Fast Forward

The first Summer (2006) and Winter (2006-2007) were challenging months for us, which my wife Sue is writing about in a book we hope to have published within the next year. In hind-sight Sue and I were glad the first year in our house tested us because we no longer take the basic necessities of life for granted. I think we also have learned to really value the process of tending to life's basic needs. For example, we actually enjoy cutting brush, preparing the garden, harvesting the fruits, cleaning and cutting vegetables for meals. After a hard day's work dinner tastes so much better and we love the fact that many of our meals now come from plants we grow.

I may have mentioned it in an earlier posting, but some time ago Sue and I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and we loved it! Sue and I were motivated by this book to become "locavores" - what we cannot produce ourselves we attempt to purchase as close to home as possible. After we were able to get fully settled Sue and I began looking around our community for local farms who sold their produce by farm stands or via phone orders. It turned ou there were more farms doing this than we imagined. In fact, several local organizations joined together and annually publish a guide map of the farms in Whatcom County, WA identifying what items they grow and sell. It also and provides location and contact information. We go to a local Blueberry Farm to do you-pick for about $1.25 a pound - this year Sue has frozen about 50 lbs. of blueberries. Our own strawberry crop, this year, netted us over 9 quarts of frozen berries - not to mention the amount we gave away to neighbors or ate fresh ourselves.

At present our garden harvest is winding down and I'm spending a good deal of my time building up a supply of firewood for heating our home this Fall and Winter. We hired a couple of professional loggers to fell two very large multi-trunked broad leaf maple trees, which were growing on a steep slope just east of our home. Both trees were slowly dying and there was a good deal of standing dead sections, which we wanted to use for firewood. I had the loggers fell the trees and buck them up into 45 inch-long logs, which I will latter cut and split up. This will take some time. I'm working on the dead portions first because I can use them for firewood right away. Well, have to go, its about time to go out and cut some firewood.