Fork in the Road

We are lucky enough to share a decent-sized piece of the woods with my father, who lives in his geodesic dome in the middle, and my sister, who lives on the north end in an adorable cape tucked into a curve of Bump's Brook. My roots are deep here, so I may be biased, but Maine is simply spectacular, and our road is particularly nice. A couple of miles of it, where it skirts the Great Sidney Bog, is undeveloped, with no homes or even telephone poles, giving us a perfect view of each season's foliage and other natural bounty whenever we head toward town.

Technically, our driveway should have a name, according to town rules, since there are two households on it, but they've never made us do it. That means that we give directions by saying, "Go about three miles, turn left at our box number, drive across the stone bridge, and at the top of the driveway, don't go to the dome, bear left, past the barn, we're the other place..."

The Dome on Mellow Hill

Dad has it a little easier, since the dome is unmistakeable. Still, the driveway has a fork in it, and that has been nagging at me for a long time. One of the great gifts from my Dad has been his love of wordplay. More than once he has held a "proverbidioms" party, which meant that guests tried to figure out that a cedar tree wrapped in birch bark was meant to depict "Barking up the wrong tree," A recently dug hole with a playing card at the bottom was "ace in the hole," and so on. 
In that spirit, for his recent birthday, I used five feet of galvanized flashing, tin snips, and a center-punch to make him his very own landmark:

"Turn left when you come to the fork..."

 Needless to say, this was a lot of fun to wrap and present to him on his birthday, and he promptly mounted it on the woodshed. Now he can tell people to turn right at the fork, and we can tell people to turn left. 
Hmmm...I think it could be time for another Proverbidioms party!
 

Cup of Bliss and Snapping Sails

I have heard it said that a danger in songwriting is when your songs become too personal, too autobiographical. I can understand why that could be; I have written some songs at low points that, while very good, I'm not ready to share. When you're a sensitive songwriter-poet, one rocky spell, one terribly sad day, can send a song onto your pages that doesn't really represent your life. Some day I will share those songs, but not now. The "Wow. My Honey!" songs actually do represent my life, and I'm sharing those now. 

Cup of Bliss by Harper Meader

My song, Cup of Bliss, is an exception in a way, because it alludes to having trouble together. The line, "I don't know where we'll be tomorrow" really needs to be there, if only because it's true (and I know people deeply in love can relate) that my greatest fear is losing my Honey. What is also true, but couldn't be worked into the song, is that I know with my whole being that I can only be with Her going forward, or alone. More than anything, the song is about how as a poet I feel the depth and mystery of the world moving within me, demanding that I write it down somehow, that I sing it. Finding love has woken that side of me up in a way that I'm still coming to grips with. For me, the most powerful line, referring to a transformative dream that I will never forget, is "I'll keep my seat, the tiller-handle tightly held while the current rages."

The title, Cup of Bliss, is in fact a deliberate echo of Amos Lee, who is a major inspiration to me. My song is not really on-topic with his song, Cup of Sorrow, but that phrase has worked into my head far enough that it has become an important inner symbol of mine. It's hard to put into words, but the way we experience our world with those close to us is a cup that we drink together, and what kind of cup it is becomes an essential part of our shared experience. I'm truly blessed to share a cup of bliss.

For the musicians, I play this in standard tuning with the capo on two. Chords are Amaj7, A, E, Asus2, A7, and Ddim. I very much enjoy working with clustered chords that move together easily, and this set is very good that way.

 - - - - -

Snapping Sails by Harper Meader

When I first started playing mumblety-summat years ago, the music I most wanted to play was that of Gordon Bok, Stan Rogers, and Gordon Lightfoot. Whales and sails, hauling nets, hardened tars, schooners, clippers, sea-foam...oh, the language of sailing is so evocative, gut-level imagery for someone like me, with sailing in my genes! 

One day when I was practicing my way through all the love-songs that have come to me me recently, my Honey said, "You know, Harper, you really should write a sailing song since you love the sea so much..." I just nodded at the time, but one day at work, maybe a week later, Snapping Sails came to me, all in one sitting, and I like it very much. Of course, true to form, by the end of it, it's another love-song; I just can't help myself.

For the musicians, this one is dead easy. Standard tuning, using Am, F, Dm, G, and C. At the end of the chorus you'll need to do a little "add4" to the C chord with your pinky, and that's it. I play it two-fingered, but it strums well too.

The Glassblower's Breath and Magic in the Moonlight

"The way the scent of wild roses makes me want to pull her down, down by the ocean..."

Rumi, that seer and poet tormented by love, wrote often of the consuming power of ecstasy, the ecstasy sometimes of love, sometimes of simply touching the universe. My very favorite Rumi poem, The New Rule, has a couple of lines that have stayed with me my entire adult life. One is:

"Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
And fall toward the glassblower’s breath."

The other is right at the end:

"Only love.
Only the holder the flag fits into,
And wind. No flag."

