I’ve been waiting and waiting for “the Utah Fruit Guys” to come to town, and Wednesday evening, there they were at the Farmer’s Market. I did my graduate work at UC Davis, and the University of Utah, both of which are located in the midst of serious orchard country — and it ruined me for grocery-store stone fruit. So I wait. Every year, I wait and wait for the Utah guys, or sometimes we really luck out and get a truckload up from Colorado’s western slope — but we wait for real fruit. And then we make jam. I was…
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Himself has a theory about minor demons — minor demons are what beset you when you are unduly annoyed by other people, usually other people who are just going about being the other people that they are, without any intention of bothering anyone. The first time we encountered minor demons was years ago, when we were hiking in the Columbia Gorge on a trip to Portland, and we Could Not Get Away from these two chattery teenage girls on the trail. We’d hustle to get ahead and get some space between us, and they’d pick up their pace. We’d drop behind…
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Enough talking about making, let’s get to work — it’s summer, and our Hutterite neighbors are filling the local grocery with their lovely green beans — so today it’s dilly beans. They’re so easy, and they’re a huge improvement on the sludgy canned green beans I grew up on (if you want to preserve plain beans for winter, I’d go with the blanch-and-freeze method. They stay much nicer than the pressure canned ones.) So, I use Michael Symon’s pickling brine recipe from his Live to Cook. It’s dead simple — half and half vinegar to water, 2 tablespoons each salt and…
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I’ve been walking this same two mile stretch of road every morning pretty much since Hank-dog came to live with me two years ago. It’s a quick drive out of town, and there’s usually no one else there, which is important. Despite having made most of my close friends upon moving here through our dogs, at this point, I don’t want to chat on my dog walk. Also, there aren’t many cars. Hank and I are still working on the concept that cars do not need to be herded (neither do runners, or bicyclists). So for two years I’ve walked exactly…
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For many years, I thought of my maker projects and my writing as separate. More than that, actually, I got into a bad habit of thinking of them as oppositional — as if my making was only a kind of procrastination or evasion from writing. I felt guilty about it. As if spending time in my garden, or putting up a batch of jam, or making a shirt, or learning to knit socks was somehow betraying my “real” creative work, which was supposed to be writing novels and essays. About a year ago I got really interested in the notion of…
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I took the leap. I gave notice at my day job. It’s pretty terrifying. I have a few things in the pipeline, but it’s a big risk. I’ve got another month of steady work, then it’s me and my little freelance shingle, hoping I can make it work. And this is the photo I’ve been looking at every time I get spooked. That’s my friend Dennis, who died last month. Denny was the first person outside of my family who truly saw me. We spent the summer after I graduated from high school leading canoe trips in the Boundary Waters and…
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On Friday, I wired the last payment on my house. I own my own house. No one can make me move, ever again, if I don’t want to. For someone who went to six grammar schools and moved pretty much every 2 years until I was 35, this is huge. This has been the primary goal of LivingSmall since day one. I moved to Montana because it’s beautiful of course, but primarily I moved here because I could buy an inexpensive house. A house I could afford to pay off. For anyone looking to achieve similar goals, consulting with experts…
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For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not starting tomatoes and peppers this year. It’s taken me several weeks to admit this to myself. I kept pulling out seed packets, and sorting through them, and then I just didn’t get to that next step, actually planting them. I don’t know what my topor is about on this front. Usually, I find starting seeds around the vernal equinox therapeutic. The first task of spring. Getting seeds in, waiting for the little sprouts, thinning them and transplanting them into bigger containers. We’ve shot round the sun once more, the light is coming…
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Five weeks ago I had reconstructive surgery on my left ankle, and I thought that being laid up would be sort of useful. That I’d get a lot of work done. I’d read books! I’d get back to the one I’m writing! I’d knit (I did knit …). The truth is that I seem to have spent most of the past five weeks fucking around on the internet. And complaining about not being able to do anything. I got nothing useful done. And so, I finally had to face up to the fact that I needed a new planning regime.…
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I have a wee Meyer Lemon tree in a pot, and it’s been languishing all winter. It’s been on the botanical equivalent of the fainting couch. It turned yellow, and wan, and there were no flowers this year. It has been a Very Very Sad Lemon Tree. But in the past few weeks, it’s been rallying. A little Miracle Go (I know, not organic, but easy, available, blue!) and it started to perk up. Then I put it in the back hall with a grow light, and started taking it outside into the greenhouse shed in the afternoons when it…