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.  

I roast your coffee!

This is where things get complicated with the blogging, suddenly.....we've launched the Forest Voices website, so I'll be writing some things for that in the coming weeks and months.  Of course, there's some overlap (some people might have perfectly clear divisions between 'home' and 'work' lives, but that's probably never going to be the case here).  So, for the whole story of how I introduced myself with that line "I'm Mary, I roast your coffee!" to completely the wrong person, I'll send you to the Forest Voices blog entry.  

I'm gearing up for a solo coffee roast tomorrow, to get our next round of shares delivered, while Noah's in Indonesia.  They'll be ready for the Friday morning delivery.  This photo is from our last round of deliveries, the first in Missoula--crossing Higgins Ave in Downtown Missoula with a box of coffee for members to pick up definitely was fun.

The Durian Has Landed

I spoke to Noah on the phone last night, and got the first report from Indonesia:  lots of good conversations, great ideas and enthusiasm from Eko, our Indonesian collaborator.  He showed a slideshow on his laptop to the women sorting coffee in the co-op's warehouse, which they loved, recognizing many of the faces he'd captured on his last visit.  He also mentioned cupping three kinds of coffee, and a late-night feast on durian fruit.

This was not exactly the original plan.  But given multiple layers of bureaucracy and delays in our attempt to have this course listed for university credit, we have somehow arrived at the point of launching course announcements and student recruiting at the point when...well, it might already be too late.

After talking with some of our advisors, just days before we were both scheduled to leave for Indonesia, we faced the hard fact that if at least one of us didn't stay on the ground here in the US trying to get the word out and find students, there would be no chance of finding enough people to make the actual course run.  It's a big gamble, here--of course most people need more than a few months to make a decision (and, likely, save up for) such a big trip.  We're going to have to get the word out to a LOT of people in order to find the magic number that will make it go.

We are, admittedly, not in a great position, time-wise.  It's not going to be easy, but we're also, of course, stubborn.  I've left dozens of phone messages with professors, despite how much I hate cold-calling.  We've run the numbers and figure that with seven people, we can at least break even.  With twelve people, we could even get paid for the weeks in the field.  We'll run the trip even if we just break even.

In terms of recruitment, we've put everything on the table.  And thrown in the table.  We (ok, I'll admit, it was me that started it) had a harebrained idea over lunch one day last week, to make something akin to a kickstarter campaign--but that instead of asking for cash donations, we would ask people to help us find students.  If you aren't familiar with Kickstarter, it's the "crowdsourcing" funding model where people pitch their idea for a project, investment, business, etc., and try to get it funded by donations of various sizes from supporters.  There is usually a graded series of 'rewards' depending on the size of the donation, and a key part of the model is that if the project doesn't get fully funded (i.e., reach whatever goal was set at the outset), then no one is charged.

An example of a great kickstarter:  last spring, my friend Theo, an excellent and generous chef who simply loves to feed people, wanted to start a mobile food cart selling Indian food in Missoula.  He ran a Kickstarter campaign asking for $9,000 to purchase and transport a used commercial-grade food cart to Missoula.  I donated--enough to get a couple of gift certificates for dinners at the food cart.  Theo got to start his business, and loads of us here in Missoula get the benefit of being able to buy dinner from him at summer concerts in the park!

Back to our non-kickstarter, campaign, though....we decided we didn't want to just ask for money.  What we really needed was people--students to come with us.  And we need at least 7.  So we thought of 7 prizes or rewards we could offer anyone from Missoula who either signed up or recruited someone for us.  They run the gamut, from a couple of our chickens to perhaps our most-treasured thing:  the barnboard kitchen table.  Truth is, neither of us wants to see that go, but at the same time, we are kind of hoping to have that problem!  (besides which, we are feeling a bit more confident in our building skills, and could probably make a new one in a lot less time now--maybe whoever got that prize would take pity and let us build them a new one to fit their space).  But we're putting the video out soon to the Missoula community, and really have put it all on the table.

We're brainstorming ways to generate some scholarship funds too, but are going to have to kind of keep that on hold till we have a sense of whether there's any chance of having students to use them!