Urban sabbatical

A speedy-ish update, as we are in packing-up-the-house mode (moving truck tomorrow, we leave Saturday), but I didn't want to leave you hanging for too long.

Garden
Our garden has gotten really pretty, especially given how laissez-faire as we've been with it this year.  I give credit to the weed cloth and to Mike's remembering to turn on the sprinklers.


Oats (which we have run out of time to harvest, although Gigi has found a way to sneak into the garden and harvest them for us)

Dry beans (which I think we can still harvest this week and carry with us to Pittsburgh for winter eating)

Quinoa (like the oats, an experimental crop for us -- and I guess I can say we've gotten to see how it grows, even if we are missing out on learning to harvest/thresh/store/eat... next time perhaps)

Goats

Goats are all doing well, they are heading out on Friday -- off to the town of Moses Lake to stay for a year with the lady who we originally bought Frosty and Cle from, while we settle into Pittsburgh and figure out what to do with them after that.  There was a brief scheme in the works to have one of the students graduating from the program I'll be teaching in to take a road trip and drive the five goats cross-country in our Subaru (where I could use them as a teaching tool -- small-scale livestock production, hoof trimming, all that)... she was excited about it, but the logistics and details were a little to tricky to figure out, so this I think will be an easier solution for now.  Oh, and chickens have been dispersed to three different friends' houses, so they're all taken care of.

Swimming

Eytan is doing well, aside from a little fall last week where he landed face-first on a bucket and knocked his tooth back up into his gums (scary and super weird, but it seems to be on its way pushing back out again).  He has become a huge water person, big fan of pools and lakes (and baths) and swimming and dunking his head under water.

Here at Lake Chelan in August

Here in the little waterfall feature at the public pool in Cashmere


Guests
In late August, we hosted Mike's dad, stepmom, bro, sis-in-law, and nephew, who made a little birthday party for Eytan, with cake (carrot) and candles to boot.




Kesher
We went in early September back to Jewish family camp on Vashon Island near Seattle.  Everyone there was very excited to see Eytan, who had been the youngest camper ever (at two weeks old) when we went last year.  Then, he had been an especially big hit last year with the 40-50-year-old-lady crowd.  This year, he was more popular with the 8-year-old girls.



The camp offers kids programming during the day run by high schoolers, and we took Eytan to the first kids session thinking we'd let him check it out but probably wouldn't leave him there right away until he had a chance to get used to it.  Turned out, he said bye and didn't turn back, totally happy to stay there right from the beginning -- in fact it was way easier to drop him off there and leave than it is at daycare, where he goes twice a week (not that it's that hard at daycare, but still).  Really interesting.  So Mike & I went to the grownup programs (scholar-in-residence sessions timed to coincide with the kids camp sessions).

Pittsburgh
And then we headed to Pittsburgh.  I (coincidentally) had a conference there, and so we took advantage to all go and look for a place to live.  We ended up with the dilemma of whether to live in the city of Pittsburgh -- walking/biking/bus distance to the main campus at Chatham (where I'll be probably 60% of the time), but having to commute to the farm campus (45 minutes away, reverse commute) a couple of days a week -- or living out near the farm campus and commuting into the city.  After a week of driving around in traffic, it was super appealing to consider the more rural setting, the quiet and the space... but in the end we decided to start in the city -- shorter travel distances, less need for and time spent in the car, more possibilities for getting to know the city without having to make a long drive in to go to the zoo, etc...

So we'll be renting an apartment, the top floor of a duplex, near a big park.  The place itself is probably a little too big for us (read, room for guests!), and we'll probably move out next summer to a place more our size, as the landlord will be raising the rent to more than we probably want to pay (he cut us a deal for this year because he was behind schedule renovating it, and the rental market in the area is apparently totally driven by the (many) universities, and so he was having trouble getting it rented, having missed the start-of-the-school-year when renting typically happens.  But it was a good compromise for us -- kind of like an urban sabbatical, after which I suspect we may move back towards a more rural area, once we know the lay of the land and the city and the commuting options better.

One interesting thing about Pittsburgh that I didn't quite expect was just how very green and very very hilly it is. I figured that after Wenatchee, the topography just wouldn't compare... and of course there aren't Cascade-sized mountains, but the city itself is actually much hillier than Wenatchee itself is.  I guess it's because Wenatchee is in a valley, so relatively flat in town with mountains all around... while Pittsburgh is just smack in the middle of (pretty big) rolling hills.  So we're getting ready for steep streets, as well as moisture in the air and precipitation... and, oddly, for the moment, better air quality.

We arrived back to Washington a few days after major lightening storms touched off hundreds of wildfires in the area, and while it is being really well managed with very little damage to structures (even with quite a number of people being evacuated from their homes), it has been super smokey for the last few weeks.  There has been an air inversion, which has meant that the smoke and ash have been trapped in the valley, so most of the time you can't see the mountains or much else really, and all sports and outdoor activities have been canceled, and you're supposed to wear a mask when spending any time outside.  Luckily, our house has been above the inversion much of the time, and not too near to the fires, and so we've been able to spend a little time outdoors at home.  It has gotten a lot better over the last week too, and most of the fires are contained, although they probably won't be fully out until the snow falls.

Other (mostly Eytan) pictures
And with that, here are some other Eytan pictures to leave you with.

Slides (climbing up and going down)

Walks (with and without help)

CDs (he especially likes to use them for sliding across the floor)

Watermelon


And a couple of videos.

Til next time from the Burgh of Pitts.