Reflections on the Third Week of Spring – Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday

Old Farm Photo of Wells Wood

Day Trippers

1997 – 2005

Friday afternoon, April 11, 1997, Spence listened to Science Friday on the radio while he drove from Ohio to Mercer, Pennsylvania―a drive that changed our lives.

Across from the Mercer County Courthouse, he walked into the ERA Johnson Real Estate office and signed papers to purchase Wells Wood from his mother’s estate. On the following Monday, while the real estate agent filed those papers at the courthouse, Spence drove to Pennsylvania again. He moved the For Sale sign from the yard to the porch and left a celebratory potted pussy willow by the porch door.

And every year since, we’ve celebrated Paper Signing Friday, April 11, and Farm Purchase Monday, April 14.

The first celebration we planted trees. Below the far end of the garden, the shape and size of a football field, Spence thrust the post hole digger into the ground, pulled out a clump of soil, and released the clump.

Kneeling on the other side of the row, I shook the sod-topped clump and inhaled the fragrance of moist, rich earth. Dangling an evergreen seedling’s roots in the hole, I filled soil around the roots and moved onto the next hole. Shaking the clump from Spence’s fourteenth hole released more than soil. A baby garter snake fell out and coiled in the bottom of the hole. I shivered at the thought of touching it even though I’d touched many a squiggling worm that day. “Spence. Would you move that?” I pointed into the hole.

He peered in. “The snake’s happy there.” He tossed the sod on top of the snake. “I’ll dig another hole.”

Spence dug thirty-three holes, and we planted.

5 white pines

5 Douglas firs

5 Frazer firs

5 Canadian hemlocks

2 weeping willows

5 American filberts

1 white dogwood

2 Sarah mountain laurels

2 Yankee Doodle mountain laurels

Over the years, we’ve planted more than a hundred fifty trees and bushes. Some became deer snacks. More than half lived.

The next April two trees had fallen across the woods path to Deer Creek. Spence took a foot and a half wide stance to wield his chain saw. Brum-brum-brum-brrrrrrrrrrrr. Sawdust sprayed, and logs thudded to the ground.

While a breeze blew wispy hair into my face, I carried armfuls of logs and stacked them by the edge of Deer Creek Road. Our neighbor Mary Ann burned those logs in her fireplace.

Over the years, Spence cut fallen trees, and we stacked logs. The wood piles served friends’ fireplaces in Cleveland and Carlton before feeding our own wood burning stove. Branches of trees became fence posts and raised bed walls. Spence only downed one live tree―the hemlock growing into the porch of his parent’s cabin.

After trees―going in and coming out―garden work dominated our celebratory visits. Accompanied with generous amounts of weeding, we planted garlic, onion sets, peppers, wildflowers, strawberries, grapes, and more.

At the top of the old driveway on Palm Sunday April 2003, punkies swarmed around my face. I swatted them between stabbing the ground with a trowel. Rocks scraped against the metal blade. Spence could have dug faster, but he squatted to plant a pound of onion sets in the garden. I dug three holes in the memorial planting for Aunt Marge’s friend Chris―two butterfly bushes and a shasta daisy. Then I dusted the knees of my jeans and walked back to the cabin for another memorial planting honoring my friend Pat, a colleague and cat-lover. Without scraping stones, I dug a hole by the cabin door for a giant pussy willow―the spot I would have planted the original celebratory pussy willow if someone hadn’t stolen it.

With the pussy willow patted into place, I picked up a watering can to get water for the memorial plantings. I rounded the porch to the barrel my father-in-law placed below the drain spout. A dead mouse floated in the rain water. Taking a giant step back and giving myself credit for not shrieking, I pivoted and followed the path through the woods to fetch water from Deer Creek.

Over the years, we carried many a bucket of water to the garden until we collected rain water in cisterns. Spence created another garden in the south field, built more than a dozen raised beds, started seedlings in the basement, used PVC pipes for plant supports and protective cages, and tinkered to secure Mr. Hooper, his portable greenhouse.

The eighth celebration, of Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday, started with gardening―planting a third pound of red onion sets, two-thirds pound of white, and one pound of yellow. Then we cleared the cabin’s screened in porch. Spence steered the Gravely, his Dad’s old walk-behind tractor, out of its center-floor parking spot. I carried armfuls of travel gear to the pickup truck. Finally, I scrubbed the plastic cloth on the picnic table, dusted the benches, and swept the tracked-in dirt out the porch door.

