Home the Land Built: Week 6

Finally, we burnt our home down, everything except the house that is.  And what a day it was.  I can’t think of anything so dramatic and terrifying and sad.  My torch dripping liquid fire.  Dry grass withering then rising, reborn in flame.  Long lines of smoke billowing into walls of cloud.   Ash blanketed mice scurrying for their lives.   And in the midst of it all, Home the Land Built, protected only by its moat of short green grass, its white cedar siding screaming, “Keep those sparks away from me!”

At 1:30 we assembled our five man crew, Johnny’s Chimney Rock Forestry team of experts (they’ve fought and defeated raging western forest fires) and me.  Don’t laugh!  They even wrapped me in an official yellow fire-proof shirt, crowned me with the white burn boss hard hat and strapped a radio to my chest. “Johnny.  Mike here.   We’re under control.”  Bummer Linda had to work.  She not only missed out on all the fun, but also the complements, “We should hire her to mow fire breaks for all the other prairies.”  The fire struggled to snake across her green paths. 

West to east, parcel by fire-break surrounded parcel, we burned our way across the Land, transforming tufts of dried thatch into ash, all in a few fiery minutes.   Aided by an atmospheric stability index of 5 (on a 1 to 6 scale), smoke rose not at us but up, up, up into the blue.  Four hours later, as the final northeast-most parcel burned itself out, my radio popped on.  “Mike.  Johnny.  Would you like to start the brush pile?” 

That darned brush pile, layers of dozer-stacked boxelder, dirt and all from our pond-clearing effort six years ago, has been a pain in the arse.   The government’s been us to burn it (they pay us to grow native prairie and expect us to follow a few rules in return).  “I’ll  be right there.  Mike over.”    Anticipating a raging 80 foot long by 40 foot wide tree-high inferno, I can’t tell you how disappointed I felt.   Marshmallow roasting mellow.  Too much dirt and green.  Not enough fuel.  The best part came after dark.  I dragged dry branches out of the nearby shelterbelt and stoked the smoldering coals back to bonfire-sized flame.  The spring peepers loved it, doubling the volume of their chorus.  And when the coyotes joined, I felt like Dances with Wolves, spearing the fire, offering the rising sparks to the stars.

Burning prairie:  why endure the cost and the effort?  Isn’t it crazy?  If crazy means jumping off a cliff and building my wings on the way down, then yes, that’s what this whole Home the Land Built thing is all about.  We could plow under 40 acres of thriving life, allow the exposed soil to wash down into the Whitewater River, spray anhydrous ammonia, plant a monoculture of corn seed impregnated with Roundup-resistant scorpion genes, spray the Roundup, harvest with a $300,000 combine,  sell the product, not as people food but for ethanol, high-fructose corn syrup and feed for confined animals, and collect my government subsidy.  Then, at least, no one would call me crazy.

Unlike corn, a tallgrass prairie only requires one input from me:  fire.  Without fire, the balance is tipped first to goldenrod and sumac, then to boxelder and buckthorn and finally to maple and basswood.  Photos and paintings from the 1800’s depict far more prairie and oak savanna and far less forest than we see today on the hills of Southeast Minnesota.  Settlers, whether farmers, townspeople or nature-lovers stomped out the enemy fire, killing the prairie.  Familiar only with parcel-agriculture, they did not, could not perceive the scope and scale of land management by the indigenous peoples.   They lit fires.  Always and everywhere.  To increase game.   To ease travel.   To make safe their homelands.  They, like the prairie upon which they depended, were the people of the fire.  And now as I sit in the yoga loft, looking out at an ash black sea, I hope the Land will remember. 

I am indeed leaping.  Will the prairie, the head-high sea of waving grass, return?  I’ve ingested the book knowledge and now I’m learning by living.  Where will my flaming wings carry me? 

“I’ll call you next year,” said Johnny as he loaded the water-hauling ATV back onto the trailer .  “You can join the fire crew.  Burn a few more prairies.”

I just might be crazy enough to do it.

Home the Land Built: Week 5

There’s just so much of it.  I wonder how I missed it, that great moving mass just outside the bank of windows.   An ocean, extending as far as I dare see, full of creatures beyond count.  Three years ago, when we asked Architect Paul to design a house which “enabled the Connection”, inviting the outside-in and the inside-out, I was often imagining a view to the land:  waving grass, grazing deer, the first green flush of leaves.  Well, Paul did his job all right.  Home the Land Built is connecting me  to something I never really imagined.  How did I ever miss the sky?

