Begin with November, and hope Spring really arrives

Spring weather in this part of Patagonia has surprised me and confounded me. Just when DO you plant a garden here. People have gardens, I've seen them. But October and up through this week has been alternatively warm, sunny and breezy, then cold, relentlessly rainy and snow. Despite the weather, some things have sprouted though I suppose it will be hard to figure out how to survive on radishes and basil. Hmmm.

I am sitting on a walnut-brown rug in front of the wood stove (brown being my final choice for rugs and other home decoration for pioneer living) and wonder just how I can't remember this Spring weather, or why it still seems a bit "trying" to make a go here. I guess I still need to shed my "call a repairman" thinking. It started with the hydro-electric intake debacle which cannot be fixed, repairman or not, until the river recedes. So, out of electric, we purchased a generator and agonized through the whole wiring a 220V plug to the house and figuring out the Chinese-made generator with the Spanish manual. But we did it. Then, having had no electric for almost a month, the laundry had piled up a bit...but now we had the generator and it worked fabulously! It was a glorious day when we turned on the electric and started up the washer with the first of many filthy loads of laundry. What would you wash if you knew you could only wash one more load to last the next TWO weeks? Well, I didn't know, and I washed stupid stuff...dish towels and socks, a small load. The washer quit agitating, and that was that.

We pulled off the back, looked. Looked some more. Lots of little gadgets encased in nifty plastic boxes, stuff, doo-dads and whatchamacallits. We made a few trips to town and inquiries for washing machine repair and got blank stares, wry looks and out-right laughter. In Futa? Jajajajajaja (Spanish for Hahahaha).

In the meantime, we are enjoying a few hours each night of electric. Greg watches Deadwood on DVD, I make dinner and read or crochet. I bake bread. Then, I notice that there is a sooty film creeping up the wall behind the propane stove, and it finds it's way onto my lovely loaves of bread. Thinking that something has fallen down under the bottom plate, I finally decide to take it apart and investigate. The entire inside of the stove is layered in soot and under the bottom plate I find a quarter inch of caked on hard, black powder. But there are no food particles or spilled grease so it is a puzzle to me how all this black soot got in my stove. I spend four hours cleaning, scrubbing rinsing and drying out the stove and put it back together (not to mention cleaning the wall. Just as I am done, I decide to shake out and clean off the mat beneath the stove. I pull it back and find a partially burned portion of the wood floor. Thankfully, we had a large sheet of sheet rock under the house and we cut it to size and install it under the stove. But what caused this??

See, I have no clue. We went to town to get on the internet to look for answers (also no gas stove repairman in the area). My first ten hits on Google are alarming! If your gas oven produces soot, the most likely (and this is the alarming part) that your oven is producing potentially deadly carbon monoxide gas. Stop! the first site says, "and call a certified repairman". Another site graciously goes on to tell me the three most common causes and solutions but also urges me to call a "certified repairman". So, it is by the grace of the internet that I am still here, writing this. We will take the stove outside, try the most likely solution, and knowing that bright yellow flames are the warning sign, not move the stove back in to use until we have fixed it, or gotten a new one.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of recent snows in my neck of the woods.

(Snowed all day November 6)

New Clothes

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 (So cold in the house this morning that my computer touch pad is having trouble recognizing my finger as something other than a cold piece of clay...I will start a fire before I start in...)

Have you ever stopped by someone's house and caught someone in their "ratty" clothes...the once white t-shirt now stained, torn and gray with "Bart's Air-Conditioning Service" screen-printed on the back? Tatty gray sweatpants cut off just below the knees and little balls of white fuzz all over them. And you wonder if this person either never throws away anything, or do they dig through the Goodwill Car Wash rag bag for things to wear? It's one thing to be frugal, and comfortable, but it's another thing to be a plain slob. But my neighbor Nono has never chastised me for my choice of clothes, and I love her for that. She did stop by last week with a message from town for us, wearing jeans and a t-shirt with paint on them. To her credit she had actually been doing some painting that day in town at her daughter's house. I looked down at my sweatpants (described above) and realized that my ensemble looked much worse than hers and all I had done all day was make bread and build a fire in the wood stove.

