Chillin'

I've lost count of the number of days we've been fogged in. Somewhere around a week with only a moment or two of hazy sun or moon. And contrary to what one would normally expect with the lowest of clouds, the temperature hovers within five degrees and on either side of freezing.

Such weather makes it difficult to gather the motivation to leave the house, the dungeon comfortable with the pellet stove now working and the upstairs manageable with the heat from the wood stove conserved with fleece or quilts. I blast the heat in the truck when running errands. Yet my "condition" seems to store a core of ice in the bones that never quite thaws.

Telling myself to rise above the chill, reinforced by insistence from the wife, we ventured out to lunch and a tour of the young farmers we support by subscribing to their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). We have been invited a number of times but have either cancelled or forestalled, and one can only do this a finite number of times before the offers stop or the defers offend. So, off we went with a tenth of a mile visibility.

There have been times in my life, albeit when I was much younger, that I lived a rustic life. I remember a leaky pot-belly stove in an equally drafty four-room country house. I slept with my jeans under the covers at the foot of my bed because the fire was all but gone by morning. After divorcing my first wife, I lived in an industrial loft with a kerosene heater providing a tolerable temperature when it came time to shower, for the big gas heater at the other end of the 3,000 square feet did not perform well around corners, let alone through a door. And a few years later in another, larger loft, the building's heat was cut altogether at night and on weekends. So, knowing that these young farmers lived in a barn, and knowing their source of heat was an untested wood stove we had given them, I bundled and steeled, yet resolved myself to discomfort.

Not so. The barn was more a big garage of modern construction and the stove kept the living area a good thirty degrees warmer than outside. Still, their living conditions could be described as rustic: a compost toilet, jerry-rigged plumbing, and a concrete floor. Garlic hung from the rafters; potatoes were stacked in crates; two coolers kept carrots, cabbage, brussel sprouts, turnips and rutabagas fresh; and their Farmall was parked at the far end. We offered to take off our mud boots upon entering and then saw it was unnecessary as they had theirs on as well. We did remove our coats.

Lunch was prepared on top of the wood stove and on a two-burner propane stove. Dessert was baked on a grill outside. The menu consisted of beans with ham, polenta with bacon, squash and a lemon tart. All was superbly seasoned and I had seconds of the beans and polenta.

After lunch we took a walk around their fifteen acres. They've owned it for a year but farmed it for three. All but an acre or two were under cultivation. I must say I was impressed for it is just the two of them, the woman working full time off of the farm until this last December. We spoke of the successes and failures of some crops and plans to improve fields and orchards. And all the while I thought back to our comparably humble operation, for I remembered how hard we worked with less than three acres tilled. Even in that these two were twenty years younger than us, I could not fathom how they could manage.

"You're going to need help in the near future. You keep up this pace much longer and it'll catch up with you."

They figure a couple more years.

We had coffee and talked some more. I moved closer to the stove and everyone followed, but I knew it was time to head home.