Goose day one minute, Comprehensive exams the next, and Snorkeling till the sunsets.

November and December came and went in a blink of an eye.

It seems like only yesterday that we had the joy of hosting Ryan's parents for Thanksgiving. They made the long trek to NH from TX with their Australian Shepard in tow to indulge in a home raised goose feast with us and our dear friend Cynthia. Yes, we decided to eat one of our beloved feathered friends for this year's festivities.

Here's Ryan holding our male Chinese goose moments before his last breath.

Cynthia and Ryan inspecting the goose after it emerged from the smoker.

And here he is after slow roasting and being smoked all day.

 As for how he tasted...well, it was good, but it was not turkey. This was the first time any of us had tried goose so we weren't really sure what we were getting into. What we quickly realized is that goose is 100% dark meat that should be served medium rare. Because Ryan is a germaphobe when it comes to meat we cooked ours till it was 165 degrees Fahrenheit so it wound up being a little tough, but I sincerely appreciate that Ryan was looking out for the well-being of all of our bellies. We all came to the conclusion that the meat tasted and felt very similar to roast beef. I have to say that for our first time cooking a goose I'm pleased with how it turned out. We are undoubtedly more prepared to deal with the next goose that comes to our table. Our female goose may last for a while though if she keeps laying gorgeous giant eggs :)

Aside from eating goose, Ryan, his parents and I had a nice time exploring the Seacoast area. We even went to a Men's Hockey game, which was really fun even though we lost.

It was sad to say goodbye to the Phillips as they packed up not only because they were leaving, but also because that meant my comprehensive exams were quickly approaching.

If you are not familiar with higher education, specifically doctoral degrees, I will gladly fill you in on one of the lovely hurdles all doctoral students must overcome prior to graduation....the dreaded Comprehensive Exams. In some programs, like Physics (which Ryan is in), students must pass a comprehensive test within two years of being admitted into the graduate program. This test typically includes two days of exams covering all types of physics (e.g. quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism) that last 6 hours. Believe me, all the folks walking out of these exams looked like they had aged 5 years just from the stress and brain power they exerted over those 12 hours.

In my program, we approach the comprehensive exams in a much less friendly manner (if you can even imagine that!). I was asked to answer five questions written by my committee members over the course of 21 days in the form of extensive literature reviews. So for 21 days I typed, deleted, typed, deleted, sat, sat, sat, sat, and drew weary of writing responses to the questions they asked. From Dec 2 to December 22, I composed 57 pages of response. It was exhausting! This is why I barely remember December. It was full of the same thing day after day. Thank goodness that is over with. Now I have the joy of the oral examination which is slated for next Wednesday.

On Dec 23, Ryan and I were able to enjoy each other's company a little bit...unfortunately we also had to say goodbye to our pups at the same time because they were headed to the kennel. Why would we do such a thing? Well, we were holding two tickets for a fun filled week with my parents in Turks and Caicos!

On Christmas Eve, also Ryan's Birthday!, we boarded the 3am bus to Boston, caught our 6am flight and were on our way out of the country.

With very few hours of sleep, we greeted my parents at the T&CI airport, gathered some essential food from the grocery, and drove to our abode for a snooze. My parents were also deprived of sleep since they flew from Utah on a red-eye. We were all in bed by 6:30 pm the first night.

When we awoke we were greeted with warm sun, ocean breeze, white sands, and crystal blue waters. What a sight! We were on the island of Providenciales, which is the most populated of all the T&CI islands. Since Christmas is the high season in T&CI there were quite a few tourists on the beach, but it never really felt crowded which was nice. We all took life easy lounging around, soaking up the rays, swimming, and reading books for pleasure. We were in hog heaven...especially me since I yearned for some R&R after the exams.

During the week we ate lots of delicious foods including local seafoods like conch (tougher than we expected even raw), grouper, and snapper. Ryan was most smitten with the jerk chicken we found on the street during the Maskanoo parade held on Boxing day. He scarfed down two servings of it in no time.

Jerk chicken from the street vendor

Maskanoo Parade

This is the view from "da Conch shack" where we all threw back quite a few rum punches...oh so delicious. Ryan even enjoyed them :)

We were all also super excited about snorkeling the reefs right off shore. Luckily there were a few protected reefs close enough to our condo to walk to so we all were able to snorkel around.

Caribbean reef squid! They can fly out of the water.

Conch. Alive and healthy.