Don't worry, I'm not going to interpret mystic love poetry for you; I know what it means to me, and that's enough. My own song, The Glassblower's Breath, in comparison, is more accessible.  In it I'm simply reaching for the words to say adequately just how much my Love has changed my life, rescued me, brought me closer than I believed possible to that ecstatic love that Rumi knew. For her I'd surely smash the glass, and fall toward the Glassblower's breath!

For the musicians, I play this in standard tuning with a capo on only five strings at the second fret. The low note remains an E. I discovered partial capo-ing this year and have already written four songs that use it. You get the benefit of almost completely normal chords, with the added benefit of a dropped bass-note, really much cooler than it sounds! Chords are mostly variations of D, G, and A. One of these days I'll try to write up tablature for it. The bass run on the D chord is easier if you can fret with your thumb.

The second song on the CD, Magic in the Moonlight, is another of my favorites. I seem to write a lot of music late at night, sitting up in bed with my guitar, just barely touching the strings, while my Honey sleeps smiling. She tells me this is magical, that the music filters through into her dreams. All I know is that on a hot summer night, with the moon reaching through the window to light up the center of my world, words of love come to me powerfully, and that's where this song comes from.

"Oh, there’s magic in the moonlight,
When lovers sleep
With just a sheet
And a glass of water sweating by the bedside"

For the musicians, I play this with a two-finger pattern, standard tuning, capo on two. The chords are Am, Dm add 9, Em, G, Asus2, and F. It's a nice chord sequence, and not hard.

I hope you enjoy my music, and pass it on if you know anyone else who might appreciate it. My hope is to finance the next recording project by selling enough from this one. The songs waiting to be recorded are at least as good!

Strawberry Pear Locavore Mead

We came home the other day to find a bushel basket filled with pears, good honest lumpy little things with all the blemishes that come from growing naturally. Dad planted those trees going on twenty years ago, and now there are more pears than he can find uses for, so he thought we might find a use for them. Well, even more of a use than all of us snacking on them like crazy as long as they last.

Pears from Dad's trees next door at Mellow Hill!

We immediately thought of mead, since it has been five years or so since I made a batch of pear mead. Rather than add oranges like last time, we decided to provide the citrus fruit content with a pound of gorgeous strawberries from the local farmer's market. Rather than add tea from across the world, we used shaved red oak bark, which has become my standard tannic acid additive. Straight from our own firewood stock is as local as it gets! 

We haven't gotten our usual bulk honey from Swan's Apiaries in Unity, but did happen to have some even more local honey (from Sidney!) found at The Green Spot, a wonderful organic market in Oakland. So except for some spices, this a wonderfully locavore batch of mead. Here's how easy it was...

Pears being prepped for mead...

We peeled and diced about three pounds of pears and started them simmering in a large skillet. To this we added the pound of strawberries and just a bit of lemon juice to help bring out the flavor. While that was all softening, we started mixing up the honey with water. This part is easy too. All we do is pour out the containers of honey, ten pounds this time, which will make a bit over two gallons, into a large kettle. Then measure two and a quarter times that much of hot water, and add that, stirring to dissolve the honey. Our tap water is beautiful well-water, so just hot from the tap works fine. If you don't have that luxury, you may want to heat up some good water from a spring or well. The hot water makes sure that you get all the honey from inside the containers.  Water measured at 2 1/4 times the honey by volume gives you a good estimate of the right balance of sweetness for a good semi-sweet mead. (If you use a hydrometer, you could fine-tune it to between 16 and 17 percent potential alcohol.) 

Pears and strawberries make great mead...

By this time a potato masher squished the fruit up beautifully, and we added that to the must. Finally we grated in a couple of teaspoons off of a chunk of red oak bark using a fine grater. If you don't have this, instead add two teabags of a standard black tea. Then some spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger), and it all went into a brewing bucket with a bubbler set up. We made sure it was well below a hundred degrees fahrenheit, and added a packet of Cote des Blancs wine yeast from Red Star. That's it. Now we simply wait for the yeast to make so much alcohol from all that honey that it dies off, let the sediment settle, and in two to four months we'll bottle and cork it, getting close to a case of mead if all goes well. This is our fourth batch so far this year. After decades of mead-making, I feel like I know what works best, what I like the most, and definitely have some varieties that I know I will always make. Still, there's always room for growth, and our recent shift to very local ingredients is a very nice trend. It will be better for us, and supports our local beekeepers and farmers!

Beloved Love and Snow Drift Love

We have a couple of fun new things going on at Ironwood Hollow, but no photos ready today for those posts, so they'll wait. In the meantime, if you'll indulge me, I'll just talk a little bit about a  couple of the songs that can be found at Harper Meader Bandcamp.

Life in our winter is simply amazing.

The oldest song on the CD is "Beloved Love", and it's dear to my heart. Honey and I knew that we were meant for each other. We longed to be together, and our lives were just not quite ready to allow us that gift of waking up to see the dawn together. For me, our precious moments of time together were the finest moments my heart had ever known, and I was caught in that perfect storm of being exactly where I wanted to be, needed to be, and knowing that it was fleeting. Dreading the dawn, because I would once again awake alone, and at the same time thanking whatever Gods or spirits had brought us together for showing me the answer to my heart's quest.

