KW-01 Happy New Year

Two steps forwards, two steps back

Here’s a thing I learned this week. In Europe, the first calendar week of the year is the defined as the week that contains four days of the new year. So if it is Calendar Week one, which it is, I would like to be the first person to officially welcome you to the firsts week of 2025. Happy New Year!

Almost every day getting up to feed the pigs is a beautiful experience. Doing the exact same thing every single day at the exact same time throughout the year is being a participant in an extremely slow motion video timelapse of the evolution of the seasons. For almost all of December, it is right at the end of twilight, and by the time I get back to the loft for a nice cup of tea, the sky is taking on the characteristics of daylight. Some days, the cold wraps your bones the instant you hit it, and iced fog condensate forms around the words “It’s a bit chilly today”.

Overnight, all the water had been desublimation from the air, deposited into centimetre long crystal shards on every solid surface. The sudden and spectacular dehumdification of the air through nothing more than the physical process of extreme cold is more beautiful than my phone camera can conceive, and greater than my vocabulary can express. So we make up new words for it.

On Sunday, it was ohhuahawooha cold. It wasn’t a bit nippy. The morning did not have a touch of a chill to it. I stepped outside, and just as the water was sucked out of the air, so the warm air in my lungs was pulled from my body, making the half horrified, half delighted noise, expressing that it was indeed ohhuahawooha cold.

The Tomato House

For the remainder of the winter. I will be working on the tomato house. The building formerly knows as the Wood Store is now the Tomato House Fab.

It isn’t warm in there, being totally exposed along the long side, but this side also being of a southerly aspect means that it is completely sheltered from the wind, and also, should the sun come out, it is the most glorious heat trap. It can be, and has been for a few days now, constantly under minus 5, but in the Fab, it’s not at all unpleasant.

I have assembled some rugged shelving in there and gathered all of the tools that I have that seem appropriate to working with roundwood timber frames.

I’m learning the processes and the tools as I go, and it’s a big and scary job, but coming along nicely.

When you learn a new skill, there are usually two elements to it. Developing coordination required to perform the skill, and overcoming the physical discomfort required to do it without effort.

I’ve been thinking about this all week, and it seems to hold true for most new skills. Playing a musical instrument - bending your fingers in a strange way to play the guitar is strange and unnatural, and anyone who has tried knows it takes quite a while to build up the tolerance to the pain on the fretboard . Boxing is a singularly unnatural combination of posture and movements. Kicking penalties, playing golf, dancing at the ballet, practicing yoga, shooting hoops - all require new coordination between muscles you have never asked to work together before - and learning it always begins with an inefficiency of movement that needs refining.

It’s particularly interesting trying to learn a bunch of new tools in the freezing cold at my advanced age, but I would say that I can now use the Swedish Drawknife fairly well for the initial debarking and rough shaping of the logs. I’m still not at all sure that I am using the Carving Axe particularly well, or appropriately. I need an Adze really, but I am yet to manifest one.

Four Years Ago

The pigs will never be this cute again!

And finally,

Without getting wanting to get everyone down, I know that many of us experienced loss in Twenty Twenty Four. I know from friends and contacts of the the loss of a father, of a mother and grandmother; the ridiculously early passing of a loved husband - actually two of these -, a mentor, and a surprising number of cats. Personally, I had to say goodbye to two very important people in my life.

I’m not sure when it gets easier, but it does get softer and the edges get knocked off somewhat with time. At the close of one year, it is always appropriate to remember them, and move into a new year without them, and it is not a betrayal to do that with hope and happiness. Life is for the living, and that is me and you and everyone reading this, and so I am looking forward to continue to share some of mine with you in the new year, and to continue to hear of your adventures and excitements, your achievements and your learnings.

Going forwards into the great unknown, with much piratey love

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

For something completely different, this has been my favourite video of the month. Perhaps of the last 10 years! I tweeted (blueskied) out that “All I want for Christmas is Ryan Ridden to teach me Physics”. And he replied! That was a good day.