From the Studio

Plumbing: RESOLVED!! (for now)

I mentioned last week that the pipes leading out of our house froze with temperatures staying consistently under freezing. Jed and our landlord got to work, putting in a new, skinnier pipe to direct water out of the barn where it had been overflowing as a temporary fix.

However, within the last couple of days, temperatures have warmed up just enough to dethaw the pipes...and we are back in business!! No more showering at the in-laws, thinking it is unfair that Jed can just go outside to relieve himself while it's not quite so simple for me. So, life has gotten much more 21st century, at least for now... *sigh*

"Are you poor?"

While winding up the day in my last art class of the day, a group of teenage girls started peppering me with a series of questions. Somehow they found out that Jed and I don't have a television in our home.

From previous conversations I had explained how my husband and I lived in a loft apartment above a barn. We can sometimes hear the ever-fattening pigs snore at night, and in the middle of the day or feel the goats ramming their heads into the wall of the barn, sending tremors up to our level. As I've mentioned before, we also hear (and sometimes have become deaf to) the sound of roosters--at all hours of the day and night.

Anyhow, my students started wondering what else we went without in our apartment, and the questions began. "Mrs. Stephensen, do you have a microwave?" I told them know, and one girl offered to give me one because her family had just gotten a brand-new one and the old one was just sitting on the counter, unused but fully functional. "Internet?" No. "Central-heating?" No, we use a fireplace. "What kind of bathtub do you have? I can just imagine...one of those old-fashioned ones with the claw feet." No. And we have a toilet, with running water too. "A dishwasher?" No. We wash our dishes by hand.

As the questions came to an end, one girl asked, "Are you guys poor? I can't stand the thought of one of my teachers being poor" They were worried about why we went without all of these modern conveniences. Since I wasn't poor (which really is a relative question), they wanted to know if I lived the way I do because of my religion. Which isn't the case either; I most definitely grew up with all of those things and will probably have some, if not most, of those luxuries that they listed off. She was satisfied with the truthful response that for now, it was a lifestyle choice.

However, within the last week or so, and truthfully, as the temperature started dropping back in November/December, I started questioning this whole fireplace and no central heating plan. Jed and I thought it would be a fun adventure to heat our home with firewood cut by Jed, himself. And it would be a way that we could lower the cost-of-living as we are working towards being financially able to take on the whole farming endeavor.

I don't think the temperature in our bedroom has gotten above 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the last two weeks. It hovers somewhere between 40 and 45 degrees. We've been dripping water from our sink when we think the temperature will drop below freezing because the pipes coming into our apartment pass from the ground, through the air in an unheated barn, to our apartment. We've had a couple of days where no water would come into our apartment and we had to bring water over from Jed's parents' house. We didn't want to deal with that again, so...constant water-dripping.

Jed and his brother, Hans lumberjacking together.

Little did we know that a four-inch pipe draining everything from the apartment would slowly freeze solid drip-by-drip. Yesterday morning, I flushed the toilet only to have it almost overflow as the water had no where to go with solid ice blocking the route out. The sink and tub also had water standing in them with nowhere to go. We don't know how soon a solid frozen four-inch pipe takes to unthaw. But hopefully the next day or two, with temperatures outside  rising to 35 degrees Fahrenheit will be enough. If not, I will continue to shower at my in-laws and threaten Jed with getting me a honey bucket.

County Fair Blue-Ribbon Winner!!

I found these photos the other day while cleaning our apartment for visitors. What can I say? I started my art career young! These are of me at age 4.

Malaria No More!

I've been researching malaria as I am working on getting funding for a malaria clinic at the school I worked at in Ghana two summers ago--Forever Young International Schools. One of the main reasons that students miss school there is because of malaria. It's been heartbreaking and insightful reading up on the disease. Did you know that about 20% (or 1 out of 5) of African children who die by the age of five will have died from malaria?!  One of the better articles I found on it is found on the National Geographic Magazine website "Stop a Global Killer."

If anyone's interested in finding out more about the project I'm working on, please feel free to ask.

A Love-Affair with Dirt

(You probably thought this was going to be about farming...but it isn't!)

A porcelain canister I threw on the wheel yesterday.