Flying dad.

 This guy is not only a great dad, but also a great scuba buddy.

Stingray. We saw quite a few of these snorkeling.

Brain coral. 

Dad (the brain) with the brain coral. 

I love this one!

Large starfish...at least 10 inches across.

He and I have now snorkeled in Florida, Hawaii and T&CI together.

love him.

 This woman taught me most of my snorkeling skills.

Looking good, Mom!

Heading down to the bottom.

That's me if you couldn't tell.

Snorkel boat trip. We outlasted the entire boat.

 Beautiful coral. Look but don't touch.

My gang. One awesome bunch of people.

Ryan and I were truly blessed to be invited to go on such a fun adventure with my parents. We had a lovely time exploring the warm beaches with them. So thank you both for inviting us and being such fun to be around! We're looking forward to the next one (hint, hint, wink, wink). Love to you both!

Now that we're back home we are trying to readjust to the bitterly cold temperatures that recently swept across the country. Luckily we have plenty of firewood to keep our house warm and our power hasn't gone out. Our bodies are slowly coming to terms with the New England weather again, but we oh so long to be back in the warm sun in the Caribbean. 

Happy New Year to you all. We look forward to sharing some more of our experiences as we navigate graduate school and life these next three (no more, please, no more than that) years.

Science by weekday; Farming by weekend

The past month has been packed full of both science and at home farming. I collected my final round of samples for the 2013 field season early in October in PA over a four day period. After bringing my samples back to NH, I began processing the samples in my new lab space...the old swine barn at the dairy. This cement walled building still smells of pig feces even though there haven't been pigs in the space for years! I had the pleasure of hanging out in the barn for weeks extracting soil dwelling fauna from both my soil samples and litter decomposition bags. Why would someone do this? I'm so glad you asked :) I'm interested in reconstructing the soil food web so that we can model how the food web structure changes following various agricultural management practices like tillage and cover cropping. To do this I need to know not only who lives in soil but also how many little creatures are present. 

David busily processes fauna samples in front of the Berlese funnels. We use these funnels to draw all the soil fauna out of the samples we collected.

Our agroecology lab studies more than just soil food webs. In fact, my dear lab mate, Tessa, is examining the effects hoop houses have on green house gas emissions. To do this Tessa has built gas chambers out of stock pots! Yes, scientists are very creative people :) She also put her sewing skills to use for her experiment. She sewed sand bags to help seal the skirt she added to her gas chambers. It's pretty cool to watch other projects in our lab develop.

Tessa diligently working on her sand bags at my house over the weekend. There's nothing better than hanging out with a friend and getting work done at the same time.

 Aside from science, Ryan and I have been spending lots of time in the yard preparing for the long cold winter. We attempted a small hoop house last year with the sole purpose of extending our growing season, but our wimpy attempt ended abruptly after a 2 foot snow collapsed the roof. This year we decided to upgrade our structure to a 8x8 ft foot print and 10 ft in height hoop house. We seeded carrots, rabe, pac choi, onions, lettuce (two varieties), chard, beets, peas, cilantro, and parsley in late September.


The picture below is from our first attempt at a hoop house this year. Yes! We already built a second structure. Here's the story. We, unfortunately, encountered a relatively strong storm a couple weeks ago that had 20+ mph winds. Since our hoop house was fully covered with plastic at the time the storm hit the structure acted like a sail and flew across the yard. Whoops!

So Ryan and I put our thinking caps on and built another frame for the hoop house that not only weighs more, but is also secured to the ground. We also added two layers of plastic (for insulation purposes) plus one wall of black plastic to help warm the space. You've probably never seen a hoop house with a black wall, but the black wall will absorb more photons than clear plastic and thus retain more of the heat moving through the hoop house (It's nice to see Ryan put his knowledge of physics to use too!)

Finally, if you were wondering about how our chickens will fair this winter there is no reason to worry.  We have put a lot of thought into designing our coop to protect them from the elements while also making our jobs of watering and feeding them a bit easier. Our efforts have proved to be successful so far based on the fact that  all of our hens (10 of them) are laying nearly everyday. Currently, we're selling at least five dozen eggs a week to our colleagues. Everyone says they're delicious and we tend to agree.

Just this week we found our very first goose egg!! We ate it and were pleasantly surprised. It was like a super duper large chicken egg with a thicker consistency. Because our female started laying we've decided we'll spare her from the dinner table for now. The male, however, is another story. He's big and beautiful, but he will soon be featured at our Thanksgiving dinner.