My husband was always a classy dresser. Tailored suits, button-down shirts, and silk ties for work. Even for home and in casual settings, and fishing off the beach, he always looked like he walked out of advertisement for an upscale men's clothing store. He wore clothes so well he actually did some modeling at one time. This was a guy who would put on his Tommy Bahama shorts, a nice shirt and deck shoes to take out the trash. After all these years of traveling, and two years now in Patagonia, I have corrupted him.

Yesterday, as I sat downstairs watching the sky lighten, drinking lukewarm instant coffee (using hot water from the tap because the gas tank for the stove ran out and I and still hobbling from the broken foot and can't drag in the other one from outside) I heard him stirring upstairs. A few minutes later, he comes down the stairs in long johns, tri-colored wool socks and a sweatshirt that looks like it came from the prop room of a horror movie. He slipped on his rubber boots and went out to get wood and change the propane tank. To dress for the day, he pulled on a pair of bluejeans now washed to a faded baby blue, splashed with old varnish and a color of paint I can't place, and went to the neighbors to get a tank of gasoline we have stored there.

We "refresh" our clothing supply every year when we go visit family but this year we are well past the one-year point and it shows. We do each have one set of "goin' to town" clothes but even those are showing signs of wear and tear. Gone are the days when my husband would dismiss a t-shirt because it had a small stain somewhere on the sleeve, or toss a shirt because he thought the cuff was frayed. Gone are the days when he would reject something even though I would point out that no one would know the bottom button on a shirt was missing because he would tuck in his shirt anyway..."I would know", he would say.

It is time, though, to retire some of our clothing. Things that are so hideously worn and stained from our days camping and building and painting and varnishing, torn from pushing through brush, caught on nail heads, or threadbare from volcanic ash that I wouldn't even cut them up to use as car wash rags. Then we will traipse into one of the Ropa Americana stores and start again. This time I will steer towards clothing in the black color scheme.

Mahjong stats: Games played- Games legally won- 200

Backhoes and Toasters

(Written in September...)
In the US, you wait for the cable guy. Here in "el campo" we wait for the back-hoe guy. I am currently waiting for BH guy to come and scoop and level the parking area at the top of the ridge where we now carefully manuever our pickup truck in between boulders pushed there by previous BH guys doing road repair. It will cost us 28,000 Chileno Pesos for one-hour.

Ismael, the neighbor has tried to convince us to widen the path by a couple of meters so we can drive our truck down to the house. But we can see that with the topography of the land, specifically where the path would have to be widened, we would create serious problems next rainy season. Without intelligent engineering, the improved road would be washed out or buried in landslides. We choose not to go down that path.

Other tidbits:

I am posting a picture of something that everyone will be jealous to acquire. A wonderful new-age innovation. Below, behold, my toaster!



I have been thinking of doing an Infomercial with this wonderful device...Needs no electricity...Goes from gas (or electric) cooktop to campfire...Rinses clean with river water...Lasts a lifetime or we replace it for free!

I know what Mom is getting for Christmas!

I have many other innovative items that I use here in Patagonia on a regular basis. My bamboo and cuphook clothes dryer. My iron-ring fire-cooker which is adjustible by pounding it into the dirt over the campfire with a piece of left-over construction lumber. My in-river beer cooler made from chicken wire (adjustable in form for proper rock-wedging) and my ecologically sound mop (an old towel with a hole cut in the middle to fit over the broom handle).

I grew up with Hints from Heloise, so I completely appreciate Patagonia innovations. I appreciate not buying so many things that I can fabricate myself with things that most people discard or disregard. A few examples would be window cleaner (water, vinegar and a few drops of dish soap), pot scrubbers crocheted from net bags (my Aunt in Ohio actually does this) or using paper egg containers for sprouting seeds, bisquit cutters from tin cans. I have a wonderfully functional smoker which is simple but too complicated and boring to explain here. I use it to smoke meat, fish and dried aji and ajo for my famous, much sought-after merken mix.

