Category: Handwork

The Would-Be Farm: Taking Shape

10/7/2019

According to cheerful old Plato, an ideal world exists beyond our senses.

Everything we see in the "sensible" world is simply an approximation of the ideal. Just shadows on the wall of a cave.

One of those plastic stacking chairs, a schools teacher's perch, that Frank Lloyd Wright piece, a Heppelwhite seat, Arthur's siege parlous, all are –– according to this argument –– mere reflections of the ideal chair. Imperfect interpretations, shadows, approximations.

Anyhoo. That's one way to look around at the world, perhaps more than a little reductio ad absurdum. But it does somehow lead me to thinking about what makes a shelter.

We humans can live in any manner of places: tents, caves, castles, huts, boats, vans. Even homeless, we have our preferred spots. What's the common denominator?

View from the storage loft.

Maybe that there's an indoor and an outdoor. In most places in the world, I guess, shelter means blocking precipitation. Once the rain can't get in, a spot can become home.

On a build, there's a precipitous teetering moment when the project is "dried in."

It's when the outside stays out and inside is more than a concept. Windows in, roof on, doors that close. It goes from being a build to being a building.

All this noodling as an excuse to post some more photos of the Woodbee.

Thanks for indulging me!

The first of many gallons of paint going up and down.

Modern plumbing essentials...

Safety first! Porch railings a la Mr. Linton installed and approved!

Check one fixture off the list: bathroom sink!

4 Comments

The Would-Be Farm –– Build Update

9/30/2019

6 Comments

As some visitors have noticed, I have been away from the keyboard. Thank you for coming back after the long, not-planned hiatus.

Turns out that when you have a wedge of time to work on a dried-in (squeeeee!) building, you make use of every waking moment to work on said dried-in (squeeeee!) building.

And what about that "building"? Is it a cabin? A camp? A cottage?

We're going to try calling it the Woodbee. Maybe a twee moniker option, but there is sits, a 600-square-foot building in the midst of the Would-Be Farm. The Woodbee. Buzz buzz.

Siding and roofing going on!

I'll return to other topics of interest: Mr. Linton's fishing and sailing adventures, for instance, and what books I am currently reading, but not quite yet...

I am the monarch of all I survey.

6 Comments

The Would-Be Farm: The Build Gets Trussed Up.

8/8/2019

2 Comments

The most challenging part of building anything?

Probably dealing with the client.

When my Daddo got his terminal diagnosis, he wanted to be sure before going that my sister and I knew how to use his garage full of carpentry gear.

Knowing how much morphine he was taking, we might have been a little reluctant to embrace the idea. Until my sister had the brainstorm of working very small.

We started projects with him in one-inch-to-one-foot-scale miniature.

My sister and Daddo finished Nana's Hat Shop pretty handily. The neat little blue shop has glass fronted cabinets full of wee pairs of gloves, marvelous tiny chiffon chapeau, proportionate wall-paper.

My miniature shingled cottage sits unfinished –– without him it wasn't much fun –– but Daddo and I used his power planer to make itty-bitty hardwood floors, and we constructed nifty little jigs and clamps scaled to handle the delicate woodwork of the house. He helped me fabricate plaster fieldstones for the chimney. We had a ball.

At one point, when I had decided to scoot the dormer windows of the cottage a fraction closer together, Daddo looked at me and said, "You're going to make a contractor tear out his hair."

Not exactly a life goal, but...

I like to think I know my mind, but the thing is, it's hard to visualize construction until it's up...

We returned to the Would-Be Farm in June and were not disappointed to see progress.

The trusty stone-quarry guy had installed a nice gravel driveway right up to the build, including culverts and a sweet level parking area that will be ideal for our friends with motorhomes.

And by the beard of mighty Hephaestus himself, the contractor and his gang were busily putting in trusses.

Behold a driveway.

The camp is taking shape.

Ahhh. Trusses. With trusses, a girl can visualize what the place is going to look like...

2 Comments

The Would-Be Farm...The Build Begins

6/18/2019

6 Comments

First-time visitors always ask why we don't renovate the little old farmhouse that's slowly surrendering to gravity at the Would-Be Farm.

It's kind of cute. And the top-line is as straight as a ruler.

Well, we say, shouldering open the door so they can see for themselves, it's only about 20 feet from the road.

And the floor is collapsing into the cellar, which is –– in turn –– earth-to-earth returning. Things roll and gather in the low spots, including the signs of many a wild animal.

Oh, they say, peering in from the doorway and sniffing gingerly. Oh, I see.

Base Camp –– a slightly tarted up camper-trailer that's perched on a bluff at the Would-Be farm –– has served our housing needs with economy. Five years into this adventure, the initial cost and renovations make Base Camp work out to something like $250 a year.

