Late winter spoon buttering.
The remaining 2017 tomatoes have finally been cooked down into sauce, and with that, the quick pace of summer is on my mind. Soon, it’ll return to my bones, too, but not yet. I’ve been knitting quite a bit this winter, even despite a recent run-in between a dull knife and my left thumb. I’ve always been hard on my hands. Abusive, really. I should be more careful.
With the slow but definite waning of winter, I start to think of all that comes next for us. It’s a little overwhelming because I feel like we’re back at square one with our Vermont house hunt, and after last year’s attempt not panning out, it’s hard to feel super optimistic. I took a quick look at real estate listings yesterday and found only one property that grabbed my attention, and it’s further out than we’d like to be. Sweet place though. Comes with a two story barn that has an attached workshop with a woodstove, a woodshed, guest cabin with a woodstove, root/wine cellar (a beautiful one judging from the photo), established gardens with irrigation, hoop house, cold frames and raised beds, mature berries and fruit trees, 25 acres with 11 of them certified as organic fields and 1.5 in current market production, a pond that is “filling” (which is probably realtor speak for “vernal pond in the spring”). All good things, not even mentioning the house! We tend to be more interested in a property's overall infrastructure, houses are secondary for us. This particular home is adorable though, appears to be cobb style with wood floors throughout (okay, that is actually really important), exposed beams, and a few other interesting details. To be honest though, I’m kind of missing December when it felt easy and understandable to back burner all this stuff as we hunkered down for winter. But I guess it’s time to dig in again and see where the road takes us. Maybe 2018 will be the year we find a really great root cellar that happens to come with a home.