On the road Day 1

Today we left Gainesville at 5:55 AM. 

• Florida - Done
• Georgia - Done
• South Carolina - Done
• North Carolina - Done
• Virginia- Half Done

Spending the night in Lexington, having arrived exactly 11 hours after we started the trip. Tonight - Meg, Steve, their 3 dogs, good beer, great cheese, wonderful sushi, hugs, love, joy.


Tomorrow, more to come

Off to see the country from south to north

The dog has had his pre-getting-in-the-car-with-humans bath, the house sitter is all set, and we are off tomorrow for Star Lake in the Adirondack Sate Park in NY. Jake is particularly eager to get his Golden Retriever body to a cooler place...with a lake to wade in and a camp where he is allowed to sit on the sofa. We are already thinking about cheese curd treats. 

We did two telephone interviews yesterday with media from up in the North Country. North Country Public Radio will air their interview with us about The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses and the talks will will be giving about cheese on August 5. When we get the link, we'll post it. The Watertown Daily Times is going to write something about the book and the talks too. Yipee!

Fourth of July in Cedar Key

Our weekend in Cedar Key started on a totally gross note. We opened the gate and found a dead gray fox on the walk right in front of the front steps! It had been much enjoyed by the vultures...thank you very much vultures. However, they left us the skull, bones, furry tail, lots of fur, and a smell previously experienced only by walking or driving quickly by road-killed possums and armadillos. Whew! We disposed of the vultures leftovers and then hosed the smelled into the ground as best we could. Our vet told us distemper is rampant in the fox population and we are need to keep our dog immunized. He's up-to-date, thank goodness.

The rest of the weekend was totally lovely. We had dinner with friends Marci and Jim at the Neptune Bar at the Island Hotel while enjoying the live band and joining in on such tunes as "I love this bar!"

We spent Sunday with thousands of others at CLAMerica in the city park, ate clams of course, and worked in the education booth of the Friends of the Lower Suwannee and Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges. We stayed home and listened to the fireworks, watching what we could see of them behind the trees outside the living room window...all the time comforting Jake while he tried to stopped quivering in fear. 

We never thought to take a photo of the fox. I bet you're sorry too.  

North Florida Dairy Goat Association

We spent the afternoon with 35 members of the North Florida Dairy Goat Association. Some have had goats as long as Laura Chenel...since the 1970s. Others just gotten started recently through a 4-H project, or as one teacher shared, because her fiance gave her 5 goats. We met a couple who, in May, had hiked part of El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, have had various breeds of goats and now are focusing on Nigerian Dwarfs, and have turkeys to sell...Anybody need turkeys? The discussions were both conceptual and very pragmatic...ranging from the value of good food to the regulations for selling raw milk, cheese, eggs, and produce. The meeting was at Mary and Rusty Ludlams' farm. Mary made an amazing blueberry cobbler for dessert, which vied with such delights as home-made angel food cake, lemon bars, and apple pecan bars for best-in-class. No winner could be selected. There was fresh roasted turkey, beef stew, pasta salads, and fresh green and tomato salads. Summer abundance! Food Heaven!

Russ and I got to talk a bit about our adventures in the world of American artisanal cheeses. What a lovely way to spend a Florida June Sunday!

Book Trip Fun

My trip was great fun. I had 8 book events and a wonderful 45th Reunion with my Nazareth College friends.

First stop was Erick's Cheese and Wine in Banner Elk NC. The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses and I visited Grandfather Mountain while there, too.

Next I went to Mansfield where I spent a wonderful evening eating and chatting with friends Larry and Donna, a nice morning hiking with Donna, and a super evening at the chef-owned, excellent Wren's Nest Restaurant.

In Rochester, I did book talks at the Sisters of Saint Joseph Motherhouse and at my Reunion.

Coming back to Florida, I stopped at Cheese To You in Lexington and the chef-owned restaurant Staunton Grocery and specialty food store George Bowers Grocery both in Staunton Virginia and at Flat Creek Lodge in Georgia.

An Eventful Day

Today the book promotions and (we hope) sales began getting into high gear. Peg left for a 5-state multi-presentation book tour that will take her to North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, back to Virginia, and thence to Georgia, with one or more presentations at each stop. Russ attended the Community Celebration of Gainesville's 2010 Eat Local Challenge, sponsored by Hogtown Hometown. He was fortunate to have three new American cheesemakers at the event and to have his table flanked by two of them, Wainwright Dairy of Live Oak, FL and Cypress Point Creamery of Hawthorne, FL. Folks from the Glades Ridge Goat Dairy were nearby. Peg will present in Banner Elk, NC tomorrow. The photos show Peg's departure for the great book tour in her new Mustang, and Russ' table at the Gainesville event.

P.S. Check our great new webpage www.lighthallbooks.com

Book Tour Begins!

Tomorrow I am taking off on a multi-state Book Tour trip. First stop is on Memorial Day when I will meet with customers and talk cheese at Erick's Cheese and Wine Shop in Banner Elk, NC between 2:30 and 5:00. Can't wait to meet the folks there.