For the musicians, I use a four-finger picking pattern in regular tuning, sort of Gordon Lightfoot-style, and the chords are:  Dsus2, Am, B7, Em, and G.

The next oldest is "Snow Drift Love." I wrote this last summer, on a very hot day, knowing that soon we would be living together, that we would spend our winters together, awake together in the morning to see that amazing blanket of snow that sometimes stops everything here at Ironwood Hollow. My favorite word in the song is "dooryard," a quintessentially downneast term. I once met an Italian New Yorker, name of Gaitano, who had moved to Maine, and remember asking how he liked it here. He was thrilled. "Oh, the language is endlessly fascinating. Just today I learned to pronounce a new Maine word." Then he crossed his eyes, and carefully said it: doouh yaahd! Then he clapped his hands with delight, and said that he found our country ways so charming. 

...underneath is still the front yard we know...

He has gotten tired of our country ways, and gone back to the city, but Honey and I, who truly love when we can see our breath in the bedroom on a frosty morning, still love our country ways, and this song is from when I looked forward to sharing that together with her. I hope you like the song, and queue it up on a blustery February morning...Honey and I will be tucked in with our tea, living the life we dreamed of, storm-stayed together and loving it!

Oh, for the musicians, I play this one with an alternating two-finger pattern, regular tuning, and the chords are: E and Asus2 alternating for the verses, and A, E, and one B7 snuck in there, for the chorus. Very easy, and one of my favorite chord patterns.

Cordwood Masonry Acoustics

As I wrote last time, I'm excited (me, Mr. Mellow, excited, yup!) about the final appearance of some of my recorded music. Actually, 'excited' doesn't cover it; I'm having a hard time thinking about anything else, except for that new song I'm working on, which may be even better. The physical CDs just arrived, sounding great, and the cover art (photo by my Honey) came out perfectly. Since I can't think about anything else right now, I'm going to elaborate on this recording project.

Music from a cordwood masonry mead-hall!

I've been writing music for a long time, and in the last couple of years, after falling in love with my Honey, that creative impulse has just skyrocketed. Finding that my heart is where it belongs, finally, has been amazingly good for my writing and composing.

 Months ago I asked my friend James Lindenschmidt of Crafted Recordings, who has all kinds of recording expertise, for pointers about getting some recording done. To my delight, he offered to help out, volunteering his considerable skills, at least in part because he had been wanting to try some recording in our house. The mead-hall, our central room with twelve-foot-plus ceilings, cordwood walls, and an adjoining space with gracefully curved walls, has great acoustic qualities. 

His version of this may be different, but here's why I think the space is so good for music. Cordwood masonry is not flat. It has a combination of very hard and somewhat hard surfaces, curves, and little angled segments all over it. So while it bounces sound nicely (compared to a curtained room, for example), it doesn't sound at all like a tiled space or a stairwell, with that complicated echo on top of everything. Not only that, but it is a magical space, made by hand with love, using natural local materials, and it is the perfect place for me to record my music. After all, it's where I write most of it, and it's where my Honey and I first met. Unless somebody tells me otherwise, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the first professional music recording in a cordwood masonry space!

James and I have much in common, including acoustic music, a similarly spiritual way of living in the world and a long-standing love of mead and mead-brewing. My first experience with his recording expertise was when he interviewed me years ago for his excellent blog, Bardic Brews. Back then, he made me feel very much at ease in front of a microphone, and this time was no different, except that it involved more microphones! Then he put in many hours fine-tuning everything for me. The end result is a very good presentation of my and my songwriting at its current best, and I can't say enough about how sweetly he worked with the very raw material. Please check out the music, which is downloadable from most mainstream venues, as Harper Meader's EP, "Honey."

Coming up, I'll talk in detail about some of the songs in particular, and also about why I like Bandcamp. Stay tuned...

Long Time Coming

Check out my (at last!) recording at bandcamp.com

I guess you may have noticed, if you are a regular reader of mine, that I have been absent for way too long. Sorry about that! Here's what's going on...

A long-time friend of mine, James Lindenschmidt of Bardic Brews and Crafted Recordings, offered to help me with some recording. I have been a musician for my whole adult life, playing folk harp, fingerstyle guitar, hammered dulcimer, and an assortment of other instruments, but in the recent past my songwriting went into overdrive, fed by the life changes that came with falling deeply in love. Happily, my musicianship has kept pace with my heart and my writing aspirations, and I have a steadily-growing collection of really good songs to show for it! 

I went into overdrive, consulting with my Honey about which were the best songs to break out with, practicing like mad, making sure I had the words just the way they should be...and new songs kept intruding! But eventually, just a couple of weeks ago, Jim came to Ironwood Hollow, toting all sorts of esoteric equipment, and Honey left us to our own devices. He told me that he has always wanted to try recording in our home, with its very unique acoustics that come from the cordwood masonry, the high ceilings, and the curved walls. 