That's all for now. Don't be jealous...but I'm working on my business and marketing plan, and soon you may see them on The Shopping Network.

Note: Being frugal and cheap is somewhat difficult in Patagonia as almost no one discards anything. There are no flea markets, second hand stores (except for the Ropa Americana shops which frankly are not cheap compared to Goodwill) and any broken machinery, building or contraption can, and is, taken apart and used to make something else. Scavengers have no future here.

End note: After noon, and still waiting for the backhoe guy.

Sept 17, 09

Written September 17, 2009

It's been a wonderful week in the country. Sunny, longer days, a small morning fire, days to dry vegatables and rearrange the furniture in the "spring-summer" formation (couch and chairs moved further from the woodstove) and a few vases (preserves jars) of freshly cut evergreen sprigs set around.

The fat cat provides much of our entertainment since we are still not up to full power so we don't watch movies at night. We still use candlight to read by, not out of necessity now, but because it's pleasant and relaxing, even as the cat attacks our feet under the comforter.

I spied some fresh parsley on a recent trip to town, and snapped it up along with some decent tomatoes, thinking of my unopened bag of quinoa purchased in Temuco. I don't remember if tabuoli (tabuli?) is supposed to be made with quinoa or with bey, or what, but it works well. I barely cooked the quinoa, let it cool, finely chopped fresh garlic and parsley (lots), and diced a tomato. Adding a little fresh-squeezed lemon juice and olive oil (salt for me) and we gorged ourselves. As a side experiment, I threw a pinch of the raw dry seeds in a planter. Just to see...

With my diminished physical capacity, I enlisted Greg to go buy the new mattress for my mother's room. One plaza y media. A little bigger than a twin, not quite a double...that's the size for the bed that Ismael made for us last year, and which we put in the spare bedroom. He bought a good mattress, not the cheap foam things that you find generally down this way. He paid handsomely, but as I told him, for a mattress (as well as other items) you get what you pay for. He roped the thing in the bed of the truck, wrestled it down to the house, then upstairs to the bedroom. I cut off the thick plastic cover and something didn't look right about it. I flopped it over onto the bed frame and dear lordy, he bought a twin mattress. I looked at it, then at him. I said, "Did you not ask for a "plaza y media"? "Yes", he says, "but they only had the size that fits our bed, and bigger." "So, why...why did you buy a mattress that clearly isn't what we needed," I continued to bitch, as I looked at the 10-inches or so of bare bedframe. Why, indeed.

"If you sent me to buy a 17-inch tire for the truck, and I came home with a 15-inch tire, would it make sense to you if I said that all they had were the 20-inch tires and the 15-inch tires, so I bought that one?" "No, not when you put it that way," he says looking at the mattress. Now...my Grandmother always said, "Everything happens for a reason, even if you don't see the reason right away." And she has always been right. The old, cheap foam mattress sat against the window. I looked at what we had here. We could tape up the plastic on the new mattress, Greg could wrestle it back up to the truck the next day or so, return it, and order a "plaza y media". I sat down on the sheepskin rug and thought. Then it came to me. This small, but charming room with a view of Tres Monjas and the forest could be more than just a bedroom. It could be a Guest Room. I rocked myself back up on my cast, grabbed the foam mattress and shoved one side down behind the back wall behind the bed, folded it over onto the bedframe between the single mattress and the sideboad, and created a lovely day bed. Covering both mattresses separately, I then made up the bed with the patch-work quilt and feather comforter, pillows agains the back.

Greg was downstairs, quiet, humbly feeding the evening fire in a state ofcontrition. When I finished making up the bed, I lit a candle, put the nice bottle of white wine I bought for my mom on the bedside table, shook the basket of herbs hanging on the wall to disperse the aroma and summoned him up to check out the room. I felt pretty rotten for being such a snark about the whole thing.

