I just finished reading this quirky little book called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning and I find that I am not yet ready for that level of de-cluttering. I can certainly get rid of things we haven't touched in years (but I have to get Jon to agree, and that is not so simple) but the author advises that you go through the things that you are sentimentally attached to, relive your memories, and then divest. I can't do that yet.
While I fully admit that we have way too much stuff and we should continue to decrease the level of duplication and hoarding (I do love notebooks and paper), I am planning on reliving memories for a while and I like some of these props. What I should be doing is thinking about who might want them next, and get people on board to take some of this stuff.
The object that arrived most recently -- my grandfather's clock -- makes me smile every day. For all the years until I went away to college, our grandparents provided a stable, welcoming second home for the four grandchildren who lived within walking distance.
Our own home was welcoming too, but it was chaotic. Housekeeping was not a priority in our childhood, although the dishes always got washed and there were daily chores that made it possible for everyone to function. Clearing the kitchen table was such a big job every single day. That table had a lot of jobs, from money counting to chainsaw sharpening to homework to food preparation to family dinner.
At our grandparents' house, everything always seemed to be in order and exactly the same. Grandpa was gruff and didn't spend a lot of time talking to his grandchildren but we knew he liked us. He was hampered by having no vocal cords or something (a result of an early cancer), so he had to speak in a gravelly whisper. If you didn't know him, that might be hard to take. But I don't think we thought twice about it, as kids. Grandma was the one who provided snacks, smiles, conversation, discipline, sample reading tests for entertainment, trips to High's for ice cream cones. She was the warm fuzzy one. She definitely liked us.
By the time we knew it, the house had additions built on to its original few rooms. As I think about it, it seems likely that the living room, dining room and bedrooms above them might have been the first house. Those parts were certainly constructed out of the oldest materials -- horsehair plaster, wide floorboards in the dining room, and the bedrooms upstairs were tucked under the slanting metal roof. There were wings added on over the 150 years or so -- one for the kitchen and one for more bedrooms. (Outside there were decaying auxiliary buildings: a smokehouse, chicken house, granary, barn.) My grandmother had tucked bathrooms into every nook and cranny of the additions, upstairs and downstairs. So it was a house with odd steps down, every time you went into a different section. I never remember wondering about that at all, but now that I think about it, I don't know other houses with so many little steps.
So when you walked into the front door, there was an entryway. To the left there was s step down to the living room. The living room floor was painted plywood with an oval rag rug connecting the furniture that faced the middle of the room: two easy chairs, two lamps facing a couch with a coffee table in the center of the space. Around the perimeter were bookshelves full of books. There was a fireplace with a mantelpiece, and on that shelf sat our grandfather's clock.
It is an eight day clock, built a long time ago. When I was old enough to be trusted, my grandfather taught me to wind it. Exactly how many turns, how not to go too far, and to do it at exactly the same time each week. When they were out of town, it was my job to wind the clock. In those days, it rang on the hour. Nowadays it doesn't seem to ring, but we know it can because our friend the clock-fixer had it ringing at his house. When we got it back home, it was all discombobulated from lying down in the back seat of the car for a week and it is still trying to regain its composure. It has to be perfectly balanced. Jon is still making adjustments.
Behind the easy chairs, up on the wall there were two portraits. One of my father when he was about 8 years old and one of my aunt when she was about 5. I always liked the one of my aunt because she was cute. I didn't think the likeness of my father was very good. But now I have the portrait of my father on the wall next to the clock and it pleases me. I don't have such an opinion about the accuracy of the painting anymore because who can really remember what he looked like when he was 8? Probably only my father's childhood friend Charles and my aunt and they wouldn't be able to say whether this was a good or bad portrait.
Below those two heirlooms is my absolute mess of a desk. The organization of this desk is remarkably, troublingly similar to my mother's current desk. Sigh. We can both put our hands on what we need, but the piles and files and notebooks are not tidy. In our defense, I have seen other business owners' desks, and they don't look so different. We do not live in a paperless world.