Spence and the Gravely April 2011

At 4:00, Samuel Somers, a Mennonite log house builder, arrived in his pickup and carried a folder of papers to the porch. He and I sat on one side of the picnic table. Spence sat on the other. Page by page we discussed the log house Samuel would build in the potato patch because that soil drained well―a fact numerous groundhog burrows verified.

Superior walls (precast insulated concrete walls) or a cement brick foundation?

Samuel would check the prices.

Which of two wood stoves―the less expensive Dutchwest with a catalytic converter or the Quadra Fire 3100 with better efficiency and a lower EPA rating?

The fellas said I could decide that and the kitchen layout.

How soon could we get the well operating?

Spence would look for the contact information for the Sandy Lake well company because Samuel needed running water for construction to start the end of May.

After adding items to the plans―an electric bathroom heater, a cistern for collecting rain water, and outlets for ceiling fans―Spence laughed. “Samuel’s trying hard to keep the house within our budget. We keep adding things which increase the price.”

Over the years, we sat with other contractors for Wells Wood improvements―a detached garage, demolition of the old cabin, installation of solar panels, and re-staining logs too high for Spence to reach on our ladder.

This year, my project for celebrating Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday took a total of five days. I read all twenty-two years of April farm journals and reflected on Verlyn Klinkenborg’s  words.

When you take on a property . . . you leave traces of yourself with every decision you make, every fence you build, every tree you fell or plant . . . In twenty years’ time, a self-portrait emerges, and it exposes all the subtleties of your character . . .”

The Rural Life (page91) 

The journals and the view from our large let-nature-in windows confirmed Klinkenborg’s assertion. Tree work, gardening, and construction projects exposed our character traits―practical, living in harmony with nature, the simple life. The PVC pipes and Mr. Hooper’s stability revealed Spence’s ingenuity. The memorial plantings revealed my sentimentality.

The journal reading also revealed a corollary. The land lured us closer and closer.

Over the years, a dozen celebrations included walks. Walks to view daffodils, find frog eggs, and count kinds of wildflowers blooming. We walked through the woods but not in the creek. Only our niece Laura ventured into the creek in April. “It’s cold,” she said holding her hands out from her sides with fingertips resting on top of the waist deep water. But she didn’t climb out.

On a rainy day in 2000, when Spence and I made the trip for a two and a half hour stay, I carried our bag lunch, and we walked through the woods to Deer Creek. Water ran high, wide, and clear. Farmers hadn’t plowed upstream fields yet.

Spence and I stopped on the bank by the “thousand dollar log,” which his mother named because she and Spence’s dad had to pay an extra thousand dollars to extend their land purchase far enough to include that log. The rain stopped pattering. I spread my raincoat―wet side down―over the log and sat like my mother-in-law had on her walks through the woods. I opened the lunch bag and patted the space I left on the coat beside me.

“No thanks.” Spence stood behind me and reached his hand out for a sandwich. “I’m tired of sitting.” After he ate, he took photos of the creek. Then we squished through puddles on deer paths to check out woods ponds. Full with rain water, four different ponds contained frog egg masses―some clear, some white, and some with black dots of developing tadpoles.

Frog Eggs April 2005

Over the years, Spence and I combined Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday with other holiday celebrations―his father’s April 5^th birthday, Earth Day, Palm Sunday, and Easter. We changed day trips for weekend and vacation visits.

Day Trippers	Weekenders/Vacationers
1997 – 2005	2006 – 2013

On Saturday, April 11, 2009, I’d planned three projects to celebrate Easter the following day. First I lugged twenty-six cartons of drying egg shells from the cold cellar to the kitchen table. Only my crazy brain would connect egg shells with Easter’s promise of eternal life. I dumped two dozen dry shells into a paper grocery bag and smashed them with a rolling pin. Spence said, “You’re a pip,” but I had fun smashing the shells to put under tomato seedlings in May. Why? Egg shells provide calcium without raising the soil’s pH level. And calcium, hopefully, will prevent blossom end rot.