"Come on, snuggle in and see what you think." I didn't want to say "sorry for being a bitch," but he knew I meant that. I pulled back the covers for him and he slid into the "day bed". Fifteen minutes later, he was snoring to the odd music of the Rio Azul. He had felt badly about messing up, I had felt a little rotten about being harsh, and here we ended up with something much lovelier than I imagined. Mom will be charmed with her room.

Around 10, or 11 this morning, the house jumped. Not the normal truck hitting the bridge span up by the road, but a hard, quick shake. It's two in the afternoon and another quick shake. With our experience in May 2008, and again February 2009, our first thoughts always go to Volcan Chaiten. Did it blow again (though it's never really stopped) or did the dome collapse? Did a tree fall? Was it just a quake? Though we don't feel quakes here like we did in Panama...real shakers that would set the rocking chairs and light fixtures in motion and cause us to get downstairs and open the front door. `I watch the sky and am keen to the light, which if the volcano acts up and the wind is right, will darken, and plunge us into mid-day darkness, as it did on those previous two occasions.

The day has grown eerie, gray, and calm. A road-side hawk is screaming up above the tree tops. The Rio Desague has dropped and calmed somewhat...just enough that our hydro power is diminished, but not enough to retrieve the tube ends and reconnect them. We will come to a "tipping point" where we will not have enough power, but still too much river. Then, when the river drops enough, we can reconnect the two ends of the tube, secure it and be back to full power. Before, during and after, our lives will not be much different. We will have lovely meals, enjoy the warmth and smell of the wood fire. Watch the goofy cat hide in a cardboard box or stalk imaginary prey in the "tool area", read by candlight and watch the rivers below, the sky above and just having a fucking blast...living in Patagonia where Nature rules, and we are never at a loss for reasons to stay despite ourselves.

Later in the day I stand in a spot of afternoon sunlight, warming my feet, and I listen to a song, Simple Man, on the computer from "Live: Crosby and Nash. 1977." The year I graduated from Highschool. "I can't make it alone," it goes. And then, after a lovely interlude and other lyrics, "Like the last time. Just want to hold you...Don't want to hold you down." And it occurs to me, that is what we are doing here. Holding each other. And the sun streams in the window. Greg is readying for a "going to town" trip. He sings the words to the song. I write. The cat sleeps on the chair, her long "pelo de gatos" drifting in the sunbeams, tickling my nose. We are never at a loss for reasons to stay despite ourselves.

And so it goes.

[Majong stats: Games played: 658 Games won: 154]

I've posted two posts today, so if you are interested, read below for other mundane news.

September 8, 2009

Written September 8, 2009 - Forgive the spelling and other errors..no time.

It happened. We woke up and it was Spring...if only for the day. I flung open the front door to let out the cat and for the first time in months vapor crystals did not freeze in my lungs. The kind of day in town that people find themselves digging under mounds of long underwear and wool sweatersin their dresser drawers for a t-shirt, which they will wear, walking down the spiffy, rose-bursting streets of Futa, unable to bear another day in a winter coat. I will have to dig in cardboard boxes, but it's the kind of day that having no dressers or closets cannot dampen my spirits. Nor can the fact that the waterline to the house is clogged and the hydro not at full power crush my Spring Fever emotional upswing.

Foot-in-cast aside, it's been a beautiful couple of weeks. Rains stopped, stars came out at night, and one evening the moon was so full and bright as it crested over the ridge behind the house, the opposing mountain range lit up, covered with glowing snow. We turned around in the bed so we could lay staring out the window until we feel asleep. Beds are the same one way, as they are the other, so I wonder why it feels so odd to sleep opposite? I woke up that morning at 5:30 a.m. feeling like I'd been camping out, and hobbled down to stoke the morning fire and make coffee. The cat was happy for the company, and wildly enjoys the toys I made for her from sticks, goose feathers and masking tape last week (I was bored out of my mind). I've also been carving pumice stones I collected on Santa Barbara beach in June when we were stuck in Chaiten for a day and a half (the volcano rumbling just 8 kilometers away).