The sky?!!!  Not that I didn’t see the sky, but until just this week, it seemed more like the glazing in a window, something to look through not at.   Invisible as it is, why start “seeing” it now? 

Maybe it’s the wind.  The small orange flags---markers for the 25 white spruce trees and 50 hazelnut bushes we just planted---flapping as they point like dancers where the wind is going.  The white gutter downspout rolling across the green lawn.  The extra few chunks of wood I stack into the masonry heater when the wind swipes its cold hand across the bank of windows.  The invitation (or not) to rise from this yoga loft chair and open the door onto the porch:  what mood of the wind will greet me (or retreat me)? 

Maybe it’s the clouds.  I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much I’ve learned about clouds by descending into the windowless bowels of our house, the cellar.  Just two little gauges:  the solar electric (Mate3) and the solar hot water (SunMaxx).  Sure, when its noon and not a cloud in the sky, the Mate 3, says the PV panels are cranking out 2700 watts and the SunMaxx says the solar hot water panels is getting hot (170F and rising fast).  What amazes me is the difference a cloudy day produces. Even through a solid grey bank, the Mate 3 brags the PV is producing 500 watts, enough to power our house for an entire day.    Always honest, the SunMaxx confesses that the solar hot water panels are languishing (85F), not nearly enough to heat the 80 gallon storage tank for cleaning our soiled dishes and bodies.  So now, when I step out under the cloud cover, I feel this difference.  I’m a plant, a blade of Indian grass, sighing as I turn toward this diffused light, this light that is enough to feed me, fueling the alchemy which turns thin air into me.  Yet I’m a summer loving grass and I’m cold.  There’s no heat in this light.  The clouds have stolen it to make more of themselves out of thin air.  How greedy!

Mostly I think it’s the birds.  Oh glorious bird!  Crow flap, flap, flapping nearly to the window.  Hovers then suddenly drops, pounces and pecks at globs of mud which turn into fist-sized bunnies scurrying for their lives.  Meadowlark announcing the morning from his post, then relinquishing it to blackbird who fluffs his red wings and trills.  Oak-a-lee!  “That’s how its done,” he says to meadowlark.  Its not like I hadn’t seen birds before.  At 4140 we loved to watch them.  14 cardinals shining in the snow at dusk.  But here, where there the trees are so far away and there’s so much tall grass to hide in what I see, what I thrill at, is birds flying, flying, flying.  There is so much sky. 

An ocean and I’m in it.  The wind is the current.  The rolling clouds and the many shades of blue is the unreachable surface high overhead.  And the birds, oh glorious bird, you are fish.  Singing whale.  Leaping dolphin.  Twisting school of flashing jewels.  I spread my arms and reach skyward, toward the dream.

And I sit by Paul’s bank of windows, inviting the outside-in and the inside out.  What could be more connecting?  The ocean of sky, the very same sky out those windows, fills Home the Land Built as she rises from the yielding floor.  The sky bathes me.  Breathes me.  The thin air ignites the fire that turns the earth into me.   

Thank you Paul!  I always wanted to live by the sea, only to discover that I always did.  In it actually.  Now I wonder one thing.  What, as I wander the thriving floor of this wondrous ocean, am I?

One thing for sure:  I’m a lucky man.  Rah-dur!

Home the Land Built: Week 4

After breakfast and a cup of tea, I felt it high time to haul buckets.  I opened the toilet’s cherry lid, looked down inside the Fleet Farm Black Logo bucket.  

 “Yup, that’s full alright.”  Good timing.  You definitely don’t want to discover the toilet’s fullness when you sit on the seat.  I  snapped on the lid, hoisted the bucket up and out and lugged it (five gallons of mostly liquid is heavy!) into the garage where another Fleet Farm Black Logo bucket, already full and lidded, awaited its companion.  Then down into the cellar, I slip like a jail breaker between the staircase studs and there, hiding behind the rack of hanging coats, I find it. 