As always, I'll leave you with a few snapshots of the boys. The seem to always end up in a dog pile after a long day in the garden.

Fall is around the corner

School is back in session and cool winds sweep through our area occasionally suggesting Fall's arrival. To prepare for her arrival, Ryan and I have started our fall vegetable garden and constructing a hoop house. We attempted a hoop house last year, but it was too small and dinky to withstand the 2-3 foot snows we occasionally get this far north. So this year our plan is to make a much larger structure with more supporting cross bars and high quality greenhouse plastics. Right now the hoop house looks like a pile of lumber and conduit...let the work begin!

Our summer garden was a success, surprisingly! I thought the crabgrass and lambsquarters that took invaded our veggies was surely going to reduce our yields, but we have harvested ample amounts of onions, broccoli, collards, tomatoes, beets, and basil so far. I weeded around the peppers yesterday hoping more of the fruits will have time to develop. Right now it looks like we'll definitely have two peppers to harvest, more would be great!

Time to start constructing and seeding the fall plants. Have a great holiday weekend everyone!

Cynthia and I at the car races. Nothing like Friday fun with 1,000 of your favorite rednecks.

Cylde loves to play in the backyard. He's such a good puppy.

Ryan's new toy. It's nearly street legal so lookout.

We constructed one half of the hoop house today. It's raining now so we'll have to build the rest tomorrow.

The flock enjoying the backyard.

Sometimes Clyde chases the birds. Ito never does (yeah right!).

The veggie garden. Lots of collards, broccoli, and cabbage. The bare spot will be where the hoop house lives this fall/winter.

Some of the broccoli heads. We already harvested at least 10 lbs of broccoli.

Eggs! There were five in the nests at this point, but we usually get between 6 and 9 per day + one duck egg.

One of the last fully opened sunflowers in our yard. They are so gorgeous!

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig

After three long and fruitful months at my field site I'm back home with the two pups and Ryan. The summer, although long, was very productive and pretty fun. Here are some pictures from the last month or so.

Waterfall outside of Minneapolis, MN. What a lovely and active park!

The infamous cherry in a spoon sculpture in Minneapolis.

Skyline (Minneapolis). The weather was unbeliveably perfect while I was there (early August). It was never more than 80 degrees during the day and cool enough to have the AC off and windows open at night.

My giant corn at the end of the summer. (PA)

An action show of me collecting soil cores and litter bags. Thanks, Dave, for the picture!

This past week I decided to have a stay-cation so that I could take care of a few odds and ends around the house. Little did I know this would end up being mostly a deep house cleaning and yard upkeep kind of vacation. Oh well! At least we were able to take care of all the tasks that had piled up...vacuuming, laundry, mowing, trimming, car maintenance, bird coop cleaning, gardening, preserving foods, and loving on the dogs :)

School starts up tomorrow. Since I'm finished with classes I don't have the same "first day of school" butterflies that I normally get. None-the-less, tomorrow I'll be biking to campus to start processing the one thousand plus vials of insects I collected this summer. It's going to be so much fun! (not)

Fall is around the corner and I'm already looking forward to my Mom's upcoming trip to NH for the leaf change. Plus the cooler weather means we'll be able to light up the wood stove again, which warms my soul.

30 revolutions around the sun

What a wonderful birthday week I've had. Ryan and Clyde came to PA last weekend to kick off the celebration with us. We had the joy of perusing the largest PA Arts Festival, camping in Amish country, biking through Philadelphia, swimming in an irrigation pond (way better than it sounds), eating ice cream, playing softball, and just enjoying each others company. Rather than a long a detailed story of our time together enjoy the pictures and captions. 

Unloading the bikes at our campsite in Lancaster County, PA. It was super hot this week so tent camping wasn't ideal, but we all made the best of it.

Ryan rigged up our kid-cart for the dogs. We lost the crucial bike-to-cart adapter so we made a new one out of various hardware pieces. The pups enjoyed their practice ride around the campground.

Our first stop in Philly was the garden next to the Liberty Bell. Rather than waiting in the long line we peered through the windows to catch a glimpse at the bell. The dogs can knock this sight off their bucket lists :)

Ry and Clyde in front of Independence Hall. The first capital of these United States.