I've nannered on about Base Camp here. (Cliff Notes version: Jeff worked hard and I showed that white paint will cover a multitude of sins)

Cheap yes, Base Camp, but also an excellent starting point: there's a propane stove for cooking, a bathroom with a door, pressurized water, a solar panel that keeps the 12-volt batteries topped up, screens.

After we built a shed roof over the whole production, it doesn't even leak.

But there's one thing.

Well, a couple of things, but the one thing about which I shall complain this day?

An elderly camper trailer has very little insulative chutzpah. Wind whistles through the windows. When it's chilly, an optimist would call it excellent sleeping weather.

But in the morning, when the time comes to emerge from that cozy nest of down-filled comforters, hot-water bottles, and wool blankets?

If it's 30 degrees outside, it's 30 dang degrees inside Base Camp!

While waiting for the little propane heater to take the edge off (in its vaguely hazardous way) one spring morning, I said to Mr. Linton, "Whatever else we might want, I think we start with a wood stove."

And so the Farm will be getting a dwelling. A Cottage. A Cabin. As the locals call it, a Camp. A Woodbee.

Something larger than a tiny house, but smaller than the average American home structure.

Say 600 square feet, not including a wide, big porch.

We've lived through a large home improvement project, but we never hired someone to build from scratch before. Or at this kind of long distance.

It proves a predictably nerve-wracking experience.

I send a check and got a description of the new well (420 feet deep! Dang!) and the pump. Months pass.

The contractor is abstemious with the photos, which might be a strategy for managing his customers.

The piers go in!

I send a cheerful, encouraging text: "Don't be afraid to send photos, even if nothing is going on!"
The contractor replies "K!" And maintains radio silence.

For a Christmas present, my sister takes a field trip to the site and snaps some photos.

Late in January, the contractor sends an exciting visual update:

The suspense! The planning! Ooo la la.

6 Comments

The Would-Be Farm: I Twig That.

5/7/2019

12 Comments

Reluctantly stepping away from the dusty hallway that leads to a discussion of deverbal nouns, I give you the word "twig."

It's a stick, AND it's a verb that means "to understand."

Okay, maybe just one tiny step down that hallway: twig as a branchy bit of tree derives from Germanic Old English. It's related to the word "twain." As in, to be cleft in two.

Okay, okay, hustling it along: the verb twig comes either from theives' cant or from Gaelic (not pointing a finger, but come on, English scholars, really?!) "tuig," meaning "to understand."

Photo courtesy Mary Tone Rodgers.

Twig is also the name of a genre of decoration. Twig tables. Twig chairs. Twig frames.

Those enormous Adirondack camps, white birchbark stuff, bent willow rustic chairs? All twig.

I picked up a reference book on the subject at the library book sale over the winter and took the instructions at face value.

As one does.

I wanted to construct a couple of chairs for the gazebo, and the book had a nifty-looking pattern.

A folding twig chair based –– so the author claimed –– on a Hopi design. Rugged but comfortable, held together with metal rods that bend slightly to accommodate a rounded human form.

Heaven knows we have plenty of twigs at the Would-Be Farm. And a crafty project is right up the alley for the Farm's stated goal of helping foster fresh neural pathways.

Though it looked "funny" in print, I went ahead and cut the 37 or so pieces of wood –– carefully following the directions.

Do NOT follow these instructions.

And then re-measured and cut most of them again, using my trusty loppers and a measuring jig Daddo would have been proud to see.

Precision is not my middle name, but I was quite careful.

It did not work.

At the end of Day 1, I sat on my heels and considered the challenge of threading eleven twigs onto a quarter-inch rod when the neatly bored holes simply did not line up –– by INCHES.

On the second day, following my favorite skipper/rough carpenter's advice, I started with fresh material and drilled holes to fit the threaded rods.

Ah, so much better!

Until it came to the question of legs.

A full 50% of the chair's legs left unaccounted for.

The diagram I'd been trying to follow simply did not mention how to incorporate the two back appendages.

I should not have been surprised.

Even knowing that the instructions were crap, I couldn't help but bemoan the injustice of it.

Instructions that don't.

Measuring guides that don't.

Reference that isn't.

Jeesh.

Eventually I wandered over to the square yard or so of good cell coverage at the Would-Be Farm –– in the middle of the field –– and Googled some help. Huh. Common theme of the Amazon reviews of the book:

A farther scouring of the inter web revealed many many distractions.

Yet, near the distal reach of the digital universe, a couple of nearly related YouTube videos and websites that at least helped me figure out how to get all four legs integrated into the design.

Day 2 ended when I tested the chair and inadvertently converted it into a recliner.

No blood no foul, but for pity's sake --!

By Day 3, I was grimly determined to best the beast. I studied physics in college. I have been making things by hand and by brain for some years now. I will not be thwarted!

It was so. darned. close. to being there.

