We’ll Just Have to be Ready Now

Final spoon orders. Rye thanks you for your patience.

I plumb forgot that the bio attached to the Yankee magazine essay I linked to yesterday included a mention of Lazy Mill Living Arts, a fact that did not escape the attention of at least a handful of particularly observant readers.

We were sort of waiting for the website to be complete before a formal announcement (believe me, I’ll let you know when it’s ready for public consumption). Maybe even more so, I suspect we were also waiting until we plain and simple felt ready, passing mention in the Yankee bio notwithstanding. I guess we’ll just have to be ready now, eh?

We’ve been kicking around this idea for a good long while, and last year, we hosted a handful of workshops. A test drive, if you will. We liked it. We met great people. We had fun. Most importantly, it felt right, a natural evolution of our life with the land, something we can offer that is tangible and – we’d like to think – meaningful. Specific to me, it feels like an analog extension of my written work, a way to connect and share that transcends the inevitable distancing of screen and page. It bothers me, this distancing. But you knew that.

None of which explains exactly what Lazy Mill Living Arts really is, which is perhaps best articulated by the brief description I wrote for the website-in-progress:

Lazy Mill Living Arts is dedicated to reviving traditional skills of hand and land. Lazy Mill was founded on a single tenet: That with the benefit of simple tools and basic knowledge, we all have the capacity to shape our world as we imagine it.

At Lazy Mill, we teach skills that are at once practical, beautiful, and necessary to the art of providing for one’s self and community. We are motivated by the thought of our students returning to their home towns to disperse these skills like seeds, restoring vibrancy, resiliency, and the unrivaled satisfaction of honest work.

What are these skills? They are as basic as honing a pocket knife or planning a garden, as emotionally and physically difficult as slaughtering and processing a hog, as pleasurable as carving a spoon from a limb of apple wood, as gracefully intricate as weaving a black ash pack basket, and as crucial as making medicine from plants. They are skills that emphasize production over consumption, and that honor the complex web of relationships comprising the natural world and our place within it.

There will be much more to say as this project evolves and unfolds, and of course I will keep you updated as things progress. Oh, one other thing I can mention now: Children. Yes.

•     •     •

One aspect we’re struggling with right now is funding, pertaining mostly to the need for workshop space. We have been kicking around the idea of crowdfunding, but I’ll be honest: We can’t quite decide how we feel about this option. Partly this is because we’re just not sure we have what it takes to sufficiently humble ourselves to the process (as a friend of ours who ran a successful crowdfunding campaign put it to me: “It’s like walking around with your pants down”).

But it’s also in part because we can’t figure out how to feel about crowdfunding in general. I’ve heard it referred to as “Internet begging,” and while that seems a tad harsh, I can’t deny the vague sense of aversion I feel every time the subject comes up. Then again, perhaps that sense of aversion is nothing more than my resistance to humbling myself, to standing up in full view with my pants ‘round my ankles, saying, in effect, this matters to me and I need your support.

Anyway. I offer this because I am interested to hear your thoughts on the matter, both in regards to the project itself, and the funding dilemma. Thank you.