The second project? Baking hot cross buns like I’d eaten in England when visiting Spence’s distant cousins. While I lifted the buns from the baking sheet to the cooking rack and savored the fresh baked aroma of our Easter breakfast, gravel crunched under tires in the driveway. Our son Charlie had driven four hours from Columbus, Ohio to surprise us with an Easter visit.

The third project was postponed for a walk to the bridge on North Road where we listened to Deer Creek gurgle and splash.

After supper, I coaxed Charlie into helping with that third project―dying hard boiled eggs. While the eggs drip-dried, we grabbed jackets, stepped outside, and gazed up. In an array of sparkling stars, we found Leo, Gemini, Cassiopeia, Orion, and the Big Dipper.

The sky, the ground, and the peace lured us to Wells Wood again and again. We changed from weekend and vacation visits to permanent residence.

Day Trippers	Weekenders/Vacationers	Residents
1997 – 2005	2006 – 2013	2014 – 2019

On one Paper Signing Friday, I cracked the black walnuts I’d harvested from our trees. On another Farm Purchase Monday, Spence cooked his breakfast of bulgar, rice, celery, green beans, and pork. Leaving the concoction on a low burner, he walked outside into the foggy 48ºF (9ºC) morning. He cut wild garlic shoots growing in the dewy grass. Back inside, he chopped the shoots and added them to his breakfast.

I coughed. My lips burned. My eyes itched.

Spence lifted the pan off the burner and carried it outside. Despite the weather, he ate the breakfast on his summer porch desk and read news from his laptop computer.

And this April 11, I put on my glasses and headed for the breakfast table. A sharp sting radiated through my right ear lob. Fearing the fourth tick bite within two years, I bend my head in front of Spence. “Do I have a tick behind my ear?”

He held my ear between his thumb and finger. “No. But you’ve got a cut and a black mark. You probably scratched it. It’s red.”

Uh-oh. The last time I got a tick, he’d thought it was a scab. To be safe, I put Vaseline on the spot to smother the tick―if it was a tick―and waited a half hour. When I reached back, I felt something sticking out of my ear. I squeezed it between my fingers, pulled, and looked. I had half a tick in my hand.

I must have gotten the tick when Spence and I walked through my friend Catherine’s woods looking at fallen trees for firewood or when I cut white pine branches into kindling sticks the day before. Figuring I could avoid the one Doxycyline pill treatment if a nurse dug the tick out before noon, I called Primary Health in Sheakleyville, a fifteen minute drive away.

No appointments until the afternoon. But the telephone nurse could get me a morning appointment in Transfer, a forty-five minute drive. I took it.

The Transfer nurse dug the tick out at 11:50 a.m. Phew. No Doxycyline needed.

But the Transfer doctor prescribed Doxycyline anyway―two pills a day for ten days. Sheesh.

Klinkenborg got it half right.

We left traces on the land. But the land,and its creatures, left its traces on us.

Field April 2003

 

Reflections on the Second Week of Spring - Comparing LED Lights to Candles (A Postcard from my Jane Austen and Friends Postcard Journal)

Jennifer's Solar Technician Wiping Snow Off Her Solar Panels - photo by Jennifer

3-31-19 & 4-1-19

Jennifer’s House in Novelty, Ohio

Hi, Julie.

I lugged 5 bags into my friend Jennifer’s house in Novelty for an overnight visit. She led me to the master bedroom and bath complete with a bathtub the shape of the copper tub Darcy used in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice TV miniseries.

Next, she took me downstairs and through the stacks of Jane Austen Books to a closet that housed an efficient Tesla Powerwall 2 battery for her solar panel system. Jennifer touched the plastic cover of the slim rectangular prism, that stood a little higher than her waist. Spence and I’d investigated batteries 2 years ago. A bulky, inefficient battery was installed in a wire cage to prevent accidents. Technology had changed!

Back upstairs, we fetched laptops―mine from one of the bags―and sank into her soft sofa. I clicked a mouse, she tapped her screen, and we studied graphs.