And to my left is my mother's piano. This piano has such a story. I cannot imagine anyone who inherits this piano (it is supposed to go to Alissa) ever letting it leave our family. My parents purchased it back when they had no money at all. Apparently it was a big priority for my father that my mother have a piano (she has been playing since she was 3). When we lived in town, the piano was in the corner of the living room of our rowhouse on Q St. Our boxes of blocks lived under it. We learned to play scales and simple songs on it. My mother had a memorized repertoire accumulated over the years and we all have strong associations with specific Mozart and Beethoven and Debussy pieces.
When we moved to Virginia, the piano was jammed into a corner and only played in the winter. Its big claim to fame is that when we had a house fire, it was one of the first things that my parents rescued. In the chaos and stress of the moment, my father couldn't get the legs to unscrew (it is a very heavy piano, a baby grand) so he got his chainsaw and cut the legs in half so they could carry it out the front door. My mother and father and Susan and Chip wrangled the piano into the front yard and there it sat while the house burned. This event was so remarkable that it was on local TV that night. Now my mother's piano still has legs that are a different color from the body. That way we can't forget what this instrument survived.
Well, the rest of our stuff isn't quite so laden with stories. Downstairs we now have a major collection of photo albums and documents from Jon's parents. He has spent a good amount of time finding space in the basement for those mementos. Upstairs we have his grandparents' antique dressers. But the stuff we have collected in our own lifetime doesn't seem quite as special. I like our kitchen collection but I don't care who gets it all. Our Turkish rugs have only been in the family for a few years so it will take a while for them to gain any long term identity.
The point of the Swedish death cleaning book is that you don't want to be a burden on your children or anyone who has to clean up after you. Point taken. I will try hard to keep that in mind and I will try to notice when it seems like I am getting old. The book recommends that we start when we are 65. That sounds reasonable. I will put a note on my desk to remind myself.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
It's Hard to Succeed in Business, Even When You're Trying
While I am sitting inside on a sunny and cold day, there are four workers out in Loudoun pushing things forward. They are planting inside the tunnels where it is warm and dry. It is way too wintry outside to work in the fields today. But right now they are having the most fun of all of us because they are actually getting something done.
Ellen retired and I am gradually learning what she used to worry about on our behalf. It is not really the part of the business that I enjoy. Ordering things, following up, calling people, following up, realizing they never called back, calling them again. It's necessary but not interesting.
Boring example of something that is frustrating me mightily right now. There is a company in Hawaii owned by someone everyone calls the Biker Dude. They grow commercial quantities of organic ginger and turmeric for seed. It used to be that the only way to get that seed was to call them at midnight on November 1 and get in line. It never seemed worth it to me so I didn't go that route. I took Heinz's advice and bought seed from the Asian supermarket, even though it isn't organic. But we want turmeric and the Biker Dude takes orders online now, so I ordered some.
They have a lovely website, laid out very clearly. It is easy to make an order. They do not take phone calls. I am beginning to understand why. I have done everything right -- I filled out the form in plenty of time, I sent a request for confirmation since I didn't get one, I waited. I sent another inquiry and got a reassuring response. I waited. I sent another inquiry and got an invoice. I paid. I waited. Today I got another invoice for the same order. And now it is getting late for sprouting turmeric. But the only thing I can do is send another note using their form. I don't have blood pressure issues but I can feel something happening.
Another boring example. I am supposed to order lime to be spread in Loudoun. I got the number from Susan Planck. I called and left a message. I waited a week. I called again today and got a call back -- he doesn't actually haul lime. He will haul anything else -- rocks, manure, soil, but not lime. It gets stuck on the cab of the truck and peels the paint. Okay thanks.
A more pressing example. Ellen used to be in charge of collecting up all the records and getting them to the accountant. She was very good at this and made sure that we were ready on time. Our taxes were finished ahead of schedule. She didn't tell us when she left that it was imperative that we get everything to them by the end of December. We didn't understand that it takes them three months to accomplish the task of getting our ducks in a row. Also there is a new guy working on our account, so he has a big learning curve. Also we are complicated because we are a farm with a lot of weird things like new hoop houses and we borrow money for short amounts of time from ourselves and we just confuse the heck out of the guy in the office. So we have been going back and forth, slowly, for a few months. And now the deadline is tomorrow and we still have not seen our completed taxes. This makes me crazy. We are going to start the search for a new accountant today. Someone who speaks farm.
