Home, lawn & garden 2015 e sub

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Home HudsonValley MAY 14, 2015 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • WWW.HOMEHUDSONVALLEY.COM

Home, Lawn & Garden

Growing better homes

Wilderness as garden, plants and pets to livestock, CSAs plus garden lessons, the joys of painting one’s house

14, 2015 2 | May Home Hudson Valley

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May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley

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Who calls spring bittersweet?

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y wife shakes her head every time the first buds appear and I start sighing. You see, I tell her, this time of year makes me tired. All I can think about are the lists of projects I never completed last year before the holidays. And the way those seasons are barreling towards us already. My publisher suggests I start reading Kierkegaard for good measure, in particular his 1843 Fear and Trembling. I agree with both, but then make new lists, and start circumventing our yard, planning a fence for our new canine addition to the family, then all it’ll take to put in raised beds where our garden plot got out of control last summer. I do the first mowing of the year and hire someone with a ride mower to do the back forty rather than buy a big machine for myself. I put up the hammock, clean the back porch of sledding gear and pull the lawn furniture out. And then I sit, sip a cold drink, look at the way a haze rises from the Catskills out to my west, and shut my eyes to listen to the mix of distant traffic, bird song, a train in the distance. The sounds of my village comfort me. I fold the list away. Home improvement’s about the fruits of labor as much as its conceptualization, or active pursuit. Paul Smart, editor

Eve Fox writes about growing, cooking and eating good food in the Hudson Valley. You can find more at her blog, www.TheGardenOfEating.org  Elisabeth Henry, a writer and an actress who lives in Hunter with her husband, where they raised their children. Henry has appeared in plays for Performing Arts of Woodstock and The Byrdcliffe Theater, has worked on several films shot in the Hudson Valley, including The Sisterhood of Night, The Ticket and Fourth Man Out, and has written for many local and regional newspapers and magazines Jen Holz raises sheep, chickens and kids in the Catskills and was a longtime columnist for The Phoenicia Times. Virginia Luppino, a self-employed landscape gardener for 30-plus years, obsesses about plants from her home in the Village of Saugerties. These days, aside from garden coaching and consulting she devotes her time to working with Woodstock Land Conservancy, helping save what matters most locally.

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Reginald Oberlag, a long-time writer for obscure arts and culture publications and the director of fringe films and videos, is also an associate broker at Coldwell Banker Timberland Properties’ Margaretville office. He attributes his success as a “Surreal-estate agentâ€? to the deep study of his hero, the late Marcel Duchamp. Ryan Trapani, a Hudson Valley native, is education forester for the Catskill Forest Association (CFA), where he offers both forestry advice and programs to its members throughout the Catskills region. He and his wife Sara’s free time is mostly occupied by caring for their newest addition, oneand-a-half-year-old daughter Metta Mae. Lynn Woods, long-time Kingston resident and Ulster Publishing writer, is co-author of Adirondack Style: Great Camps and Rustic Lodges and co-director of the film Lost Rondout: A Story of Urban Removal. The cover features the work of Wendy Hollender, who is profiled on the next page.

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This issue’s contributors include: Ed Breslin is a writer and former book publisher who lives in New York City and in the Hudson River Valley with his wife, dog and cat. Jennifer Brizzi has lived in the Hudson Valley since 1996, writing about food since 1997, currently from Rhinebeck. She calls herself a writer-teacher-cook. She writes for newspapers, magazines and books, and does recipe development, cooking demonstrations and teaching. She also writes a weekly health column for Ulster Publishing. See her website at www.jenniferbrizzi.com and her blog at www.tripesoup.com. Lisa Carroll is a busy mama to two little girls, a wife and writer for reporter for the Shawangunk Journal and River Reporter. She resides in a quaint upstate village with her family, a cat and a goldfish called Purply. quality produce. herbs. shrubs. trees. mulch. soil. garden plants.

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“The plants kind of talk to me” Lynn Woods interviews botanical illustrator Wendy Hollender endy Hollender knows plants — the various shapes of leaf and the patterns created by leaves on the stem, the spherical forms of fruits, seeds and bulbs, the complex structure of flowers, including the tiny-fisted blossoms of common weeds, which viewed under a microscope are every bit as splendid as a daffodil. Formerly a home-furnishing textile designer, Hollender switched to botanical illustration over a decade ago. She never looked back. Enjoying rare success in a notoriously labor-intensive profession, Hollender has exhibited her work at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew and at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Her illustrations have been published in The New York Times, “O” The Oprah Magazine and other national publications, as well as on labels for wine and food, herbal products and inns (she also designed a charming logo for her own Hollengold Farm). A highly sought-after teacher of her craft — she has taught for many years at the New York Botanical Garden, among other institutions — Hollender has authored two books on botanical drawing. She has illustrated Foraging & Feasting, a Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook, written by Dina Falconi, which won two gold medals. A 1976 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design who was raised on Long Island, Hollender is a member of the American Society of Botanical Artists and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Florilegium Society. She has lives full-time on her farm in Accord. The original artwork for the illustrations in Foraging & Feasting is on display for the month of May at the Depuy Canal House in High Falls, a perfect venue given Hollender’s fondness for edible plants.

