Choosing Voluntary Simplicity » Personal

The Year Without a Summer — 1816

Shirley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:46:03 +0000

I found this old newspaper clipping tucked away inside one of the old 1889 diaries. The year "1889" is written in pencil in a margin on the back, but there is no identifying source on this clipping because of the way it is cut. I would guess that this clipping, like the many others that were saved in these diaries, probably came from the same newspaper that we have always assumed originated in Boston.

Read the rest of this post »

Somewhat More Intimidating Than the Usual Do-It-Yourself Project

Shirley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:25:05 +0000

We have heat! It took nearly a month of telephone calls, research, lots and lots of perseverance, and a full day of exacting work, but our previously "dead" furnace is now running like new. We were hoping to repair... not replace... the furnace, and this turned out to be a problem because the part we needed didn't seem to exist. There used to be two dealers within a sixty-mile radius selling and servicing this kind of furnace. The dealer we bought the furnace from went out of business a few years ago. The other dealer is closing his business in a few months because of the recession and he had absolutely no interest in trying to help us find parts or information.

Read the rest of this post »

Progress, Perhaps… But an Intangible Something Has Been Lost

Shirley — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:12:37 +0000

It's actually starting to feel almost spring-like here. When the days are bright and sunny like this, and the temperatures rise above freezing during the day and drop down below freezing at night, this is sugaring weather! When I was a very young child, my parents "sugared" every year, and we spent many long hours wading through the deep snow to gather the sap, and even more long hours huddled around the fire waiting while the sap boiled. It was a lot of work... thirty-five to forty gallons of sap boils down to make just one gallon of syrup... but we had fun, too. Often we cooked our supper on the fire or toasted marshmallows while my parents kept an eye on the syrup's progress. Even a whiff of a certain type of wood smoke will still bring back happy memories of those times.

Read the rest of this post »

It’s Almost Time To Plant the Tomatoes

Shirley — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:54:54 +0000

I just finished paring down a seed order for tomatoes (if I had the space, I'd get one of each!), and I think I have finally made my choices. I'm ordering heirloom seeds and one or two hybrids. This order is only for the smaller, "novelty" tomato varieties. I'll be ordering the seeds for larger tomatoes from another company.

Read the rest of this post »

I Know There Must Be a Logical Explanation

Shirley — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:32:47 +0000

Have you ever had anything really weird happen that didn't seem to have a logical explanation? I had an experience like that last summer.

Read the rest of this post »

Things Could Be a Whole Lot Worse

Shirley — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:46:27 +0000

As weeks go this one hasn't been the greatest. On Sunday night the weather forecast was for overnight temperatures near thirty below zero and strong winds that would make the wind chill temperatures even lower. The house was warm and cozy when we went to bed... when we woke up it was COLD!!!

Our furnace is set to maintain a certain range of temperatures so the coldness we were feeling was unusual, but the reality that something was very wrong didn't sink in immediately because we knew how terribly cold it was outside. Then we discovered we had frozen water pipes and just to make everything perfect... frozen drains as well. And when we went to turn the thermostat on the furnace up a notch, we found that the furnace wasn't sending out any heat at all... and in fact was frantically blinking out its little error message to indicate that it had stopped running entirely.

Read the rest of this post »