And one last boring but necessary issue. Ellen used to make sure we got our order in for herb plugs, working with our neighbor to combine the orders. That didn't happen this year and now I have to figure out where to get herbs. I don't like this job. I like thinking about where we will plant things and I like getting the ground ready and I like making it all happen.
While we really like to do everything ourselves, and we do as much as we can, there are so many examples of us needing something from the outside world. And that just feels so frustrating. Jon has his own list of call-and-wait projects, looking for parts to repair our huge collection of engines and machines. I think he added it up once and we have 52 internal combustion engines to maintain.
My mother has her own list of call-and-wait projects too. You can't just order potting soil at this time of year. The demand is too high and they can't keep up. So you have to keep calling and figuring out what is available, or you have to stockpile it way ahead (when you don't have any money for that kind of luxury).
And don't get me started about the truckers. Oy. Once you finally get your order successfully placed, then there is a long dance of waiting to hear when they are arriving, and then getting details from the vendor that you don't even really need to know, and then suddenly the trucker is there looking for the loading dock. Usually they don't call until they have already arrived. Why should they? Eventually someone will come and unload them and what do they care if that person has to travel 30 miles to meet them?
But, on the good news side, I just got a call back from Eric Cox of Cox Farms fame (I wrote about them a while ago). We only talk about once a year or maybe once every two years but when I send him a text, he calls me right back. That's because he gets it. I wouldn't be asking him something unless I really wanted the answer. The bad news is their good accountant retired too and they aren't so sure about the new one yet.
Oh well. All of these frustrating details eventually get resolved and then we just get to plant stuff and keep it growing. We can't avoid this part, we just have to get through it. What I really need is Rebecca. She would make these calls and get this all organized and she wouldn't miss a beat. Trouble is, she is already so overpriced. We will have to find a way to make enough money to get her into the office manager seat in the family business.
There, I figured it out. We just need to make enough money that I can pay my way out of this part of the job. Phew.
Ellen retired and I am gradually learning what she used to worry about on our behalf. It is not really the part of the business that I enjoy. Ordering things, following up, calling people, following up, realizing they never called back, calling them again. It's necessary but not interesting.
Boring example of something that is frustrating me mightily right now. There is a company in Hawaii owned by someone everyone calls the Biker Dude. They grow commercial quantities of organic ginger and turmeric for seed. It used to be that the only way to get that seed was to call them at midnight on November 1 and get in line. It never seemed worth it to me so I didn't go that route. I took Heinz's advice and bought seed from the Asian supermarket, even though it isn't organic. But we want turmeric and the Biker Dude takes orders online now, so I ordered some.
They have a lovely website, laid out very clearly. It is easy to make an order. They do not take phone calls. I am beginning to understand why. I have done everything right -- I filled out the form in plenty of time, I sent a request for confirmation since I didn't get one, I waited. I sent another inquiry and got a reassuring response. I waited. I sent another inquiry and got an invoice. I paid. I waited. Today I got another invoice for the same order. And now it is getting late for sprouting turmeric. But the only thing I can do is send another note using their form. I don't have blood pressure issues but I can feel something happening.
Another boring example. I am supposed to order lime to be spread in Loudoun. I got the number from Susan Planck. I called and left a message. I waited a week. I called again today and got a call back -- he doesn't actually haul lime. He will haul anything else -- rocks, manure, soil, but not lime. It gets stuck on the cab of the truck and peels the paint. Okay thanks.
A more pressing example. Ellen used to be in charge of collecting up all the records and getting them to the accountant. She was very good at this and made sure that we were ready on time. Our taxes were finished ahead of schedule. She didn't tell us when she left that it was imperative that we get everything to them by the end of December. We didn't understand that it takes them three months to accomplish the task of getting our ducks in a row. Also there is a new guy working on our account, so he has a big learning curve. Also we are complicated because we are a farm with a lot of weird things like new hoop houses and we borrow money for short amounts of time from ourselves and we just confuse the heck out of the guy in the office. So we have been going back and forth, slowly, for a few months. And now the deadline is tomorrow and we still have not seen our completed taxes. This makes me crazy. We are going to start the search for a new accountant today. Someone who speaks farm.