Jennifer said the kid who’d installed the panels got up on a ladder and wiped snow off them so he could show her how the website works. Her site records each panel’s production, the amount the battery charged and discharged, and how much electricity flowed to and from the grid. Unlike the Wells Wood system, she didn’t turn switches. The battery controls the electric flow. Of our two websites, one reports the whole array’s production. The other calculates kilograms of carbon dioxide we offset. Her 45 panels could produce 70-some kWh a day. Our 30 peak in the low 50s. Comparing systems was like comparing LED lights to candles.

The next morning, I overslept. Not enough time to luxuriate in the Darcy bathtub. I took a shower in the glass stall. And, before hurrying to breakfast, I removed the camera from one of my bags to photograph the Darcy tub.

Love,

Janet

 

The Darcy Bathtub

If you are interested in seeing all six postcard stories of my Jane Austen and Friends Vacation, click here.

 

Reflections on the First Week of Spring – Stink Obsession

Emma by the Wood Stove Fire

On my knees, facing the toilet Wednesday afternoon, I shook the lemony bathroom cleaner bottle. Not a drop.

I trudged to the kitchen, plopped on my bottom in front of the sink, and opened the door to the cabinet―a place my husband refuses to go. Crammed between a box of rags, a collection of picking buckets, and the compost bin sat a carton of household products. I rummaged through them. Dish detergent, scouring powder, stainless steel cleaner, window cleaner, hydrogen peroxide, and Lysol. No bathroom cleaner. Did I want to change out of my scrub clothes then make the half hour trip to Cochranton’s Market Place for more cleaner?

Picking up the bottle of Lysol that we’d bought decades ago, I read Kills Germs . . . Concentrate. Killing bathroom germs worked for me. And it would save time. I turned the bottle to the back for directions. Tiny letters formed a swirling mosaic. If the mosaic gave directions, I couldn’t read them. Adding a capful to the pail of scrub water would have to do.

Pouring the thick liquid, I missed the cap and a blob oozed across the water. The rusty-brown syrup looked like something to clean rather than something that cleaned. With a rag, I stirred the blob. It smelled―rather reeked―medicinal.

Usually after I scrubbed the tile floor with cleaner, I rinsed with clean water. I didn’t have an extra pail for clean water. I wouldn’t use a picking bucket for cleaning. Should I rummage through Spence’s stash in the basement?

I wiped the floor with a dry rag.

By the time I’d finished scrubbing, my hands tingled. Too late to put on rubber gloves. I emptied the cleaning water, hung the rags, then washed my hands with soap and water. No more tingle, and the bathroom smelled antiseptic clean. Disinfected indeed!

The next morning, Spence, who’d arrived home from Cleveland after I’d gone to sleep, said, “Can you smell that?”

The odor had intensified over night. A corpse with a stuffed nose could’ve smelled it. “It’s Lysol. I ran out of bathroom cleaner.” I wrinkled my nose. “I want our house to smell like wood not disinfectant. Do you think I should scrub the floor again to get rid of the smell?”

“Don’t go crazy.” He opened the front door, stepped outside, and came back with three logs for the wood stove fire. “When it warms up, open the windows.”

While he prepared for another day fighting lead poisoning in Cleveland, I climbed to the loft for yoga―my stretch, relax, and breathe exercises. Breathing brought the stink deep into my lungs. Yuck.

“Goodbye. Stay safe,” Spence called. The front door slammed shut.

I couldn’t wait until the outdoor temperature warmed. Pausing the DVD, I opened the window. Thirty degree air (minus one degree centigrade) poured into the loft. To finish the routine, I pulled on gripper socks for warm toes and no slipping on the yoga mat.

Back downstairs, I opened seven more windows and the sliding glass door.

Our cat Emma merrowed and hobble-wobbled to her blanket in front of the wood stove fire.

“You’ll be fine.” I petted her. Fetching three logs, I stoked the fire. Flames leapt and the stove clanked. I shivered, bundled in a heavy sweater, and huddled under a blanket to eat Spence’s special breakfast concoction―pita stuffed with a mix of chicken, peas, celery, tomato, and tahini sauce

Mourning dove, robin, and chickadee songs floated in with the brisk fresh air. Ahhh. I shivered and took deep breaths. The breaths triggered the memory of inhaling muriatic acid at the YMCA two weeks ago. [See “The Stinging Stench” March 17, 2019] Had I created a toxic stink in the log house?

