Category: Play

Milestone and New Project

This week my little web log hit 200 WordPress.com Followers – plus two email followers (Thanks Mom!) – what a shock that is to me, and I am humbled and excited to know you all are out there. Thank you so much for following me, and I hope you continue to enjoy (or at least tolerate) what I’m putting out in the universe.

Also, while I have your attention, please note in the sidebar a new Page – “Standing Invitation,” which I have copied wholesale from Patrick McKenzie – whose blog you should also follow. The invitation? If you want to talk about craft agriculture or technology, and you’re within a reasonable distance of me, I will buy you a coffee. That’s it!

Last thing: I’ve started a side project, the Hopcast. It’s an interview-format podcast where I talk with hop farmers, brewers and other folks involved in the seed-to-pint-glass chain about how we can improve the state of local agriculture in the craft beer movement. Please do follow that, if it sounds interesting.

Thanks again! You all are the best.

Quotes from A More Beautiful Question

When we hit failure, I start to laugh. It’s almost like checking off a box – great, we got that out of the way. Now we’re that much closer.

– Mick Ebeling

And:

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.

– John Keats

Both from page 201 of A More Beautiful Question, by Warren Berger. I just finished it and cannot recommend it highly enough.

Hop Yard Update: May 24th Edition

All ten plants are approaching the 12″ mark, and they’ve all successfully found (or been lead to) their climbing twine.

Since we’re getting into hotter, drier days here in upstate NY, I’ve upped their drip irrigation to 60 minutes, every twelve hours. They also got their first dusting of solid organic fertilizer this week.

Big things await! I’m feeling very good about this test yard – I’ve been considering at great length how to leverage the Internet of Things at a large scale for craft agriculture. Lots and lots to consider here.

Summertime in Saratoga

The windows are open, it’s bike riding weather, and we’re in that sweet spot after graduation but before the Thoroughbreds start running.

A nice time and place to have a drink and watch the world go by, for sure.

To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.

Charles Baudelaire, describing this very moment, as far as I can tell.