The shape of the land shows like the ribs of a hungry animal this early in the spring.
​
Waiting for the arrival of spring, Mr. Linton and I blazed a couple of new trails. It's easier to make a way without having to part that modesty-drape of leaves and grass.  

Naming the trails is surprisingly difficult, for what we end up calling them.

So, Broken Wagon Trail it is.

Okay, yes, it's not technically a wagon. Neither is it precisely broken. But Abandoned Hay Rake Trail doesn't have the same ring, does it? Plus Mr. Linton named it, and what he says, goes. Sometimes. This time. 

Back to the narrative.

​Late spring this year: even the old oaks seemed to be having a hard time waking up.

"Years ago," wheezed the oldster, arthritic knuckles whitening on the handle of the deluxe walker. "Years ago, artists had to use rubylith to separate each color for a color print."

Honking into a worn handkerchief, the dusty wheezer raised watery eyes and continued. "Hours I spent over a drafting table, X-Acto blade in hand, separating colors. The eye-hand coordination alone --!"

After a long pause, the lecture continued. "It took years to learn the tricks of the trade. Nowadays, all it takes is a ninety-nine cent app. Putting artists out of business. I don't know how they make a living any more."

Yeah, artists mostly don't make a living.

In honor of all of us antiquities who remember cutting ruby to separate colors, here's a timelapse video of the Rubylith process...

But those 99-cent apps are really fun:

In this highly digitized age, it's nigh on impossible to grasp the amount of work that went into, for instance, the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. This link describes the Technicolor process.

Such an effort to give the viewing public ruby slippers!

The settee cushions went to local upholsterer, as I knew I'd make hash of the long zippers.  I did the rest of the sewing, with some help from my favorite sailmaker. 

How long did it take? Probably longer than I think: taping the whole cabin was a full afternoon, but each coat of paint was a matter of an hour.  Four coats of paint including primer, five when I went the wrong way with my choice of color. 

I was hesitant about drilling holes in the walls until it occurred to me: this is a 2006 truck. What could I possibly do to make the interior design worse? 

Here's how it turned out so far. Still some things left, but that's home life. 

Between midden heaps and melting metal, the Would-Be Farm is giving us a rich archeological site to mine.

The barn has been a collapsed wreck for thirty years or more. Locals who come visit don't even remember even when it went. It's a little mystery. 

This spring, we hired a guy with a very large excavator to clear out the old foundation and haul the detritus away.

1. First, because Mr. Linton kept wanting to toss a match and some accelerant into the pile of rotten wood and rank weeds
2. Second, because we thought we might make use of a limned space already carved out of the side of the hill.  
3. And third, because, well –– squalor. 

The man with the excavator (and dump trucks!) showed up while we were racing sailboats in Massachusetts. By the time we arrived back on the farm, only an invoice, some dents in the turf, and a void remained.  

Knowing how brambles quickly re-colonize an area, we got to work clearing the rocks* that had tumbled outward from the collapsed western and southern sides of the old foundation. Decades of fallen leaves helped the old timbers and cow manure compost itself into some good-looking soil. We took the opportunity to carve out more garden space.

(*Rock-picking. One of the harder jobs on a farm. Oddly, it did not seem incongruous for me to find myself, decades and degrees later, once again picking rocks from the clay soil of the North Country.) 

The metal chunks range from the obvious –– hinges and horseshoes –– to the arcane.  

Nails were evidently cheap, and our guys never used one nail when three were possible. 

​Astonishing amounts of leather survive, the linseed oil preserving the bits of harness and halters even after half a century or more. 

So much peculiar loot!  We could open our own Agricultural museum –– or stock a display case or two at least. Until then, we have a level spot to park the tractor, a stretch of reclaimed field, and a new couple of gardens.

I am thinking horseradish and rhubarb, plus a protected winter bed for daffodils and iris.  Ahhhh.

It took two and a half years of procrastination and one short day of work to get solar power at the Would-Be Farm.

Some readers may remember our solar ambitions and my brief return to calculus. What I neglected to mention is that I didn't finish that class. Stupidly enough, I lost my notes from class while transporting myself and the late small dog across the Philadelphia International Airport. 

I know: duh.  