Robin

Exchanging the breakfast tray for my laptop, I searched for Lysol’s toxicity. The first article warned of swallowing or burns to the skin and eyes. I’d washed the cleaner off my hands fast enough. No burns. The second and third articles proved more dire. Of Lysol’s thirteen ingredients, three were neurotoxins and two caused asthma not to mention damage to multiple organs and systems in the body. Sheesh. And hobble-wobble Emma had asthma. I stared at her on the blanket in front of the fire.

She slept with her legs crossed. No coughing. No snoring.

Two and a half hours later, the chilled air made dull, nagging aches radiate from every joint of my right hand. I checked the temperature on the kitchen weather station. The outdoor temperature had warmed from 30ºF (-1ºC) to 40ºF (4ºC). Despite the stoked fire, the indoor temperature dropped from 66ºF (19ºC) to 61ºF (16ºC). Time to shut the windows and pack for lap swim.

The bathroom still stunk of Lysol. I left the exhaust fan on and stuffed the cleaning rags into an empty coffee bag that had a robust, dark roast aroma.

Though I didn’t cough and didn’t have a scratchy throat, the stink lodged in my lungs. During the fifteen mile drive to the YMCA, I inhaled deep, twelve-second yoga breaths. I held the air four seconds. Thinking of the force I’d used to make the plastic balls rise in the incentive spirometer after surgery decades ago, I pushed all the air out from the bottom of my lungs. By the time I nosed the car into a parking space on South Main, I’d expelled the stink―ready to douse myself in chlorine.

When I lugged my swim gear back home, I opened the front door with caution. A fainter Lysol smell met my nose. I opened the windows for two more hours.

When Spence came home in the evening, I greeted him with “Do you smell the Lysol?”

While he took two sniffs, his nostrils flared. “No. The airing worked.”

For him. The airing had worked for him.

Friday morning dawned rainy, and Lysol greeted my nose yet again. How long would the stink last? Because of the rain, I only opened the bathroom window and turned on the bathroom fan―enough to make Spence use his falsetto voice when he took a leak. “Ooooo. There’s a draft.”

I busied myself washing laundry and baking a chicken pot pie. Mid afternoon, I pulled the third load out of the dryer and took a whiff. The bathroom smelled of baked crust and chicken with a faint aroma of warm lint and Lysol. Maybe if I baked a pie daily for a month, I’d have a house that smelled like pie not Lysol. If the Lysol stink lasted a month, would that cause harm even if only I could smell it?

I dumped the clothes onto a chair, pulled the concentrate bottle from beneath the sink, and squinted. The tiny letters still swam in a mosaic. Fetching a magnifying glass, I moved it back and forth between the print and my face. Slowly, painfully, I decoded the back. Danger . . . Avoid prolonged breathing. How long was prolonged? I kept reading. No hints on getting rid of the smell.

When I woke to the stink of Lysol Saturday, I gritted my teeth and growled. “I WILL ERADICATE THE STINK!”

“Don’t go crazy.” Spence sipped his morning coffee. “You’re going to the Jane Austen meeting Sunday.” He rubbed my back as if calming a sobbing child. “When you come home Monday, the smell will be gone.”

Would the house smell like wood instead of Lysol on Monday? Maybe. And I’d do my best to make sure.

After breakfast, I said, “Please stoke the fire, Spence.”

With his shirt sleeves rolled up against his biceps, he scrunched his forehead at the request. Nevertheless, he stepped onto the porch for more logs.

I rushed about opening the eight windows and sliding glass door. Then I moved everything off the bathroom floor, fetched a handful of rags, and filled the cleaning bucket with water. On my knees, facing the toilet, I rinsed the floor with water and dried it with rags. With sopping sweatshirt cuffs and jean knees, I tossed the water out and settled in my log chair by the fire. Wind chimes clanged on the porch while a red-winged blackbird and phoebe sang. Air blew through the great room spreading papers and contents from the ash bucket across the room. I moved the ashes to the porch, picked up the papers, but left the windows and door open.

Early afternoon rain poured onto the great room floor.

One by one I closed the windows and door then walked to the bathroom. I inhaled a deep yoga breath. No Lysol stink. Maybe the smell of wood would dominate the house again. And the next time I contemplate taking a short cut, I’ll opt for the long way around.

Phoebe