Summer is quickly coming to a close. I’ll be heading up to the Jack Mountain field school at the end of the week for the fall semester, and with that knowledge always comes the urge to get things done here in VT. Putting up wood for winter and whitewashing the house seems to be an endless way to spend time. It feels good though. Autumn programs are some of my favorites to run, and these chores mean we’re getting closer to that time of year. I’m looking forward to crisp chilly nights and warm days. We’ll be running the autumn session of our friluftsliv program starting in October, so if you’re interested in joining us for some of those crisp evenings get in touch.

I’ve also been spending a fair amount of time doing small projects to make our sauna more enjoyable. Laying a new stone walkway from the sauna itself to our cold plunge tank using stone from the property was probably the biggest. The most rewarding one, however, has to be this lid I built for the bath itself. We have the bath set up so that it gets filled by run-off from the guttering as much as possible, and that meant removing the old lid anytime it rained, which means remembering to put it back on afterward.  A quick morning’s work made a folding lid, and a walk through the woods behind our house turned up this looped hemlock root that became the handle.

Projects like that aren’t necessarily the most important ones when you’re living on a working homestead, but they’re certainly the ones that make it feel like home.