Built by my friend Bob and I for camping, this rustic cousin of the upstairs toilet reinvented himself for a life in our house:  “In addition to an emergency toilet, I’m a used kitty litter container.”   I scoop Kirby Cat’s two litter boxes into the toilet, topping off the green Enviro Smart bucket (fancy name for a bucket of doo).  A minute later there’s 3 full buckets side-by-side in the garage.  But wait!  There’s more!  Soon the steel compost pail, from under the kitchen sink, joins the party.  Finally!  To the compost heap!  Strangely it’s much easier to carry two full buckets, one in each arm, than only one tipping me lopsided.   A hundred feet from the house, I dump each bucket onto a rake-leveled compost heap, scrub the bucket with water and a toilet brush then dump the wash water onto the heap.  All four buckets dumped and washed, I cover the heap with lawn rakings  (and chicken wire and two wooden pallets to keep out the critters) then prop up the buckets to dry and sterilize in the sun and wind.  

Now all this is what I’d set out to do between my first and seconds cups of tea.  Ten, maybe fifteen minutes of work I suppose.  “The chores,” I thought to myself as I walked back to the house.  I never liked that word:  chores.  Somehow, when Aunt Dorothy used to say it out at their farm, it sounded so shrill and unpleasant.  But now, like nearly everything in this grand experiment I call Home the Land Built, I tried it on.  No sooner had the word escaped my lips when I noticed the gutter downspout lying in the grass half out into the lawn.  “I’ve got to learn to respect the wind,” I thought.  This time I secured the downspout by driving a forked stick into the ground, pinning the spout between.  Brushing off my hands, feeling a little proud, I then noticed what the wind had actually done.  The downspout was a mire diversion.  Yesterday’s gusts had knocked over the wood pile stacked so neatly, 7 feet high, under the lean to.   An hour later that task was done.  I really needed that second cup of tea.  Finally, sitting with Linda, looking out on the land as I sipped my hot chai, I wondered what part of tall that effort was chores.  I’d always imagined chores as routine.  Cadenced.  Hauling buckets fits neatly into that category. But what about other tasks, especially those that call to me while I’m doing chores:  fixing downspouts, restacking wood. 

Maybe the tasks would be better off without a label.  I know I don’t like labels put on me.  I almost never put them on myself.  Be a rare day when you hear me say, “I’m a liberal”  or “I’m a writer”  or “I’m a retiree”.  They feel too defining, too confining, in need of a jailbreak.   So, this morning, when I scooped Kirby’s litter, maybe that’s all I did.  It doesn’t need another name.  Unlike the litter, I don't need to put the task into a bucket. 

Home the Land Built: Week 3

Monday

“Home is where bright morning breaks upon far valley wall.  Can you hear sweet running waters call?”  These words, the music Amelan hears as the folk of Jordan bear his ailing grandmother into the healing waters of the river, have echoed in the backwaters of my mind since first they floated into my novel seven years ago.   Now, especially after this past weekend, with my river boat rocked so, I feel the need to tie up and lie down in the warm and familiar waters of home.  Wherever that is.  Saturday morning, I finished my novel.  Seven years and nine months ago,  I paddled out into what I then thought was just a safe little stream.  Silly me!  Good thing I didn’t know about all the twisting, turning, rock-crashing whitewater.  Somehow, I managed to steer my way, nearly drowning in the last storm of scene, and set my feet again onto the dry shore, the last lines of the book.   Though much remains to do---edit, publish, market--- it’s still an unbelievable milestone.  Unbelievable indeed.  Being done feels less real than the soothing voices of Jordan.   I know where to go next.  I just don’t recognize where I am.  Where are the familiar voices of home?  Though I could feel myself slipping back under, I managed to keep my head above water.  Barely.   Thank goodness for 150 year old barnwood.   What a life raft!  The very afternoon of my struggle, our new dining table arrived.  Or should I say, our old dining table. 

Duane, from Winona’s Pieces of the Past, delivered it himself.  He’d not only made our harvest table---fastened with square nails---but he’d salvaged the 150 year old Fountain City barn, board by bug-chewed board.   Much of this we learned as he joined as for our first meal at the table:  Linda’s moist and dark ginger bread.  Since Duane left, I can’t tell you how time my fingertips have spent tracing the dents, scratches and inch-long former homes of bugs.  And I listen; like Duane, the table, the wood itself, has a tale to tell.  To sing even.  “Home is where bright morning breaks upon this table top.” 

I do love breakfast!  Care to join us?