Greg has finished chainsawing, splitting and stacking all but one of the fallen trees Ismael hauled to the woodlot with his amazing oxen. I always wonder when I see him working them how the term "clumsy as an ox" came about because them seem incredibly graceful, though huge and a bit scary to me.

Nono sent down five new pairs of her signature wool socks. I was a little dismayed to realize it would be stupid to wear just one new sock (I love a new pair of socks), and that got me to thinking about how when you wear socks, after a while it always seems that ONE will get a hole in it, but never both. I spent an afternoon sewing up holes and managed to salvage a few old pairs, but the happy spot in the afternoon was realizing that I could still utilize the orphan socks left over from unpatchable, unrepairable pairs. As my Grandmother always said, "Always a reason for everything...we just don't always know at the time why". She was a wise woman who also often lamented while shaking her head, "Vicki Jo...What WILL become of you?" She was right again on that point. No one knows.

I'm trading my refridgerator for having my floors finished and sealed. It's an energy hog (both the fridge and the floor). I'll look for a smaller, more efficient one. Greg traded a used alternator for Ismael's oxen work. Ismael and Nono brought back 70+ pounds of flour and several gallons of cooking oil I ordered from Argentina where it is half the cost of buying it in Futa. I'm back making bread and pizza dough again. Greg is happy.

We get enough power to listen to audio books each evening, and to turn on the bathroom light in the middle of the night and not trip over the mounds of laundry that are impatiently waiting to be washed. When not listening to bedtime stories podcasts, we read by candlight and Greg pretends to go downstairs to put a log on the fire but I know he's sneaking a piece of bread with peach jam. We are done dog-sitting, and will miss Chon, the big sheepdog. Inexplicably, the yellow Collie disappeared the day Greg brought home 25-pounds of dogfood. Minky is queen of her castle again.

Tomorrow it might rain, and the temperature drop to a two-pair of socks, fleece jacket day. But for today, it's Spring, and lovely.

[Other ways I spend my time: Majong Titan. Statistics: Games played: 445. Games honestly won: 86]

And how Did August Play out????

Coming up on two years in Patagonia. I read back through a few of old posts and it dawned on me that anyone reading them, then coming to Chile might think I was writing the blog from a mental institution in Arcadia, Florida. Certainly not the Chile that most people see and experience. Maybe unconsciously that's why I called the blog Futalandia, instead of "Fools in Chile", or "Pioneering in Patagonia". The fool part would fit, but still, here, this...us...it's no one else's experience but ours. Uniquely ours.

Writing on paper, by candlight again because the hydro tripped and Greg is in town this evening (I cannot climb down the hill with a cast on my foot - and more on that later) it occurs to me that there is still so much to do, learn and prepare for. Uncertainties and inevitable things.

The first cast...split to accomodate the swelling. That is Chilean Eucalyptus I cut and skeins of yarn in the background.

But how to strike a sensible balance between flapping in the wind, and spending all your waking moments fearing and preparing for every possible scenerio and disaster? Shelter. Heat. Water. Food, Medicine and First Aid. That would be Tier One preparadness.

So what is tier two, three, four? How far do you go? To what lengths? Is it possible we could both end up injured and some weeks or months later someone will find us crawling on the floor burning furniture to keep warm, eating raman noodles dry from the package, gaunt and dirty, laying on the couch cushions while the cat has gnawed off our toes????

The China Cabinet - Empty

Who will check the mail no one ever sends us? Or the electric bills we don't have, so no one will expect them to be paid and a meter reader will never come to shut off the electric and smell our rotting bodies?

Nono and Ismael! They are who will save us! As they did recently when one morning I was daintily slipping down the stairs and missed a good, firm step down, slid, left foot catching between the two stairs while the rest of my middle-age cellulose plunged forward and I broke all the bones on the top of my left foot. Once I was done screaming, I waited for Greg to quit screaming (he realized that his life would be substantially different for some time after this fall). Nono and Ismael had to help him, help me up the football-field lenght path that leads a hundred and fifty feet up to the road to the truck. Off to the hospital in Futa.