Long story as short as possible, we had about three hours of good recording time all to ourselves, and in that time we recorded six of my songs. For each of them, I played my solo arrangement and sang at the same time, then went back and recorded a harmony track and a second guitar track in some cases. The one that sticks in my mind the most is when I said, "Jim, let me just hear the tune, and I'll play through the lead guitar, and see if I remember how it goes..." When I was finished, he just said, "Oh yeah, I was recording; that's great. What's next?" 

Six songs of spiritual love recorded in a cordwood masonry meadhall!

It was that kind of session. Jim's knowledge of recording and innate calm made it a pure pleasure. Followed by many hours of his skilled time mixing and mastering, one of the finest gifts I've ever received, this session has turned into an EP of a small sampling of my recent music. (An EP is an extended play, several songs, but not long enough to be called a CD). I have been working my way through the process of making the songs available, now that Jim has declared the tracks finished. Actual CDs are in process, and I'll post details about that when it's all set up. In the meantime, harpermeader.bandcamp.com is where to go to hear them. I hope you will purchase all or some of them for download! Bandcamp offers music affordably, with the option of paying anywhere from a minimum up to what you feel the music is worth. They will appear in the other usual venues shortly (itunes, amazon, etc), as that process does its thing. 

The changes in my life and my heart that my Honey has brought to me are only hinted at in these songs, but I am so pleased to be able to share a bit of that joy with you. There will be more, since I've determined to make songwriting a major part of my future. Stay tuned. Among these songs you will find a steamy celebration of midsummer loving (Magic in the Moonlight), a rousing sailing song (Snapping Sails), the perfect tune for when you're storm-stayed with your love (Snowdrift Love), a partial-capoed pattern-picked epic-love-song for the guitarists among us, with a nod to the great love-poet, Rumi, (The Glassblower's Breath), and more.

I hope that you like my work. My hope is that this project will fund the next recording, and that my love of music, words, spirit, life, and my Honey will become something more than a hobby, that it will bring a piece of that joy that is my life into the homes of many.

Okay, a final note...anywhere else you find my songs, they're likely to cost about the same, but at bandcamp, you get the lyrics for free, and you can hear the whole song right there before you decide to part with a dollar or two. Also, just sayin'...as one of my blog-readers, you know where to find me. If you play, and want to know my chords, or get a hint about the picking patterns that I use, you know where to find me. 

Songwriting Takes Me Over

You may have noticed that I've been quiet lately, and I apologize for that. One of the reasons is that I have been plowing what creative time I have into my songwriting. A good friend has offered to help me record three or so songs, and I have been working like crazy at polishing up my best five (or so) songs to prepare for that. The trouble is that Love and the Muse, encouraged by the remarkable love story that is my life now, keep sending me off to write more songs, and what I think of as my top five songs keeps changing!

My fervent wish to express my feelings and experiences in a way that touches hearts, that may even brighten somebody's world, has pushed my musical ability to new heights, which after many years of being fairly intermediate is a very pleasant surprise. Inspired by the likes of Amos Lee, Ray LaMontagne, K.D. Lang, Jack Johnson, Gregory Alan Isakov, and a few others, I'm writing music that would have been impossible for me two years ago. So when James, my recording friend, gets me set up, I think the results will be very good indeed.

Just for a sneak preview, Honey and I have decided almost for sure which songs are in the top three. The first one is a love song written back when we had very little time together. One night I wrote the words in my head while lying awake wishing dawn would never come, because she would have to leave. It's unabashedly emotional, grateful, wishing for the moment to never end. Partial lyrics are:

"Beloved love, wake to me!
I hear you speaking in your dreams,
Asking all the spirits 'round us
Why does dawn come?
Every time I wake to find you
Sleepy-eyed, my arms around you,
Waiting for your gaze to find mine,
I thank them!"

Number two was written last summer, when I was looking forward to having my Honey move in with me, imagining that we would be snowed in here in the Maine woods together, the inexorable, beautiful drift-building weather a powerful metaphor for the way our relationship has only become more beautiful over time. It's very "Mainish," even using one of my favorite local words, 'dooryard.' Partial lyrics are:

"That's the way our love grows,
Building slowly like these all-night snows.
Underneath it all, just like our dooryard,
Never changing since I fell so hard
For you, that's what you do to my heart!"

Number three is recent. I have always loved sailing songs. I imagine my sailing ancestors whispering to my soul that the sea is calling, that I should follow in their salty footsteps somehow. Maybe this song will satisfy them. Like nearly all of my songs these days, love makes an appearance, but at heart it's a song about the lure of the sea.

"Once I asked the captain what he looked for in his roaming,
He said sometimes he rounds Cape Horn, sailing back from Nome
And then it's all downwind from there until he plants his boots at home,
And that's all he said when I asked why..."