Tuesday

5:05  Arise

5:05:01 Eat 1^st breakfast (roasted sunflower seeds, craisins, maple syrup, milk, PB)

6:15  Complete blog

6:16  Beg Linda to edit blog (as always)

6:17  Morning read:  Becoming Animal, David Abrams (I’m trying, I’m trying)

8:45  Wave sad good-bye to Linda as she heads to MPLS

8:46  Console myself with 2^nd breakfast (honey tangerine)

8:55  2^nd Morning read:  The Hobbit (what a treat, I’ve haven’t read a novel since beginning my own novel 8 years ago because I always got sucked into their writing style)

9:45  Indulged my inner hobbit with 3^rd breakfast, (honeycrisp apple)

10:05  Always trying to use existing resources, determined I can roof Humanure Hacienda with pallets

10:45  Mixed up batch of sawdust (just add water) and refilled sawdust toilet bin

11:14  Vacuumed up sawdust mess in bathroom

11:47  Lunch (fried egg sandwich, two eggs layered between two slices toast dashed with Tobasco)

12:06  Readied guest bedroom for visit overnight visitor:  nephew Daniel.  Can’t wait!!!

12:39  2^nd Lunch (popcorn)

1:08   Called HVAC Arnie.  Filled my inner geek with engaging conversation to optimize heat transfer from solar hot water storage tank to in-floor loops

1:45  Dug wild parsnips from lawn with Parsnip Predator.  Soaked in water.   Ready to eat.

2:43   Hauled 12 wheelbarrows of dirt from our mini-mud mountain to fill sink hole between east porch and septic tank

3:48  Built fence around transplant garden.  Hoping to have better luck keeping deer and rabbits out of our 4140 perennials than we had keeping mice out of our 4140 furniture.

5:26  Supper.  Burrito:  beans with cinnamon, cloves, nettles, sweet potatoes.

6:45  Walked Kirby Cat.  Hah!  As if anyone can “walk” a cat.

7:05  Tolerated conversation with financial planner. 

7:30  Finished this blog.

7:31  Wished Linda here to edit.  L

Now, reading this list, I realize that none of this begins to describe what it’s like to BE on the Land.  For that, you'll just have to come on down.

Wednesday

I’m afraid he beat you to it.  Nephew Daniel is first to sleep the night in the Murphy bed.  When he arises, I’ll learn how they got on.  Right now, his door is closed and that’s a good sign.  And a comforting sign;  so good to have him here.  And so good to have a guest for the night. 

The night!  We even pondered the nature of night as we sat on the moonlit yoga loft porch, perched within the glass-less cedar framed windows, Daniel’s favorite spot in the whole house.  “What is night?” I asked.  You’d think I’d know, having experienced over 20,000.  Perhaps I hadn’t really noticed before.  Or perhaps it’s just too darn big to notice.  Now, with the darkness all around us, and me just having read David Abram’s opinion on that in his Becoming Animal, we thought we’d try it on.  “You can’t say what it isn’t,” I grinned, making up rules.  “When the sun isn’t out, doesn’t count,” I said.  “Evil!” he guessed.  “Ah, poetry.  At the soul level,” I nodded.  “But are not other things evil?  Can you tell me what night is and ONLY night is?” We pictured launching at night in a moon-bound space ship.  “As we climbed, suddenly night would end.  What is it that we left behind?”  As I had done a few days earlier, he awoke.  I recognized the child-like wonder in his moon-lit eyes.  “The earth’s shadow!  Night IS the earth’s shadow.”  Seated in our perches, we let the immensity of night wrap around us and our shared understanding bind us.  Suddenly, wide-eyed, he looked at me.  “What is the moon’s shadow?” he asked, turning the game around on me.  Now, it was my turn to struggle.  I could see our own moon-shadows, cast dimly upon the porch floor.  But he wasn’t asking about my shadow, whether cast by sun or moon.  I shrugged, gave up.  His smile beamed wider than the moon.  “A solar eclipse.”  In my amazement, all I could do is nod and clumsily add,  “Maybe you and I can go see one someday.” And I meant it.  And he knew it.  Who knows if we will, but there, wrapped together in our earthly shadows, it seemed quite possible.  “We’re not just going to SEE a solar eclipse,” he said, breaking the silence.  “We’re going to sit in the shadow of the moon!”

