This evening I’ve been writing cover letters and resumes and sending them off into the internet ether. I’ve been mildly stressing over what to do when I leave here in September and to that effect, have put together a detailed spreadsheet of options. Top contenders include:

• Applying as an Americorps Vista volunteer at one of many food and ag-related organizations… Sustainable Connections in Bellingham, Farms for Families in Montana, and Laurel Valley Farm in Eugene.
• Putting together mish-mash of part-time work in the Bay, including Farmers Market managing for the Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association, an unpaid internship with the Chez Panisse Foundation, work with Free Range Productions, tutoring, part-time field work at random local farms…
• Working on a slightly larger organic farm that has more than 200 CSA shares, more than 30 cultivated acres and some value-added production.
• Getting a job at a farm/non-profit like this or this or this that combines farming and education/non-profit programming

All are exciting. All are making my heart sing, but my brain hurt.

Thank goodness my personal savior, made a delicious dinner tonight and forced me to take a mini break:

Check out my girl’s pockets. Now that’s class!

Romantic, methinks.

And yes, another ridiculously yummy mish-mash.

Friends, farmers, countrymen… what do you think I should do?

Just signed a new contract this week to product three short videos for an international NGO. I put together a little movie as an experiment and it turns out that some folks in this NGO liked what I had done and decided to hire me to make more over the next month or so. I feel a bit like an impostor given that I have no previous experience with video editing, shooting… production, but I’m going to do my best and see where that takes me.

Things have been rough at the local NGO. The project I was working on was abruptly cancelled, leaving much of our staff (including myself, the expensive consultant) in limbo for the past couple of months. Without burdening this (small but elite) audience with boring details, the project’s death was a basically the perfect case-study of all the things that can go wrong in development (project-based funding meaning salary insecurity for local staff; petty corruption; international NGOs making ridiculous requests and bullying local NGOs).

Thankfully, yesterday we got two pieces of really good news which have lightened up the atmosphere in the office considerably and mean that I’ll probably be able to continue this video gig until I leave. Pretty spiffy.