Minky waits for Greg to come in and clean her litter box.

With a temporary cast and xrays and excellent pain meds, we drove back home. But something was wrong. How to get me back down. And the short story is that ...in the pouring rain...in the dark, with a @%$?@* flashlight that quit, Greg had to go down to the house and bring up the wheelbarrow, after which we had an argument about "face forward", or "face backward". Facing forward, I slumped painfully into the now pooling ice-rain in the wheel barrow, and holding a small pen-light on his key chain, we made the trip down to the house. Where the hydro had tripped again. And we had to grope around for candles, and dry matches. Then start the woodstove.

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD GREG WE NEEDED HIGH-QUALITY HEAD LAMP FLASHLIGHTS! HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I SAID WE NEED OIL LAMPS AND A GENERATOR? RAIN GEAR THAT IS NOT MANUFACTURED BY Hefty Garbage Bags?

[Note: When having a cast put on, be sure that your blue jeans will be able to be pulled over the cast, or have a good pair of scissors to cut them off.)

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I BEGGED GREG FOR A GOOD PAIR OF SCISSORS, EXPLAINING THAT THE FOLD-OUT ONES ON HIS FAUX SWISS ARMY KNIFE ARE NOT SUFFICIENT?

Ok. To be honest, I wasn't that pissed off. I had too much pain medication in me, but it those thoughts did run in a loop in my brain. God bless him, he did cook for me, though I found myself craving dry macaroni instead. And he put up with me asking for this and that, and something else. He ran up and down the stairs, and on top of everything...the water tube for the hydro separated and we have been without electric from the second day after I broke my foot.

Patagonia will do this. Test you.

Patagonia says, "So! You think you want to do this?"

"What?" we say, starry-eyed at the screaming rivers and snow capped Andes and salmon the size of third-graders!

"This," Patagonia says. "With all of this beauty, pristine and stunning nature comes hardships. Keep that in mind."

"Ha!" We say!!!! What could Patagonia through at us. We survived the volcano. The winter with rains, and rains, and then it rained. But then it froze, and snowed and the volcano blew again."

But I never imagined the humiliation of being transported in a wheelbarrow (because I had to, not because I was drunk), or having to pee in a bucket during the night because I couldn't walk to the bathroom. Hardest of all has been teaching Greg to cook. When he honestly says, with humility, "Where's the ham?" I almost want to double dose my pain meds and wake up when he figures out we don't keep it in the bathroom.



NOW I know I can live and survive anything here. Ismael brought me this awesome walker he made from bamboo. I no longer have to pee in a bucket, and actually stumped over to the counter and made bread and pasta yesterday and we sat in front of a warm fire, with the sun turning the Monjas brilliant rose. And this too....is Patagonia!

A dog we are sitting. He looks like a cross between a giant mole and a Panda. He's a huge sheepdog who didn't tolerate the leftovers he ate and added to Greg's domestic clenaup duties the day after I broke my foot.

Late Post on End of July

Post July 30, 2009 (This post wraps up July, and I am just now getting to somewhere with internet access, and have the time to post. I will follow it with another post tonight which updates, and explains why it's been so long since I've been here...until then....)

Inching along, wrapping up things at our rental cabin in town, we dragged our refrigerator and washer back home down the several hundred meter path to the house. Will the fridge be salvageable? Time, soap, bleach, vinegar? While we were in Temuco for a month and a half, the landlord shut off the electric, which was supporting the fridge, which held packages of frozen meat, fish and vegetables, etc.

Other fascinating news:

It's been wildly sunny the past week, yet has rarely gotten above freezing, even mid-day. The chainsaw is repaired and it's owner now has the correct gas-oil mix straightened out. Apparently it makes a difference. We've discovered that the cat enjoys shredding toilet paper, and totally unrelated...we are still dipping water from the river. Since the pipes don't appear to be frozen, possibly we have an air lock of the neighbors oxen have broken the line (anywhere from the house or along the 1500 meters to the source).

