Woah! Here already. And finally getting down to this blog business. I swear, it does not bode well that it's taken me all this time to get things up and running. I hope for this posting business to be a more regular thing once I'm doing farm labor.
But let's back up a minute... Hi! I'm James. You might remember me from such roles as Northwestern University or Chicago. On July 2nd I left on a journey, sure to be deemed "magical," that will take me across the wilds of the Old World and New.
A week was spent at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games with my father and a bunch of people in kilts. I then trekked to New York City, where I was shown a lovely time by various friends who had moved there in the great post-college artist diaspora. I am currently lodged in Berlin. On the 31st of July, I will be headed to Möglingen, Germany (in the South) to work on a farm.
Woah woah! A farm you say? But James, you studied theatre n' shit! What are you doing? Well, in the past year and a half I have become increasingly interested in global food policy and sustainable agriculture. But James, isn't that just yuppies buying expensive heirloom lettuces at the farmers market? Well, it's actually a lot more than that - the way our food is produced has serious consequences in terms of environmental protection, social justice, water resources, nutrition, and global hunger and poverty. Dang that's a lot of stuff! I know, and I may talk more about individual items as the blog progresses, little that I know.
In any case, I'll be doing this through a program called WWOOF, a loose network that connects volunteers with interested farms. In theory, you work for room and board (and hopefully some knowledge) and no money is exchanged. Why Germany? Because I speak German. Call it a working vacation. But it will also be interesting to see how the issue is handled in a country other than my own. Maybe larn somethin'!
Here is a link to the farm's website - if you don't speak German, you can at least look at the pretty pictures: http://schwalbenhof-biogemuese.de/
But for now I'm hanging out in Berlin, where, for those who don't know, I studied for my junior year. It's a wonderful city, and I have dearly missed it. Already I've gone to a 3 euro concert and met up with some friends for grilling in the park. I plan on seeing as many old friends as possible while I'm here and simply having a bit of good-old-fashioned fun before the hard labor begins.
Please keep in mind that I'll be writing this blog mostly for myself, to keep as a sort of journal, but of course I'll try to make it so that other people at least won't HATE reading it. The posts will be grammatically correct, in any case, so you can rest easy there. And since I've had trouble with spamming in Google Groups before, I'm just going to send out updates via email.
Hugs and kisses,
James
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