JohnBollwitt.com

I’ve been listening to geek.farm.life since the first episode. If you are wondering what this podcast is all about, then you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head already. Andrew and Misty are a couple who left their silicon valley lives for the more simple life of the midwest. Podcasting from Indiana, they are two tech-heads that now raise a variety of farm animals that makes your trips to the store seem easy, if not cleaner.

The element of this podcast that first captured my interest was the fact that Andrew[blog] is a native Albertan while Misty[blog] is an American. They first met while being career geeks in California, only to get fed up with the west coast and the post dot-com boom. Somewhere in the fray of things, these two passed through a Las Vegas union on their way to creating their modern day farm that would make Old McDonald proud.

Three-Elms farm is located in north-central Indiana. We’re on the border of what many local call Michiana. Our hobby farm is 10 acres, of which we’re letting 6 return to trees and the the rest is the house and pasture. We have too much lawn and neither of us like mowing so we’re looking to do something with all that grass.

The reason we’re called Three-Elms is due to the three huge siberian elm trees in our front yard. The biggest three is several feet across. They dwarf our two story house, standing about 3 times as high. The provice awesome shade in the summer and we’ll get hundreds of birds sitting on the branches singing in the morning. [three-elms]

These are one of those podcasts that are more of the audio blog style. Each episode usually hits the three main topics that makes up the title, in addition to any of the other interests that the two have. Of particular interest was Andrew’s story of buying his father’s car in Canada and then driving it across the border from Manitoba. It’s not that it’s a great story, but it’s entertaining for anyone familiar to the joys of border crossing.

The way this podcast is recorded makes me more inclined to stay subscribed. Quite often, the barn is the studio, and the stereo effects of ducks, cows, geese, and goats is very cool. Listening with headphones, you feel like you are hanging out with the couple as they talk about how their animals are doing, the joys of their labor, and the pains of waking up in the morning to take care of the chores. If you are one to have lived through or, like me, experienced this type of lifestyle, the sounds can also trigger a sense of remembering what it smells like inside that barn as well.

The latest episode of geek.farm.life was published on Sunday, June 18, 2006. With nineteen episodes under their belt, the duo are getting more and more comfortable with their efforts, not to mention having done remote recordings while one of them is on the road. If you like true, simple reality, you might dig this.