The Best Kind of Contagious

Carding wool with Nate

The little kick of pre-autumn we had a couple weeks back has departed, and another push of summer has ridden in on its wake. I love that cool weather, but the heat and humidity ain’t so bad, either, what with the chill of the pond just a few steps and one cannonball away.

I’ll tell ya what’s going on ’round here: Everything. Every-freakin’-thing. If you’ve somehow gotten the impression that my life is naught but strolling through lush, misty fields, sniffing cows and eating berries from the vine, well, I got some news for you: There’s a wee bit more to it than that. The good part of that news is that the power project is nigh unto completion (does that make any sense at all? Hell, I don’t know, but I like it…. what I’m trying to say, if it’s not clear, is that’s it’s ’bout finished). As a whole, I vastly underestimated the project and the sheer amount of toil and burden it would necessitate. But that is ok: I think that electricity should perhaps not be so damn easy, given all the devastation its production wreaks. As a quick aside, I was more than pleased to see that in our first 24 hours of metered connection, we consumed a grand total of 7 kilowatt hours, and that’s with four chest freezers and one refrigerator humming. Once we get our solar panels feeding back to the grid – next week, hopefully – we’ll get that down to zero or so.

Anyhoo. On top of it all, we’re going canoe camping for two nights, a luxury enabled only by the enormous generosity of our dear friend Dan, who will be housesitting for a three-day period early next week. And by “house-sitting,” I mean milking a cow, feeding our menagerie of creatures, and generally being on-call should one of said creatures decide to take a walk-about. We love going camping, but rarely do… there just aren’t many Dans around, and leaving this place during camping-friendly weather is a fairly unrealistic undertaking, given the sheer volume of day-to-day tasks that are part and parcel of the season. But whatever. It’s gonna be great.

On top of it all again, Penny came home from Falk’s workshop frothing at the mouth in excitement. (By-the-by, I’ve been meaning to recommend his new book. It’s a wee more technical in parts than my sorry intellect can master, but it’s real, real good nonetheless). Part of it was the sheer inspiration of his place, which is a pretty remarkable example of what can be done on a relatively inhospitable piece of land. But another part of it was the recognition that already we have made so much progress and that so much of what he’s doing is well within our reach. Every so often, we are blessed with a moment of awareness regarding just what has been accomplished on our little piece of ground. Of what is accomplished from day-to-day. I realize that may sound a little, um, self-certain, but what can I say? It’s true. The other truth is that this awareness is generally lost to the minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour passing of our lives, and this is probably a good thing, only because it doesn’t seem all that healthy to walk around being all smug about what you’ve done.

In any event, visiting Falk’s place was for Penny one of those clarifying moments, both in regards to what has been accomplished, what will be accomplished, and how we can continue to evolve our practices. I love her excitement and the sheer joy she has for this life and the work it blesses us with, and it’s impossible for me to not get caught up in it, myself. It’s the best kind of contagious.

Over and out ’til we return.