Thursday

More and more I find myself pondering my legacy.  No so much about what, if anything, anyone will actually say about me---maybe I don’t want to know---but about my positive impact, what good, if any, will linger because of me.  So the Novel:  a possible legacy of ideas and inspiration.  So the Land:  a possible legacy of healing and abundance.  So Medtronic even, though retired (or more preferably refired).  I enjoy meeting my old work team, who I had some hand in building, and seeing my legacy unfold, their successes and challenges.   Yet there is one more legacy, more basic, and perhaps more uplifting than all the rest:  my nieces and nephews and their engagement with the Land.  And today, nephew Daniel went at it as if Star Trek’s Captain Picard issued his command:  “Engage!”   I lost count of  the firsts for Daniel.  We unhooked the PTO generator from the tractor, the New Holland TC45D, otherwise known as Little Blue.  A Daniel first.  Daniel mounted the beast, turned the key, pulled out of the shed and navigated our never-flat terrain to the trailer.  A Daniel first.  He backed up the tractor, and after only three attempts at perfect alignment, I hitched the trailer.  A Daniel first. 

Then we were off to trail clearing, with Daniel and Little Blue pulling our trailer of tools:  chain saw, weed whacker, splitting maul and all the paraphernalia associated with converting trail-blocking deadfall into firewood stacked alongside the mowed path.  We cleared, snapped, sawed, split and stacked the gifts of two trees:  one boxelder we call the mother tree and one Siberian elm, both of whom we'd girdled (killed by stripping a ring of bark) years ago and are still clinging to life.  A Daniel first.  We learned the personalities of boxelder (vindictive, my jaw still hurts from the whack she gave me) and elm (stubborn as rock).  A Daniel first.  Our task finished, Linda handed us a bag which we half-filled with nettles to contribute towards our supper, carefully avoiding the painful stingers as we plucked the top tender leaves.  A Daniel first.  After dinner---blanket nestled in our yoga loft porch window perches---we let our hearts pound, fantasizing how we might approach the ten deer lolling from the east pond up the draw toward the house.  A Daniel first.  Of course, all this really is a first for me.  Like a new parent, I’m learning how to hand down what I have, what I am able, to Daniel, to my nieces and nephews.  I’m learning how to create a legacy. 

   

Friday

Home the Land Built: Week 2

Monday

The experiment is ON.    While this whole thing---this rainwater harvest, off-grid electric, solar hot water, masonry heated, composting toilet...alternative home---has been one big, bad experiment, the results really didn’t count until now; now that we’re living in it.    So far I can honestly say that everything is going as expected, that is, absolutely nothing, not one single alternative system, is working as hoped.  The masonry heater experienced the perfect storm of challenges. 

*****Geek WARNING!!!!  If, unlike me, you have no inner geek whatsoever, stop reading NOW.  If you choose to continue reading, don’t say you weren’t warned.  End warning*****.     The perfect storms collided like this.  I hadn’t fired the masonry heater since we moved in; with so many sunny 70 degree days, who needs it?  So the masonry was cold, cold, cold and it takes at least two days, lighting a series of small “break-in” fires to get it heated up again.  We were out of town Saturday until late Sunday, so I couldn’t fire the heater until Sunday night.  The concrete floor is still relatively cold since the in-floor heat is just now working, maybe.   The forecast high for today, Monday, was 45F.   The upshot is this:  by Friday, when the 45F temperature forecast came in, I knew I was screwed.  “It’ll be like camping,” I told Linda.  In the end, even though today’s outside temperature has yet to climb above 40F,  it hasn’t been too bad.  I’ve managed to keep the living room at 66F, thanks mostly to serious insulation, including our R5.5 Serious windows.  I lit the first small “break-in” fire last night soon as we arrived:  a puny, smoldering wisp of a thing resembling a campfire of wet wood.  Even today’s third and final fire required an inelegant, open-the-door-quick, smoke-in-the-house lighting rescue.  But it’s going.   And frankly, Linda hasn’t complained once about feeling a chill.  Then again, she spent much of the day cleaning the old tiny cabin, where 70F always feels drafty and our house never, ever feels drafty.  Fact of the matter is, I had a blast!  I’d missed the masonry heater and enjoyed crafting my log cabin style fire with the kindling-on-top (called the top down or upside-down fire method if you want to YouTube it).  I hope Linda doesn’t get too frightened when she learns how much fun I had; she’ll accuse me of creating failures just to work my way out of them.  Hmmm.  So, maybe I was wrong.  Maybe everything is working like I hoped it would; that is, maybe nothing is working like I hoped it would.

