Memphis Democrat Column from February 10, 2008

It's another very cold day, even though the sun is showing its face. In spite of it we've been finding things to do inside and outside. Stan and Otto have been busy this afternoon finishing up some selective logging that we have been working on for the last week. The intention is to improve some of our woodlands and field edges. With Oliver's help this project has moved along at a pretty brisk pace the past few days. Thomas from Dancing Rabbit also came by on Friday to help out. I've been using my time today to catch up on a lot of office tasks. I've worked on on quite an assortment of things: filing, bookkeeping, fair applications and visitor correspondence. Now I'm having some fun and writing my column. We started our maple sugaring on February 1st with tapping the first trees and worked on it through the weekend. Our crew, including Renay, got caught in the intense sudden thundersnow while they were on one tapping run. Stan, Michael and Otto harvested our first sap yesterday before the chill set in again to stop the flow. It's just the beginning of what we hope will be abundance and visions of quarts of beautiful syrup are dancing in our head.

We had a skating party before the weekly community potluck on January 22nd. Lots of community friends came over early to glide around our pond. Many of them also went out again after supper for another round of skating by the light of the full moon. Sandhill folks have been getting in more skating or brisk games of hockey when the weather has cooperated. Some of the Sandhill crew attended the consensus training workshops offered by Tree and Sky at Dancing Rabbit's annual retreat last week. Gigi, Stan and Renay also provided some of the childcare during the meetings following the training. Tree and Sky are old friends of ours, so we had them over for supper and a pleasant evening of conversation while they were in the neighborhood.

We started our winter birthday season with mine on January 25th. Michael and I had a very nice lunch at El Mezcal in Memphis and then celebrated at home with one of Gigi's amazing cakes at supper. I got a nice birthday surprise a couple of days earlier with the news that I am going to be a grandmother again. Our daughter Melina is expecting her second child in late June or early July. Renay and Gigi took French on an outing to Fairfield the following week for his birthday. They ate at an excellent restaurant that features local food and Gigi made a nice connection with the woman who owns it. This is a growing trend in the food business that we are glad to see and something that we have been involved in for a while now. Gigi left this past Thursday for a winter visit with her family in New York. She is staying with her brother Simon in Queens and also spending time with her parents on Long Island. She will then go up to Albany to visit her sister Monique and her family. She hopes to see our friend Natalie who is now living in Albany and also spend some time with Emmet and Gretchen on her way back through Chicago. Renay is spending this weekend with her friend Chelsi (I finally spelled it right) at her mom's house in Iowa. It's been fun watching Renay's friendships grow since she started school in Memphis and we have enjoyed getting know her girlfriends and their families.