Winter update

In which we fall short

Dear Everybody,

It’s been a very full year. I’m not going to do an annual recap—we’d be here all day, and I have quite enough just in the last three months. But I think I’m not alone in feeling like I’ve run a twelve-month marathon this year.

A lot got done, and the house and I are both in considerably better shape than we were last winter. But there were some failures, and frustrations, and a lot of delay as well. That’s the nature of the beast; I am keeping a multi-generational tradition when I grumble that every task takes longer than it should, and I feel like I move forward slowly. My forebears accomplished big things anyway, and I’m trying to keep that in mind.

One of the things I checked off my list was to dig a new bed for the east creek. I’m going to look back on it thirty years from now and go “wow, I really did that”. Three full days of digging, much of it in the rain; terrible footing, tough grass roots, buried branches and fencing. I managed to use the marsh sedges to keep from sinking knee-deep in the mud (well, more than once), but I described it to a friend as walking on a carpet laid over three feet of peanut butter, pulling bowling balls out of it with a shovel, and a joker tied some of them together with twine. All that while wet to the skin, and wearing only sandals on my feet. It wasn’t especially cold, and I didn’t want to risk losing or puncturing my galoshes in uncleared marsh. It made cleanup a lot easier, too.

I dug a channel at least a foot wide and a foot deep, about 120 feet long, from the foot of the near pasture (where the marsh had decided to drain) all the way up to the right-angle bend behind the Shippen. I dug under the old cross-fence, but when the first flood came I had to finally cut it away; it was snagging too much debris. The new creek is not straight, as one doesn’t want straight waterways as a rule… the more momentum the water builds up, the deeper it cuts into the bed, and the more erosion you get. The pasture has more clay than I had expected, which eases my mind—I had worried the first floods would cut four feet deep and leave me with a ravine, but it’s rather the opposite, taking its time about working down below grass level. I haven’t sent the full volume of the creek into it yet: there’s still a diversion I made a few years ago upstream, and I left that until the storms finished digging the new bed. As it is, the current volume of the water is overflowing the channel and causing mild flooding near the foot, but that’s par for the course in the first year. It’s draining well enough that the leach field won’t be underwater next March, barring disaster.

There’s still water in the old creek, but when I went out to have a look a few days ago, the marsh above the big beaver dam was a shadow of its former self. A little stream ran through it, and much of it was dry, with the long dead grass giving the illusion of level ground. It let me picture what reclaiming it would look like, and gave my spirits a big lift. Maybe it’s not so impossible as it once looked.

Darlene, who lives about halfway toward town and one ridge over, called me a month or two ago and made noises about loading her china cabinet into my truck so I could take it home now that the bridge is finished. This china cabinet is a lovely two-piece unit, seven feet long, with small glass doors and a mirror in the center; she wanted to get rid of it, and I thought it would do a great job of holding my craft supplies in the office. (Imagine brightly colored yarn behind those glass doors.) But the bridge was out, and she held it for me for a year and a half. So I can’t blame her for wanting to get it out of the middle of her living room.

There was a small problem, though. The office, while finally empty and clean, isn’t finished yet. So I looked over the options, and started poking at the garage. Furniture shouldn’t live in the open garage for long periods—my modern thrift-store filing cabinet is going to need its wood veneer refinished because of several damp winters, for example, and everything is prone to mold. But one winter, well-covered at the back, would likely be fine.

The next thing I knew, I had cleared the loose junk out of more than half of the garage, and I carefully arranged the remaining furniture (waiting to be given away, refurbished, or installed) and the small upright freezer into a compact and accessible block. I certainly had room to store a china cabinet. In the meantime, I accomplished a long-anticipated feat: I parked the pickup in the garage. Darlene informs me that there has never been a vehicle parked there in her memory, and she’s known Jenny a long time. It’s still a little tight, and the furniture block prevents me from backing up the full length of the truck, but only the tip of the hood is still exposed. There’s far more clearing to do next year, but I feel a lot better about having both vehicles sheltered from winter weather.

The china cabinet was loaded into the truck with only minor damage, and with some assistance from Conrad and my cousin Kirsten, it was convinced to stand on end out of the way, well padded and covered. It can stay there until the office is ready for it.

Which may be a while. I was pushing hard at the end of the season, but a lot of things cut in front of it in the priority list, and when cold weather descended it still needed major work. I told myself that I could work on it over the winter, but I haven’t been here enough years to absorb how impractical that is. Northern winters aren’t like where I grew up. The shorter periods of daylight matter even in lit buildings, and I have the windows covered for warmth which increases the gloom. I’m not strongly influenced by Seasonal Affective Disorder, but warm dim places make me want to sleep. I’m often still recovering from the frantic pace of the warmer months, both physically and mentally. Add to that the fact that the cold is surprisingly tiring by itself, and I spend energy every day hauling wood and cooking more… I don’t get a lot done in the coldest part of the year. Someday that will sink in, and I’ll relax and enjoy my creature comforts while I wait.