Tuesday

 Today I lived the ‘Home the Land Built’ life.  Almost.   Every half hour, from 9:30AM to 7:00PM, I searched for the cause of the dripping tankless hot water heater, recording potential X’s on a spreadsheet, graphing the results, from which, in the end, I learned nothing.   

I know, I know, what could be more fun than a line plot in Excel?  Yet still something was missing.  As for the 25 minutes or so between data acquisition sessions, I spent those atop the Poet’s Tower, or at least Amelan, my novel’s protagonist, did in an effort to finish his final scene.  I keep telling him we’ve got to finish by Easter, but he keeps saying, “but wait, there’s more!”  Drat those characters!  Whose story is this anyway?   His I’ve learned, and the story, especially this new ending, get better and better as I get out the way.

I know, I know, what could be more fun than being told what to do by a fictional character?    Yet still something was missing.

Supper!  Ah the harmony, they synergy, the symphony of food here on the Land.  Steaming on back of the stove:  wild greens picked in five minutes within 100 feet of the house.   Stinging nettles.  Curly dock.  Dandelion.   Sautéing in front:  root vegetables from the Dietz’s, dear neighbors and organic growers.    Stirred together with plenty of Hope Creamery butter, snowed on with parmesan cheese.   Supper doesn’t get much better, especially with a cup of honey drenched nettles tea steaming alongside. 

I know, I know, what could be more fun than feasting on plants pincushioned with stingers?  Yet still something was missing.

And that something is you. 

 

Wednesday

What is the source of abundance?  I’m not sure, but Home the Land Built was designed and constructed to engage this question, this question of primal importance.    Today the Home sprouted one little bud of an answer:  diversity.  Thanks to diversity, I bathed in the luxuriously warm waters of abundance.   Literally.   Today, for the first time, Home the Land Built heated herself with all three heat sources:  masonry heater (wood), in-floor (active solar hot water), windows (passive solar).  While the masonry heater and passive solar have been doing their job since December, the in-floor, dependent on the active solar hot water system, cranked up today.  Such an exciting moment.  Taking a break from writing my novel, I wandered down the cellar.  For a windowless, subterranean hole, the cellar is an exciting place when the sun is shining.  In fact, when I’m down there, I can tell you exactly how much sun is up there.  By reading gauges, yes, but also now by listening.   In this case, a gauge told me to start listening.   The hot water storage tank, fed 175.2F heat by the solar panels, now read 144F. 

I’d programmed the in-floor pump to start when the hot water storage tank exceeds 140F, using the excess hot water---more than we could ever use for bathing and dishes---to heat the concrete floor and thus our house.  I waited, listened, waited some more.  Nothing.  I ran up the steps.  Adjusted the in-floor thermostat.  Ran down the stairs and then…and then…click!  Whir!  The sound of a pump!  The in-floor heat pump!  Pulsing water into our floor.  And the solar panels, still sucking up heat from the sun, out-produced it.  When the hot water storage tank climbed above 150F there was only one thing I could do.  Take a shower.  A 10 minute plus long,  luxuriously warm shower.  Ahhh!!!  And when, finally, I was done with that, and shaving, and doing dishes, the tank still read 153F.  And the in-floor pump still filled the floor with hot water warmth. 

And the windows still bathed the floor with direct sunlight warmth. 

And the masonry heater still radiated wood warmth, from a fire I’d built seven hours earlier.  The living room thermostat read 73F.  I opened windows.  Inhaled the fresh air of the Land.  Now that’s abundance.  Did I get that right, Home the Land Built?

 

Thursday

The blogger, overdosing on newness and dangerously low on familiarity, harvested the abundance of his old Minneapolis haunts:  soul-engaging Pink Flower lunch with Heather and Kim dearest of former Medtronic co-workers, gooey Salty Caramel ice cream cone from Sebastian Joe’s, teeth-ripping duck jerky from Clancey’s Meats, on demand organic peanut butter from Linden Hills Coop, a butter-slathered fist-sized sample of mushroom-swiss cheese bread from Great Harvest.  Finally, buzzing from Anusara Yoga with Monica and his kula at Judson Church, and knowing that if he stayed one minute longer he’d stay for a year,he pointed the Prius southeast and said “home”.    