Anyhow, the notebook contained my calculations for the first weeks of class as well as the splattered remains of those four brave brave brain-cells that had remembered something about calculus. I honestly couldn't face doing that homework over again. Never mind the work for the rest of the semester.

I was raised to look for solutions in the pages of a book. Thank you, O Beloved Bookworm!

So, to book! The class in solar system design was actually a bit of overkill. I just wanted to set up a couple of batteries and some panels so that we could have light and be able to re-charge our electronics.  

​(Oh, which reminds me of this potty-mouthed and funny political Tweet. )

The go-to-solution book this time was Stand-Alone Solar Energy by Oliver Style, a clearly-written, solution-oriented reference that focused on installing systems in remote, underdeveloped areas with ITACA and Concern America. 

So, two panels, a controller mounted on the side of Base Camp, two batteries, an inverter, and poof: we have power for the water pump, lights, various small electronics, and we can charge battery packs for our power-tools.

Utility! Civilization! No unsightly power-lines and no monthly bill.  

​And as if their great-grandparents didn't say the same damn thing about the egg-head scientist working on penicillin, chemo-therapy, seat-belts, gel insoles. Jupiter!

References
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-secret-life-of-bees-99559587/
www.goldengooseaward.org/awardees/honey-bee-algorithm
www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/24/136391522/natures-secret-why-honey-bees-are-better-politicians-than-humans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/09/22/how-honeybee-research-improved-your-internet-experience/?utm_term=.01028bb510d3

Imagine sitting in the tiered seat of a dark movie theater late at night. You are among a group of outgoing, cheerful, and odd strangers. It's a scene. Then begins a not-quite-chaotic game of call-and-response that seems a little like magic.

People in the theatre make a suggestion or ask a question, and the movie provides an answer.

"What's your favorite Ivy League?" the crowd hollers in unison and up pops the Columbia Pictures icon.

It's a giddy, cheerful experience that blurrs the line between watching a performance and becoming  the performance.

We have no particular audience cheering us on at the Would-Be Farm, and heaven knows our meals are both low-drama and Meatloaf-free, still, this tangent eventually leads to the Would-Be Farm...

Mr. Linton and I ventured North for Thanksgiving. We deep-fried a turkey, played in the snow, made pie, and visited folks we care about. 

And while we were up there, we fired up the chainsaw and did some more upkeep on the elderly apple orchards that came with the Farm. It's a long process, as these trees were left to run wild for decades. When we first found them, the trees were scraggly and snarled and over-crowded.

Three years later, they are slightly less so, but  –– evidently –– the Would-Be Farm will always call for some level of lumberjack work.

The process goes like this: I'll select a branch or a whole tree that needs to go. If I can use the loppers, I'll nip the bit off, but the big stuff I leave for Jeff and the chainsaw.

Unless my skill as a sawhorse is required, I generally watch Jeff work from a short distance away and wring my hands.  

It's not an irrational fear of power-tools. I once saw the result of a chainsaw rearing back and catching someone in the leg. Yurp.  Anyhow, each time he leans over the chainsaw to yank on the pull-cord, the phrase "Transvestites, start your engines," drifts idly across my mind. I rarely say it aloud, but it's a bit of comfort for a worrier.

We dodged disaster again this trip, and left giant piles of brush for the wildlife to enjoy over the winter. Some of the logs we made last year got hauled back to basecamp, and I only wish there were a scratch-and-sniff option on the internet to share the scent of that apple-wood as it burns in the campfire. 

So there are presently two foils extending from the sides of the boat. They resemble the tipped wings of some airplanes. 

​
To put them in, the fellas first cut a pair of holes in the sides of the boat and then fitted them with daggerboard trunks from an A-Cat. 

Why yes, it does seem ironic to cut holes into the hull of a boat that was a good floater. But progress is not made without some revolutionary thinking.

When the team chooses not to use the foils, they can seal off these slots with a strip of tape. Good old duct tape would do, though they are more likely to use Insignia sail tape.

A few test-runs (thanks to guest test-pilots Bill Wingrove, John Paulson, Ben Givens, and Dave Clement) to adjust the angle of attack, and poof! The bow lifts to reduce wetted surface and make Spawn a more stable creature. 

The team will take to the water this coming weekend for a longish trial. Crossing fingers for good sailing weather. 
​​​