Woodworking 101 and My Escape to New Hampshire

Me on my tractor!

In case you haven’t heard me mention it before…..I chucked my entire life at the age of 52......4 grown kids and a husband of 31 years (actually we chucked each other) when I ran off to build a log cabin in the mountains of New Hampshire. I also kind of chucked my mom who was reasonably happy with lots of friends in a posh retirement community that closely resembled a country club.  In my defense I should mention that I did ask her if she wanted to come along with me. Whereupon she looked at me as if I had sprouted two heads. 

I suppose I should clarify what building a log cabin really meant in my case.  No, it did not mean that I personally chopped down a bunch of trees and turned them into hand hewn logs.  I hired the first company listed in the local New Hampshire phone book by the name of Crockett Log Homes (sounded pretty darn woodsy to me) and Jeff, a rugged looking bearded mountain guy helped me pick out a cabin plan. With a several modifications it became and still is to this day their model named “The Holly!”  I kid you not!!! http://www.crockettloghomes.com/holly-log-home.html

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent that first winter in a wobbly, one room stilt house with no running water and a small wood stove for heat while my cabin was being built.  The cabin construction was like watching giant Lincoln Logs being stacked together, and I was beside myself with excitement to move in when they finished in February.  It had been a very snowy winter.  The day before moving day a blizzard dumped 3 more feet of snow just when I needed to drive to the nearest airport which was several little states away in Massachusetts to pick up my moving crew. 

Several of my grown kids and their friends were flying out to help me move my furniture from storage and into my cabin.  My new/used 4 wheel drive truck had inconveniently decided not to start buried in snow in my driveway.  I dug a tunnel down through the snow, rolled over on my back and shimmied underneath it in order to hit the starter and anything that remotely looked like it with a hammer, while receiving these instructions on my cell phone from a mechanic friend back in Wisconsin.  Nice idea but no luck!  My helpers had to stay in a hotel for a couple of days until I could get it repaired and pick them up. 

The rest of the move went very well and pretty soon my lovely cabin was looking quite cozy with all of my old furniture hauled out of storage.  My moving crew flew back to Wisconsin, and I enjoyed the rest of that glorious winter snowshoeing in the surrounding forest and stoking the 2 wood burning stoves that the builders had installed. 

By spring, I was running out of the firewood I had purchased and stacked next to the cabin during the winter.  I knew that there was some wood under the snow that I would be able to use, but as the snow melted, I realized I had severely underestimated the amount.  In fact, I was slightly horrified at the pile of fallen trees that littered the mountainside! 

Looking up at my cabin.

Let me take a moment to clarify what happens when you have a cabin built in a forest on a mountain.   Many trees are removed to make room for your cabin and also for large equipment to drill a well, dig a basement and make a driveway etc. What I didn’t realize was that all of these trees would be scattered helter skelter down the hill from my cabin.  There was also another huge pile of construction lumber left over.   They apparently don’t clean up after themselves.

Cleanup crew...my son and trusty dog, Raven!

I was not one to shrink from a daunting task and in fact rather loved a challenge. So, I immediately purchased an airline ticket for one of my sons to fly to New Hampshire and help me out.  My next purchases were a really neat hydraulic log splitter and a chain saw!  I wasn’t fond of using the chain saw, but I was about to start a long term love affair with my log splitter!  My son cut up the logs and we split and stacked them together.   We made quite a team and in a short amount of time the wood piles were starting to look like a stockade.

 I cheated and rented a tractor for a couple of days to haul more wood up to the cabin from the pile below.  Did I mention that the ground was littered with lots of rocks and boulders?  They were actually quite beautiful rocks, some like large crystals, but rather impossible to push a wheel barrow full of logs over. 

 

I won’t go into details about flattening my thumb in my hydraulic wood splitter.  It took a few seconds for me to figure out why my thumb was hurting so bad. After all, I was the one controlling the lever.  It took a few more seconds for my brain to send a message to my other hand to reverse the lever.  Note to self:  Keep your fingers out from behind the log that is being split! It made for a slight interruption of the log splitting caper for a trip to the emergency room.  Over time my thumb resumed its normal shape.

