Categories
thinking big

Making Family

Being a maker goes well beyond the workshop, to the thoughtful crafting of culture and community. So with Family Day on Monday, how does a person make “family”?

Make family out of whatever knits you to this world, and holds you together. You can be a family of one. Or, if you like, your family can include critters, or trees, or sunsets. (All three make good listeners and stalwart friends…) Or maybe your family includes a human or two or three or many. A partner, partners, children, wise elders, dear friends… You name it. The possibilities are endless, and none of them are mandatory.

Family is a bespoke creation. And like any good project, it’s a work in progress. It iterates and changes. It gets broken. It gets mended. People now long gone may have built its loving foundation. Or perhaps it had a bad foundation, and you’ve had to start over. That’s alright. How a project looks in the beginning might be quite different from where it ends up. No matter where you start from, creativity, patience, and perseverance may yet yield something beautiful.

With whomever you find care, love, understanding, empathy, and grace… Wherever and however you feel safe, whole, and loved. That’s how to make family.

Have a great long weekend folks!

~Kate

Categories
thinking big

Winter Word: Apricity

Apricity: “the warmth of the sun in winter”

“This word provides us with evidence that even if you come up with a really great word, and tell all of your friends that they should start using it, there is a very small chance that it will catch on. Apricity appears to have entered our language in 1623, when Henry Cockeram recorded (or possibly invented) it for his dictionary The English Dictionary; or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words. Despite the fact that it is a delightful word for a delightful thing it never quite caught on, and will not be found in any modern dictionary aside from the Oxford English Dictionary.”

from Merriam-Webster’s Winter Words

On Saturday morning, I went for a tracking walk with OWA. It was -20 and change, but woodlot folk are hearty folk. A couple of dozen people went tramping around a beautiful property, looking for signs of other critters tramping around.

We were looking at the footprints of a fox skedaddling over a wood pile when the sun suddenly appeared. I don’t always notice the sun’s absence on a cloudy winter day, but I always notice when it re-appears. It doesn’t provide the same blazing heat of a summer sun, but whenever I am enveloped by its brilliant sparkling rays, I am warmed from the inside out.

The time for apricity is passing. I’m certain we’ll have a few more big blasts of snow this year, a lot more treacherous ice, some wintry mix, and at least a couple of surprise storms. But I saw my first robin today, and I’ve been told the sap is already running. Time to tap. I would prefer a longer colder winter, with more time to disrupt invasive cycles, more time for the hibernators to rest. But while we do what we can, it is what it is. For now, I’ll be savouring the last of this year’s winter, while waking my thoughts of the brighter bolder suns that are around the corner.

~Kate

Categories
tracks & scat

Following Fish…ers

❄️⏳: There’s a lot to love about a snowy winter. For one, it gives everybody a superpower — the ability to look back in time.

❄️📝: Because snow’s crisp white pages note every passing. From the stealthiest critter to the tiniest one, in snow, they all leave their mark. Even when their paws or hooves move in total silence, the snow records it. A fisher went this way, a fox went that. Mice scurried back and forth and back and forth and back and forth under this fallen tree. A weasel wandered along the ridge, and a deer did a u-turn.

❄️📚: It all happens before I get there. But snow is a great storyteller, always ready to share its tales. An otherwise quiet walk is enlivened with a cast of dozens, story after story, chapter after chapter.

👃👀🔍: In other seasons, the stories are often written in invisible ink. One day perhaps I will learn how to read the missing moss, smell the earth more thoroughly, notice crushed grasses, follow gentle tracks left in morning dew.

But for now, in the winter, I’ll revel in the bright bold text of these frozen moments. This peak into the recent past. There are still plenty of mysteries — the snow doesn’t do spoilers — but it’s enough to follow some of the plot, meet some of the characters.

It’s storytime. 💙
//
Wishing you all well in this first chapter of 2023 ❄️

~Kate

Categories
homeMADE news + announcements

Whittle Trees

A few whittle trees, made by this evening’s fire. 🌲
//
Like many small businesses, we’re overdue for a long winter’s nap.

☀️/🌑: It’s the perfect time of year for rebalance. At winter solstice, when you can drink in whichever your heart needs more — the light or the dark.