And one last boring but necessary issue. Ellen used to make sure we got our order in for herb plugs, working with our neighbor to combine the orders. That didn't happen this year and now I have to figure out where to get herbs. I don't like this job. I like thinking about where we will plant things and I like getting the ground ready and I like making it all happen.
While we really like to do everything ourselves, and we do as much as we can, there are so many examples of us needing something from the outside world. And that just feels so frustrating. Jon has his own list of call-and-wait projects, looking for parts to repair our huge collection of engines and machines. I think he added it up once and we have 52 internal combustion engines to maintain.
My mother has her own list of call-and-wait projects too. You can't just order potting soil at this time of year. The demand is too high and they can't keep up. So you have to keep calling and figuring out what is available, or you have to stockpile it way ahead (when you don't have any money for that kind of luxury).
And don't get me started about the truckers. Oy. Once you finally get your order successfully placed, then there is a long dance of waiting to hear when they are arriving, and then getting details from the vendor that you don't even really need to know, and then suddenly the trucker is there looking for the loading dock. Usually they don't call until they have already arrived. Why should they? Eventually someone will come and unload them and what do they care if that person has to travel 30 miles to meet them?
But, on the good news side, I just got a call back from Eric Cox of Cox Farms fame (I wrote about them a while ago). We only talk about once a year or maybe once every two years but when I send him a text, he calls me right back. That's because he gets it. I wouldn't be asking him something unless I really wanted the answer. The bad news is their good accountant retired too and they aren't so sure about the new one yet.
Oh well. All of these frustrating details eventually get resolved and then we just get to plant stuff and keep it growing. We can't avoid this part, we just have to get through it. What I really need is Rebecca. She would make these calls and get this all organized and she wouldn't miss a beat. Trouble is, she is already so overpriced. We will have to find a way to make enough money to get her into the office manager seat in the family business.
There, I figured it out. We just need to make enough money that I can pay my way out of this part of the job. Phew.
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Post-Wind Update
In 2012 we had a surprise storm with a wall of wind that came through overnight and created total havoc up and down our region. It was at the end of June, when the trees were in full leaf. Trees came down, power went out, it was really hot, it was a mess. Carrie, our up and coming farm manager who is a critical member of the team, got hit on the head by a falling branch and her head injury took six months to heal. We were without electricity for five very long, very hot days and nights, and we scrambled to keep up with picking and moving vegetables without coolers.
A couple of days ago, the weather report gave us a heads-up that there was another storm coming. This time there were no leaves on the trees but we are in the season when all of our vegetables are growing inside of plastic tunnels. It is hard to get a lightweight structure ready for 24 hours of high winds. They worked hard out in Loudoun to prepare, and here in Vienna we also made decisions and tied up tunnel walls, to keep things from flapping and tearing and blowing away.
By 7:30 in the morning on Friday, Zach was already on the phone listing all the things that were breaking and ripping, in spite of it all. The winter crew mobilized and fought back, pounding more posts, closing doors with more screws and staples, moving giant round bales onto the edges of the tunnels. By lunchtime they had pretty much done all they could and they went back indoors to listen to the howling wind.
Of course, in here in one of the richest counties in the country, there were power outages all over. Trees across lines, roads blocked, the whole works. We hunkered down for a long wait, based on our last experience. Jon got a generator hooked up for the greenhouse so there could be water and heat for the plants, but the humans just had to use candles and a woodstove.
In the end, nothing terrible happened. Jon is still repairing the end of the hoop house that separated after 36 hours of pummeling and he has cut up most of the trees that fell in inconvenient places. In fact, we are already burning some of the dead locust tree that crashed into the blueberry patch.
But just at the tail end of all that excitement, and just after the power came back, we had some visitors from California. They were in town because they are architects and they came to be judges for a sustainable design competition. These particular architects specialize in sustainability, comfort, lighting and solving unusual problems (they consult for other architects). We know them because the woman of the couple once worked on our farm, and she was part of an interesting family that rented our house for a sabbatical year in the late 1960s.
She hasn't been back here in 35 years, but we definitely feel like we still know her. We are still in the same place, doing mostly the same thing, and we have all visited her mother on our cross country trips, over the years. The connection has stayed strong even if we have not been in touch directly.
