How my high ideals were mown down this summer

By the time we arrived in Maine this Spring, our yard was already over-grown, the grass tall enough to hide rhubarb plants. Initially, we deemed mowing a low priority and happily waded through our lawn. We noticed how closely cropped Mid-coast Maine lawns are and joked about our hippy homestead. Yes, it was all fun games until we started realizing the extent of our tick problem and were reminded that tall grasses are to ticks what the Ramble in Central Park once was (still is?) to certain men, a great place to lurk while you wait for a tasty tidbit to walk by. So we bought a push lawn mower and basked complacently in the glow of shared ideals. We were here to escape noise, not make noise. We're homesteaders, not gas guzzlers. Besides, people-powered mowers are so much safer and we have small children to think of.

Luckily, Aaron and I also share a willingness to re-visit the ideals-vs.-certain-realities equation and adjust as needed. The first problem was that the mower wasn't able to cut one type of tall stalk, and since the ticks were not abating, we worried these stalks were acting as safe harbor. The second problem was that to keep up with all of our lawn, which includes a small network of former ATV trails, mowing became Aaron's primary outdoor activity. By the time the last corners were done, the first corners needed to be mown again. And the tick siege continued. We reassessed. It's so quiet around here, what's a little noise every once in a while? We are homesteaders, not landscapers. Besides, Lyme Disease is no joke and we have small children to think of. And just like that, we turned to the Lawn Chief, a ride-on mower that the former owner left for us to fix or dispose of. It was sitting in our shed, an object of much fascination for Forest. Happily, with nothing more than a new battery and some air in its tires, the Lawn Chief was ready to roar (loudly enough to make Forest sob when he finally got to ride on it). And, voila, mowing shrinks to a once a week chore.

And there you have the siren call of the Industrial Revolution: get more done in less time. (The siren call of the Post-Industrial Age seems to be about spending all that saved time: movies, shopping, tv, video games, Facebook.) Although part of our homesteading dream is about greater self-reliance and smaller carbon footprints, how do we resist the lures of the heavy machinery when our to-do list looms long and guzzling a little gas enables us to check new items off rather than check the same item off over and over?

Sleep-gods willing, I'll post soon on other adjustments we confronted this past summer when our ideals bumped up against reality.

The best laid schemes of mice and mothers

I can't comment on the planning skills of mice or other mothers, but this mom's blog plans certainly went awry. For starters, it turns out my dana by AlphaSmart is disappointingly dumb. If the batteries run out (as they do with mysterious speed even if you don't turn on the device), all saved files are lost. So much for the blog posts I had saved on there. Sigh.

Meanwhile, my children are waging a double-pronged attack to see how sleep deprived their mother can get.  Walker, who once upon a time slept through the night or maybe woke up for one ten minute snack, is now up more at night than he was as a newborn, literally. But in the months since those newborn days, Forest has lost his nap, so this time around I have no chance to catch up on my sleep or write, for that matter. I am amazed, all over again, at just how utterly sleep loss correlates with brain power loss. Sad to say, for the time being, I'm an idjit. By default, the blog is on hold. Yes, the children are winning.

It's good to be home

Although I spent my last week of packing up feeling very sad about leaving Maine, I sure am happy to be back in Brooklyn, hot as it is. It is great seeing friends and family. I'm enjoying The Grid. 24/7 online access is glorious, even if I only have five minutes here and there to check my email. And I've already been to the Food Coop twice with plans to return again today. (Nearby shopping with no car means frequent trips, unlike in Maine where we drove to the grocery store once a week.) On the other hand, I'm glad to be leaving Brooklyn this Sunday to stay at my parents in Cambridge for six days.

On first arrival, I was amazed to see how small our apartment had gotten. Three days back and it already feels back to normal, but with the cabin fresh in the spatial portion of my brain, walking in the door was a shock. “Hey, this place is a cubbyhole.” We are still adjusting to the heat and weaning down from the a/c. Yesterday, we air conditioned the whole apartment; today, half; tomorrow, none. And now I must get back to unpacking. The wall of stuff in Forest's room is almost back to the actual wall, by tomorrow I hope to start bringing stuff up from the basement.

Going forward I thought I'd put up some posts from this summer that I wasn't able to get off of the dana, by alphasmart, and write a few posts I had planned but never had the time to write. Then?

Park Slope Food Coop, here I come...

As we are getting ready to return to Brooklyn, I have been having a strange backwards reaction to leaving Maine. The past few days we've had some lovely social time and after each event, I find myself feeling flat and sad. The first time it happened, I was more than a little confused because I left excited at the prospect of new friends in my new neighborhood. But then, after it happened again, I realized it's because making new friends means saying goodbye to old ones. I can't even write that without tearing up. I know, I know, I'll stay in touch and visit, but it isn't the same. So as I get ready to leave Maine, I'm all weepy about leaving Brooklyn. Go figure.

And, for the most part, my friends are the main thing I'm sad about leaving behind in New York. Apart from people, I'll miss being able to walk and take public transportation to get where I want to go. And, even more, I'll miss the Park Slope Food Coop, a lot, from September through June. (I might be wrong, growing season may keep up through September.) July and August, the eating is delicious around here thanks to all the gardens and farms. The rest of year I'll be dreaming of that produce aisle on Union St.