For the moment at least, these are the top contenders, but Love and the Muse keep distracting me with new ideas, and the songs are starting to pile up in my notebooks, about twenty so far. I'm champing at the bit to share them somehow, either by recording myself, or by finding homes for them with good recording artists. At least a few will make an appearance soon, recorded solo at Ironwood Hollow. Stay tuned!

More on Wood and Men

Blowing the sweat-lodge fire to life at Ironwood Hollow

In my last post I speculated about some kind of workshop that would bring men and boys together to learn/share/grow in their experience with wood. I don't think gender is a defining point in this, but my own experience is based in being first a boy and then a man, so that's coloring my thinking. After I wrote that piece, I found this photo in my camera, and there's so much in it. Please allow me to ramble.

On its face, what's happening is that the boys have decided to build a sweat-lodge. They found saplings that they could bend into shape, hunted down an assortment of tarps, old blankets, and plastic sheeting, and scoured the area for rocks to build a fire-pit. In the picture they are nursing a fire to life, to heat rocks and see if their sweat-lodge can be made sweaty and smoky. Right there, just that, is the kind of thing that I know in my heart is more good for them than a thousand hours of TV or computer time.

My own personal overlay of this picture adds so much more. That hammock in the foreground? I put that up last summer, thinking that, with my Honey and the kids moving in, I would surely need to wander out there with a frosty beer and a good book more than once in a while. You know...still my mind, commune with nature, let the kid-thing fade for a few minutes a week...

I've lain on that hammock exactly twice. For no more than ten minutes each time. The reason I bring it up is that the reason is so great; I don't ever have the impulse to go hide from this new life of having the house filled with my Honey and the kids. If I'm out there lost in a book, pretending there isn't a handful of lives closely connected to mine within a frisbee-throw, then I'm missing so much that is incredibly important. Those kids will grow up and move out into their own lives before we know it, and while they are here, I'm not going to miss it! Also, back to the picture, I find a sweetness in the way the boys thought that right next to my getaway hammock would be a great place for their sweatlodge. How cool is that?

Okay, there are even more layers to why this is such a rich photo. Just to the right, out of the frame, is where I have my shrine to the spirits of place, the magical energy that is unique to our little patch of forest. When I made it, years ago, I envisioned a life before me of settling quietly into an increasingly solitary life, mellowing under the aging trees that I know well, fondly remembering my youth of climbing those trees...I'm reaching for, and can't find to my satisfaction, the words to express how incredible it is to me that I had that vision all wrong. That saplings growing under the protection of my limbs would grow right there, reaching for the sun, that another generation of boys would scrape their knuckles wrestling chunks of stone out of the ground and dragging logs around, finding a niche of their own in the forest that provided my own growing-up space not so long ago. The spirits of this place have new ears to whisper into.

The more I realize how insidious the influence of technology in our lives has become, the more I want to listen to the trees, the soil, and my own heart, the more convinced I am that "Go out and play" may have been the wisest thing our parents ever said to us. Let's say it more often, to our kids and to ourselves.

Mud Season Musings

I'm going to start with a confession. My mom, a dyed-in-the-wool Mainer, moved to Florida quite a few years ago, and stayed there for most of the year, only coming home for Christmas and a little bit of the summer. My confession is that, among all the kids and step-kids, I'm the only one who never went to visit. My sister went, and even found parts of Florida that she liked. My step-brothers and step-sisters all went, and more than once. I even sent my daughter down alone on a plane, and she had a nice time. For myself, though, I just knew I would hate Florida.

As an avid reader of mystery novels, you'd think I would love it there, the home of not only Clinton "Skink" Tyree and Marion "Doc" Ford, but also of the father of Florida Tough Guys, Travis McGee. Nope, even that's not enough. The reason that I knew I wouldn't like it is that having a frost is so crazy there that it makes national news. That, and the fact the you could throw a frisbee over its highest point from its lowest point with little effort. Sorry, but this Maine boy likes his seasons, and his hills.

Ironwood Hollow Awaits Spring

Eventually, and sadly long after Mom gave it up and moved back home, I went to Florida for a weekend, and was completely vindicated. It's terrible there, or at least it is for me. The weather was mild, in the fifties, and people kept apologizing for the cold, as though their state was in breach of contract. There are no hills, neither up nor down, and that flatness applies to the weather as well. I couldn't wait to get back home, and will never go there again. That doesn't mean, of course, that I'll stop reading Randy White and Carl Hiaasen! This morning, snuggled in bed with my Honey and watching a drizzle feed the thriving crop of mud that is taking over our dooryard, we were talking about this, and realized that we both have the same prejudice.

Here it is; real, honest-to-god seasons, so that you have to change your wardrobe, either start a fire or open a lot of windows, and adjust to new waves of wildlife that follow those seasons, build character and give a shape to our lives. Yes, of course I get tired of shoveling and snow-blowing, of getting up before dawn to go out and be turned into Frosty while wrestling the old Gravely snowblower up and down our quarter-mile driveway, only to come in and shake life into my frozen fingers in front of a smoky fire. Yes, of course I can't wait for mud season to be over, when I don't know from day to day whether I'll end up frame-deep at the crest of the driveway, needing three men and a come-along to get out. Yes, of course I am ready for fall long before the mosquitoes, blackflies, and deer-flies have gotten tired of bleeding me dry in the hot sun. Absolutely, each season has its time, sometimes more than enough of it, and I keep having to adjust as one gives way to the next.