Anyway, we just had a chance to have a couple of long conversations with two extremely smart, interesting people. What a treat. They have spent their professional lives teaching, saying yes to unusual requests for help, traveling and designing buildings. Their internal tagline for their company is: The Leading Edge of Common Sense.What a cool life. Charles and Benjamin would both love to be in touch with these folks because the stories they tell are all about engineering conundrums. There are just so many fascinating problems to solve out there. They were even asked to help solve a murder mystery once by reconstructing the temperature and humidity that would have been in a room two years ago, when a body was in the room. And there was some beer company that needed a computer program that would predict when to ship with refrigeration and when to skip that expense (so they had to include all sorts of factors, like weather and direction of sun and altitude and I forget what else). Who knew that architects could have such a broad portfolio?
At the end of the visit we got to give them a tour of Blueberry Hill. They could understand everything without our having to explain the backstory: design issues, geothermal struggles, getting through the bureaucratic tangles. It made it so much more fun to tell the story -- especially since they already knew about cohousing.
So we are much buoyed by this unexpected burst of intellectual visiting. It reminds us that there are many interesting topics that we have not been thinking about, and that people everywhere are doing great work. And wind is just wind, as long as no one gets hurt.
A couple of days ago, the weather report gave us a heads-up that there was another storm coming. This time there were no leaves on the trees but we are in the season when all of our vegetables are growing inside of plastic tunnels. It is hard to get a lightweight structure ready for 24 hours of high winds. They worked hard out in Loudoun to prepare, and here in Vienna we also made decisions and tied up tunnel walls, to keep things from flapping and tearing and blowing away.
By 7:30 in the morning on Friday, Zach was already on the phone listing all the things that were breaking and ripping, in spite of it all. The winter crew mobilized and fought back, pounding more posts, closing doors with more screws and staples, moving giant round bales onto the edges of the tunnels. By lunchtime they had pretty much done all they could and they went back indoors to listen to the howling wind.
Of course, in here in one of the richest counties in the country, there were power outages all over. Trees across lines, roads blocked, the whole works. We hunkered down for a long wait, based on our last experience. Jon got a generator hooked up for the greenhouse so there could be water and heat for the plants, but the humans just had to use candles and a woodstove.
In the end, nothing terrible happened. Jon is still repairing the end of the hoop house that separated after 36 hours of pummeling and he has cut up most of the trees that fell in inconvenient places. In fact, we are already burning some of the dead locust tree that crashed into the blueberry patch.
But just at the tail end of all that excitement, and just after the power came back, we had some visitors from California. They were in town because they are architects and they came to be judges for a sustainable design competition. These particular architects specialize in sustainability, comfort, lighting and solving unusual problems (they consult for other architects). We know them because the woman of the couple once worked on our farm, and she was part of an interesting family that rented our house for a sabbatical year in the late 1960s.
She hasn't been back here in 35 years, but we definitely feel like we still know her. We are still in the same place, doing mostly the same thing, and we have all visited her mother on our cross country trips, over the years. The connection has stayed strong even if we have not been in touch directly.
Anyway, we just had a chance to have a couple of long conversations with two extremely smart, interesting people. What a treat. They have spent their professional lives teaching, saying yes to unusual requests for help, traveling and designing buildings. Their internal tagline for their company is: The Leading Edge of Common Sense.What a cool life. Charles and Benjamin would both love to be in touch with these folks because the stories they tell are all about engineering conundrums. There are just so many fascinating problems to solve out there. They were even asked to help solve a murder mystery once by reconstructing the temperature and humidity that would have been in a room two years ago, when a body was in the room. And there was some beer company that needed a computer program that would predict when to ship with refrigeration and when to skip that expense (so they had to include all sorts of factors, like weather and direction of sun and altitude and I forget what else). Who knew that architects could have such a broad portfolio?
At the end of the visit we got to give them a tour of Blueberry Hill. They could understand everything without our having to explain the backstory: design issues, geothermal struggles, getting through the bureaucratic tangles. It made it so much more fun to tell the story -- especially since they already knew about cohousing.
So we are much buoyed by this unexpected burst of intellectual visiting. It reminds us that there are many interesting topics that we have not been thinking about, and that people everywhere are doing great work. And wind is just wind, as long as no one gets hurt.
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