CABIN PROGRESS.
With all the rain we've had lately, it has been a mad rush to finish hanging the drywall. During such a busy time in the gardens at Bugtussle, we have to grab every moment of free time we can spare to work on the house - and rain is a perfect opportunity. We are so close - truly just a few sheets left to put up!- Hannah.
CLEARING.
In order to build a cabin, or really to walk onto our land, Hannah and I had to clear a great deal of honeysuckle and rosebush, saplings and briars. Most of this activity, however, took place in the fall when much of the life was dormant, hidden from sight or on vacation. Now however, as the clearing continues, we've become INTIMATELY aware of the life—of the ecosystem within which we are working. Our bodies are blistered with poison ivy. Our hands are constantly lifting our shirts and waste bands in search of ticks (all too successfully). We uncover nests and holes, scare up snakes, poke toads and flush out rabbits. And there is something both tragic and wonderful about this element of "reclaiming" the land. We have no choice but to be sensitive to the environment during our work (it bites back), and it feels a lot more gentle to go about it this way—by hand—than with the giant machinery our poor skin wishes we were using. And in the end, we feel the land will be grateful, fruitful and full of life, just the way we like it. We'll hire some fowl to control the ticks, and hopefully some small livestock —a milk goat perhaps— to help remedy our poison ivy problem. The last thing we want to do is remove the life. And by working slowly, utilizing life to create a tolerable balance, we believe we won't just preserve the life at was there, but hopefully grow it a bit.
- Jesse.
WHAT A MESS.
I dream of our finished home. I dream of clean, white walls...wooden floors, rows of organized shelves, books and mason jars and trinkets artfully arranged. Everything minimal, simple, and neat.But that dream seems distant sometimes. Especially yesterday, as I looked around our tiny cabin and saw: bags and bags of left over insulation and the plastic it was packaged in, stacks of newly-built bee frames, random scraps of drywall, boxes of tile and grout and adhesive, Jesse's latest fermentation project, plywood boards and flooring pieces, stovepipe and bags of chicken feed....not to mention the literal MOUND of garbage still lying in the yard full of trash from the early days of construction and strange metal pieces we have unearthed from around the property.
Jesse and I produce very little trash, in reality. All of our food scraps go to the compost or to the chickens or to Wendell, and all of our paper or cardboard is burned. We reuse anything that we can. We try not to buy or consume products made or packaged with plastic. But, in the process of building our house, we find ourselves stuck with a ridiculous amount of plastic wrapping and other such junk. It leaves us in a sort of dilemma - living in Bugtussle, where there is no such thing as trash or recycling pickup. And so the garbage piles up, until we decide to drive it to the faraway dump, where we then have to pay for them to bury it in a landfill. There is always the solution that many of our neighbors use, to simply burn it all, plastic and everything, filling the sky with a dark, chemical cloud. Which is worse?Clearly, we don't like either of these choices. So....there is sits. Not decomposing. Making a mess.While I am still working on a solution for our garbage pile, I can find an answer to the clutter. While in my mind our life is simple and organized and white and clean, I have come to realize that it is mostly, actually, messy. Our life is messy - it is overflowing with canning jars and bushel baskets and skeins of yarn and dirty chore boots and books and old wine bottles and all of the little things that fill our days. It is not the cover of a magazine. It will always be a little bit cluttered, a little bit dirty, a little bit real. And when I can embrace this, I know I will be happier. We are farmers, and our life is full of practical, utilitarian things - it will never be truly "minimal" or "streamlined." I think of the Shaker saying - Beauty rests on utility - and in that, I can look at our unorganized cabin floor, and smile.- Hannah.
CABIN PROGRESS.
Busy week! We began installing drywall...
...and we got the stove pipe up through the roof - a rather precarious task that involved balancing a ladder in the bucket of Eric's tractor. It is so hard to be patient when all we want to do is move in....we are so close!
