Episode #2

While I know you from Sage's podcast comments, I found out that you had one of your own from Karen and Ross over at Zee and Zed.

Great podcast - it is great to see someone moving from the city back to the country and doing so well at it. When we made our move years ago we never once felt competent and flailed around for a few years before heading back to the city life. It seems like you guys are naturals.

By the way - it is because of you that I ended up choosing goat curry at the carribean place instead of of a less adventurous meal.

Hey Todd,

Thank you! I'll pass it along to my wife in the morning, she loves reading feedback.

When/where did you guys live out in the country? Without the internet and lots of books we would have been in so much trouble. =)

How was the curry? I had never tasted goat till we butchered our own, would be interesting to see how it compares.

We lived in a 20 foot yurt in the Missouri Ozarks (photos here and a whole lot of blabbing about it here (sort of an intro/FAQ to my online journal from those years). And I agree - the net connection was a lifeline - at one point we were snowed in for 27 days (a couple other people lived on the land but we were still quite stircrazy by then). And books were (and still are) very valued. We could go to our tiny local library 20 minutes away where we were limited to checking out 4 books and nearly everything was a $2 fee for interlibrary loan. Alternately we could drive 90 minutes and go to a great library. So we drove a bunch.

The curry was fantastic. Similar to lamb but not as strong. Very tender, too. The only downside was that they just basically took a big piece of meat and hacked it up with a cleaver so there were a number of little bone shards throughout. We live in a muslim neighbourhood here, though, with several halal butchers and so the meat they get is quite fresh. (That said, most of the time I try to avoid eating meat - it is a very guilty pleasure for me, though)

I'm so glad you are enjoying the podcasts! I only know about yurts because they are constructed from felted wool! It sounds like you were "roughing it" a lot more than we are.

I love love love Sage's podcast. I havenot subscribed to Zee and Zed yet. It's a matter of only having a 2G iPod and not enough time to listen to all the podcasts I have!

I'd like to hear YOU on Sage's show sometime. How about it? :)

Hey Todd,

Holy cow I've been looking through your site and where you two have lived. Man, when we say gone country, it's kind of tongue and cheek. But you guys had no power, composting toilet, etc. I'm not sure I could live so far south without A/C, heh I don't mind -40c as much as +35c.

As I browse through the site it's pretty darn neat. Your story and podcasts are really neat. I've listened to Sage for a while, it's interesting hearing you instead.

Hi Misty - As Andrew pointed out, I've done a few podcasts of my own though I haven't done as many as Sage and am not nearly as confident as she is. That said, I have a plan to do a podcast telling of how the two of us met from my point of view. We also have some plans for a series podcasts together that we'll do sometime this year. Do subscribe to Zee and Zed, though - or give them a listen. They're quite fun.

And Andrew - I'm totally the opposite. I turn into a big baby after it goes below -10?C here, and the few times it has been below -20 have seemed like utter hell. When it is above 35 now I feel like I need to soak it up and save it for the winter. The days above 38 weren't pleasant though we did get a little used to it. It basically consisted of either going to the library/creek or pouring water over yourself all day while doing little between 11 and 5 pm. The worst we experienced there was about 45?C and that was brutal as the humidity there is awful. We left town for a visit to family and it ended up going to over 47?C. And the following winter we saw about a week of of -20 to -30?C weather. Add that to the horrible bugs, poisonous snakes (and insects) and you can see why the real estate prices there are beyond low (sometimes it seems like buy a house get 40 acres of land free).

Oh, and sorry to post this here but I don't know another way to contact you. I tried to email you a few minutes ago and gmail gave me a strange error:

[SNIP!] Really usefull error message trimmed after problem was solved, I hope[/SNIP]

Oh poo, I should have tested the new domain sending mail from something other than myself. Drat, let me fix that, that's lame.

I love qmail's (not gmail) error message, they are so cryptic for those not in the know. =)

I say name the cat Ezra!

Thanks Dawnzzle! We'll put that on the list. :)

Ok Todd, I think I fixed email. It works for me now from work so it should work everywhere... :)

Thanks for the suggestion, Dawnzzle! We will be reading all of the suggestions so far on the podcast this week, so stay tuned!