How I've been spending my time:

Ignoring the stacks of boxes we've dragged from the rental house, I've focused on more important tasks. I received a panicked email from friends in Temuco...they've run out of Furken, my Futaleufu version of the much-loved Chilean spice mix called Merken. It starts with copious amounts of chopped aji peppers and many heads of garlic, peeled and sliced, all of it dried, then cold-smoked, then finish-dried in the oven, ground by hand and funneled into spice jars. Nothing special but for the nutty, smokey garlic and the hot, but not brutal bite of the peppers. Merken has comino in it, which makes it less desirable for fish and some other dishes. I stuck with the simple garlic and pepper mix. So, I'm making Furken this week...drying screens on racks, piles of aji seeds littering the cowskin rug as I sit in front of the fire cleaning peppers. Gathering a pile of the right kind of wood for the smoke fire. With all the end pieces of aji and garlic, and a recipe from my homesteading book, I will attempt to simmer up some tangy hot sauce.

I also needed some celery for chicken pot pie, and the only celery available at the produce store was massive bulk packages. What I didn't use for the pot pie, I chopped and added to the drying racks. Cocho came down to paint the high ceiling in the living room and with his ladder, knocked an entire tray of drying celery off the wood stove. I couldn't save it from the cowskin rug, had to take the whole thing outside and beat the rug many times over to get it clean.

The snows on the mountains are still substantial, but the locals say it's not as much as earlier years and they are concerned about water levels for the coming summer season. The Azul and Espolon are both extremely low, yet the little Desague here is deep and wide. Barrels of chicha are showing some imbibing and getting a little vinegary. The Azul Valley is sparsely dotted with little wooden houses puffing smoke from wood stoves. Socks are being knitted, haylofts are emptying out, and there are some new lambs being born. I thought that only happened in the spring, but just saw four new babes on our way home yesterday.

So, that's about it from this neck of the woods. For my panicked friends in Temuco, the Furken is in the works and I will notify you when it's shipped.

post script...the Furken caught fire when I failed to monitor the smoker. All is lost.)

Sunset in Futa

Above: View of Tres Monjas from home in Azul

Above: We ventured into town to check mail (it comes every Thursday and we missed last week) and this was the scene coming into town looking east towards Argentina.

The past five days have been freezing...water lines frozen, ground frost not thawing even though the sun has been shining. We are getting water from the river, warming it on the stove to wash. Cold and plumbing problems aside, we had some great home-made deep-dish pizza two nights ago, and chicken pot pie last night. Inclement weather and remoteness never dictates our culinary enjoyment!

In other exciting news, I gave Greg a haircut so he no longer looks like the Unibomber, while I continue to look like a cross between Calamity Jane and god knows who.

Somehow my blogger edit program switched to Spanish, so if I misspell, it's not my fault, I'm just lazy.

Nono brought fresh milk again yesterday so I made some more yogurt. The rennet I have doesn't seem to work for me...or I'm not being patient enough. I dragged in the 35-kilo bag of potatoes Greg bought and we must get to eating them...I'd asked him to get a sack of potatoes in town two weeks ago and he came wobbling down the path with a wheelbarrow loaded with a
"sacko"...35 kilos. Too bad when I ask him to buy beer he doesn't think big, huh?!?!?!!

So, we are off now...back to the homestead, watch our podcasts tonight, draw more water from the river tomorrow, paint a little in the house, Greg will chop wood, I'll bake some bread, chop and dry peppers and garlic to smoke and re-dry, and then find some useless things to take up time....write letters back home.

Pink Snowy Mountains and Cookie Monster

[These posts are not necessarily posted on the days they are written...I write offline out at our place where we have no internet or cell phone service, then when we do come in town, I post them. I am also horribly bad at knowing what day it is - not only when I post them - but when I write them. And then, it doesn't really matter.]

