Watch Me Airstream Y'all!

The last I left off with the Watch Me Travel site, I was bravely…wait, strike that…I was valiantly…no, better yet…I was heroically making my way through winter in New York. I know I make Manhattan sound like Juno, Alaska in January, but to me, the suddenness of having to leave the warm beachside town I was writing from in Portugal because of visa issues had certainly made it feel that way.
When Europe didn’t want me anymore it felt good when family and friends did. Luckily I have a superstar brother and sister-in-law who granted me familial gypsy rites to the spare bed in their pied-à-terre until I figured out my next move - which happened in early May when my friend Gecko called.
“Hey Gecko, how are you?”
“Honey, I’m over it. I’m selling the house, buying an airstream, and parking it on an organic farm. You should come on down.”
When he said that I felt like Bob Barker had just called my name from the studio audience. “Oh my god! That sounds amazing! Yes! I’m a comin’! I’m a comin’ dooooown!” I shouted into the phone, my free arm swatting the humid city air as if I was running down the aisle of the Price Is Right, ready to bid on a dinette set from 1985.
Down would be on Red Wing Farm, a ten-minute drive outside of Asheville, North Carolina. And Gecko is officially one of my most favorite people ever. An artist, an adventurer, and professional prankster (rubber rats, carefully placed insects and perfectly timed explosion sounds as soon as I get to the propane tank), he knows how to fearlessly live life because he has successfully dodged his own death more times than a few dozen litters of kittens combined.
I would be lying if I said I ever saw myself trading in my eyeshadow collection and summer wedge sandals for a bottle of bug repellent and a pair of beat up river shoes this summer. Originally when I was mulling over my next writing destination, I kept gravitating to cobbled European streets lined with outdoor cafes or laid back Middle Eastern seaside towns where lounging on floor pillows while smoking apple sheesha was all in a day’s work. I definitely didn’t predict an organic farm down south in my very own country. But when Gecko explained his motivation for selling almost everything and moving into an airstream, it seemed all too appropriate for the time in my life and the times in general.

Getting Back to Basics

The past three years have been pretty rocky the world over. People have lost their homes, their jobs and their life savings. Entire countries have gone bankrupt, markets have crashed, and currencies have been devalued. Egregious banks have been bailed out, an oil leak is dumping an unprecedented number of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico per day and U.S soldiers continue to return home traumatized, without limbs or in body bags.
With each new crisis, the question - echoed in newspapers, by political commentators or during private dinner conversations – seems to remain the same, “Who is responsible for this?” And the flagrant irresponsibility so present in our current events is always deduced to a common denominator – greed.
The timing and relevance of Gecko’s decision to downsize was parallel to my own. I had spent over a year living out of a backpack and just mustered enough courage to sell off almost all of my other possessions. With so much of the world feeling volatile, reckless and irresponsible, I was completely grateful for the opportunity to spend time with and learn from people who were practicing the exact opposite – people who are rolling up their sleeves, working hard, living responsibly and getting back to basics. This blog is an attempt to document that.

Wowzers!

There was so much darn activity this week between getting settled on the farm and working out the kinks of the airstream (correct - we still do not have air conditioning) that I’ve barely had much time to write – but here goes with some bullet points of this week's finer moments:

The Yankee Whore Arrives in Nawth Carolyna!

When Gecko picked me up from the Asheville Airport the day before the fourth of July, the sun was still kicking down some good ol’ southern heat. He was tired. He had spent most of the day hauling the Airstream from the top of a mountain, where it had been renovated, over to the farm, where it would stay parked by a lake. There were still a lot of technical’s to work out like electricity, propane and air conditioning, but the interior was done and we were excited to spend our first night in the trailer.
I was tired too. I had spent the day hauling myself from subway to train to plane to connecting plane and I was officially ready for a cold beer and some fresh farm air. I was also ready to switch up my jeans and my wedge-heeled sandals for a pair of daisy dukes and flip-flops. Surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and a coveted spot in a trailer, it was time to leave the city girl back in New York and start fine tuning my inner Britney Spears.
Before I had the chance to do any of this though we stopped at the Shell station. Gecko and I separated in the chips aisle and he was already back in the car before I had finished paying. When I got there he was cracking up.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, slipping in to the passenger seat.
He was hysterical.
“WHAT?”
“That guy who was in the store with us just came out and said to his wife ‘You ain’t gonna believe what I jus seen in there – that them there wuz a prostitute!’”
And that them there prostitute would be me! I love Nawth Carolyna already! I had no idea that a pair of jeans, a tank top, some wedge sandals from Macy’s, and my Coach sunglasses would make such a bold and immediate statement in the south.
Well ladies and gents it looks as though the Yankee Whore has arrived!

Accepting Lyme Disease Into My Heart

The turnoff road to the farm is sandwiched between a Jehovah’s Witness kingdom of something or other building and a Baptist church. Oh, and Billy Graham’s heavenly (tax free) hideaway is just five minutes away.
Being smack down in the Bible Belt, I thought it might be a good time to turn inward and see what else I could stuff into the storage bins of my heart. I read something in a church program once that I was supposed to accept something, but I forgot what, so with tics in a blessed abundance, I decided for now to accept the possibility of Lyme disease.

Thursday Night Family Dinner on the Farm

There are seven of us here, sharing a five-acre plot of beautiful, farmable land. The owners of Red Wing Farm, Beth and Christopher, have turned their dream of sustainable living into a reality and are not only cultivating the soil but a community of like minded people to help and share in the experience. There are two smart and hard working interns, Nicole and Ali, who are students at the nearby Warren Wilson college. And Dau, Beth’s nephew just arrived from Georgia to spend the summer working the farm as well. It is incredible the amount of work it takes to run such a responsible and organic operation. There are no sprayed chemicals killing the bugs off the vegetables, they must be handpicked. There are weekly harvests for market days and there is the constant planting and tending of new seeds for the season ahead. Everything is calculated and timed according to nature and it is a gift for me to witness these guys in action everyday, all day, in the heat, making this possible.
Then there are the two hoodlums parked by the lake where the snapping turtles live. Gecko and I have been incredibly busy as well – not necessarily farming but carefully constructing a fantasy world of summer camp for adults.
Beth and Christopher live in the house. Ali lives in a small airstream. Nicole lives in a converted bus and Dau lives in the Yome – a round, canvas yurt-like structure. All of us, except Beth and Topher, share a communal outdoor kitchen and a bathhouse. With sharing a pillar of community living, it was decided that family dinners would happen every Thursday, with each person adding something to the potluck. Our first one went swimmingly well.
There was Mead, a homemade honey wine infused with herbs, and squash casserole. Beth made the best potato salad I have ever eaten and also fried green tomatoes, which I tried for the first time (yum). There was bean salad and falafal. The dinner was delicious and it was organic and the most incredible part was that almost everything was grown right here on Red Wing Farm.

Young Boy Has Difficult Time With Certain Images

These are two girls from the local Roller Derby team who I can't wait to get tickets to see! This boy is too young to know what roller derby is and therefore looks as though he might be in the process of getting scarred for life.