We can't imagine life without real seasons!

The point of it all, though, is that the process of loving, hating, and adjusting to, each new season is an enormously important part of what makes life interesting. I waited all summer to be able to kick through piles of autumn leaves with my Honey during our first fall season together. Then in the fall we both dreamed of being snowed in together, of watching the trees out the window, sagging under pillows of snow while we stayed snug under covers. Now we're eagerly awaiting that first day that's warm enough to sit on the porch in the sun, maybe with sweaters on. If every week were more or less the same, it would be like living in a house with only one book to read, wouldn't it? The sameness would be stifling. Sledding the car out through the deepening mud this morning, I celebrated in my head, thanking the universe for seasons, for cycles, for the woman who watches just as keenly as I do for that first touch of gold in the willows, then in the forsythia, then for the first north-bound goose, and then...and then...

Happy Mud Season!

Writing and Reading on Paper

Yes, I have been remiss in my blogging. Sorry about that! My excuse is that I haven't had an interesting DIY or cooking project going for a little while, and have instead been busy with things like the water heater not working, the snow needing lots of snowblowing, and similar efforts. The real reason though, if I'm perfectly honest with you, is more complicated, and has to do with this medium, the internet. 

I was just reading a fellow bookseller's blog, and he very intriguingly related books to horses. I think his point was that, even though we have always loved horses and relied upon them, they have been needed far less in the mechanized era, but books have been more resilient in the digital age. That's how it struck me anyway. I enjoyed the post very much, and it got me thinking. I find that once I saw through the glittery show of how much the internet and social media can connect us, bring information to our fingertips, render encyclopedias obsolete, and so on, and realized how thin the experience of digital media is, I am more than ever in love with paper books.

Apple Valley Books in Winthrop Maine

It's not just the books, though. I am more in love with live acoustic music, song from vocal chords, friends to talk to in person, real food on a real plate, and most importantly, love with the woman who shares so many up-close breaths of real air with me. It goes on...chess with Soren at the kitchen table is vastly more rewarding than chess online with strangers. Frisbee or other real outdoor play will beat any online play you can conceive of. Pinterest may show us the most delicious pictures of bacon-wrapped goat-cheese monkey-bread with avocado glaze, or whatever, but the finest thing to cross my palate lately was cooked by my Honey in a real pot on a real stove, and was not shared or liked online. For those who want to know, it was sweet potato and brussels sprouts baked with herbs, bacon, and chevre, but it could have been ANYTHING and beaten out pinterest.

Back to the books though. What I've been doing with my time hasn't been something that shares well on a blog, at least not yet. I've been fine-tuning my song collection with the goal of recording, for one. I have about a half dozen songs that I think are as good as any of my favorite recorded songs, within my musical taste, and will find a way to get them out into the world. Also, I've been writing, a novel, on paper. It's moving along nicely, and I am happy with it. I'm writing in pen on lined notebooks, then revising it just a bit as I type it on the computer. I found my old typewriter, got a ribbon for it, and when I can type out on the porch so as not to deafen everyone in the house, I'll switch to that for my first draft. The relationship between our dreams and imagination, and the physical act of writing down words, is a magical thing that I believe will survive the digital age intact. In this age, it may well be an e-book at least as fast is it can be a paper book, but the book-lover in me hopes that paper copies will be kept and loved for years on good old-fashioned bookshelves by people who live most of their lives away from glowing computer screens.

I'll be back into the blogging, I promise. There are many projects waiting for spring, waiting for the workshop to be warm enough to do carpentry in, waiting for winter to loosen its hold on those of us who live under the snowdrifts until May up here in Maine. In the meantime, get off this computer thing, and go play, write, cook, read, be with your loved ones, eh?

Men and Wood

If you have been reading right along, you already know that I have an affinity for wood. Trees are metaphor-rich, and I love metaphors. Some of my best childhood memories are about wood, from watching Dad build first a gunning float, and then a sailing dory, in our suburban basement when I was little, to building my teenage muscle by carrying anything I could of the trees he cut down for firewood, to earning minimum wage splitting enormous elm trunks by hand during one long and memorable summer. The memories are many, and powerful. 

Half your wood, and half your hay...