Mr. Linton lent his good hand (short story: don't drop a Sunfish. And if you do, don't let your hand be caught underneath the fiberglass boat.) and practical cleverness to the effort. He was the one to suggest using the planks of the deck to square up the legs.

This time when I tested the rake of the chair-back, my own old quads suspended me.

Crouching builder, hidden sand-trap.

By gum, at the end of Day 3, we had ourselves a twig chair.

A bit battered. Not rated to hold an actual human. Handy for keeping my gardening gloves off the floor.

Still, it's a prototype suitable for the next round of construction.

And I can barely wait to begin again.

12 Comments

Everglades Challenge: Spawn Looks More and More like the Painted Love Child of a Praying Mantis and a Delorean DCM-12

12/18/2018

12 Comments

Not sure what else I need to add after that title, but here goes.

Background: The Everglades Challenge is an annual unsupported adventure water race that sends a fleet of paddlers, sailors, and rowers down the west coast of Florida from St. Petersburg, across the Everglades, and ends 300 miles later in Key Largo.

It begins on the first Saturday of March.

It's organized by a group called the Water Tribe, and the start at Fort DeSoto Beach is one of the goofiest, most glorious marine spectacles imaginable.

Racks folded for trailering.

My favorite skipper has participated for a few years –– his WaterTribe handle is "Two Beers."

He sails with Jahn Tihansky ("Moresailhesaid") on a boat designed by OH Rodgers ("Ninjee"). The team has surprised more than a few skeptical onlookers and broken a couple of records.

I've been chronicling the ongoing adventures, naturally.

Each year, the guys innovate, redesign, refine. Mr. Linton spends many a spare hour dreaming about the project, and then many a busy day implementing the improvements.

This year, it's a new arrangement for the water ballasting and hiking racks.

Carbon fiber attachments and integral glass-over-wood tanks hinge up and out. This change, we all hope, should improve flotation as well as speeding up the processes of getting the boat from trailer to water.

Plus it might be a bit cushy for the tushy.

Racks deployed as for sailing.

Each year, I try to tamp down my impatience and worry knowing that Two Beers finds the long, fiddly process both mentally and physically engaging.

He told me that there is no other sailing competition that gives him the chance to use his strategic wit, maritime experience, and boat-MacGyvering in this way.

I get it, but still I worry. 300 miles. Storms. Gators and crocs. Sticky mud and razor-sharp oyster beds. Sleep deprivation. Idiot powerboaters. Et cetera.

Water testing in a couple of weeks, knock wood.

12 Comments

Art or Nature?

12/11/2018

2 Comments

Life is not the only thing out there imitating art.

Evidently Nature's in on it too.

According to Edgar Degas, "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." And for that I might as well go ahead and apologize.

The naughty bit...of a goblin. Goblin State Park, Utah.

She doesn't get the same press as David, but the Medici Venus at the Uffizi has got back, baby.

I was thinking about the Alexander Pope quote, which was –– I thought –– Art is but Nature to advantage dressed. Or, in this case, not dressed. I meant to rift extensively on part about being undressed. Low humor, sure, and possibly dragging in the topic of saggy pants.

But when I checked the quotation (From his Essay on Criticism, which is in strictest truth a poem), Pope actually wrote:
"True wit is Nature to Advantage drest,/What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest,/Something, whose Truth convince'd at Sight we find,/That gives us back the Image of our Mind."

Oh Alexander Pope, you navel-gazing noodler.

2 Comments

The Would-Be Farm: Success!

11/26/2018

4 Comments

I'm kind of proud of the asparagus.

The roots went into the ground in 2015. Of course I wrote about it.

Lo and behold, up they came. And up. And up.

So lush that the well-drilling guy stopped and marveled.

So enormous that my gardening neighbors ask –– with palpable envy –– how do we make them thrive?

So thick that I no longer have a view of the cool half-plough that Mr. Linton found for me.

Uncontested success is rare on the farm. So when it arrives, we like to recognize and celebrate it.

All hail kale?
Nu-uh: Rush lush Asparagus!

4 Comments

Thanksgiving: Orphan Dishes

11/20/2018

2 Comments

Yes, of course there is so very much to celebrate on a daily basis.

Waking up, for instance. Highly underrated.

Also the ability to walk about. Coffee (Or Mountain Dew, for those so inclined). The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth like the –– Wha?

Shakespeare, really?

Truth be told, I am grateful for this rich cornucopia of memory sending me so often off topic. Then I can loop it back again...

Not that any of us should wait for a special day to recognize the good fortune and lucky stars that has got us this far so far.

But tis actually the season for this sort of thing. Plus feasting.

Ah, feasting. We have missed a few years of Thanksgiving in the States. So the groaning board seems novel this year, despite its familiar elements.

And those less familiar ones. What I think of as the orphan dishes, left from another time, fossils of past iterations of the family.