🔥/❄️: So we’re off to enjoy firepits and snow banks. Fill our eyes with dazzling ice blues, and listen to the bright loud silence of winter.

💤/🎉: We have wonderful projects we’re excited to share with you in 2023. But before then, we’re putting our devices and ourselves in rest mode. Off and offline. Time to recharge.

Wishing you peace, love, merriment, and a beautiful new year.

~Kate and Neil

Categories
news + announcements products

A Mess Up Fess Up

Front of card.
What should be on the back.

✖️ Behind-the-scenes, a misprint, and an apology.
//
Above is what the back of this year’s holiday card was supposed to be. Because the printer was unable to get the recycled stock we usually use, and we compromised on FSC-certified stock instead.

✒️🤦‍♀️: However, while writing our own holiday cards last night, I realized that the printer did not use our supplied art. They used a card back from a previous year instead. As a result, the wren card says it is printed on recycled stock, though it is not. It is printed on FSC-certified stock, my bare minimum.

🤢🤮: I am really, really sorry for this error. I am the sort of person who always flips a card over to check these details before buying it. And so I put a lot — like, a *lot* — of effort into making the best choices I can for printing, and representing those choices accurately to you. I’m honestly gutted about this mistake, and I apologize.

🚶‍♀️✉️⏳✉️⏳✉️: When you buy one of our cards, you’re paying for the time it takes to draw it, but also the effort that goes in to making greener choices. Everything we make is an iceberg of active decisions. In addition to the stock selection, we try to use local suppliers whenever possible. And I’ll be honest — it’s a real challenge, and sucks up a lot of time. I’ve only been able to have our cards printed locally on recycled stock by finding the one printer who was willing to special order it in for me. (I’d describe some of my exchanges with other printers as “active scoffing”.)

🗞️🗞️🗞️: This year, I was told I could only have recycled stock if I agreed to buy the whole stack instead of just what I needed, since, and I quote, “it will never get used”. I did, btw, agree to do this, but then was told it was unavailable until at least next year.

In related news, I’m looking for a new printer 😂…

I guess it’s fitting to post this on Humpday, cuz sometimes, it doesn’t go smooth.

So again, I apologize. We’ll keep trying to do our best, and if/when we mess up, we’ll fess up too.

Have a great week folks 💚

~Kate

Categories
homestead QoTD thinking big

There is no substitute for fire

“Television often gives focus to a room, but it is nothing but a feeble substitute for something which is alive and flickering… The need for fire is almost as fundamental as the need for water. Fire is an emotional touchstone, comparable to trees, other people, a house, the sky. But the traditional fireplace is nearly obsolete, and new ones are often added to homes as ‘luxury items’. Perhaps this explains why these showpiece fireplaces are always so badly located…

Less monotonous and less abstract than flowing water, even more quick to grow and to change than the young bird… fire suggests the desire to change… it magnifies human destiny; it links the small to the great, the hearth to the volcano, the life of a log to the life of a world.”

“A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander


🧣🧦: I like layers with my layers. So most systems at our place have backups or partners. We have an electric heat pump that keeps our home at “I hope you brought a couple of sweaters” warm. But to get truly toasty in the fall and winter and spring, we turn to our woodstove, Calcifer.

🍞🥓☕🧼👖🚿🐔: Besides heating our home, our woodstove has baked our bread, made our coffee, served up nice crispy bacon, and offered sweet blueberry cakes. The spent wood has become lye, and then soap to wash our dishes. The ash is added the chickens’ dust baths, used to fight parasites. I’ve made drawing charcoal from wild grapevine in its embers. It bakes potatoes, toasts marshmallows, and warms stew. Sopping wet clothes hang lazily around it, and with no effort on their part, are soon bone dry. Snow set out in buckets has melted down to emergency water. Because when the power goes out, the fire still works.

🤔: I don’t think woodstoves are necessarily The Answer To Energy Needs For All. Firewood is renewable, but complicated. But in the woodstove, the fire’s energy is visible and precious. It pushes me to use less, and think about it more. And that’s just not something I get from staring deeply into my thermostat.

