Genesis

I heard The Beginning Farmer on Weekend America last weekend, and after checking out his blog (I'm midway through 2007 working forward) I decided to re-enter blogging (for the 4th time, maybe ... ). This time however, I have focus. I want to share my experiences as I struggle to 'get back to the land' ... not that I was ever really on the land to begin with, but I've always had that desire to be more self-sufficient and to live more in harmony with our natural surroundings. I think my parents had the same urgings, and from what I can gather, they actually farmed for a while (until they got hungry and had to thumb through Stalking the Wild Asparagus to identify their next meal).

My mother often says of my father (and I think he'd agree) that he was/is a jack of all trades and a master of none and I was always proud of that, b/c I could see and admire his knack for doing just about anything. I grew up reading his copies of Roy Underhill's Woodwright Shop books and 'helping' him as he pursued his many hobbies. He would disappear into the shed after dinner and emerge much later, covered in sawdust and carrying the beginnings of a sketch - planning some better way to do what he had just attempted.

From an early age my parents hauled us off to flea markets looking for some elusive hand tool, though I don't remember purchasing much beyond the fried pork rinds, fresh from the big black kettle full of snapping hot oil. Both of them love to go 'antiquing' and I developed and patience and later a love for perusing other people's cast off junk, old or not. While in more natural settings my mother would pull grape vines for wreath making from the trees while my father sawed up dead and downed oak and hickory for the season's two cords of firewood from the nearby Holly Springs National Forest. We traveled for blacksmithing conferences and even to the 1984 World's Fair to watch my father exhibit white oak basket weaving under the Mississippi state banner. We didn't grow up 'country' but I've had the opportunity to shape cherry red iron, to rive shingles, to stoke a coal fire, to weave a wreath, to sit on a shave horse, to shell peas, to hang a tree, to carve spoons from downed street trees, to ... enjoy working with my hands, however successful or unsuccessful I was, and to see life as an opportunity for learning and living.

This is beginning to sound like a biography for my father, but I think the memories hint and something else ... I want my family to have those experiences, and more. I want to use this medium to expand on what I learn and perhaps gain some feedback and insight from those more experienced and pragmatic.