Equine Dreams

January 31, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

For starters I can’t believe I’m actually putting this photograph on a post but I think it’s the only one I have of me and Jingles. I think it’s one of maybe three that I have of that horse at all. Before the age of digital photography you had to pay for each image you took. Not only that but it was more of a project. Buy the film, expose the film, bring it to have it processed, wait a week or more, pick it up, throw half of them away . . . you get the idea. My mother wasn’t the most sentimental of people and she was also quite frugal – photographs were not really in the budget (except for those school pictures, ugh). This photograph I believe was actually taken by Eunice Hillier at their house on Ford Hill Rd. Her youngest John and Sarah are on the horse’s back. As memory serves this must have been around 1968 or so. I was 12 or 13 I think.

When my daughters were little we would spend weekends and summers in Rowe and I would tell them stories about the animals we had when I was growing up. About the horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs – everything except a dog. They never believed me. They would play in the back forty never knowing the number of animals that had happily grazed it for the years that I was growing up there. In their minds I think it was just impossible to picture their mother with animals they only saw at Forest Park zoo.

I often dream about having another horse, I have a couple of friends that still have them but we are all more realistic these days. We are much more aware of our physical limitations when it comes to riding. I think back on the number of times I’ve fallen (or been thrown) from a horse and understand that if I took that kind of fall today I would likely end up with a hospital stay rather than walking it off like a teenager. I thought maybe a small draft would be good but when I’m more rational in my thinking I know that having a horse is a distant memory. Still that nagging desire to have something from the equine family is still there. It probably never goes away. Hmmmm, maybe a donkey or two. Something that will be happy grazing the back forty and I can scratch its ears on a daily basis.

More About Chester

January 30, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

When Chester moved in with us he insinuated himself into every aspect of our lives. Dogs are good at that, especially young dogs. Chester was different in he honestly was the best behaved puppy I have ever owned. I was fully prepared to take him off leash and have him take off into the woods and not see him for a couple of hours. It didn’t happen. He loves his people. He made friends with the dogs at the houses on either side of us. Jolie (his girlfriend) never leaves her yard. The dogs on the other side of us have an invisible fence. The bonus in this situation is that he never learned that he could run away, although I’m not sure he ever would.

Chester does have some true abandonment issues. For the first year we could not leave him in a crate. All of our dogs are trained to a crate, they sleep in them at night, in our bedroom. They love their crates, it’s a safe spot for them. It took a couple of weeks just to get Chester to go into a crate, a few more until he stopped crying. If we left him alone in the room in his crate he lost his mind. Consequently he went EVERYWHERE with me. He became our shop dog at L&S Automotive.

We put a gate up in my office space, got another crate with a cushy bed and brought him to work with us every day. I would take him to the park a couple of miles away to run him mid afternoon and then he would nap. In the photo he is lying with Malcolm, Amanda’s dog. They have a love hate relationship to this day – in this particular photo they love each other. I can gladly say that after a year and a half he is a little better adjusted to being left alone although you can see his anxiety level go up as you’re heading for the door. He would sit in the car and happily wait for me all day if he had too, just because he knows he’s with me and hasn’t been left.

An interesting thing has happened with Chester at the shop. He has become our official greeter. He loves everyone (especially kids) and waits in the waiting area for people to come in. I know he has shown more than one person that dogs don’t have to be scary. He also has built quite a fan club, there are days when you’d swear that’s what he’s doing, building a fan club. We have customers and parts delivery people that call to see how he is, that bring him treats, that play fetch with him out in back of the building while their cars are being repaired. There are people that drop their keys in the drop box in an envelope with dog biscuits. He’s added another dimension to customer service.

After a year and a half he has settled in and now takes advantage of as many situations as he can. He’s a sofa dog but there has always been furniture he’s not allowed on. Well, most of the time.

Thinking Local

January 29, 2013January 29, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 4 Comments

A couple of days ago I received an order for yarn from Green Mountain Spinnery. Until I read the tag I had no idea that they were in Putney, VT which is about 45 miles from Rowe. They are a co-op and spin the majority of their yarn from New England fleeces. This is for a project I will be doing in a knit-along with Ruth Fischer-Ticknor. You can read about it on her Counting Sheep blog. It is a beautiful yarn.

As I was winding the skeins into balls I started thinking about having a garment made from wool that was processed so close to home. I’ve gradually become more of a locavore in the past few years and have begun to see that mindset seep into everything I do. I grow and preserve a lot of food from my garden every year. I get all of my dairy from Smyth’s Trinity Farm in Enfield, CT where I can talk cheese making with someone who works with dairy on a larger scale. We buy a side of beef from Russell in Heath once a year – grass, sunshine, fresh water, nothing else goes into these cows. We also make our own maple syrup with him. My eggs come from my sister next door where I’ve watched those hens from hatchlings. Our sausages, bacon and other assorted smoked meats come from Pekarski’s in South Deerfield. Mike Pekarski is a very generous man and rightfully proud of his smokehouse – he will tell or show me how things are made, right there, with the help of his family. In the summer there are a few farms that I frequent for pick your own produce that augments what I am putting up at the time. Although the farmers there don’t know me by name they instantly recognize me when I arrive. I thought, until I started writing this, that it was more important to know how far my food had travelled but I now realize that I have friendships that have been built over time with all of the people who are raising much of my food.