 

Friday

Home the Land Built: Week 1

Monday

Tuesday

We’re here!!!!!  Even more than sleeping in our own bed in a real bedroom, with a door on it,  and even more than Kirby Cat howling in the hallways and still managing to pretend that the Yoga loft---where I write this blog as golden dawn washes the prairie--and the staircase up to it don’t exist, the surest sign of home, Home the Land Built, is food.  Meals!  What, in all our shared memories, feels more home building, community creating and downright pleasurable?   What builds more connection?  I should say Connection with capitol “C”.    Even Kirby Cat, after his puking episode on the car-ride over, settled with surprising speed into his Indigo Moon filled bowl.  And later that Saturday, Linda’s mother Carol provided dinner and supper (lunch and dinner in urban English), featuring warm homemade buns lathered with butter, for we move-weary workers.  Sunday, as I found a couple more Rent Joe’s Box to mule from the shed into the house, I heard the rumble of a motorcycle followed by the unmistakable laugh of a child.  Peaking my head out the hayloft door, up the driveway, I saw my dear neighbor’s, the Dietz’s, hand in hand, coming to call.  After hugs, Sandy, both mother and grandmother to the gathered, extended a white plastic bag.  “A gift from sister Ruthie.”  Watercress!  Fresh snipped from some cold and hidden stream.   Sandy knew I loved the peppery crunch of watercress sandwiches.  “Bacon and watercress salad.   Mmmm!” suggested daughter Erin.  So that was the first meal I cooked in our new home.  Found the recipe in new favorite cookbook:  Brett Laidlaw’s Trout Caviar, Recipes from a Northern Forager.  Ho my gosh!!!  We devoured a pumpkin sized bowl.  As scrumptious as that was, last night’s supper---thank you again Trout Caviar---seemed the best yet, Nettles and Wild Rice Soup.  Each ingredient seemed a character in the plot-twisting story of our life.   Apple Brats from Clancey’s Meats (we could feel Kristin’s smile).  Hope Creamery butter, churned just down the road from Linda’s 90 something Aunt June.  Linda’s chicken stock, long-simmered in her old 4140 Harriet kitchen (hope Mark and Kari, the new owners, can still smell it!).  Hand-harvested wild rice from Whole Farm Coop, our Judson Church partner.  Potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic from the Dietz’s organic farm (again!).  Organic Valley Cream from the Winona coop.  And of course the nettles.  All I had to do was walk the north hedgerow a few steps from the house.  The greener than green shoots shouted, “pick me, pick me” if I passed one by.   And my leather gloved fingertips obliged, gently pinching the topmost leaves.  Never once did a nettle decide to sting me. 

Oh, and the soup itself?  Whoa!  I can’t wait to serve you a steaming ladleful. 

House the Land Built still promises to keep me busy this week.   Chest freezer and fridge arrive today.  Stairway carpet tomorrow.  Piano Thursday.  Perhaps even solar hot water, but if I held my breath for it I’d likely perish.  Though I look forward to each of them, House the Land Built essentials, they seem now less important, save the piano.  The sound of music.  Fur Elise!  Let it Be!   I’m loving just living.   So come, as soon as you can.  We’ll pick nettles.  Slurp steaming soup.  Sing Do-Re-Mi as Linda plays the piano.   Sure we’ll tour the place, then we’ll quickly get on with living, nudging House the Land Built on its journey toward Home the Land Built.   

Wednesday

I’m not used to not working.  150% that is.  Sure there’s always a box to unpack and dings to touch-up.  I’m not yet harvesting rain off the roof.    And then there’s organizing…well…the whole gosh-darned house.  Please, stop by, choose something, anything---binoculars,   whole wheat flour, garbage bin, and put it somewhere.  Anywhere.   If it were summertime then living would supposedly be easy, if there be wisdom in song.  So, with Linda gone and working in Minneapolis, I did paint and unpack and organize and prep for carpet installation and freezer arrival.  Though work tugged at me like gravity,  part of me, the better part, sought desperately to get away.  Had it not been for Trout Caviar and Kirby Cat I may never have achieved escape velocity.  After last night’s success with Nettles and Wild Rice Soup, I felt enticed to try my luck with ramps.  According to Trout Caviar, ramps, our native wild leek, thrust up their green onion-like shoots the very second the frost comes out the ground.   Inspired, I pulled on my muckin’ boots, tromped across the corn stubble and entered the wood.   The north and east hedgerows of the Land border the Whitewater Wildlife Management Area, the WWMA, a steep, gorge cut, 30,000 acre wilderness of valley walls snaking alongside the Whitewater River for twenty miles until spilling into the Mississippi.  Once inside the WWMA, I quickly realized I had no idea where, amongst the 30,000 acres,  one might actually look for a ramp.  And as I zigged and zigged along deer trails---the sides of my feet desperately clawing the steep hillsides for traction---another and more profound realization began to gnaw at my mind.  “I’m not sure I’d know a ramp if I saw one.  And I don’t care.  Ramps are an excuse to be here.  To live.”  So I did, keeping up the ruse by scanning the mould.  Thank goodness, else I may never have found the cliff.  