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come successful? WH: Initially I did a combination of things, including teaching, which was always steady and paid well. Slowly it built up to point where I now do a lot of big illustration projects, including wine labels and food packages. I did a big illustration of the peanut plant for the National Peanut Board which was posted on the New York subway. I also did a full-color spread of the Op Ed section of The New York Times. People find me now, and I don’t advertise. I’ve published two books on botanical drawing using color pencils and watercolor, and I teach that all over. My niche is the aspect of color pencil and watercolor.

LW: What led you to become a botanical artist? WH: When I worked in home furnishing textile design, I’d look at old botanical illustrations for reference. I was in love with the way they looked and tried to paint flowers, but they never looked like the botanicals. I was living in Manhattan and started taking classes in botanical illustration at the New York Botanical Garden. I studied there for five years and started getting work and taught at the New York Botanical Garden. LW: It’s not an easy profession. How did you be-

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LW: How is that different from traditional botanical illustration? WH: The old-fashioned way is to use just watercolor, which is really labor-intensive. I use two kinds of color pencils, regular and watercolor, the latter to create a wash. I came up with the technique in my teaching. I was using mostly watercolor and a little bit of color pencil to do sketches. The New York Botanical Garden asked me to teach in their color pencil program, which is very basic. I thought, ‘I better learn about it’ and explored other materials, such as better-quality pencils. I developed my own way of using them and it got to the point where I used the pencils for the final product. I love the immediacy of drawing right on the paper. Whether it’s a big piece or a little sketch, I go right to the drawing. The technique has helped me, especially on commercial projects. You can erase the pencil marks, so you have [more] flexibility [than just watercolor]. LW: Where else have you taught besides New York? WH: The first place I conducted a workshop was in Trinidad. Then I went to Hawaii to visit my daughter, who worked on a farm, and also taught a workshop there. I went to the National Tropical Botanical Garden and met the head of sciences, and now I teach there for a month every March. I’ve also taught at the Chicago Botanical Garden, a few gardens in California and Portland, Oregon, and the U.S. Botanical Garden in Washington, D.C. I’ll be teaching a five-day retreat at Omega in September. But I also love doing my own projects. LW: Do you ever get tired of drawing plants? WH: No. The plants kind of talk to me. I have a thing for edible plants, maybe because I love to eat. I do like to work on projects that are multipurpose and help people, whether it’s to better

May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley

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IMAGE OF WENDY HOLLENDER CARE OF SUNY ULSTER.

understand plants, tell stories about gardening, or focus on improving the environment. LW: The beauty of your work is that you reveal what’s marvelous and interesting about the forms of plants. WH: When I did the foraging book, a lot of those plants are weeds, which have tons of tiny flowers. That’s because the more seeds you produce, the easier it is to propagate the plant. Looked at through the microscope, these flowers are fascinating. I work under the microscope all the time because understanding the structure is crucial. When I depict a plant in the earth, I dig it up, Iook at it while it’s in the ground, and take a few photos. I just did a book cover on the water system, which shows the roots of different plants in the ground. LW: Any other favorite projects? WH: I just did a project for the Botanical Garden in Hawaii illustrating the canoe plants — the 30 plants brought over by the Polynesians, including the coconut, banana, sugarcane and breadfruit. They brought these plants over 2000 miles Polynesia to Hawaii in their outrigger canoes. LW: What’s on your list of future destinations? WH: I would like to go to South Africa and Aus-

tralia, where the plants are very different. But, truthfully, I get excited about the things growing in my backyard. LW: When did you first come to the Hudson Valley? WH: In 2008 I visited this area in summer and fell in love. I had a vision of living on a small farm and growing plants and eating them. I bought a weekend home in Accord in 2009 and in six months later I moved up here full-time. LW: You’re from the city. Was it difficult making the transition to life on the farm? WH: For me it was the most natural thing I’ve ever done. I have four acres and we heavily cultivate one and a half. My kids both work in farming in different parts of the world and have a background in permaculture. It had been a horse farm and so was a blank canvas. They designed the layouts [for the gardens], putting in food forests. Over the years a bunch of people have cultivated the land. Every year I’ve had a different person cultivate the land, including the Hudson Valley Seed Library. I get to share in the beauty of it, and my boyfriend and I grow plants on a bunch of it. We can’t use it all.