Preparing and eating food that you trust gives you a peace of mind that is difficult to really describe. There is nothing that makes me feel better than to prepare a meal where I know where everything came from, I’ve visited its source, I know who’s hands have been on it. I know that if I didn’t grow it myself I have contributed to the livelihood of people that have become my friends or have been for a long time. By doing that I am contributing to my local economy. So I try to get what I need within the 100 mile radius that is often talked about. Purchasing fiber that I needed for a project from less than 100 miles away made me feel that there are so many other ways I can think about being local. I personally know at least 3 people that are raising fiber animals. Although I didn’t buy their fiber I know that I am still contributing to their type of local economy as well. Yes, things cost a little more but doesn’t it feel better when you know that the money you are spending is going directly into the pockets of people you know rather than some huge corporation with the farmer essentially getting paid just enough to keep going? It’s worth thinking about.

This is my 100th post! Thank you so much to all who read, follow and comment on it.

Another Baking Adventure

January 28, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 2 Comments

This past weekend was an adventure in baking. My niece, Meredith, had given me a book entitled “Crust: From Sourdough, Spelt and Rye Bread” saying she thought it was a little beyond her skill level. This is a wonderful book that really goes beyond your basic bread making. His method of working dough is quite a departure from how I usually do things and I have to confess I read it and thought it was interesting and did it the way I always do. The recipes are wonderful though so I decided to step out of my comfort zone and leap into laminated dough. What do you ever really have to lose in doing this? Maybe a few hours, but even if it’s a total fail you learn something, sometimes you learn a lot.

My oldest daughter spent some time in Ecuador a few years ago and smuggled back some chocolate croissants that she had eaten daily for breakfast while she was there. They were wonderful. I have to say that a yeasty, flaky pastry has always intimidated me a little. I think because it is such a departure from making a loaf of white bread. So Pain au Chocolat was what I decided to make. This is something that takes a little more than 24 hours to make so a little planning is needed (but most of that time is waiting).

There are enough posts on the internet that tell you how to make laminated dough, suffice it to say that it is way easier than it looks and the results are more than worth the trouble. It does represent more of a workout than I had anticipated (do you know how long it takes to roll a piece of dough that’s 8″x12″ to 12’x30″?). The recipe made a total of 18 rolls, all light and flaky and quite delicious.

I have read recipes for Pain au Chocolat in many places, all a little different. I decided on this one only because the pictures were pretty and self explanatory. It was like taking a little class with no one watching what you were doing or judging the end result. The judges were the company that devoured them on Sunday morning.

Dreaming

January 25, 2013January 25, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

I’m dreaming of warm weather. Of tilling the earth, the smell of it. Of a vegetable gardens surrounded by caution tape. The smell of fresh mowed grass. Fresh lettuce. Radishes. Chard. Beans. Longer days. It’s coming. A few short months away.

Red Sky at Dawning …

January 24, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 1 Comment

I’m not sure there is any weather on the way but the sunrise this morning was beyond compare. Sometimes a photo can’t do justice to the scene. It is COLD. The kind of cold that makes your face hurt as soon as you open the door. The dogs stay out just long enough to do what they have to do. It is so still the only thing you can hear is you electric meter running. When you walk the snow crunches beneath your feet. This is winter, it seems like I haven’t seen it for sometime. It feels restorative to me this year – quiet, restful. In another month we will be gearing up for spring and be thankful for this time of rest.

Change

January 23, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
Zhuangzi

There is a special town meeting tonight in Rowe about plans moving forward regarding the school. I am going. I need to be surrounded by townspeople to understand how they are feeling about the whole thing. I will be living there soon enough so any decisions that are made will effect me.

Change is always difficult for everyone, especially when it is sudden. The loss of the elementary school was a shock and a blow to the people of Rowe. The remains of the building are still there 7 months after the fire. Every time I drive by it I just wish it was gone. There is something to be said for it still being there though. It means that everyone has had time to go through their stages of grief if they needed to. The wound isn’t so raw. I think it has given us all more time to think about what the town needs as opposed to a knee jerk reaction to the loss.

I think that is something we are seeing far too much of these days, that knee jerk reaction to our problems. There is no foresight. No one thinks about how anything is going to affect us 15 to 20 years down the line. You see it with gun control, energy policy, climate change. Events are reacted to rather than analyzed. Do something to fix it right now without thought about what that means in the future. Just look like you’re getting something done.