This winter, having a newly-enlarged family in the house, We've been going through more firewood, and that means cutting more firewood. That work has been lightened by having boys to help, and I am so very conscious that this work is my chance to help them gain similar memories, metaphors, and strengths of their own. Just as I remember my father teaching me how to spot cherry in a woodpile by the orange color of the heartwood as it seasons, how to measure out four feet quickly by waving the chainsaw over the log a certain way, how to bring down a snagged tree safely, I hope they remember decades from now these days of learning some of the same "guy-stuff" knowledge.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all on board with women doing heavy lifting and using power tools. It's just that working with wood is one of those few remaining arenas where men can almost always find common ground and a sense of shared humanity. In the last week three different men have stalled at the store, clearly not wanting to get back to their work or errands, because we got to talking about wood. Just today I spent a full hour talking about thermal mass, drafts, recirculating masonry-stove heat, and the relative merits of pellet stoves, with a man who obviously was thrilled to talk shop with another guy. Last Friday I spent a similar hour with a man who shares an interest in music with me, but who had never stayed so long to talk about guitars even though he is in the store nearly every week.

An ironwood sprig on the woodshed when it was new.

Last summer I spent one day with friends helping them cut and carry cedar logs for their planned cordwood masonry building project. It was gasping, back-wrenching, sweat-soaking work, and I felt like a dishrag afterward. But those few hours of grinning at each other through the flying wood-chips and mixed-gas smoke, joking while carrying logs too big to be exactly good for our backs, conferring about which way to drop a particularly tricky tree, all brought Ben and me much closer than we had been before. I eagerly await a next time, even as hard a day as that was. 

I wonder if there's something to the idea of a wood-centered workshop for men and boys, where those who know, share what they know, and those who are new to tools, trees, even to varieties of wood, can learn, and build their connection to nature and to their own manliness, which is really just one of the kinds of humanity if you think about it. Cut down a few trees, learn what it is to carry a tree-length log through the woods, get the smell of bar-and-chain oil in your hair, split a bit of firewood by hand, learn to identify the most common trees in your area, and then bask in the afterglow of all that work, leaning on the result of your work, still talking wood, trees, and stoves with the guys.

Guns by a Gun Guy

Okay, I have been wrestling with my initial promise to myself not to blog politically here. I believe that we all have much in common by virtue of our humanity, and that politics, and political discourse, makes us maintain inflexible walls. I believe that people all over the political spectrum can share views and advice about very meaningful stuff, homesteading, living a loving and respectful life, making do with little, being creative, loving life, beauty, song, stories, and one another. With that in mind, I really really do intend to leave political discussion to other people. I want to write here about non-divisive aspects of living in a positive way.


But recently, in the wake of the school shootings at Sandy Hook, it seems that everybody is talking about guns. That's not political in the sense that arguing about teabaggers/libertarians/Maddowites/Foxdrones/Feminazis, etc., is political. America's gun culture is unique in the world. So many factors in our history have brought us here, from the oddly phrased second amendment to the cowboy culture of the Victorian Age in our western states and the hunting and trapping that was so significant to the development of our groundbreaking ancestors, just the grandparents and even parents of many of us. When people say that guns are inseparable from American culture, they are right. 

Before you change the channel on me, let me set out my credentials on the issue. I grew up in a gun home. My father was a riflery coach in the local high school when I was young. I learned to shoot at about age five. I have been duck-hunting, partridge hunting, rabbit hunting, deer hunting, skeet-shooting, oh hell, shooting anything I could call a target for as long as I can remember. I own four guns, and am honestly considering another. All four of those guns are quickly accessible to me, and loaded, when I am home. I have a valid concealed carry permit in two states. 

Here's the kicker. I revere life, love, and peace. Unlike many of my fellow gun owners, my reaction to the Sandy Hook killings was not, "Oh boy, now Obama is gonna take my guns, I knew this was coming," but rather, "Oh, those poor families. What has gone so wrong with humanity that anyone at all could ever actually shoot one defenseless child after another? And what can do to prevent this from happening again?"

I have a great deal of respect for the frontier culture, the hunting culture, the history of successful rebellion, that have brought us to where we are. I hold much of that close to my heart. But listen. We don't have unpoliced frontiers any more. We are not rebelling against the king any longer. Almost anywhere in the country, if you have a shotgun with two rounds in it, or a small handgun, and a triggerlock, in your bedroom, you are adequately prepared for just about any possible criminal incursion. And I don't understand why anyone who hunts in American needs a gun that shoots more than a handful of rounds at once. I don't understand why anyone who leads a normal life in ANY city in America needs a handgun that shoots more than five or six rounds. We don't live in the movies. We live among humans. Nobody, and I mean nobody, in our country, has a need that I will accept, to be able to fire more than a half-dozen rounds in a minute. If no weapon that could exceed that were legal, we'd have fewer gun-related deaths. Simple as that.

