Yestermorrow Visit

Late this week Stephanie and I began to seriously consider moving to Vermont. We've enjoyed our time here so much and love what we've seen. So I'm asking myself (and Stephanie) how the heck this plays out with the forming plans of us heading to California so that I can go to the College of the Redwoods Fine Furniture (CRFF) program? Right now, your guess is as good as ours.

CRFF offers what I consider the best instructional and communal learning opportunity with regard to furniture craftsmanship and philosophy and it would be a great starting point for my foray into designing/building for a living. Sadly, the town of Fort Bragg and the thought of living in California for a year haven't really excited both of us. We don't think we'd ever settle out there long-term, and we don't know anyone there. Not to mention, it's wicked expensive for non-residents and I would be in a shop for 60 hours a week. ...There's no real show-stoppers there, but definitely items we're considering.

Considering Vermont, we've been seriously looking through Yestermorrow's site and reading their course catalog, and it seems like it might be a place where Stephanie and I could both grow while living in a place we both love with dear friends nearby. After perusing the website, we found that Yestermorrow offers internships that sound right up our alley: a Kitchen/Garden internship for Stephanie and a Design/Build internship for me. With questions in hand and curiosity in full bloom, we visited Yestermorrow on Saturday.

A current intern, Matt, gave us a tour and answered all of the questions that were in his power to answer. Stephanie and I both loved the facilities and the laid back atmosphere of the school, as well as the location only 30 minutes from our friends Pete and Amy. It's also nestled near tons of hiking trails and blue ribbon fly-fishing streams. The outstanding item that Matt could not answer was how it would work if we both applied and what our chances were of both being accepted. There are some sticky issues with these internships from the get-go in that the Kitchen/Garden gig is for 1 year while the Design/Build internship is 4 months. This also begs another difficult question: "What will I do when my 4 months are up and Stephanie is still committed for another 8?" To answer these, we're going to try to get in to see Kate Stephenson on Monday - she's the director of operations for the school. Depending on how this meeting goes, our plans could be shifted into action a bit sooner than we had originally planned (shocker). Deadline for application to Yestermorrow is October 1st.

Weeeeeeeeeeee!