Merry Christmas, dear ones. May your holiday be full of love, champagne, and mercury glass.
(and, just in case you have 30 eggs and enough brown liquor to kill a horse lying around, here’s my family’s egg nog recipe, for good measure).
Thanks to the divine Miss Betsy for the bottom picture.
It’s cold and blustery and I’m having some lovely ladies over tonight for a little light Holiday Crafting (we’ve all been a little under the weather, so I think we’ll just have to hope that our ancestors were correct in prescribing whiskey for ailments and add extra honey to our hot toddys). Very colonial, very exciting! Hopefully they’ll be more helpful decorating than this guy.
ps. for those of you in the know, that is NOT Nipsey Russell, that is his ever-lovin-brother/doppelganger Mr. Peepers.
Grey and chilly in the country, today is the kind of day to make tea on the woodstove.
Oh, My. What a time. My Jubilee birthday celebrations this past weekend were absolute perfection. Everything I could have wanted, better than I could have hoped for. Champagne, Oysters, Moonshine. Laughter, Love, Music. Nautral. Home. I seem to have misplaced my camera cord in the melee, so for now, I’ll let instagram tell the story…
So much thanks. Cakes, Anna, and Smills for their pictures and love, Rav for bringing over a pound of Mennonite butter at the last minute and for infinite other tiny graces, to Deke for the moonshine and commitment to mayhem, to the men of the 5:15’s for pickin’ and grinnin’, to Sweetheart for moving the world to be there, and to Mama and Daddy for everything, always.
Yes, those are my painted wood farmhouse floors. Yes, that is my pink poinsettia. Yes, they were both waiting for me when I returned to the country from the city this week. The floors have been here since 1890 or so, the poinsettia, since just last week, but my how I love them both. My mama has been getting me a pink poinsettia for my birthday every year, as long as I can remember, since before I wore a fur muff and a cape (like this) and took three very special friends to Richmond for a tea party and to see The Nutcracker (this was my deepest desire as a girl turning 8 and, frankly, that STILL sounds totally awesome). Also waiting for me upon my return, a parcel from dear McKay, with a new story (hers) and moon vine seeds to plant in the spring (mine), and a big ‘ole box from Jay and Katie Rose full of JARS (!! how well they know me) and, among other affirmations, this quote:
Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of 30.”- Robert Frost
Now, I realize that there may be a bit of a mid-century jibe lurking here, one about lying about your age, but that literally didn’t occur to me until just now… rather, I read it as something powerful, as if, at 30, a woman has a certain hard-earned-sense and now-finally-trusted-intuition and faith-in-the-weight-of-her-own-truth to slow down from the head-long gallop of 16, the jittery glitter of 21, and the loud, mouthy, wisdom of 25 and take a deep breath, at last, and be comfortable in quiet, in time, in her own skin. 30 years of living may not magically afford us the ability to weigh what we need and want and love and craft a life of purpose and beauty out of them, but I turn 30 on Sunday, and I’ll celebrate it at Home, with wood-smoke and family, with Sweetheart and music, with friends coming down from the cities and coming in from the farther-out-country mountain hollers, and with love. And fried chicken, oysters, and champagne. So.
So, I know this isn’t the best picture…. but I couldn’t NOT share jar system 1.0 with you! This is what I was doing at 1am with a glass of wine, happy as a little clam, when I should have probably either been sleeping or trying to locate any.other.pair of shoes in the packing melee besides these painted clogs that I’ve been wearing everywhere because they were inexplicably packed in the box with the jars and so got unpacked first (top priorities, people):
I’ll be slipping these puppies on and heading down to Williamsburg today to get some Colonial style pine and magnolia and boxwood swag for my banisters (!) that my Ever-Lovin Mama ordered for me in anticipation for the simultaneous arrival of a) me here and b) Christmas everywhere. Merry Merry!
So, this is my woodpile. The big kahuna arranged for two separate deliveries of a half cord of mixed hardwood to occur in the same afternoon (the trucks passed each other in the driveway). The first load delivered and joyously/haphazardly stacked by two young hirsute hippies who, in addition to the firewood operation, have a band, a furniture shop, and an antiquing business on the side. They spent their time unloading discussing how hard it is to find good drummers (this seems to be a universal conundrum across state lines?). The second load delivered by a “You’re my boy, Blue!” look-alike with a turquoise bandana, shoulder length white white hair, and a shirt with howling wolves on it under a denim jacket. A good spectrum of dudes to have on call. I dallied to get a tarp to cover it, because I liked going out there and looking at it, walking around it like it was a horse I might buy, picking the best pieces for my little nightly load. I felt like I was living in this tumblr. But then there was snow in the forecast and my practical side prevailed. When I got to the store, all they had was camouflage. One left.
The sweet angel of a man at the small, local, awesome hardware store (who keeps a bird behind the old, wooden counter, and also cut me a length of carpet tape on the house to see if it would be strong enough to hang my knife rack without drilling into the brick) told me that ever since Sandy hit, he hasn’t been able to order any new tarps larger than 6×8 because they’re all being funneled into New York. “They need ’em more there then we do here, at least until spring” he said. Truer words, sir, you have no idea. So. I am now the proud owner of a 12×16 Camo Tarp. Over the winter it’ll keep my precious woodpile safe and dry and, hell, come spring I might just put on an American flag bikini and rig up a nice lil slip’n’slide with the thing. The best part is that now (duh) it’s pretty well camouflaged, which is actually quite nice.
Now that the dust is (literally) settling around here, now the incredible joy of nesting projects begins! I have a serious long list of things I’d like to do (and finally the space and chance to do them! ay yi yi yip yip yippee!), ranging from hanging picture rail to building a series of tiny houses off the grid in the woods, compound style. A.Girl.Can.Dream. In the meantime, though (until we see if “bush hog”, “chainsaw”, and “ridiculous artisanal city axe that now actually kinda makes sense” make the cut on my Christmas list), there are some easy-to-execute little ditties that I can’t wait to tackle. First up: Jar System. Did I tell you? This house has a walk-in pantry (*passes out for a minute*). Here, some inspiration.
Oh My. What a time it’s been. One week after our arrival, I am now solo in this house. Sweetheart has gone back to Brooklyn to work and I’m here with the woodstove (which I am learning to master, stoking and banking with purposeful and beautiful and ancient tools, waking up to a bed of coals still gleaming after the long night) and the cat (whom no one will master, especially not Buster, who he met for the first time yesterday). In the intervening seven days, we settled, nested, unpacked, corralled, toasted with funky local cider and fancy champagne, cooked up a storm, danced in the kitchen, and in the midst of it all, hosted 18 people for Thanksgiving dinner. Hooo-eee! Sweet Family, together again, bringing laughter, stories, recipes, and a plant raised from clippings from the one my Great Grandmaw always kept in her kitchen, to be kept now in mine. Dear friends bringing pink bubbles and aprons and trout-sent-by-mail and the best dishwashing hands I’ve ever seen and smoked ducks and jars of apple pie moonshine and mandolins. And Loves, bearing burdens and brunts and just now taking a deep woodsmokey breath and settling down here in the dusky twilight, the night coming on cold and clear through the bare trees, the sun setting over our darkening field, our little house a bright jewel on the hill.
Such a wealth of thanks. So much heart full and deep and almost beyond words. Home. And just like the third and final page of the localist paper: news, recipes, and crop reports to come.
Feather By Feather 