I am having my morning coffee in bed, gazing out over the tops of the trees that hug the Azul and Desague gorge. Above them, a sun-pink, snow-covered mountain ridge stretches and a morning half-moon hangs overhead. Had it been raining, as it had for over two weeks prior, we could have kept the heavy curtains drawn and slept till noon if we desired. But when I cracked open an eyelid, I spied a sliver of blue and that flash of pink and through open the curtains.

I grabbed Greg's big, warm robe and slipped down the stairs to stoke the morning fire and set the kettle on. Out the window at the bottom of the stairs, in a morning mist on the eastern side of the house, the sun has not risen over yet, but fired the frozen air around the far sides of the Tres Monja spires, an other-worldly scene.

With only one robe between the two of us, and my chores done (fire-stoking and kettle heating), I climb back under the covers and toss the robe to Greg. He climbs down the stairs, checks the view, adjusts the flue on the wood stove and makes our morning coffee. We put a Tapestry of the Times podcast on my computer and talk about the day. We are excited that two days have passed with sunshine, and the fallen trees might take a chainsaw now. I will coax Greg into cutting some long, straight selected branches for my bathroom towel shelf project though it's entirely possible I might force myself to wash up the stack of dishes on the kitchen sink. It is the kind of day that looks as if we could throw open windows and doors and let a warm breeze blow through the house, but it is not yet 35 degrees outside.

The hydro popped off last night for no apparent reason and Greg is now well enough that he felt his way down with the flashlight and reset it. Twice. Speaking of last night...yes, last night I found I had a cookie monster in the house. Hydro reset, but candles going instead of electric lights, I was reading in bed while Greg watched an episode of Deadwood on his computer downstairs. I felt a craving for one of my raisin, crushed peanut shortbread cookies. I had made over three dozen just a week ago.

"Hey, Baby? When you come up would you bring me a cookie?" Silence from downstairs.
"Greg?"

"There aren't any left," he says without shame. Three dozen shortbread cookies in a week? So much for eating healthy.

I finished my mother's room. It is actually the only room in the house finished. I took a bunch of pictures of the tiny, sweet room, but now can't find my camera cable so she'll have to either wait, or just come visit. Aside from a few books and the sheets and an inferior mattress, there isn't anything in the room which didn't come from very basic handicraft. The bed was made from saplings by Ismael. The pillows are stuffed, hand-pulled wool (by me), the basket that holds balls of Nono's home-spun wool...I made that from Sauce branches sitting down by the Rio Desague when the temperatures reached 80 degrees and I thought I'd faint from the heat. The clothes rack is rough wood with hand-whittled dowels, scrap from the wood pile. A quilt. Dried red and white roses from a walk around Futa. A punched-copper lamp shade, by yours truly. A couple pieces of odd driftwood from Rio Futaleufu and an old broken, weather-gray ladder Ismael left after some work here leaned against a wall to hold throws and an extra blanket, an old camposino doll my mother got at a junk sale and some hand-woven throws top it all off. I tossed a white sheep-skin rug on the floor and pronounced it finished.

I can't hardly bear the thought of going to town today. It's just too peaceful and lovely...and considering town is a place that shuts down for a four-hour lunch and has a population of about 2,500 now, that says alot about the level of serenity out here. I would be more enthusiastic if I could find the camera cord to email photos of Mom's room to here, but without that, I have no desire to go anywhere but into the kitchen to punch down a loaf of bread or make another batch of shortbread cookies...which I will hide.

Margaret's Calendar Trap!

Margaret's Cachando Chile blog is always excellent, and entertaining. Her latest post, the Calendar Trap is a MUST READ if you live or work in Chile. At first I felt a little dense that I did not know this subtle language trip-wire, but then I remembered that Margaret has been in Chile for 18 years. I secretly study-up on Chilean Culture via Margaret's blog any chance I get. Cachando Chile is one of ( if not The One) best blogs on living in Chile and navigating the culture.