We have officially landed.  After 6 months in the rental cabin 6 miles away, we have returned to the farm--not quite in the way we'd initially hoped when we started in on building a small strawbale house last fall, but in at least in a space we can make cozy, settle into, and start to make our own.  The transformation of the barn from a dusty, dirty, drafty storage space into a warm (mostly), insulated, sealed space with a  few new windows has been a crazy journey all of its own.  But here we are.  Mabel has laid claim to the space in front of the stove, as always.  Noah and I are each allotted a small corner on opposite sides of the upstairs hayloft-turned-bedroom-and-office, and are considering how to make our corners our own, once a few more carpentry projects are sorted and seeds are started.  Hershey has returned to patrolling the farm for mice and voles, and Malaya has graduated to being allowed general outdoor roaming, taking her beauty-sleep naps tucked under the dishwashing table in the outdoor strawbale kitchen.

There is not yet any running water indoors, but the simple ability to finish work and go to sleep without a commute, the ability to sit down at a table and write a few lines, the ability to walk out the door and be at our own place....they all feel like a good improvement and a good way to start what will soon be spring.  I hope this space, this coziness, makes space for more sharing and reaching out, too.

This morning, the first of 2015, came bright and clear and really, really cold.  Cold enough that I had to return to bed after the first stoking of the fire, before working up the gusto to leave the warm sheets and make coffee   This cold morning was the first back in the dry cabin, after three weeks of luxury living in t

Falling in deep snow on Christmas day.
Soft, forgiving, beautiful, and fun. 

he farmhouse while the tenants were away (luxury = hot running water, an efficient wood stove  and a shower, right there in the same building where we sleep!).  The day before had been another hard one, in a hard year, really, of trying to build, not just a house, but the life we are looking for. The start of 2014 saw us just beginning to move to this 10-acre farm in the Bitterroot, still trying to understand and recover from the disappointment of losing our land-access agreement with a landowner in Missoula, and trying to muster the gumption to start fresh.  2014 was, I have to admit, a very hard year.  

And so, maybe it was, in the cold morning cabin, at the start of another year that is without doubt going to stretch and pull and challenge...maybe it was the perfect time to see a friend post this to her Facebook wall as a happy new year greeting: 

 “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.
So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
― Neil Gaiman

My first thought was that wow, I certainly did that in the last year:  made mistakes, tried new things, learned, lived, pushed myself.  It's growth, and that is uncomfortable.  But it's also living, and it's not over yet.  Here's to more calm and sanity in 2015, but also to embracing continued growth, and more mistakes, all in the pursuit of that custom, hand-built life.  

Cold, any way you count it.

Depending on the scale you use to measure temperatures, today when I woke and took Malaya out registered as nose-hair-freezing, husky-pleasing, or -22 degrees F/ -30 C.  That's just really cold, no matter what your metric. Malaya couldn't be happier.  These deep colds must hit some northern-breed arctic switch deep inside her, because at the same instant I registered that the inside of my nose was crackling frozen, she gave her playful growl and began bouncing around my feet, dashing in and out in an effort to recruit a good chase and play.

I knew we'd been below zero the night before, and I knew the draft that seemed to seep in around our bedroom window had seemed chillier last night, but I didn't check the current temp or forecast before taking Malaya out into the snowy field at sunrise.  I just knew, as soon as I stepped out the door and breathed in, that it was cold.  Only on returning to the kitchen and turning on the radio did I hear the hard number:  minus 22.

And so, today, I am more grateful than ever that our new place has this powerful and efficient woodstove, and that we made those two trips to Lubrecht forest before we started moving ourselves in and managed to cut enough aged wood that we have been warm, at least in the small radius of the stove itself.  The farther reaches of the house are chillier, but considering that the whole place, with some inefficient and convoluted hallways and wings, is right now heated only by the woodstove, it's doing pretty well.

And the stove is getting a workout.  To keep the farther reaches even a little warm, it is going pretty much full bore all day and as much of the night as possible.  That does mean the area immediately around the stove is a toasty haven from which Mabel has hardly moved.  Sprawled on the couch, spread out and drunk on woodheat, she has no intention of going anywhere until this cold snap is well over.

Returning

I have decided, for friends and family, to return to periodically posting here on the Current Local Time blog, bits and pieces.  On the Forest Voices and H-Brace Farm blogs, Noah and I write together and try (whether or not we succeed) to find the links between our efforts and accomplishments, and some of the bigger issues facing the world.  I think of it as focusing a bit more on the bigger picture.

It takes some effort and adjustment to set the "tone" of a blog, but it seems good to keep it consistent, and we've decided that those more public blogs should reach beyond the tiny and ordinary details that our close ones might love to hear, but don't necessarily appeal to the rest of the world at large. I like the pressure to think big-picture, and yet I have such a draw to the minuscule details as well.  The way the shadows of weeds across the snow can be long in February, even at noon.  The sound of the chickens settling in for the night.  The cat melting in the heat of the wood stove.  They sometimes call to be noticed, and sometimes call to be shared, at least in a small circle. So, for the ordinary things, the smaller crumbs of the day and the little details observed, I'll post again here, but with no promises of regularity.  

Moving on...

In case anyone is still checking in here despite the long silence, I thought I'd let you know, my writing, observations and examinations of detail have mostly moved to our new joint blog, at:

http://forestvoices.org/farmblog/

Join me there as Noah and I explore what it means to attempt a hand-made life, a creative homestead, and the growing of food and community.

first growth: garlic spears

I couldn't reveal this special spring secret until Noah was home from Indonesia and got a chance to see it for himself, but last week, on a check of the garden beds, I first felt, and then saw, the first pale sturdy tips of our fall-planted garlic, just beginning to emerge from the ground.  The green leaf hasn't quite emerged, nor has the shoot really cleared the layer of straw mulch on top of the beds, but still, I know they are there, up out of the soil and looking for the sun.

Other things will need planting soon (or already), meaning there's a greenhouse to build.  And we've got to get to work on that deer fence. Spring is both excitement and anxiety, when you aren't quite ready for it all to uncoil just yet.

Currently::warm breeze

I just walked through the low pasture between us and the young-family neighbors who are coffee members.  The plants are all still hiding, for the most part, but it just sort of feels like the ground is getting ready to go.  There was a definitely spring-like breeze blowing down from Blue Mountain; the sort that is big and round, soft.  It had me involuntarily scanning the ground for lupine seedlings, though really they are still a ways off (and probably not in our pasture here, anyway).  

The work for a while has been all outreach for the coffee and storytelling class.  The sort of work that has no clear way to measure progress.  I'm long past ready for a day of something that havs a visible accomplishment:  shoveling manure, digging a garden bed, pruning the orchard.  We desperately need to build some sort of greenhouse so we can start our seedlings.  

There's an intense sense of needing to dig in and get to a more grounded kind of work, blowing in on that wind.