Holy Smokes...that's a lot of wood!

As fall approached there were still some really big trees that needed to be cut up, so I hired a local guy named Vern to come and take care of it.  He suggested that I gather up branches and brush to burn while he cut up the big stuff with his hefty chain saw.  It was a rather windy day, but there was some snow on the ground so Vern assured me that a bonfire was a good idea.  He didn’t notice that the large tree he was cutting down had caught on fire in a crevice above him until I pointed it out to him.  Then Vern conveniently disappeared when I wasn’t looking never to be seen again.  I spent the next hour packing the fallen tree with snow in the dark to put out the fire. 

Vern and the flaming tree!

Not contented with having two wood burning stoves, I decided that I needed to have a wood burning cook stove as well.  Luckily the locals in those mountains were always very helpful.  It only took two guys and me to wrestle a 600 lb. wood cook stove through the kitchen door and into place.  Never mind a couple of gouges in the new pine floor.  The distressed look only added character to the place.  I even cooked an entire turkey dinner in it when my kids all visited the next Christmas.  They don’t really warn you about how much heat those big old stoves give off.  The dinner was great but it was probably 100 degrees in my kitchen in the dead of winter. 

Me and a turkey!

I have had a special relationship with wood since then.  It’s been 13 years since I ran away and lived in those glorious mountains for 2 years.  I didn’t even come close to working my way through that stockade pile of wood and left it behind for the next inhabitants to enjoy it at their leisure.  Over the years I had several more wood burning stoves back in Wisconsin, but no big forests to harvest from.  I have only recently gotten over my urge to pull over and start throwing road kill wood into the back of my beaten up Toyota Matrix.  You would be totally amazed at the amount of wood you can fit into those little cars!

Heidi's Hut and a Heart of Gold

One of the greatest gifts that my mom gave me was to encourage my creativity.  I have vivid memories of the excitement of receiving new boxes of crayons and coloring books when I was 4 years old.  I also remember starting piano lessons at that age and soon after discovering the joy of reading books.

I spent countless happy hours painting, reading and playing the piano as I grew up.  One of my favorite first books was “Heidi” by Johanna Spyri which my mom read faithfully to me every evening at bedtime.  I loved that story so much that I often dreamed of being that adventurous little girl in the snow covered Alps. 

When I advanced from crayons to paints, mom would buy me paint-by-number oils.  I must have been about 10 years old at the time.  One day, my mom bought me a blank canvas and some paints and suggested that I create my own painting.  Some of my first paintings were my rendition of “Heidi’s Hut” perched in the snow covered Alps.  I remember I painted several versions of it. 

Our family started downhill skiing when I was 12 years old and a new love affair was born of flying on skis down snow covered slopes.  I have many happy memories of those years spent with my parents enjoying winter together.  Back then, the Wisconsin ski hills were pretty primitive with only rope tows to get you to the top and heavy wooden skis that didn’t release very well when you fell.  The hills were not crowded since skiing wasn’t all that popular yet and a rope tow ticket for the day cost 50 cents. Some of the people that skied in those days were from Austria and Germany and had grown up skiing in the mountains of Europe.  They were great skiers who became our good friends and taught me how to ski.

I painted one of my best versions of “Heidi’s Hut” at the age of 12.  It was an ambitious attempt for me and quite a large painting. Mom was always so proud of each of my paintings, sometimes giving them away to her friends as gifts.  I never kept track of where my paintings went because I was only interested in what I could paint next.

Fast forward 50 years where I am having dinner at my daughter’s home with my former husband.  He and I have been friends all of our lives and we still are.  He has been a witness to many of the things I have painted even as a child.  His elderly mom still lives in the neighborhood where we grew up, and he is often there taking care of her.  We were all dumbfounded that evening as he told a story about a rummage sale the previous day near his mom’s home where he had seen one of my old paintings.  The people that held the sale apparently did not speak English very well.  In fact they seemed to be German.  He did understand that they wanted $30 for the painting of “Heidi’s Hut” that I had painted over 50 years ago.  He did not understand their explanation of how it came to be there. 