That means the office is waiting too, however. I decided I want to replace the floor, which isn’t the huge job it might sound like; most of the house is floored in Masonite, a smooth and durable cousin of the chipboard used for cereal boxes. I thought that was what the office had as well, but as I looked closer, I decided it was actually the kind of thin fake-wood veneer used in cheap furniture. It’s warped, and while I could go around and nail it firmly down, I’d rather have the same surface as the rest of the house. There are stacks of double-faced Masonite in the Annex, waiting for such a project, so I brought down half a dozen. After I’m done with that, I’ll do the wiring.

But again, nothing is simple in this house. I started cutting the drywall at chair-rail height so I could expose the studs and old wiring, and it didn’t cut normally. It didn’t come away in pieces either. I removed a two-foot chunk with some effort and found… cedar boards. 1x8s, nailed to the studs like an old-fashioned exterior wall built before plywood was common. But this was the wall between the office and the hall. What on earth?

I tapped walls all over the house and came to the conclusion that every single wall, inside and out, is covered in cedar boards. Only the walls constructed after my grandparents bought the place in ‘71 are modern style, drywall nailed to studs. The theory is that the original walls were lath and plaster, except cedar was so cheap back then that used boards were easier to get than thin wooden lath strips. When my grandparents remodeled, they removed the plaster and just nailed the drywall over the boards. On the plus side, it makes the house structure super-durable for things like when it was jacked up to replace the foundation, and heavy paintings or mirrors can be hung anywhere… but my plans for wiring and plumbing just got a lot more complicated.

I do have a plan, involving the baseboards and wire-channel, and it will be both inconspicuous and code-compliant. It needs to happen after the floor is replaced, and before I repair and paint the walls. But I’m looking at another few weeks of work, and working in one of the coldest rooms of the house is not especially appealing right now. A lot of plans rest on getting it done, but I need to be patient.

I didn’t get the dryer into the mudroom either. I’m being cautious about how much laundry I do at a time, letting it dry thoroughly on the rack in the living room. That’s something else to look forward to, I suppose.

I finished making the kitchen door snug and weathertight, and went on to reverse the pantry door as well. It opened inward, which makes no sense for a 4’x9’ room full of shelves, and it didn’t fit well enough to shut. But all it needed was to be cut down a little for the higher level of the kitchen floor, and have its hinges swapped.

Two days later I was swearing at myself as I hauled the door out to the driveway to shave the long side with the circular saw for the third time. It hadn’t fit to start with, I don’t know what made me think it would fit better on the other side of the frame. I was very glad I had spent a full day last year tuning my grandfather’s hand plane, too. But eventually I fitted it properly, shifted the holes and installed the (cleaned and oiled) mortise latch with a new knob, placed the hinges and hung the door, and then moved the jambs into place so it latched snugly. I added 1” rigid foam insulation to the back as well, which got rid of the cold air that pours off of solid wood doors in the winter. Between that and the rebuilt kitchen doorframe next to it, the biggest cold draft in the house has been eliminated. Only the whisper of cold air from the cat door remains.

I replaced that too, after determining that the old rigid one was what had wounded Artie at the base of his tail. A day of carpentry later, there’s a soft flap instead.

My efforts to winterize the house continue to improve. I haven’t found the time to sew the thermal curtains yet, but the blankets and fabric I’m using are mostly hung by curtain rods rather than thumbtacks, and I have actual rods across the curtained doorways. I got a bunch of honeycomb foam carpet padding from Darlene and covered it in old sheets to keep the kitchen floor warm this year, and I have a few more throw rugs. And I bought some red-and-black plaid fleece on sale, then cut it to create what I call “door coats” for the outer doors. The fabric covers the glass window (I can lift it up to see out) and insulates the body of the door itself. They look very seasonal. It’s not elegant, but every year I upgrade the curtains and rugs, and in the meantime it gets warmer and cozier.

Which is good, given the weather we’ve had this year. The late summer typhoon delayed a bunch of crops, and the cabbages and broccoli had only just matured when we got two atmospheric rivers and a bomb cyclone in November. I hadn’t had a chance to sort them out—I get very sick when the barometer shifts more than a centimeter of mercury a day for most of a week—when a hard freeze hit in the first week of December and finished them off. The stored apples handled a week of nights in the 20s, but the harvested peppers didn’t do so well. You win some, you lose some; I couldn’t do any better, under the weather and exhausted as I was. All I can do is enjoy what I did manage to bring in, and hope for better luck next year.

