Month: December 2011

  • In Another Land

    We walked across the sand and the sea and
    The sky and the castles were blue.
    I stood and held your hand.
    And the spray flew high and the feathers floated by
    I stood and held your hand.
    And nobody else’s hand will ever do
    Nobody else will do

    Then I awoke
    Was this some kind of joke?
    Much to my surprise
    When I opened my eyes.

    We heard the trumpets blow and the sky
    Turned red when I accidently said
    That I didn’t know how I came to be here
    Not fast asleep in bed.
    I stood and held your hand.
    And nobody else’s hand will ever do
    Nobody else’s hand

    “In Another Land” by Bill Wyman, sung by The Rolling Stones 

    We are enjoying some much needed family time. It is hard to believe that we are here, and our short time is going sooooo quickly.  We are eating it up (I mean that literally) and Burundi already seems so very far away. Another world. For now, we are enjoying this one. It’s a world full of brothers and sisters and cousins and grandparents and cold and firsts. Our kids are getting some great “firsts” under their belts.

    First time seeing snow.

    First time wearing winter jackets.

    First time ice skating (that didn’t go so well).

    First time sledding.

    First snow ball fight.

    First time seeing their breath outside.

    First time having Christmas with their grandparents and cousins.

    Our poor kids experience so many new things every day that they fall into bed exhausted and wake up late (we are loving it!).

  • Merry Christmas to me!

    Our dear friend Jason Grube creates beautiful things (even his kids are beautiful). That’s what he does, pure and simple. I could look at his portfolio site for hours, and I tend to be a bit helter skelter with two little-littles, so that means it’s really worth looking at. He made the beautifulness above using my words from this blog post. I can barely breathe when I look at it, I love it that much. So I am vowing to you right now that I will find a way to have this puppy printed so that it can hang on our walls in Burundi. I need the reminder, everyday.

    Merry Christmas!

    Kristy

    Just as a quick “permissions 101” course, you should always ask the artist no matter what you are printing, photographs included. And if you are using someone’s image or art online, you need to credit them 100% of the time. If you don’t have permission, just don’t. I asked, promise.

  • A Christmas round-up

    I think our whole family is finally coming out of our “we just got here” coma. We made it home to America in time for Christmas!  In case you are new to the blog or just don’t get a chance to read every post (how could you!) we’ve rounded up a highlight reel for you.

    We began our move by sending the vehicle first. Ben left to drive our South African purchased vehicle from our home in South Africa 5,500 kms through Africa to Burundi. The first day of the journey his traveling companion had to turn back because of visa issues. He went on to do the drive alone (here’s my nifty map of the drive) which scared the crap outta me. The trip was not exactly convenient. I was left alone with two kids and a mostly packed house on our ten year anniversary.

    Then, as Ben drove on, my heart was tested and it was almost more than I could bear. My sweet littlest little got sick, so sick. We were in the hospital, friends were watching my oldest (some of the best friends on earth), and I was just praying that my littlest would breathe.

    Our littlest made a full recovery, and Ben eventually made it back to South Africa. When he did he was feeling pressure that we should have moved to Burundi already because the coffee was rolling in. That made my heart break because I was not ready to leave my lovely South African life. Certianly not before our schedule said so. But then we were there, it was time to jump. Ready or not.

    And we did. We landed with a thud. Into a house with 20 construction workers crawling all over it, a film crew following us around, and a kid throwing rocks through windows. Ben began cupping coffee all day long every day to try and catch up on his job. The boys and I just tried to survive. Every day was a test of my resolve to stay… and we had only just landed.

    Eventually the construction stopped. Not because they were finished, but because they ran out of money. I didn’t care. I was happy just to have them out. We began to make friends. I knew how to drive through all of this and life gained a rhythm. And we found ourselves preparing for a big day. Our biggest little’s first day in a French speaking school. When that day came, soon after so did another. A very unplanned for day. Ben had a potentially life threatening staph infection. We were faced with questions. Should he be airlifted to Kenya or South Africa? Should we risk the care in Burundi and stay? We decided to stay.

    He recovered, but I was tired. Tired of living at a flat out crazy man’s pace. We decided to make some changes. Changes that would ensure we could live life better. We found a nanny, we set some work boundaries, we made time for things that mattered. Then I lost something. Someone, really, who had journeyed with our family for what felt like a century, even though it was just a decade.