And the rock-hugging wildflower, a star shining above the mould. 

I do not know her name.  I’d like to think she doesn’t have one, that I’m the first to lie nose to petal with her.   So when I returned home and failed to positively identify her in Wildflowers of Minnesota, that only proved our special relationship.  And freed me to just hang with Kirby Cat.  And so we did.  Venturing out the front door, to the far end of the west porch onto the driveway.  Crunching popcorn during the meadowlark’s solo (backed by the chorus of frogs) from the east porch table. 

Even potato-ing on the living room couch. 

We went everywhere in our new home together, except the yoga loft, which apparently doesn’t exist.  Kirby walks right by the stairway without a single glance up.    He needed something to not be, which does.  And I needed something to be which doesn’t.  We both have our tricks, coping mechanisms for engaging this, the biggest change in our shared life. 

 

Thursday

Kirby Cat just braved the yoga loft.  He’s up here with me.  Hurray!  

Now, I’m the only one gathering strength from an illusion.  Not today.  Today I pursued reality, the nettles once again, down in a deep grassy draw we affectionately call Lyndale Park, hoping the name alone would confer healthy growth to the trees we planted.  It didn’t.  But the nettles grow well there and they’re much better eating.   I’m learning to listen to the Land.  And here in the yoga loft, with the porch door swung wide open, it’s easy to listen.  The oak-a-lee trill of red-winged blackbird.  The listen-to-me-I-have-something-to say caw of crow.  And accompanying them all, the chorus of frogs.  Of course, that’s just what I hear.  Listening is something else, something more interactive, more connecting.  I have much to learn.

Speaking of learning, we now have our super-energy efficient fridge / freezer triad.  Atop the kitchen cabinet sits the Sunfrost, a smallish fridge-only storage for ‘I need you now’ kinds of food, like a ½ gallon of milk   

As of this morning, a pair of dancers are chilling in the cellar.  The dancers---pictured next to the batteries from which they are not supposed to draw so much juice---are the chest-style Sundanzers: one fridge, one freezer. 

In theory, the chest refrigerator stores ”I can wait for you food”, like the other two gallons of milk.  And the freezer, well…I guess we just dash down into the cellar when we need something.   I don’t mind.  At least, I think I don’t mind.  Or maybe I’ll learn not to mind.  I don’t know.  As a visitor to the US once said, “There’s only one thing you Americans fear:  inconvenience.”  Part of the journey of the Land is to paddle out to the edge of inconvenience and discover what’s there.  Do I fall off?    I’ll find out.  At least now, I can gather strength for the journey ahead from Kirby Cat, explorer extraordinaire of the yoga loft. 

Friday

The home is alive with the sound of music…ah, ah, ah, ah!!!   Today, our generous friend, Debbie---having cared for our piano since last May---said good-bye to her foster child.  Soon after, we watched as the truck arrived, the most anticipated of countless deliveries to our house, one of only a few that turned our house into a home.   I don’t how to describe the feeling as Linda sat herself onto the bench, opened Moonlight Sonata and touched the keys. 

More than the lilting, aching beauty.  More even that the shared moment:  Linda, myself, our dear niece, Rachel, bathing in our home’s musical baptism.  

Tears, which don’t come easily for Linda (unlike me!), found their way down her cheek.  Perhaps it was just the unleashing of memory.  The piano arrived the morning of our wedding day, a rainy June 9, 1984.  It’s safe to say that our relationship with Linda’s mom and dad had been strained, nearly to the point of  breaking.  So when that piano arrived, their gift to us, the ice broke, sweet summer rain poured in.  And today we felt that sweet rain, not only with the piano but literally, as a drought-buster unleashed itself upon the prairie, drumming our steel roof.  Do you play?  Then please come, sit, right here on the bench.  Stretch your fingers.  Unleash the sweet rain.  If not, just come and listen.  The musical baptismal awaits.