After frantically thinning the Golden Delicious in the summer, I barely got any. I noticed there were fewer than I expected in mid-October, and by the time I was ready to harvest in early November, it was clear something other than deer had eaten nearly all of them. I would figure it was raccoons, but even a family couldn’t eat a whole tree’s worth in two weeks… I’m blaming the bear. Whatever it was couldn’t climb the Jonathan as readily, and I brought in close to a thousand pounds of crisp red apples from that tree. I donated three buckets to the food bank, and another three to Darlene, and I still probably have too many to eat before spring. Thank goodness I figured out what caused the water-core disorder it had for years, which had caused the Jonathans to spoil quickly while Jenny was here… A few applications of lime, and it’s right as rain.

In October I took advantage of my neighbor’s standing invitation, and went up the road for a tour of Camp Cooper. The local Boy Scout camp is used by various organizations as a retreat and conference space, but I had never been there, and I was curious. Aaron met me and showed me around what turned out to be a large, utterly beautiful chunk of forest, with a central complex, basic cabins, a waterfall, a lake that doubles as a swimming hole, and buildings and equipment sufficient to keep it all humming. It was a wonderful time, and we got a chance to talk more than we had since we first met. I think we’re very much kindred spirits, and I look forward to visiting and maybe collaborating in future.

Rue cut the box bushes down on the north side of the house, and it’s made a big difference even though I haven’t yet managed to haul them to the green waste dropoff. Boxwood burns, sure… too well. I dislike the idea of making a burn pile out of bushes that go up like matches even when wet. It’s one of the major reasons I wanted them taken down. The north side of the house breathes a lot better now, and the rooms don’t feel as damp and dark.

Rue also cut a bunch of firewood for me late in the summer, cleaning up some of the fallen trees beyond the pasture. I had cheerfully dried and stacked the result in the woodshed, and when the December cold snap hit, I turned off the heat pump and ran the woodstove. To my dismay, the wood in the shed seemed to melt away. Half of what had been cut was from dead trees, and more punky than I thought—it burned like tissue paper. By mid-December, the shed was half-empty. Though I still had the rest of the split oak in the Annex, I got nervous and ran the numbers. To my dismay, I had enough wood for two months, which put me squarely in the snowy end of winter. I was in trouble.

I dug out my notes and called the firm which bailed me out two years ago; they said they would happily deliver two cords of dry wood in a day or two. I looked at the price, sighed, and paid it. I’ve taken a lot of steps to bring my bills down, and as a result, I’m paying half as much as I used to for phone service, and a third of what I paid last winter for electricity. Between choosing the right plans and not even bothering to run the heat pump in freezing weather this year, the savings will pay for the load of wood by the middle of January. I’ll just bump “harvest firewood” up on my priority list for next spring and summer, and pay a lot more attention to the quality of what I’m putting away. As I clear more space in the garage, I’ll be able to store more surplus too, in case of nasty surprises like this one. Live and learn.

The cats are faring pretty well, having gotten to the “older sister and her annoying kid brother” stage. I’m doing pretty well too. I’ve mostly recovered from the non-stop pressure of the dry season, and while I was edging into burnout for a while there, I’m starting to feel like taking things on again. Thanksgiving was my farm-to-table feast, where I eat almost exclusively things I’ve harvested; after that, I did something I hadn’t done in years. I tested my wheat sensitivity.

See, I’m not gluten-intolerant. I picked up a half-dozen food sensitivities in 2000, when I got injured by a (now common) cleaning solvent which damaged several things, including my GI tract. The result was that when I ate various foods, stuff got into my bloodstream that really shouldn’t, and that’s why I couldn’t eat wheat anymore. But I had a hunch that living up here away from the solvent and other pollutants, with pure air and water for two and a half years, had probably healed my insides. I had already lost most of the other food sensitivities over the years, so it was worth a shot. And I was right. For the first time in almost 25 years, I can eat wheat-based foods with no issue.

I’ve been exploring the half of the grocery store that was off limits for a quarter century, and while I can’t have everything—I seem to react poorly to one or more of the preservatives in common use—I can stop relying on expensive and mediocre gluten-free alternatives. I bought all-purpose and bread flour, and I plan on baking my way through the “Complete Book of Breads”. My sourdough starter is coming along. I finished my winter stock-up run to the grocery store under budget, thanks to cheaper pasta and such. More than that, I have finally achieved a health goal I’ve been slogging toward for half my life. I could never have done it without this place. As I thought four years ago, the house and I might be able to fix each other up, and it looks like we’ve both kept the bargain.

So now here we are, at the winter solstice. My Christmas tree is up and lit with cheerful white and colored lights, and the house is warm and smells like pie. If you feel like tossing a gift my way, I have a fund on ko-fi that will go toward getting my modern electric sewing machine tuned up, to handle the stitches the treadle Singer won’t. Either way, enjoy the photo album, and I hope you have a warm and happy winter season. Remember, it only gets brighter from here. I’ll see you at the spring equinox.

—Sam