    Somewhere in there I got my first medium format film camera. I began to shoot. It was more than just a camera for me. I fell in love with the beauty of slowing down. Of taking time for things that need time. Of appreciating one thing at a time. The list goes on. My kids began to thrive. They made friends. Great friends. We began to see that this decision of ours, to be in this crazy place, might just be a blessing to all of us after all.

    And now it’s Christmas and I am so thankful to be in the land of warm and consistent showers… no matter what the temperature is outside. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

    Love,

    me

  • Win an Aeropress and Dogwood Coffee!

    Congats David B! Your entry won you some Dogwood Coffee and an Aeropress! Email us at longmilescoffee@gmail.com to claim your prize!  Thanks for entering everybody!

    “Learning to love coffee through weekly visits to a local coffee shop over the course of a summer in high school with my best friend.” -David B

    While we are flying over the Atlantic for 45 hours with two small children to make it home in time for Christmas (oy vay!), Dogwood Coffee in Minneapolis, MN is offering our USA readers a chance to win an Aeropress and a sampler pack of their coffees ($50 value). Included in that sampler pack is a Burundi coffee from the Gatare region. Right now the bridge to Gatare is washed out, and yet it has some of the best tasting coffees in Burundi.

    What do you have to do to enter? Simple.

    1. Share this giveaway post somehow with your friends via some sort of social media thingamabob (like Facebook or Twitter).

    2. Comment below answering “What’s you favorite memory involving coffee?” and include the link to where you shared this post.

    One entry per person, please.

    Since our judgement will be seriously impaired on Friday by the jet-lag monsters, we will use Random.org to choose a winner.

    Winner will be announced Friday morning, December 16th.

    Thanks Dogwood Coffee!

    Love,

    The Long Miles Crew

    (about to be “The Jet-Lag Crew”)

     

  • Want $45,000?

    I sure do… to help this community. I’m not going to lie. There have been lots of days (usually the “I’m-not-writing-on-that-darn-blog” days) that I don’t understand or know my purpose here. I know who I am, but not always what I am doing here. I am a wife. A mother. A photographer. A creative. A wanna-be chef. A wanna-be gardener. A wanna-be runner….. we better stop now. My wanna-be list is as long as my arm. BUT it is ultimately Coffee Guy’s purpose that brought us here. Yes, I love coffee. No, it’s not my job to export containers of it or to help farmers… but I care about it anyways. Deeply.

    I need to go to the coffee hills. To bring the kids with. To connect with the reason why I left everything I did to come here. To see the women, to know we are helping, to breathe the air they breathe, to see the communities they live in. To remember WHY I gave up my house and my dog and my friends…. for a new purpose. Those are THE BEST DAYS of this journey. I love our mid-week jaunts to the hills. It’s a time for us to pull the kid out of school, drive through the banana trees and connect. Connect. Connect. With our purpose.

    But enough about me… really. Seriously. There are people right outside my door with no clothes on and I’m whining about my purpose. Uff duh… so far to go girl, so far to go.

    Last week, with the film crew and the nanny all packed into the car…we headed to a new community. Farmers in a new part of Burundi. We drove along the lake and then up and up and up into new hills.

    Being filmed along the way.The following few pics shot out the car windows. Aka: totally incredible images. Just kidding. Try bumpy, blurry ones.Goat meat kabobs anyone? The goat is hanging right there so you can pick your cut of meat. That yellow container probably has banana beer in it. Good combo, banana beer and goat. Not much left, better hurry on down!

     

    Move it cows, we’re comin’ through!

    Burundi is full of people. Wide open spaces? Not without people! Here, there and everywhere.
    In the car… the producer (ahem, Wesley), the cinematographer (see Sunel, I can even spell it!), the nanny (and yes, IT’S TOTALLY AWESOME TO HAVE A NANNY!), the two kids… and the parents.
    Driving alongside the lake and the DRC mountains.
    Arriving at this amazing community.

    The farmers waiting for us.

    They have built this washing station with their own money. Here in Burundi, that’s rare. most exist because of government grants or foreign aid or foreign investment. This one exists because of initiative. Pure and Simple. We were so impressed by this amazing community. They need a $45,000 USD loan to complete their washing station. Feel like investing? Email us! We can give you a breakdown of where every cent would go.

    If you are a coffee shop and invest, they would give you first option on all the coffee they produce and you can garantee we would help oversee the processes as much as possible for as long as we are here.

