The Would-Be Farm: Vroom Vroom.

During the performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, there's a moment before Dr. Frank-N-Furter starts carving the Donner-party-style roast when the audience shouts, "Transvestites, start your engines!"

Dr. F., played with divine camp by Tim Curry, obligingly fires up his electric carving knife and begins the dreadful supper.  

I won't attempt to sell the experience of a theatre full of strangers coordinating their shouting and toast-flinging.

​Oh heck, maybe I shall. 

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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.

We hope more applewood = more apples.

Nipping away.

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.