BENGARLAND!com

I’ve been busy lately and haven’t had too much time to update this thing. Here’s a rundown of the past month.

We bought a Toyota Prius. Barcelona Red. Love it.

Laura and I have been doing lots of planning for our house. Learning about concrete foundations, suspended concrete decks, solar power, standby electric generators (and the fact that ALL of them run on fossil fuels), rainwater harvesting, low power refrigerators, split ductless air conditioning, induction stove tops, composting toilets, water tanks, ceiling fans, doors, windows, and UV water sterilizers. Whew! Eventually we are going to write about it all over at Our Farm Adventure, which is just getting off the ground.

We’ve also been working on a year-long road trip through the U.S. and Canada that we’re going to take when I graduate in 18 months. We going to start in Georgia, go down and up Florida, across the Gulf Coast through Texas to Big Bend National Park, then up through New Mexico to see caves and desert, north to Denver, west to Salt Lake City, south to the Grand Canyon and Phoenix, west to San Diego, meandering north through California, Oregon, Washington, and B.C… and then… to Alaska! After Alaska, it’ll be back down through Alberta to Yellowstone National Park, northeast-ish to Winnipeg, east over the Great Lakes, to Toronto and Niagara Falls, then back north again to Ottawa and Montreal, south to Burlington, VT then east to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, north to Québec, northeast along the south side of the St. Laurence river to the eastern peninsula at Parc National Forillon, then south through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, then back towards Maine and finally south down the Atlantic coast home to Georgia. Fun! Got any ideas of specific places we should go or things we should see? Let us know.

A few weeks ago, we went to Georgia to check out our land and see family. Laura learned to use a machete. I got chiggers (sorry, no pics). Maybe next time we’ll make more progress on the land… because we’re never coming in the summer again (too many bugs). Hello, October! But we did discover that Toccoa has a beautiful downtown (even if it’s kinda sad in a historical context, like most small towns). One thing we do love? The Amtrak station. While we were down there, we saw my dad, my PaPa and MaeMae, MeeMa, Aunt Nina, and brother Whit.

I got a writing gig over at Accidental Hedonist. I’ve been reading Kate’s food blog for some time now. 3, 4 years? I forget. Anyway, my articles go up every Wednesday until the end of December. You can read the introduction to get a feel for what it’s about, or check out the first entry on Okra