Our “Happy” New Year turned out pretty sad

On New Year’s Eve, my step-grandson, Tony, was fatally stabbed to death. Details are still sketchy but it appears that the student-housing block was having a New Year’s Eve party and after midnight things turned horrible. We are still numb and in shock at this senseless death of a wonderful young man. We send our prayers and hearts of Tony’s family in Massachusetts and elsewhere and truly wish we could do something to make their pain (and ours) less.

Meanwhile, back on the homestead, life continues, although with much less joy. We have an unfinished roof projecting into our greenhouse, off the living room. It’s covered only with black ice-and-water shield and it’s pretty ugly. I’d wanted to finish it with hand-split shakes but they are SO expensive and it never got done. Will had made a knife blank for our friend Eric, who is experimenting at making knives, and had a piece of that old broken leaf spring left over. He also had several large cedar logs left from when he built fence on the new forty acres. Things started clicking and he tried the knife Eric had made for him, which is really like a foot long sturdy Samurai sword, on one of the rounds cut from the cedar logs.

It made pretty shakes although was slower than using a froe. A froe is expensive and that is why we don’t have one. BUT there was the leftover piece of leaf spring and Will cut it to length, leaving the eye on the end, sharpened it, made a handle from some ash we have stockpiled for firewood (and other uses). Now, a few hours later, he’s out splitting shakes like mad with our new froe. With the long handle, the shakes pop right off the blocks of wood. And, as you can see, they are pretty, too.

It’s getting dark so I’ve got to go do chores. Life goes on even on the darkest of days. — Jackie