Sometimes I just like to get my hands in the dirt. Mud up to my elbows (or at least to my wrists). I had never thrown anything on the wheel up until a year and a half ago. I had had a roommate in college who had made her own dinnerware set and I made the goal to do the same. Only, after graduating from college, I had never lived in the same place for any real length of time, and filled my evenings with all sorts of things when I wasn't traveling...teaching English to immigrants, taking photography and Arabic classes, going to a religious study group, whatever.

Finally, after letting 10 years pass, I finally decided it was time. I found a studio down in the Sugar House neighborhood of Salt Lake, and I started going to an evening class once a week. My two teachers were fantastic--Jeff even still has a studio and teaches down there. The first month came and went, and my bowls could have been worse. Month after month passed. Slowly, the clay started to listen to what I was telling it with my hands, and maybe I started listening to it as well. I watched what everyone else was making, asked lots of questions.

I was so sad to leave the community I had found there. But I still get to make pots. And I get to teach pottery to my high school students (good thing I learned). I am working on my first complete matching dinnerware set, my brother is paying me to do it! And I'm trying out all sorts of new things.

There is just something so rewarding about throwing on the wheel...clay slipping through your fingers, mud flying onto your pants, the soft purr of the motor as the wheel turns round and round... The creative process is happening in a very tangible and in-the-moment way. There you are--creator--pushing this substance that came from the earth, and forming something beautiful and functional out of a lump of clay. You are looking, making decisions, problem-solving, and adding details. Then you get to decide whether you are going to celebrate the raw, fired clay or add a splash of color to the finished piece. Finally, it comes out of the kiln, still warm from the firing. And there it is!! Your touch, your influence upon Mother Earth.

View from the Window

Cock-a-doodle-dooohhh.....!!!!! Dark still blankets the early morning sky. But that doesn't stop the roosters that live below Jed and I on the first level of the barn. I pull the covers up to my chin as the biting cold air of Autumn starts rousing me more than really want to be at 5:30 in the morning. Jed should be getting out of bed within the next half-an-hour to start up our wood-burning stove. He'll come back to bed right after and let the fire take the chill off the morning before we both work out the cobwebs and get ready for the day. We live out in the country at the end of a dirt road in eastern Kansas. We've been here for about 3 months now.

I live in a barn. More accurately, I live in the upstairs loft apartment above a barn. The view from our little abode looks out over a pasture full of cows, goats, and Belgian draft horses--all grazing and playing. I swear, cows are the funniest to watch, all chasing each other like they are playing tag or something. And goats really like to jump over each other. The only light at night comes from a light post located in the yard of our neighbors and landlords to the east. The only noises come from the occasional goat ramming the barn wall (accompanied by a little shaking of the structure) and the inconsiderate roosters.

Six years ago I moved into another apartment at another significant mile-stone in my life. I had landed my first teaching job. I bought my first car. I bought my first cell phone (at the age of 26). And I loaded all my belongings and headed across the country--leaving Arizona behind to call Washington, D.C. home. Actually, I lived in Pentagon City, Virginia (which is actually in Arlington, but who's checking). The apartment was at the end of a long hallway on the seventh floor of an eleven-story apartment building, which was one building of three in the complex. Right out my southern facing living room window I could see Pentagon City Mall and a large shopping complex. Ann Taylor Loft. A running store. DSW! A Thai food restaurant. Harris Teeter's (a grocery store). An Irish pub. A French restaurant. Noodles & Company. Just to name a few. And to get to work, all I had to do was walk across the street, cross the outdoor plaza, walk down into the indoor mall and to the metro stop. At the other end, I would walk eight blocks to my school.

In the summer, local bands would play in the outdoor plaza. In the winter, there would be an outdoor skating rink set up and people would skate around and around in circle. And I could see it all happening right there from my window, seven floors below me and across the street. I don't remember hearing too much in that apartment, except in the couple of weeks of spring or fall when I could open my bedroom windows as I slept. The hum of cars to the north of our building--the 395 freeway going into D.C. and separating us from the Pentagon on the other side.

Six years ago I had no idea I would be living in the countryside (for the first time ever) or married to a farmer. The view from my window has changed. And I LOVE it!! (Most of the time ;)