You know to what I refer...the things made only for one Thursday in November (or maybe for a midwinter feast).

Perhaps enjoyed only by one of the people around the table, but it's the item that ensures that THIS is the feast of family tradition.

Oh, the outcry when an orphan dish is forgot!

Recipe box. Before there was a Google.

Orphan foods I have known:

Creamed corn. Corn souffle. Corn pudding.

Aspic and Jell-o based salads, especially the ones with shredded carrots or mayo.

Green-bean casserole with canned fried onions on top.

Dilly carrots.

Candied yams with mini-marshmallows.

Parker rolls.

Creamed pearl onions.

Giblet-mushroom gravy.

Ambrosia salad (aka white people soul food).

Baked quince custard –– or was it persimmon?

Let alone the vast category of foods Mr. Linton refers to, bracingly, as "wet breads."

What we might call in normal parlance, stuffing*.

Traditional sage stuffing, chestnut or pecan stuffing, cornbread-sausage stuffing. Be it ever so savory, we know it as "wet bread."

In England, I discovered that treacle cake was in point of fact, a too-sweet syrup-drenched wet bread mess. Such a disappointment after all those jolly British boarding-school novels!

Wet breads. Gah.

*In strict honesty, I know some people make stuffing more often than once a year. I dated a boy who made StoveTop at least once a week. For himself. Still, there are stuffings and StoveTops, and the latter does not make or break Thanksgiving.

My childhood Thanksgivings –– set out on a white tablecloth, with my mom's Friendly Village dishes and the polished silver cutlery (I can still almost taste that odd polish-and-silver flavor. Yuck-yum) –– started for me with a series of sneak attacks on the pickle and olive plate.

She'd dash out from the kitchen and replenish the crystal dish with a sort of mock-annoyance. I might be adding the mock part.

Anyhow, Mumsie also served mincemeat pie. Hey, don't judge. It's like a spicy apple and raisin pie. She skipped the suet and beef component. As do I.

Anyhow, the single element that proved it was Thanksgiving in Mumsie's house? Oyster stuffing. Technically a wet bread, the recipe includes saltines, "dots of butter," oysters, milk, salt and pepper, all baked in a casserole.

Mumsie's cousin Shirley (Hi Shirley!) continues to make this family dish for Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania.

I haven't had the heart to make it –– or mincemeat for that matter –– absent my mom.

Well, that and my casein intolerance thingie. Making oyster stuffing my orphaned orphan dish.

One day, I imagine, the idea of a roasted turkey itself might seem quaint and Betty-Jo Crocker-ish.

If not, you know, for the oddity of roasting the flesh of a formerly living creature, than because the means of cooking seems so rustic and old-fashioned.

A couple of years ago, we switched over to deep-frying the birds. Nope, not greasy. And three minutes per pound!

Nowadays, we all show up at the family feast bearing our various contribution (pies from my kitchen) plus a whole uncooked turkey to take home.

The element of danger –– open flame! boiling oil! –– plays well with the boys, and there's zero squabbling over the leftovers.

Plus, we get our money's worth out of that bubbling vat of peanut oil.

Perhaps as time marches along, I'll see the evolution of the meal go farther yet afield. Tofurky maybe, or into the funky Cajun science of the turducken. Both of which appall my Yankee sensibility even as the latter –– wet bread filling notwithstanding ––does pique my curiosity.

Well, I promise to be thankful if I have the chance to see that.

2 Comments

Meanwhile, on the Spawning Grounds...

11/13/2018

10 Comments

The seasons change subtly here in the land of weird news.

Months pass: last summer, this summer, next summer.

Okay, eventually, the weather will surprise us by turning chilly. We might wear socks. Okay, sorry. I'll stop now.

But as this summer melts into November, my favorite skipper's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Spawn.

Spawn is the Rodgers 22 that Captain TwoBeers build for the Everglades Challenge a couple of years ago. The adventures –– and there are so many –– can be perused in past blogshere.

via GIPHY

Each year, Mr. Linton dreams up some Gucci modifications to the adventure boat: water ballast tanks, a foiling board, cassette rudders, a big old bowsprit.

And he's back at it again.

Hiking racks with water ballast tanks.

Since the metal handicap-rail style hiking racks began to wrack, and it takes the better half of a small village to get the things pressed and warped into place, Mr. Linton has been cooking up a better idea.

Last year's water tanks (made of polycarbonate sheets) point-loaded on the straps holing them in place, and after getting water-boarded by the mighty Gulf of Mexico the first night of the challenge, turned out to be less sturdy and consequently less water-tight than one might hope.

Combine the these two elements, add in a salvaged carbon fiber A-Cat mast from the most excellent Robert Cummings of Cummings Marine, and design courtesy of OH "Ninjee" Rodgers, and the Spawn is taking new shape.

Folding carbon-fiber hiking racks.