Craft Ways. We try to live our lives in a way of making. This requires often - a lot more work and forethought than if we did not try to make. This ethos came for me from learning as a young teen from Helen & Scott Nearing, Hendry David Thoreau, going to music festivals, attending The John C. Campbell Folk School, handweaving from a local master weaver, making my own clothing, reading Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith - the list is very long. It was an exciting time in the 1970’s. Making do as I found my way in the world became a large part of my ethos.

I look around the world and see on the surface so much less of this. If however, you travel in circles of makers there is a sort of unspoken understanding between all of us. It is a given that you have projects you are working on at your home place. If you are fortunate enough to own a home with a bit of land - the projects just expand exponentially. It might be a holiday weekend for most people. For us though - it means making things, fixing things, repairing stuff, rounding up the never ending list of “need to do”. I was thinking about that this past couple of days. These clamps are my husbands tools - gotten out to repair and shore up an 100 year old cane rocker that is my daughter’s.

Since she also grew up with this ethos - it is a given to her that her father can make or fix nearly anything. It’s usually true. At her home one day - I asked about the rocker sitting there. She said it needed repair. I automatically looked at my husband Rand and said, “Can you fix it for her”? One of his talents is antique restoration. Long ago he worked in Woodbury, CT at Millhouse Antiques and worked on restoration of antiques. This was a simple fix for him. We left her house. Rand helped them for a few years to basically tear their small house down and entirely rebuild it into something else entirely. We make things. Even houses can be remade with ingenuity and serious hard work and sacrifice. We dragged the chair home in the back of the car on winding back roads.

I looked around our place as he was on and off working on the rocking chair over a couple of days. It needed to be taken apart a bit. Glue was applied to the proper places. Clamps held all of it together the best that could be done without taking the entire chair apart. I see a 1700’s house that he gutted to the outside frame and rebuilt it here decades ago. I helped with some of it. Everything here he put in by his own two hands. I see the firewood that he splits and stacks in the house everyday. Pieces of furniture he has made for us. One piece is a Shaker rocking chair that he gave me as a gift for when our daughter Emma was born. The flooring in the photograph he laid down over a week of nights after working all day. It needs refinishing again. That beam that has settled - he muscled in here when he was a young man. The corner of the handmade bookshelf is showing a bit too.

The thing is when you pick to live a life of handmade and do-it-yourself - things take longer. If we need something done or made or fixed - we don’t call anyone. We do all of it ourselves. Most of this is out of necessity as paying somebody else to do something is costly. It’s also a way of life that floats along on a wing and prayer sometimes. We cannot always have all the things. We have to compromise - make do - sometimes settle. It changes over a lifetime. Growing up with your house that you make and living in a way that requires - watching the river flow by as you stand on the bank edges of it - is not for the faint of heart. It is a life that asks for a living painting that can transform into an unexpected picture of wonder. That wonder can be full or it can be - I wonder why we are doing this.

Over the years as time goes by it is just something that you do. In talking with others - I forget that not everyone lives like this. They pay people to do things for them. They buy the things they need. It might appear that their lives are easier. Let’s face it though - either you earn the money to pay someone to do the work you need or acquire the goods required. You pay for it from your own working life in one way or another. It comes out of your effort in working or making it yourself. My husband has made a working life as a very talented carpenter. Except for the wrought term - he is a master carpenter. He has made many things from wood - barns, houses, toys, boats, furniture, altars, a coffin - many, many things. He has left his hand and difference in numerous people’s lives. He is always making do.

This theme of living in a handmade way is actually something I think about everyday. I view the world through this lens. My thoughts turn to how to make something work for us. I think about what is the next thing I want or need to make. I think it is a rewarding frame to wrap your heart around. Even if you do not have a lot of money - one can fashion a creative and beautiful life. Maybe it isn’t the easiest way to forge forward through the days but, it is an authentic way to live. You wish for things. Things like - please take the over head wires out of the sky. I wish for only small beautiful buildings to be put up. The signs of neon and cheaply made grate upon my psyche - along with all that is behind those cement buildings. Where are the hands?

I wonder at the long ago ethos of a different way of life. Not in a nostalgic sort of way. In a way that embraces the handmade. The passing down and learning of making do for yourself. The skills needed to live like this takes effort, time and motivation. It is a rewarding thing to rely on yourself. I have ideas of what a school could teach to children. I have ideas about a community center that every town could have that would be a learning center for a life of curiosity. I hope I can write about that in another field note in the future. I mostly wonder at the fact that we are required to fall into a way of life from the very beginning that is not really of our own choosing. It is a fact that what we do with our hands is set up for us from our early days and the culture’s expectations. Imagine if each person had more particular open options given to them. Would people actually be doing what they are doing with their lives? Was the outcome of what a life is spent doing really of their own free choosing? These topics can be hard to contemplate as we grow into an adult life - a working life. It is a great adventure to be able to formulate a life path that embraces in particular a rich life map that has been individually create and crafted with your own two hands.

