Ice and Mini Blinds

Except for the snow and the snowplowing, winter at Drag'n Rock Farm can be a bit droll.  Feed the woodburner, feed the pets, feed yourself, and plow the snow.  We don't have a farm with cattle or chickens, just a couple of worm farms down the basement so we don't have to make the cold trek out to the compost pile.  The worms are perhaps busier than we are.

Winter is a good time to make those small house repairs, make sure the grapevines and the apple trees are pruned and to set in plans for the growing season, plans for gardens full of vegetables, orchards and vineyards of fruit and fresh paint on all the old wood.  It's also a good time to cut ice.

Ice Day

In my office I have several nice windows that look out onto the snow covered landscape and the neighbor's beautiful pond and barn. In just a couple of weeks, the frozen cover of the pond will be filled with people, vehicles and saws.  This is the annual ice-cutting day.  That day the ice is cut from the pond into large cubes, loaded onto trailers and then brought to the ice shed. There the ice is packed in sawdust and straw to be saved and used in the summer to keep beverages cold for the town's picnics. As was usual in the past, we found ways to use things that we had close by. Going to the store to get ice, or expending energy to do what Mother Nature had already done, just wasn't a consideration. I look out to the pond and remind myself to make sure to send over a big container of hot chocolate when my partner goes to help.

A Repair Done

The windows in my office all have blinds in them and I normally have them open and partially pulled up. It's nice to take a break when you're writing to look outside, plus a particularly beautiful set of cardinals likes to sit outside my window on the burdock bushes.  I haven't closed the blinds in a few months, but tonight it's bitter cold out there so I grab the cord to release the blinds and come away with a shredded cord in my hands.  Well, I knew that would happen sooner or later.  The windows get a lot of sun in the morning and the blinds have been in those windows for quite a few years. I go to put 'new blinds' on the shopping list, but hesitate.  There's a lot of vinyl and plastic in those blinds that will just be wasted and would end up in the landfill - not a good picture.  I look them over and find that the blinds overall, are in relatively good shape except for the cord that broke. I've repaired many a set of blinds years ago when I worked at Colorado College, designing window treatments for the mansions, putting up curtains and drapes, and repairing what I could.  It would be work, but it's winter, and it's a bit droll here.

In the kitchen I find a roll of cotton cord, a scissors, and in the sewing room, my rug hook. I grab a towel to lay on my lap and a soft dusting rag, hoping to clean and repair at the same time. I pour a big mug of coffee and sit down to work. After an hour, the remains of the old cord has been removed and replaced with the new cord and the blind has been put back up in the window for a test run.  It works good.  I used a rough cotton cord because I did not have the smooth poly cord that the blinds came with, but it's still functional and no one but me will know the difference.  Small winter repair done and it feels good to not have added to humanities ever-growing piles of discarded junk.

Why I Do It

You might be thinking - well you could have saved yourself some time and just bought a new blind.  They're cheap and easy to find.  But I'm not that way.  I will use and reuse and reuse again, until an item no longer functions, and then if I can, I'll find a way to use the parts. 

I'm looking at those blinds now and thinking, they have another ten or more years of life in them. Maybe more. I feel good about that. Tonight I will let them down and close them up to the cold winter night, but in a day or so I will have them open again, to watch the life outside my window, and in a couple of weeks, to watch the festivities of a very old tradition on the pond across the road.

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• Putting the Vineyard to Bed for Winter (tablascreek.typepad.com)
• Winter Home Improvement Projects You Can Get Done Now (quizzle.com)