We were in Philly during an extreme heat event. It was 98F with super high humidity. The dogs were very hot! We kept them as hydrated as possible, but at one point we had to dip them in a water fountain...the big pretty kind that people were swimming in...to cool them off. Although Ito isn't super fond of water, he appreciated the refreshing dip.

Relaxing at the park across the street from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The stairs S. Stallone, as Rocky, climbs in his movies are featured in the back.

Too embarrassed to lift his arms and mimic Rocky. I captured his cute smile though.

I'm a champ like Rocky!

Navigating the Philly traffic was not as difficult as we first expected. The downtown area has an extensive network of bike lanes. However, there are very few shady spots in the streets so we were all sort of baking throughout the day.

We started biking at 11 am and finished up during the 5 pm rush hour. The best thing about pulling a cart is that car drivers assume there is a kid in there so they gave us a little extra room.

Passing cars and pedestrians were often surprised to see two dogs panting in the cart. We even had an Asian husband and wife couple take pictures of all of us including the dog cart because they thought we were such a spectacle. We are a little strange, I guess.

As we loaded the bikes back onto the car, the pups tried to rest. The were so tired the interstate traffic didn't faze them.

We thought Ito was going to fall into his dog bowl he was so thirsty.

Once the AC cooled the car air the pups quickly fell asleep. Surprisingly, Clyde didn't have a crick in his neck from sleeping like this. Ito was stuck on bottom as usual.

On Saturday, we headed to my secret pond to swim and cool off. We had to drag Ito into the water and turn him loose so that we'd swim. Clyde, on the other hand, loves swimming. Just throw a stick or ball out and he'll dive in.

Clyde will even swim to us to see what we're doing. What a good puppy.

We've been together for nearly two years! And what fun we've had. 

Check out how tall my research corn is now. All this rain and heat made it shoot up.

Being corny.

Birthday salmon and asparagus at midnight. 

I was just surprised with  more birthday gifts...lilies, chocolates, a card, McD's frappe (silly Ry!), and a surprise re-visit from Ryan. 30 years ain't so bad. I'm definitely looking forward to many more to come.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend friends. It's time to play catch-up with all my work. 

Lots of light and long days

The summer solstice has left us with lots of day light, rain showers, and warmth this year which is a great change from last year's droughty summer. I've been in PA for over a month now working relentlessly on my research with a few breaks here and there. I had the joy of hosting my mom, dad, aunt and uncle for a few days. Our time together was full of belly-laughs, Amish buggies, and car shows. My mom stayed at my house, a tiny studio apartment, for five nights leaving us plenty of time to discuss financial investments, potential birthday gifts, and upcoming adventures. I am truly blessed to have such an awesome mom. When my dad got to town, he was quick to volunteer as my field assistant. Dad, I promise you will be acknowledged appropriately for your hard work.

Other highlights from the summer thus far include an unexpected weekend adventure to a 2,500 share CSA farm called Spiral Path farm and a short trip back to NH to see Ryan and Clyde. Most of my time has...unfortunately, or is it fortunate?...been spent either at the research farm or in the laboratory processing samples. I certainly look forward to finishing up all the processing!

As the summer heat sets in Ito and I will likely cool off in the irrigation pond pictured below. Not a bad spot, eh?

The growing season is here

First off...three cheers for the end of the school semester. Hip-hip-hooray! It is strange to say, but as of this morning I officially completed my last graduate course, EVER. If I did my math correctly I have been in college (undergrad + grad) for nine years and just now, today, I finished all of my coursework. Whoo hoo! Thanks to my advisor for taking me and our new postdoc out for seafood to celebrate his arrival and my accomplishments this semester.

Now I can spend the next 2-3 years finishing up my collecting , analyzing, and writing up my data. So much to look forward to; seriously, I'm quite excited about it.

As the spring semester ends summer is upon us, which means I have to pack my bags yet again and move back to my field site for a summer of fieldwork. This summer is slated to be particularly fruitful now that I have my research ideas organized, my field experiments designed and a few publications to work on...wow, academia has truly taken over my life! The downside of the summer is that Ito and I will be away from Ry and Clyde for 3 whole months. I'll be the first to admit, distance makes the heart grow fonder, but it can be difficult going from a home with three boys that love me to having just one snuggle bunny. I guess Ito will feel like a king this summer.

I'll pack the car tomorrow and hit the road on Thursday. Once I get resettled I'll give a more thorough update + pictures of sights and sounds from our trip.