All of us sat there in stunned silence wondering why he hadn’t bought it.  I mean…what were the chances of him seeing a painting that I did as a child, over 50 years later at a rummage sale?  It was a disappointing moment but we didn’t say much, other than my son-in-law asked the name of the street where the rummage sale had been. 

Several days later we were asked to come to our daughter’s home again because my son-in-law had a surprise for me.  With a big smile on his face, he presented me with my painting of “Heidi’s Hut.”  My dear son-in-law had taken the time to locate the street where the rummage sale had been and knocked on doors until he found the right one.  And yes the occupants did not speak English very well.  So he did not find out where the painting had been for 50 years.  But they did make it very clear that he was getting quite a bargain for $25 because so many people had been interested in it. 

As far as I can guess, mom must have given it to one of our German skiing friends so many years ago.  It really doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that my son-in-law has a heart of gold and knew that seeing it again would mean something to me.   The painting of “Heidi’s Hut” now hangs proudly in their home and makes me smile every time I see it.

Meditations on Sweet Cream of Tomato Soup

I am making Sweet Cream of Tomato Soup today.  I have made countless batches of it over the 30 years that I have had a vegetable garden.  I love the feel of the weighty red globes of tomatoes that I have gathered from my garden waiting to be made into soup from the plants I nurtured all summer long.  And of course there is the heavenly smell that fills the kitchen as it simmers in my big soup kettle on the stove. 

What I never really consciously thought about were the sounds that accompany this kitchen ritual.  There is a gentle hum this time of the year as the fullness of summer is preparing to slip away.  The crickets are singing quietly in the grass outside, accompanied by the sweet calls of goldfinches at the feeder.  The chatter of the hummingbirds along with the whirring of their little wings also drifts in through my kitchen window.  

A gentle breeze ruffles the leaves on the big maple tree near the lake and sends little waves lapping on the shore.  In the distance I can hear the laughter of children playing at the beach down the road.  All of this settles in my soul like a balm to my spirit as I go through the motions of this ritual that is so much a part of my life. 

As I prepare the ingredients, my thoughts wander, and I see my children at various ages laughing and splashing in the lake or running barefoot in and out of the kitchen with their friends for a summer treat of popsicles or a quick meal, only to race out again and play until dark.

The house is quiet now as I reflect on these things.  My kids are all grown and have moved on to their own lives, but the ritual remains, and I smile at the memories and the gentle hum of late summer that floats through my windows.

This recipe is from Farm House Cookbook by Susan Herrmann Loomis

Over the years I have eliminated the milk because it’s just so darn good all by itself!  I freeze it in small containers to eat during the winter.  Then I get to enjoy Meditations on Tomato Soup all over again.

Sweet Cream of Tomato Soup

3 medium onions, peeled and chopped

¼ cup water

½ bunch celery (about 6 ribs), trimmed and chopped

6 pounds fresh ripe tomatoes, quartered

2 tablespoons coarse (kosher) salt

1 to 2 tablespoons sugar (optional)

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup all-purpose flour

4 cups milk

1.  Place onions and water in a large soup pot over medium heat, and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook, until the onions have softened.  Stir frequently to keep from browning.

2.  Add the celery, tomatoes and salt to the onions, stir, and raise the heat to medium.  Cook, covered, until the tomatoes are tender, about 1 hour.  Taste and add enough sugar to smooth out the flavor.  Cook another 5 minutes.

3.  In a small bowl mix together the butter and the flour until thoroughly combined.

4.  Strain the soup, discarding the solids.  Return the soup to a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Stir 1 cup of the soup into the flour and butter mixture, whisking until there are no lumps; then whisk that mixture into the soup.  Lower the heat and gently cook, stirring frequently, until the soup has the consistency of a medium-thick gravy.  Let it come just to the boiling point, but do not boil.

5.  Heat the milk in another small saucepan over medium heat until it is almost at the boiling point.  Slowly add the milk to the soup (do not let the soup boil, or it may curdle).  Stir well, and serve.

12 cups (8 to 10 servings)

Note: The soup base (through step 4) may be canned or frozen.  After thawing (if necessary) and reheating, add 1 cup hot milk to each 2 cups of soup base, as described in step 5.