm. What was Plan A, you ask?

Disclaimer: this is Sarah's interpretation and understanding of said farm plans. There are probably lots of errors. Deal with it. I'm no farmer and Phil seems to have lost the battle with technology and is no longer posting.

Plan A went something like this:

• Start a 2000 sq ft "kitchen garden" this spring. This involved
  -putting in some amendments to the soil
  -tilling in composted cow manure
  -planting the seedlings Phil started in our spare room
  
  
• Improve the soil on 1 acre for future plantings. This involved
  -getting more horse manure from the neighbors than you could possibly imagine
  -composting horse manure
  -at some point this summer tilling composted horse manure into the soil
  -planting cover crops to help fix nitrogen and lower the acidity in the soil
  -till cover crops in and then plant veggies
  
  Now that the bulk of our house-building consumption is behind us, Phil had the green light to really get going on Plan A. Up until now he'd been limited to the first things on the above lists. It was a little late for spring planting down here, but such is life. Unfortunately, he quickly learned that Plan A was not going to work. At least partly because:
  
• tilling Mississippi clay is hard and doesn't really give you anything good to work with
• our water table appears to be about 5 inches above ground.
  
  So, on to Plan B, which looks something like this:
• kitchen garden
  -till as well as possible
  -plant things like okra which we've been told will grow just about anywhere down here
  
• build some raised beds in which to plant the other seedlings we have
• start lasagna farming, AKA sheet composting, on the acre we want to cultivate
  -this involves essentially raising the ground level up 2 feet...for every bit of land you want to cultivate
  -you layer manure, straw, newspaper, and other organic matter till you reach the desired height
  -once all those materials have composted then you plant right in them
  
  As you can imagine this is very labor intensive and was what Phil was hoping to avoid doing. If you ever feel the need to shove some horse manure, push a lawn mower, or collect leaves let us know. We'll supply the beer!
  

Beware the ides of March

There isn't really anything to beware of down here (or at least there isn't anything specific about March 15th to beware of), but I thought it made a good post title.

And now for your irregularly scheduled update of life in Mississippi:

Last weekend we volunteered with a local organization to clear and clean up a vacant lot that will be the new home of the Starkville Community Market. The Starkville Community Market is our version of a farmer's market and it's where Phil hopes to eventually sell what he grows. We figured it was a good investment in the karma bank to spend the morning digging, shoveling, hoeing, and carting dirt for them. This new structure is courtesy of Gulf States Manufacturers--a steel plant based in Starkville. The economic downturn has hit them hard but instead of laying off their workers they are converting an acre of their land into farm land and having their workers work the land and sell the produce at the community market. The company also decided they would help with the construction of a more permanent shelter for the community market, which is what we worked on (previously they just closed off a section of road just off Main St on Saturday mornings). Pretty nice, huh?

Spring has arrived and Phil's been trying to get the farm up and running:

farm mid march

The house is coming along. We close on March 31st!

house-movin' along

Again, why?

To follow up on yesterday's post...why it's good for us that we're straight.

Why Mississippi? Why?

When people ask us how we like it here we generally say something like "It's great. Everyone is really friendly and we like that. Of course, we're a straight, married white couple so that makes things easy."

The benefit of being white in Mississippi cannot be underestimated. This is a place where the Klan comes out to protest at football games. While that incident had the sort of happy ending where more people turned out to protest against the klan than turned out to support them, the fact that the klan is alive and well down here is still pretty disturbing.

Here's another example of why we respond that way. (Thanks to Sarah's colleague for the great post--we recommend reading the oped he links to).

Saturdays in Starkville

We've had some gorgeous weather on the weekends down here and have been enjoying the great outdoors of Mississippi in February.

Here are some photos from a short walk we took in the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge (not to be confused with the Noxubee Hills Trails where we run).

Noxubee Refuge Hike

Phil's been working on the farm, adding amendments to the soil and starting some seeds in our makeshift greenhouse. This weekend we worked on the piles of materials to be used in compost and for mulch later on. Nothing like raking and mowing on a beautiful Saturday to make you excited for farm life!

Early, early spring on the farm

Finally, with some help from our local paint lady we corrected some of our earlier mistakes with the house.

What's on your TV?

Often when we're watching TV we look at each other and say "wow, we really do live in Mississippi." That thought is often sparked by this:

The Poo is on; It's go time at the farm.

You are now looking at the biggest pile of Poo I've ever created in my life in one sitting... ha! Imagine that?

But seriously, this is a pile of animal poo, honest. It's horse manure with a bit 'o sheep (manure that is) mixed in, courtesy of new friends at Scruggs farm just down the street.