    They stopped school and brought the students to us so that we could tell them about the importance of education and coffee farming for their community.

    Ever wondered what it looks like to produce a TV show in the coffee hills. Well, it looks like this! Hi Wesley!
    So cute, no?Myles does some cool drawings while the community meets with us about their project.
    When we got there the whole community was waiting and they had decorated the washing station with beautiful hanging flower arrangements (above). They had me hook, line and sinker right there.
    Do they have you? If you or anyone you know would be interested in providing a small business loan to this community, email us! The kids also desperately need some new clothes. I re-tied one boys pants three times… just so that they would stay up high enough to cover his willie. So, if you want to donate childrens clothes… we can talk about finding a way to get them to those kids.
    Love,
    me

  • A Styled Shoot: Burundi Style

    Uh, hello! Who would have thought that I could be a part of a shoot like this in BURUNDI! I didn’t, until I met a designer who is living here and asked her if we could find a way to collaborate. She was amazing and put everything together in under a week. Another crazy thing? The beautiful woman in the majority of these photos:

    a) Heard of us through a friend of this blog and had phoned us to see if we could meet up. I had never met her, but during the model fitting she recognized me and said, “Oh my gosh, we’re having supper together next Monday!”

    b) Has TWO kids. Hello, can you believe it?

    c) Has a beautiful heart. Seriously, beautiful.

    d) Owns the only Great Dane in Burundi. If you don’t know, I have a thing for Great Danes.

    e) Played with my kids.

    Happy to be shooting around,

    Kristy 

  • Brew Guide: French Press

    Brew Guide: French Press

    Before we begin this full immersion French press course, you need to know a few facts. This is serious business folks, if you get it wrong Coffee Guy is bound to come to your house and whack you across the wrists with his fancy silver cupping spoon. As you can see, the Carlson house never has fewer than three French presses in the house at one time. It’s against our house rules… and we just really like to be prepared for every possible French press brewing scenario you can imagine.

    This is the history of our beloved French press, according to our good friend Wiki :

    The French press underwent several design modifications over the years. The first coffee press, which may have been made in France, was the modern coffee press in its most rudimentary form: a metal or cheesecloth screen fitted to a rod, and pressed down into a pot of boiling water. The coffee press was patented by Milanese designer Attilio Calimani in 1929. It underwent several design modifications through Faliero Bondanini, who patented his own version in 1958 and began manufacturing it in a French clarinet factory called Martin S.A., where its popularity grew. It was further popularized across Europe by a British company by the name of Household Articles Ltd., and most notably, the Danish tableware and kitchenware company, Bodum.

    Now let’s get this French press party started with some easy step by steps. Pay attention, there’s a really hard quiz at the end of this post. Don’t you dare cheat by scrolling down!

    What you need:

    A french press

    A kettle (we love electric kettles, but a stovetop one will do the same trick)

    A coffee grinder (you can use pre-ground coffee to avoid the grinding step, but the coffee will lack flavor in comparison to freshly ground beans. We recommend the Hario hand grinder , especially for camping trips or for people who live where there is not dependable electricity… like us!)

    A spoon

    A thermos

    Coffee cups

    Coffee beans (Burundi coffee is a great choice for the French press, and we aren’t just sayin’ that)

    1.  Preheat your French press by pouring hot water into it.  Empty the water into your thermos.

    2.  Measure out 1 scoop of beans (think heaping tablespoon) per cup of coffee you want to brew.  

    3. Grind your (we hope they’re Burundi) coffee beans. Place in French press.

    4.  Slowly pour off-boiled water (give the kettle 30 seconds to rest after the water has reached boiling point) onto grounds, just enough to cover ground coffee. Start timer. Watch the grounds bloom for 20-30 seconds. 

    5.  Slowly pour the rest of the hot water onto grounds in a circular motion.

    6.  Stir with a spoon and cover the French press. Start your timer and brew coffee for 4 minutes.

    7.  Preheat your coffee cups (using the water in your thermos) while you time the brew of your French press for 4 minutes.

    8. Slowly plunge the French press. We say slowly because this prevents the grounds from escaping around the edges of the press into the filtered coffee.

    9. Pour your cup and then pour the rest into the preheated thermos (so that the remainder of the coffee doesn’t sit on the ground coffee and continue to brew… which will make it bitter).

    Oh, and we lied about the quiz.

    Enjoy!

    Love,

    The Long Miles Crew (aka Coffee Guy and Camera Girl) 

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