This Week 2009 and 2010

What a lucky week this must be for us. Last year we were hiking El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. The sun shone every day. The wildflowers colored the air. We felt the Camino being a healing spirit. This year, our book was published and began flying off the shelves (at least in our imaginations), and we bought ourselves a sports car...a Mustang because it is big enough for a Golden Retriever to come along and enjoy the rides. Life is good. If you have ever wondered how the cheddars and yellow cheeses of your childhood morphed into the abundance of American-made artisanal and farmstead cheeses of today, take a look at The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses on our website and buy a book!  Lighthall Books

Food

Florida summer arrived this weekend. Although it was in the mid 40s overnight last week, it was in the mid 90s Saturday and Sunday. We fit in 5-mile walks before it got too hot each day. The Farmers Market was packed with shoppers, vendors, and fresh, local food Saturday. We bought red romaine from Waldo Demonstration Farm, cucumbers and rainbow swiss chard from a Jonesville farmer, and a huge bunch of the beets...which turned out to be as good as they looked. Russ cooked them last night with their tender tasty greens. It was a treat.

Saturday afternoon was the Kickoff for the Eat Local May Challenge. People register to eat only foods from within 100 miles of home for a month. We went to Swallowtail Farm for the opening celebration, saw several of our Slow Food friends and some cheese-book friends too.

The revised website for Lighthall Books is almost ready for its beta test. Yeah!

Book Delivery

The page proofs went back the day after the received them. We expect to see an advanced copy of the finished product about May 20. Soon after that, the books will be available. Can't wait.

Page Proofs

The page proofs arrived for the cheese book. The cover looks fantastic! We found one error that needs to be fixed and ought to have that resolved tomorrow so we can send them back. Scary-exciting to have it leave our hands.

Florida Food Summit

The Florida Food Summit has been a great event. Last evening we attended a lecture and discussion led by Michael Dimmick, the Executive Director of the Roots of Change Fund and former president of Slow Food USA.

Our presentation this morning went really well. We had a wonderfully engaged group of participants, including John and Nancy Mims who are long-time dairy farmers in nearby Hawthorne. They have just started producing cheese on their farm. The first of their cheeses will be ready to sell in a month. Stephanie Hamblen was there. She is the writer of Hogtown Homegrown blog and newsletter. And lots of other interesting folks. David Green from Winter Park Dairy talked about his cheesemaking. Dan Eddy and Robbie Sipes talked about their cheese retailing. And we talked about what we learned in our cheese research. What a nice way to spend a morning!

The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses

 

The book is now off to the printer. Next step...reviewing the proofs.

We are just back from the Gathering of the American Pilgrims on the Camino. I thought we'd done really well last summer with our 200-mile Camino hike. It was a "Doing at 65 what we would not have dreamed of doing at 45" experience. But new challenges presented themselves at the Gathering when we met Cedric. He walked 500 miles last summer to celebrate his 80th birthday!

Bunnies

Easter is coming and I have our damn bunnies on display. 

 

In about 1972 I was sitting on the front steps at Corey Creek Apts with my 4- and 1-year olds, and Anne, who lived upstairs from us, came home from kindergarten. "Hi Anne, what did you do in school today?" said I. 

 

"Worked on those damn bunnies, again!" said Anne. 

 

Ever since, any project that keeps bouncing back for more work regardless of how hard you try to finish it has been a damn bunny to me. The folks I have worked with will tell you it was our code for things like a foundation proposal that seemed perfect, but got returned for one more re-write. 

 

Thanks to Anne for a lifetime of smiles. 

 

I'll bet other parents of former Mansfield Pa kindergartners also have damn bunnies on display! In the photos, you will note that Pam had the same teacher as Anne and their bunnies were "just right." Meg, however, had the other kindergarten teacher and her bunny has a distinctly more individualistic character.

 

On the Board!

Saturday was the Annual Meeting of the Friends of the Lower Suwannee River and Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges. Russ and I both got elected to the Board of Directors. We are looking forward to two years of advocacy for taxpayer interests, birding, kayaking, hiking, and fun with a really great group of Board friends.

 

A Presentation about Lighthall Books

We are just back from visiting our friends Jean and Stan who live in Solivita near Kissimmee, Florida. While we were there, Russ did a presentation about writing and publishing for a community book club. The members had read his most recent novel, Oswegatchie Green, in which Fish and Wildlife Service scientists get caught up in a murder investigation and a wind farm proposal while trying to forestall environmental devastation. Russ's presentation led to discussions of four main topics:

• The book's plots and subplots---community tensions in an economically hard hit town where people are torn by simultaneous desires for good jobs and wilderness tranquility, viability of a wind power business in a region such as New York's Adirondack Mountains where the story takes place, the roles of science and scientists in public policy, and whether the scientist-protagonists will ever sort out their relationship with each other. 
• Being an author---story genesis, genres, plot and character development, writing and rewriting, voice and tone
• Getting published---fiscal and logistical issues related to commercial publishing and self publishing.
• The next offering from Lighthall Books---The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses a non-fiction book coming this month about exploring the phenomenal changes in the world of cheese starting with the cheddars of our childhoods and leading to our the summer we discovered a thousand types of American-made, artisanal and farmstead cheeses.

Happy Valentine's Day

It must be almost spring. This is a gorgeous day and the cherry tree has begun to blossom.

 

 

February days in Cedar Key have been rainy, blustery, cold, cold, cold. Between raindrops we hiked with Jake, went on a ranger-led walk to identify winter trees at the Lower Suwannee Wildlife Refuge, had a great chili and corn bread dinner with friends, and participated in a town hall meeting on water issues led by Cynthia Barnett, Cedar Key resident and author of "Mirage."

A Wildlife Bonanza on the LaChua Trail

Our friends Arnold and Ismini are visiting. We hiked in Paynes Prairie, here in Gainesville, along the LaChua Trail. Among the abundance of wildlife, we saw alligators, herons, ibises, wild bison, wild hoses, sand hill cranes, white pelicans, savannah sparrows. See how many gators you can count in the second photo. They were equally thick all along the trail.