The care required to embark upon a handmade life is complicated. We cannot go backwards in time. I would not want to. I also believe that embracing some of the skills needed to live in this way are useful. It gives us a way of living that is a slow growing kind of life. We can feel more connected to the land we live on - the community that we live with. If we keep each other going - we can be there for one another in challenging times. We have lived in a way of making connections in the community and that is a gift that cannot be bought. Those times may come when we aren’t directly looking. Crafting a handmade life is creating a life with intentionality - simple abundance - satisfaction of a self-made and artistic life.

Work at creating my own Biographia - my life story is an artistic journey. I want to be able to look back upon my life and see it as a living tableau of thread woven into creating and making a living picture for a present purpose. As the moments unfold over time - I am able to see what I created. The places of walking slowly and observing that which is around me gives me the most fulfillment. Making a life is the creative gift we are each given. As the cosmos unfold over an entire lifetime - a full and rich story is being written by each of our hands. Perhaps looking toward - looking back - we can find a fully written biography about us - as we would like it to be seen unfolding. I have offered. I stand in it with my hands forward.

How did that rocking chair turn out? Rand finished it and we delivered it to my daughter and her husband. A gift received with smiles of the nicest kind. They will use it daily - being precious about it is not in the hard working life they carry.

Repairing 100 Year Old Rocking Chair

Firewood

Firewood dumped again in a pile. It always amazes me when a pile of wood is dropped here for the next heating season. It is different these past, more recent years here regarding firewood - or cord wood as it is usually referred to for those of us that heat only with wood. Dwelling with firewood is a rhythm that marks the year for a good many months. Long ago we used to find and gather our firewood. It often came from a neighbor that cut a tree down. Or it was gathered from a downed tree by the side of the road. This took us a really long time to get it together. It was not very efficient either. Such is life when you are young and have more energy than money.

How do you decide to dwell in your young life? We had decided to make due with just about everything. This included our heating story. There is a furnace here - unused for all the time we have lived here. It just became a habit to use only cordwood. A habit born out of necessity and frugality. It isn’t always a very easy lifestyle choice. It does allow one to have some small amount of independence from heating in ways that often depend on others. We like that. If the power is going to go out - we can at least stay warm. We do not live off grid so we are still hooked up to power. That is another story for another day.

I think firewood is beautiful. When a pile of it arrives here it feels a bit like a sigh of relief with a warm sense of safety. It even seems to hold a bit of fire magic. We have had the same wood guy for a long time. He is always fair and consistent. If you need to be warm, you want your wood guy to be fair. It is serious business finding a wood person. You want to keep him and also to keep him going for the community. It is something that you always keep in the back of your mind - what if? So, we keep going with the cordwood that is delivered - which is really only the beginning if you heat your home with wood.

In the beginning of the season it feels cozy and warm. It feels plentiful and unrushed. You know - a nice fire going in the woodstove to sit back and enjoy. As the season turns colder - the hauling it inside - stuffing it in the stove - waking up at night to load the stove - all of that begins to factor in to the joy and contentment you feel. As the days grow dark and shorter with longer nights - the fire is always on your mind. The colder days make hauling it a hurried affair. It’s hauled across the house to the wood storage spot and dumped with a heavy let-go of the log carrier. I am grateful for the warmth.

When you heat with only wood - there are things to consider. For instance - generally I always have a scarf on all winter long. I can wear a hat as well when it’s below 0 fahrenheit. There always seems to be some sort of chill in the air coming from somewhere. Always more work to do in fixing that old house that you live in that you heat with wood. Sometimes you get splinters or bruises from loading the stove in a hurry. If your arms hurt or your back is soar - well, that isn’t something much to consider as you still need to load the stove to stay warm. It is pretty to watch while at the same time being a nuisance sometimes.

Living a life that includes heating with cordwood has it’s own kind of rhythm. It is a tempo that you need to always be aware of. It is maybe a bit like having a story your living while heating in that season of wood. There are maybe only three months out of the year that the wood stove is not going - although not at full capacity through all of that time. The story is a remembering - hauling - stacking - pulling - dumping and finally loading. Memory may become muscle - and you still need to remember. You cannot forget about the wood or the woodstove ever. What is it doing? When does it need to be fed again? Is it clean? Do we need more firewood called in? Come to thing of it - it is like caring for a being. It is the Wood Stove Being that needs forever tending. In the tending of that beast in your home - you tend yourself and see your own thoughts in the mirror of the stove.

As I look into the stove day after day - night after night - it is me and my being meshing with the being of the hearth stove. We are one. I am grateful for the woodstove - grateful for the warmth. Moreover - I am glad to have a focus that grounds me in a simple act that humanity has been dancing with for eternity. The fireside enchantment of heating with wood allows me to be in connection with all of my ancestors. The effort of heating your home with wood is the heart and hearth connection with humanity that needs warmth in the cold to survive another year. A loud thud of wood dropped from a big ‘old dump truck is a contract with the fire gods that this ember is going to keep going for another year.