I’d like to see thoughtful consideration given to what the town needs. Put the needs before the wants. Look at it from the perspective of 5, 10, 30 years from now. Rowe is the kind of place where properties are handed down for generations so forethought is needed. It’s easy to feel like you have lost all control due to the actions of others when it comes to the future of our kids, I know I do a lot of the time. I just hope because this town is truly run as a democracy that every issue is taken into consideration and everyone will feel a need to vote on their future.

Brrrrrr . . .

January 22, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

This photograph was taken on July 19, 2012. It was a hot, humid day and I was spending it moving this pot of flowers around to keep it in the shade. It was too hot to plant it in the new perennial garden until the sun went down so I just kept moving it and watering. The bees loved it. They would follow it on its trips around the yard.

Don’t get me wrong I like winter. I love it when it is so cold out the snow crunches under your feet. I love the winter activities. I love having fires both inside and out (burn season started the 15th). What I don’t like is the temperature dropping to 8 degrees and the wind blowing that fine snow in 30 mph gusts. Not fun. You can’t even dress for that.

So today I’ll look through my photographs of gardens past and peruse the seed catalogs one more time and dream about it being May.

Yahtzee!

January 21, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 3 Comments

Last October I was cleaning out a desk drawer at the house and found 5 old dice. I had a flood of memories surrounding them. My mother was an avid game player. She would wait for us to get home from school to play some sort of game with her. All the games I ever played with her involved dice or cards but the game I remember playing the most was Yahtzee. We would play it every day.

Bill is not a game player. The only time he will play is when we are camping and there is absolutely nothing else to do. He won’t play Yahtzee with me because he feels there is no chance of winning. This past weekend daughter Cait came up to Rowe for a visit. I begged her to play Yahtzee with me but she said she won’t either because she feels there is no chance of winning.

Sister Sue and I play often. We seem to be pretty even in our scores, one or the other always having some run of luck. It has become a mini obsession actually. We play whenever I am there. We play when there is a spare moment or two – morning, afternoon, evening. We play while we’re eating dinner. It’s kind of a mindless game. I can talk about anything else while we play. I find myself with spare moments throwing the dice three times as I walk by them on the table to see what I come up with.

I’ve always thought of this game as an almost total game of chance. You can’t control what you throw only how you score it. I think the difference between those of us who are obsessed with it and those who rarely play is whether we play it safe or are willing to take a risk. I risk it all with every throw, I’m always going for the Yahtzee.

I think you need to look at life the same way. You need to take risks. There are so many little choices every day. You should keep rolling those dice and come up with a great score.

Outbuilding

January 18, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

out·build·ing – (outbldng)

n. A building separate from but associated with a main building.

There are a few outbuildings on Fort Pelham Farm. Some were there when we arrived in 1967, some were put up after we got there. The interesting part about some of these buildings is the reason they are there. The buildings in the photograph were built by my father to house a Chase Sawmill that he purchased in the early ’70’s from Gerald Truesdell.

My father has always been a tinkerer and collector of large machinery – especially if it could be run on steam. His big dream was to own a locomotive and have tracks running around the property – it didn’t happen. Along those lines though he amassed collection of very large machines. I remember it starting with the sawmill. He built the original building to house it and set it up to run with the diesel power unit that came with it. It took a while to work the bugs out of it. I remember on one of the first runs the carriage running off of its tracks and firing through the building wall – he kept it open for a while after that. He ran it quite often and did it all by himself.

Shortly after getting the mill he purchased a small steam engine to power it. I remember him buying a boiler that had once been in a laundry in Shelburne Falls. I was working at Lamson & Goodnow at the time and spent the better part of a morning upstairs in one of the buildings there watching the riggers pull it out of the roof of a building across the river. I think I was really wondering how he was going to get that huge thing into his mill. I can’t recall if this particular piece of equipment was put in by riggers or if he managed to get it in himself.

One of the amazing things about my Dad was his ability to move huge, heavy things by himself. He was a master of block and tackle. He worked on this project for a long time, fabricating the things he needed to get this steam engine running. This all was happening during the Carter years when there was a huge interest in renewable energy and he got a grant to help pay for some of the materials he needed. When he decided to do something there wasn’t anything that was going to get in his way. The mill was glorious to watch run on steam once he had it set up. The only real sound was the saw blade cutting through the wood.

He built the building that is currently there after snow collapsed the original one. The boards on the outside were ones he sawed himself as well as the ones on the garage. The mill currently sits idle but with a little effort it will be running again only with a diesel power unit this time. We look forward to cutting some of our own boards for use in other projects around the place. There is a lot to be said for having this capability. Just being able to replace siding on this outbuilding from your own woodlot is a win. Not to mention the satisfaction of knowing that everything you’ve used has come from your property.

1978 Running the Mill

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