The argument that there are just too many guns out there, that regulating them wouldn't keep them from the hands of those who might do harm, is just baloney. I remember when it seemed ridiculous to stop drunk drivers, because it was so much a part of our culture, or to prevent people from smoking in restaurants for the same reason. Looking back, I'm glad that legislation was passed to move both of those issues in the right direction. We can do the same thing with guns. Here are some possibilities. 1. We make ownership of high-capacity magazines, and automatic-fire weapons illegal. Yup. Don't need them to hunt, don't need them to protect your home, don't need them at all. You want to have that kind of killing power? Join the army. 2. Require liability insurance for gun ownership, with rebates for safety procedures, same as we do for moving motor vehicles. Tell me why not. I'll insure mine, no problem. 3. Require training, certification, and registration of all gun ownership. Tell me why not. We already do it with cars, and they actually provide a non-violent service on a daily basis. 4. Charge anyone whose gun is used in a crime with negligent manslaughter or whatever else is appropriate. If you have a gun, and someone else can readily find it and shoot it, you are irresponsible with a deadly weapon. Tell me why not.

I'll get back to how-to, building, crafts, creative writing, etc, now that I have this off my chest, I promise. Thanks for listening. 

Saurkraut at Home

Sauerkraut ingredients lining up.

We have been reading  a lot about fermented food, and decided last week to jump in with a small batch of sauerkraut. Here's why. A: Fermented food keeps much more of the nutrients intact than canning or freezing. B: "Probiotics" is a fancy word for the stuff that is good to have in your belly that comes from things like yogurt, pickles, sour cream, raw vegetables, etc. Rather than buy probiotics, eat raw and fermented for for the same benefit! C: We both really love sauerkraut. D: you save money making stuff like this from scratch!

Okay, so what we did was thinly slice a head of cabbage, two apples, and a couple of carrots. Then we laced the resulting salad with sea salt, put it under a plate with a big weight on it ( 4-litre wine jug full of water), and waited for the salt to draw the moisture out of the vegetables, making a brine. After one day, we didn't have enough brine, so we made some with sea salt and water, adding it until the vegetables were submerged. We left it to sit and pickle in the brine, with the naturally occurring enzymes doing their thing, for several days. Yesterday we tasted it, and it was really yummy! The idea now is that we will save it in jars, making sure to have an inch or so of brine above the contents, in our cellar. It is supposed to last for many months that way, but I don't think we'll have any left after the first two weeks, so I think we should start another batch.

Sauerkraut in process!

We look forward to having a crock stewing in its own juices all the time, and a decent supply of jarred sauerkraut so we can grab some as a side-dish at a moment's notice, much the same way as we do with our mead brewing. The cost is almost zero, and the flavor (and health) rewards are enormous.

One link we like for this is Nourishing Days, which has a non-intimidating how-to for making sauerkraut, among other great things. The next thing we will likely try is pickled carrots. When we feel really emboldened, we'll try kimchee, which is a big step for me. The last time I made something that I had only ever heard of, but never tasted, it began a lifelong passion for mead-brewing, which provides the ultimate fermented food, goes without saying...

Ironwood Coasters

Pentacryl wood stabilizer

We approached the holidays agreeing on wanting to make things by hand for gifts as much as possible. Both of us remember reading about Christmas in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and agree that a morning like that, with simple, love-filled gifts from the heart, among the close family, is just what we need more of, instead of the competitive shopping mania that brings so much stress and not so much happiness to many families. Sure, there were some gift cards, books, store-bought boots, and the like. But that will be the case less and less as we move through this change. 

The coasters drying...

  Bottles of mead, with a simple bow of pretty yarn. Bottled peppermint cordial (one of our first shared brewing efforts) with hand-written labels in cute little bottles. Hand-made oak personal-sized chalkboards with attached chalk pencils. Personal objects with inlaid scrimshaw name-plates, and some personalized scrimshaw jewelry. And, to commemorate our first holiday season as a family at Ironwood Hollow, some ironwood coasters! These were so much fun to make, tromping around in the woods looking for the right tree, taking turns dipping them, decorating them as part of our late-night Santa's Workshop sessions! No way will we ever want to spend part of the run-up to Christmas elbowing our way through mall-stores for just the right plastic object from China...

Gifts from Ironwood Hollow!

We had seen a product advertized that claims to stabilize wood so it wont split as it dries, called Pentacryl. The supporting documentation is vague about how long to soak wood for best effect, and since we were running late with our projects, we just soaked all of the slices of wood for a few minutes and hoped for the best. We'll post updates as we see how the coasters hold up.

What we did was cut a medium-sized ironwood tree down, and use about three feet of it sliced into 3/8 inch disks. The rest of it will be excellent firewood! In other parts of the US, ironwood means something else. Here in the northeast that's what we call Hop Hornbeam, an understory hardwood that grows slowly and if very dense and hard, making excellent firewood. The disks were then soaked in pentacryl for a few minutes apiece, and left to dry for a couple of weeks. Then we simply ornamented each one with "Yule 2012", tied them into little bundles, and added them to the other gifts. Voila! Ironwood Hollow coasters for the very first time!

Our first Solstice together! First of all the rest <3

We got the idea from some "redneck coasters" sent to me years ago by my Kansas friend Clem, which are made of osage orange, or "hedge" as he calls it, another very dense wood. Those have sat beneath many a candle, cup of mead, or coffee ever since they appeared here in the mail as a surprise gift, and I hope our coasters will be as much appreciated in the various households they ended up in last week.