Wherever you are folks, I hope you’re snug and warm.✨

~Kate

Categories
birbs homeMADE products

Birb’s Eye View

🐦✏️: This is a little winter wren that is actually not a winter wren but instead is a Carolina wren. Because I got aaaaaallll the way through drawing a winter wren and then read that most winter wrens move out of Ontario for winter. 🤦‍♀️

🍄❄️: (In my defence, I ran into a winter wren in the woods here just a few weeks ago. Though I guess a few weeks ago the woods were also full of oyster mushrooms and not snow.)

🐦🔁🐦: Fortunately I was just a brighter belly and an eye stripe away from a Carolina wren — who *does* overwinter in Ontario. And who is also super adorable, and is also a sometime resident of our woods.

🖨️❔: This artwork is intended to be printed up as this year’s Maker’s Dozen holiday card. Though I’m having trouble finding a local printer with recycled (or FSC at minimum) cardstock. It’s really put a WRENch in my plans. Any recommendations in the Quinte West area welcome! 👍

Hope you’re having a great week folks!❄️🐦🌲

🙌🏳️‍🌈: And thanks to the incomparable @wellpreservedcreative for reminding me to quit playing colour wheel roulette and just look at colour theory when I’m stumped. (*Rogue colour choices remain my own.)

~Kate

Categories
baking baking

Snow Cake – 2022

A family tradition, to mark the first snowfall of the year. A white cake with white icing.

☃️🌨️: It’s a love cake to snow. It’s like if a love letter were edible. It’s a celebration of snow and winter. The cake (or cupcake) doesn’t have to be fancy, though it can be if you like.

🌈❄️: The particular kind of cake and icing isn’t important. It can be decorated with sprinkles or chocolate chips or not at all. Some years I make my snow cake playful, some years experimental, some years nostalgic.

💝❄️: It’s a cake to bake up and savour that feeling you have when you’re a little kid, and you throw open the curtains one morning, see that first blanket of white, and shout: “IT SNOWED!!!”

I still do this. (Just ask Neil 😉) And I plan to keep doing it until the day I die. I hope the snow sticks around here as long as I do.

And if the Snow Cake tradition sounds good to you, if you remember that feeling, that delicious “IT SNOWED!!” feeling — or if you’d like to — you’re welcome to join in, with whatever sweet snowy treat your heart feels like baking up. ❄️🎂

Have a wonderful weekend folks! Happy Snow Cake Day!

~Kate

Categories
foraging fungi mushrooms

Aw shucks, Neil found oyster mushrooms!

Neil went to the woods to cut down buckthorn and found 3 pounds of oyster mushrooms. *3 pounds!*

This is *one* of them. Well, more like a mother mushroom made up of a few. The biggest of his haul were ~20cm each. Some we’ve nommed fresh, but most I’ve dehydrated and popped in the pantry.

He caught a wild mushroom and it was thiiiiiiiiiis big! 🎣🍄

//
📸🍄: Mood lighting courtesy of holding the mushroom under the light in the range hood. Use what you got. 👍


Hope you’re having a great week folks!

~Kate

Categories
amphibians birbs

The Night Shift

Owls and salamanders 🦎🦉🍂
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🕯️🍂: A little before midnight last night, I went for a short candlelit walk. There’s always a lot to do this time of year, before the cold and icy thrall of winter. But right now we’re perched on that point between light and dark and warm and cool, and I try to make moments to go notice it.

🦎🚪: When I got back to our front door, I found a little friend sat on the door mat. A blue-spotted salamander. As perfect as it could be. A nocturnal critter that enjoys the damp and dark, its hunt was just starting up as we wound down for rest.

👶🐈❓: When I crouched down to look at this blue beauty, I noticed a call repeating in the night air. A bit like a child, a bit like a cat — a Great Horned Owl. In the autumn, their calls become more prominent and frequent. Now is the owls’ time to court and set territories, before they make their winter babies.

🌜: Life doesn’t end at nightfall or pause for the cold or wet. The lead roles are taken over by a new cast, but the story — the story never stops.
//
Have a great day slash night slash day folks! 💙
//
👣📝: I am only holding the salamander to move it away from the front door where we come and go and come and go — aka a High Squish Zone. I popped them into a nearby pile of logs and we both went on our way. 👍

~Kate