Here's the kicker: multiply that pile by 20. That's my goal for the one acre. Need more for composting and the other projects.

That's alotta poo, no?

House update: good decisions and bad decisions

We've returned from a fabulous, and far too short, trip to Carrboro, NC to find our house looking like a place people might actually live in! Or rather, a place with a few rooms people might live in and a few rooms where people would go crazy looking at the terrible colors. Lesson #542 for building a house is that it is always best to get professional advice when picking wall paint. Here are a few pictures of the inside. You can't really tell what the colors are, but some are really quite nice.

House inside

Frostbite Half Marathon Race Reports

Sorry for the long lull in posts. Life down here is generally unremarkable so we just weren't making any remarks.

This weekend Sarah's cousin Jeff and his wife Jo came for a visit. Jo is planning on running a race in every state and we, and Starkville's Frostbite Half Marathon, were their Mississippi stop. The local race is in it's 25th year and has about 200 entrants now. For those of you who aren't runners, that's a tiny race. It also doesn't start until noon, which is weird. We think it's because Mississippians would think it was too cold to run in the morning in January: the forecast was for high 50s/60s. Brr. The race is a point-to-point starting in Pheba, MS (a town with a gas station, a couple of churches, and one stop sign) and running 13.1 miles on highway 389 to Starkville.

Overall it was an excellent weekend filled with surprisingly good food, plenty of drinking, lots of excellent conversation, and some good running. Below you'll find our separate race reports.

Sarah's race report:
I haven't run a road half marathon in over 3 years and have spent the winter focusing on running as long as possible with absolutely no speedwork (Uwharrie 20 is looming large on the horizon). This means I wasn't feeling very well prepared and wasn't at all sure what to expect with this race. But, the competitive part of me was still hoping for a PR (personal record)--my past few trail half marathons had been pretty fast and I thought the transition back to roads might leave me pleasantly surprised. As we boarded the buses to take us to the start I looked at the Mississippi flag flying nearby and shuddered--both because of what the flag looks like and because I realized that these gusting winds I was feeling were going to be blowing straight in our faces for the entire race. Bye-bye PR. I also realized the forecasted temparature did not take those gusting winds into account and I was definitely under dressed. Hello neon-yellow cotton long-sleeve race shirt! Yes, I was one of those people--the one you snicker at when you see her on the course wearing the shirt for that race. I had to do it folks. My t-shirt was not going to cut it. I had to toss my ego aside and don said neon-yellow race shirt. I felt sheepish all day, but it was a warm sheepish.

Sorry, I digress. We got off the buses, someone blew a horn, and we all started running. I dodged in and out of a few people, felt good and looked down at my watch: 7:22 pace! What? That lasted about 15 seconds. I hit the first mile marker at 7:52--still freaking fast for me, but much closer to a sustainable pace. The road at this point was lined with trees which sort of protected us a from the wind, but it was still a force to be reckoned with. The next three miles felt good--8:18 pace. I settled down at that point and made sure the college kid with the sweatband did not pass me. At this point the road started passing through open farm land and past small lakes. Pretty to look at, but not very good at blocking the wind. I spent the next three miles trying not to slow too much, but desperately wishing we were going to turn right. We didn't. We turned slightly to the left--straight into the wind. I now know what it's like to run in a wind tunnel. It was crazy! I felt like the road runner--my legs were moving so fast but I was not moving forward at all. I looked down at my watch: 9:40! ugh. I looked up and realized that it was 2 miles across open land and then it was a mile up hill! double ugh. Luckily for me I saw a guy all decked out in fancy running gear ahead of me. I didn't care how windy it was, I was not going to let some guy in fancy socks finish in front of me. So I ducked my head and slowly made my way through the 2 mile wind tunnel. The hill at mile 10 was a welcome change for me and I thanked the Carrboro forest as I passed several men and got closer and closer to the guy in the fancy socks. Mile 11 was mostly up hill and I just kept focused on those socks. I could see the final right turn ahead and I blew past fancy socks guy (only to hear that he had biked 74 miles from Tupelo to the start of the race that morning). Finally we turned right and had the wind at our backs! I sprinted to the finished and crossed the line in about 1:51. Not a PR, but nothing to turn my nose at.

The real surprise came at the post race ceremony
when I found out I won my age group!

Woo hoo! I'm a champion! My time was over 10 minutes slower than last year's 30-34 year old winner, but I am chalking that up to the wind and still basking in glory. Maybe next year it will be a PR for me.


Phil's race report (ghost written by Sarah): I'm an Ironman with plantar faciaitis. I don't need to train and I'll still kick ass. 'nuff said.

Here we are celebrating our fabulous weekend:

Frostbite Half Marathon