Patience

I suppose now I can check "re-roof a house during a Vermont winter" off of my life list of dumb ideas accomplished. After waiting for 8 weeks for our roofer to have the right combination of weather and healthy, willing crew, I was pleasantly surprised this weekend to find the house with its first new roof in more than 45 years. If you look closely, you'll see our man Vern to the left of the chimney.

This is the time of year to see the land - snowshoes and a light jacket - elevated above the underbrush, and equipped with crampons to navigate the steep terrain, it is arguably easier to hike around now than it is in the summer.

The mud is spectacular. The decomposing road almost convinced me that spring is upon us - but I know better than that - we predicted April 23rd at 11:35AM for the Brookfield Ice Out competition - a raffle to see who can guess the closest day, hour, and minute to when a concrete block falls through the ice on Sunset Lake. Open areas are almost bare, but there is a good 2 feet of snow in places in the woods.

Underway!

Giving up secrets

At long last the roofers and carpenters have begun their work, and just in time, too as temperatures have been hovering in the 20s during the day and dropping to the way cold at night.

We think the house was built in 1800, but that’s just a guess. We haven’t completed deed research or definitively dated the structure. We know that it is certainly early 1800’s, but that’s about it.

It was a pleasant surprise this morning when I talked to our carpenter, a local guy who has restored most of the antique homes in Pond Village. He knows old. He told me today that the frame looks “real old.”

He thinks that the house was built in two pieces. We know that there used to be a shed addition that had a two bay garage and probably a woodshed. There certainly were other structures at other times. The barn foundation remains from a time when a small dairy herd roamed our field, back before the fields became forest again. Evidence suggests that part of the house burned at some point, and was rebuilt.

The current best guess is that the oldest part of the house is an 18th Century frame – I hope that it’s pre-Revolution, but only time will tell.

Happy .5

Today the boy would by 6 months old, a pudgy little pumpkin. I'd be home with him, probably taking him on a long walk in his stroller, introducing him to blowing leaves and to the first chilly air of the season. Might almost be time to break out Aunt Steph's chunky knit hat to keep the ol' noggin warm.

Instead, we find ourselves with empty arms, looking for something to love, and setting our hands to work on another stage of our lives. We bought the farm (!) not to fill Baker's unfillable void, but rather as a place of refuge and renewal where through the process of restoring the old house and bringing the land back to productive use, we may create a space to remember our boy, and welcome family and friends to gather.

There is something timeless about the work that lies ahead of us. We are preparing the house for winter, in much the same way that the original inhabitants did 208 years ago. We'll mow the fields once more, and we'll try to seal out the cold and wind as best we can. A new roof will go on, and will offer protection to a frame that was cut from timber on this very land, and has survived the decades and generations, settled, skewed, and weathered, but strong.

I imagine those people who came before us and lived in this tiny house, the babies that were born here, those that didn't make it, and whose memory is erased to history. Like them, we have no choice but to find a way forward, grieving our lost boy, carrying him with us, and fixing the roof.

Happy .5, Baker.