Calvin - The Fun of the Fourth and Friendly Farming Fundamentals

As I'm sure many of you know I'm not the most sociable of people but every year there are 2 big exceptions where I invite a few people to my house and have a little party, the 4th of July and New Years. This year's fourth of July was a bit smaller than usual: Taba's pet-sitter fell through so her fiance Matt couldn't make it, my friend Ethan Lambert betrayed his country and went to Canada to support his cousin in the paralympics, My friends Evan and Lilly couldn't get Friday off of work, and my friend Zoe recently started her residency at UMass so couldn't exactly pull her away from that. As a result it ended up being a much smaller group than past years with just Ethan and I, Max, Taba, and my friends Kaleb and Sage. Still, it was a lot of fun, we cooked out, played some board games, and enjoyed the summer weather! Experience is a good teacher and I learned not to try to cook multiple racks of ribs with different thicknesses at the same time:

 

Though after some re-grilling of the under-done ones ended up with some delicious dry-rubbed ribs along with some other 4th of July staples I think the food turned out pretty well: 

Thanks to those that made it though I know most of you don't read this blog. 

Farming

A little while ago Ethan and decided to do a little fruit/veggie garden/hobby farm so we got a rototiller and tilled up a corner of the yard.

 

 

 Then planted a bunch of veggies.

It seems to be doing pretty well (ignore the weeds), except we had 2 beautiful rows of corn shoots until the squirrels/raccoon decided to eat them.

Petra

The "farm" is fenced off from Petra but she's been taking care of it the best she can by killing squirrels and even a raccoon. The raccoon got in a little scrape but Ethan and Jen took her to the vet because I'm visiting Taba and Matt and the vet said it was superficial enough that it didn't need any treatment so they didn't even charge for the checkup.

It already looked much better the next day after some clean-up and she seemed to have forgotten about it completely.

I may add more pictures, I'm uncomfortable taking pictures of people but Taba is like a fairy leaving behind Polaroids instead of fairy dust so I may scan and add some of those when I get home.

Don't Use the App

 I once again tried to use the app to create a post while we were in the Virgin Islands but it doesn't work well and always seem to create huge pictures and duplicate posts.  So, ignore that previous post, if you will!

Josh and I spoiled ourselves rotten by booking a sailing adventure in the USVI and BVI at the end of June.  Josh had taken Max and his friend, Sam, along with Josh's friend Tim and his son, Connor when the boys were all seniors in high school on a similar trip. They all absolutely loved it so of course, I have been jealous for the past five years.  This time, we had Tim and his wife, Stephanie, join us so we were a grand total of 4 people on a four bedroom, 2 bath, 40 foot catamaran.  We rented it out of St Thomas and lived onboard for 7 nights.
Although it was hot and muggy, the conditions and trip were just beautiful and we truly relaxed for the first time in a long time.  We ended up going to five different islands where we hiked and swam, lounged on the beach and ate.  We ended up staying two nights on a mooring ball at the Bitter End Resort in Virgin Gorda as we loved it so much!
We will definitely repeat this vacation another time!  Maybe with some different friends or even family!

Sailing the Virgin Islands

Josh and I flew down to St Thomas yesterday where we rented a 40 foot catamaran with our friends, Tim and Stephanie from Cleveland. With our first day out to sea under our belts, we are sweaty and sticky and sunburned and bug bit but had a nice day. We were able to catch a mooring ball off of St John with some struggles. Discovering a missing piece to our grill changed our dinner plans but we still managed to eat well and will certainly sleep soundly tonight!