Hi friends and fam
this is my attempt to keep a journal of my year here at Yestermorrow...it may not always be terribly interesting or well written, but it will be written with love and hopefully (mostly) spelled correctly.
It's taken a few weeks of chaos to get me here, but I am happily settled at my new home in Vermont. I attempted to move out of my apartment in mid December, which I was only about 75% successful at. After spending lovely, but busy and rainy, holidays in St. Louis I trekked to the north woods of Minnesota to spend the new year's holidays at the family's cabin. After making everyone drive from STL to chi-town to northern MN it was decided that maybe I really needed help finishing my move, and transferring the belongings I hadn't already given away or forced on to friends back up north. So my amazing aunt and mom and I spent a hectic day driving the 9hours (round trip) ,re-packing, cramming gear in the car, begging friends to let me stash belongings in basements and running errands. They are saints. After getting rid of more belongings, packing the car in -40 degree weather (no joke) cars not starting, locking keys in a running car, AAA, van still dead we made it to Minneapolis, and after a lovely but delayed flight to Burlington (1.5 hours spent circling Burlington because we couldn't land due to snow) I made it to Vermont. It snowed 3 feet the next day, and my baggage finally got to me last night, 2.5 days after I got here... whew! Hopefully that will be the most craziness I deal with for quite a long time....
Yestermorrow is an absolutely beautiful place. Nestled at the base of the Greene mountains, between the small towns of Warren and Waitsfield in the Mad river valley. The school is one main building that houses a conference room, the main office (with a staff of 5), a large studio, a smaller studio, a wood shop/ shop, 5 dorm rooms, laundry/showers etc., and the kitchen & dining room. Just outside the kitchen live the 10 chickens, an herb garden, and a lovely three bin composting system. The campus is used as site for student projects and a place to learn skills, so there are beautiful projects, buildings, and architectural art all over the grounds. Beyond the main building to the east are 3 cabins, all design/build projects of the school- highlighting different building systems. There is a timber-framed cabin, a cob cabin, and a third that I cannot recall. Nestled in the wood are 3 platforms for people to camp on during the warm season, a composting toilet, a solar shower, and an amazing wheelchair accessible tree house. Just to the south is the Intern Challet that I live in. I share the space with 4 design/build interns (who do architecture/ building things and are generally amazing) a woodshop intern, and a community outreach and communication intern. Below our house and beyond lies the main gardens. A 1,500 square foot space with a beautiful Cobb structure garden shed, a sink space, and bordered to the north east by some lovely trestles and wood fencing built by past interns. I am the kitchen/garden intern, my role is working as a cook doing mostly breakfast but other shifts as well- aprox. 30 hours during the week in the winter months and also being the head/ only/ keeper of the gardens. This includes the main garden, the herb garden, an edible forest garden and keeping up with the chickens and the compost. Exciting that I get to really start at the beginning of the growing process... I get to meet with wise garden folk and develop garden plans, start seeds, grow and harvest, and put to bed in the winter...
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