The local supermarket certainly is trying:

And thanks to Ginny's comment, I know all about gobo root's Clark Kent alias: burdock root. Other Hannaford's bags mention “tabouleh” and fiddlehead ferns. But their produce section is still a supermarket produce section. End of story. (Trust me if you've never been to the Food Coop, the produce section has an unbeatable trifecta of selection, quality, and prices that can't be matched in the Northeast, maybe even on the East Coast.) On the other hand, I am cognizant that if we were living in The Interior, as Aaron tried to convince me to do thanks to property prices, the supermarket selection might not include things like tabbouleh and organic almond butter.

But right now, the eating is fantastic here on the Gold Coast of Maine. Here are some items from this week:

The bananas, cantaloupe, and sea salt are there to represent Hannaford's; the potatoes are from the Belfast farmer's market; and the cukes and zukes come from our neighbor's gorgeous, over-flowing garden. Here is our weekly bread pre-baking:

I just learned the way to slash bread is with a razor, and what a difference that makes. (Slashing prevents an air bubble from forming just under the crust.)

See:

Caulkamamie schemes – redux

I am posting this again because something went wrong with the links the first time around.

One reason it is silly to spend too much time worrying and anticipating future challenges is the high likelihood you will be wasting your cortisol on the wrong topic. All that anxiety we had over the wood stove delivery, and, just like that, in less time than it took me to get Forest to sleep that day, the stove came up the driveway and was in the house. Meanwhile, a throw-away item on our to do list: spray house with weatherizing stain, has muscled a bunch of other Must-Do's! off our list and is eating up impressive (or is that depressive?) amounts of time and money.

We just spent the past week pulling, chipping, scraping, hammering, plier-ing, and otherwise wrestling dried, cracked caulk out from between our exterior logs. Early in the week, we realized there was no way we were going to get the whole cabin done. “Spray the cabin” was down-sized to “spray the bottom three logs of the cabin” which was further revised to treating up as high as five logs (gasp), but only touching the two weather-beaten sides. Whatever we de-caulk, must be washed, stained, and re-caulked before we leave. We are almost done with the acid wash. You can see how high Aaron could reach on this log:

We can only hope Forest doesn't talk about this project too much when we get back to Brooklyn. Child-services might get called in. Some oft heard phrases of late:
“Mommy, are you getting the caulk off?”
“Are we getting new caulk?”
“I want to get the caulk off!” This one gets repeated insistently.
“Mommy and Daddy are getting the caulk off.”
“Where's the caulk?”
And more recently:
“Mommy's putting the caulk on.”

Caulkamamie schemes

One reason it is silly to spend too much time worrying and anticipating future challenges is the high likelihood you will be wasting your cortisol on the wrong topic. All that anxiety we had over the wood stove delivery, and, just like that, in less time than it took me to get Jasper to sleep that day, the stove came up the driveway and was in the house. Meanwhile, a throw-away item on our to do list: spray house with weatherizing stain, has muscled a bunch of other Must-Do's! off our list and is eating up impressive (or is that depressive?) amounts of time and money.

We just spent the past week pulling, chipping, scraping, hammering, plier-ing, and otherwise wrestling dried, cracked caulk out from between our exterior logs. Early in the week, we realized there was no way we were going to get the whole cabin done. “Spray the cabin” was down-sized to “spray the bottom three logs of the cabin” which was further revised to treating up as high as five logs (gasp), but only touching the two weather-beaten sides. Whatever we de-caulk, must be washed, stained, and re-caulked before we leave. We are almost done with the acid wash. You can see how high Lee could reach on this log:

We can only hope Jasper doesn't talk about this project too much when we get back to Brooklyn. Child-services might get called in. Some oft heard phrases of late:

“Mommy, are you getting the caulk off?”

“Are we getting new caulk?”

“I want to get the caulk off!” This one gets repeated insistently.

“Mommy and Daddy are getting the caulk off.”

“Where's the caulk?”

And more recently:

“Mommy's putting the caulk on.”

T-minus two weeks

It is difficult to believe we will be back in Brooklyn in two weeks. Park Slope feels somewhat abstract from here. No more popping out in my underwear to grab the pair of pants I want off the clothesline. Sure, there is a guy I see on my walk to the Park Slope Food Coop who hangs out on his stoop in a fuzzy, electric blue bathrobe, weather permitting, but I'm pretty sure he qualifies for certain social services. If it were my thing, I could get in a lot of underwear time in our yard. Living on a dead-end, dirt road affords us lots of privacy. Besides, mores are different around here. There is a guy we see every so often on our drive into town, along a well-traveled road, who gardens in boxers and unlaced leather boots. In this case, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have mental health issues, but just doesn't care what the neighbors think. Not that I would be that guy. I wouldn't want people idly glancing out their car windows every time they drive by to see if Captain Underpants is out and about. But even though I don't garden in my skivvies, I do love the quiet and the privacy.

Last week, I heard a plane going overhead at night. We don't hear jets here, they are too high up, only little propeller planes. I lay in bed and wondered what kind of crazy shenanigans they were up to flying around at 10pm!

We don't even have peeper frogs around our cabin. Apart from occasional yip, yowling from coyotes or the crunch, crunching of the porcupine (who has been back only twice since I posted about it), it is silent unless we hear the leaves sliding against each other on breezy nights.

Night before last, I looked out the screen door at around 2 am on my way back to bed from the bathroom and felt a wrench as a little bit of air was sucked out of me. Actual awe hurts a bit. The stars were bright and myriad, the milky way a thick glow across the sky. And I felt as small as we humans should. (On a semi-regular basis for proper perspective and mental health.)