LW: What role does the farm play in your work? WH: I do a lot of botanical drawing workshops here, and we make farm-fresh produce for the participants for lunch. LW: Do you have any water on your property? WH: Last year I put in a natural swimming pool, which has no chemicals. Instead it is full of water lilies and other plants that are gorgeous and clean the water. Natural pools are popular in Europe. It works great except for the fact that it can get overrun with algae; hopefully when the plants get bigger that problem will be solved. We have frogs and dragonflies. It looks like a pond, but underneath it has a filter system that circulates the water, which is complicated and high-tech. When I first moved here I was naïve. There was no water on the land, and I didn’t realize how important it was. LW: How do you teach people who’ve never drawn before how to depict plants? WH: I start one step at a time. They learn how to sharpen the pencil, then basic toning techniques. They learn how to use one specific light source and how to describe a form with tones. I start with a cherry tomato and teach people how to make it look round.

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14, 2015 6 | May Home Hudson Valley

PHOTOS BY VIRGINIA LUPPINO

Let memory speak Landscape gardener Virginia Luppino herself becomes a mentor

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gardener lives with the rhythm of the seasons, re-birth and passing, often savoring the empty winter calendar. Universally gardeners have been assessing — taking pause, pulling back mulch, nicking the bark with a fingernail. The false start of spring is behind us. Time to make the rounds and assess the past winter’s toll. Were voles actively stripping bark below the snowline? Ash trees continue to

decline dramatically, as do boxwoods. Only time will tell whether the butterfly bush survived. My 30-plus years of gardening professionally in Ulster and Dutchess counties have provided me access to unique landscapes, many with jawdropping natural beauty and accompanied by extreme challenges. These remote landscapes were sometimes family camps, sometimes weekend getaways visited by bears. Passing from zone 5 to zone 4, where spring arrives in fits and starts, you fall in love with native plants. You learn that less is more. Seeking the plants that thrive under the harsh weather and severe browsing, my plant quests ultimately resulted in a small palette of plants capable of reliably thriving. Using these well-tested plants as the

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backbone of my landscape have ensured blooms spring after spring. Where the vista or other natural features steal the show, a light touch goes a long way. Employing spring flowering trees to lead the succession of blooms by planting in the transition zone from woodland to meadow provides a subtly beautiful show along the wood’s edge. Find a place for shadbush (Amelanchier arborea), witchhazel (Hamamelis vernalis) and star magnolia (Magnolia stellata). Know your trees. Want a reliably hardy, show-stopping small ornamental? Check out Stewartia pseudocamellia. Own some good reference books. Does anyone collect a library of reference books any more? Field guides? I still have a wall of well-referenced books at my back.

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f you garden-for-hire, you are required to have keen powers of observation. Clients expect you to know your stuff and be one step ahead of adversaries. Knowledge of invasive plants or pests is critical. Friends and neighbors pick your brain all the time. I was lucky enough to become obsessed with gardening at a time when UCCC offered a degree in ornamental horticulture. Landscape architect Fred Hagy’s love for woody plants infected all his students. Alain Grumberg showed us how to

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May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley

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e never listen to music in the garden while working, opting always for the sounds of nature, the birds, the wind in the bamboo. I have never owned a string trimmer or a leaf blower and have always planned maintenance visits around the schedule of the mowing crew. The mowers will appreciate not having to work around your tarps and wheelbarrows. It gives them more room to manipulate their trailers around the driveway. Invest in some good hand tools. Care for them and keep them sharp. My crew always made great use of the Italian grape hoe for preparing new beds. Smaller Japanese hoes were put to good use as well. Know where the water goes, whether it is water from the roofline, the gutters, seepage from a rock face, or a seasonal spring. All drainage issues should be addressed prior to any planting. Pointing out drainage issues may delay plantings for a season but result in a better outcome. “Begin by knowing the lay of the land and water. Study the works of past masters, and recall the places of beauty that you know. Then, on your chosen site, let memory speak, and make into your own that which moves you most.” — Anonymous, Japan, 1000 A.D.

grow any and every thing in the greenhouse and out. Find your mentors. Then become a mentor yourself. Don’t be shy about advising a client that their planting plans won’t be successful. Draw upon your own experience. Be clear about maintenance and watering needs. Be clear about who will be responsible for what and at what cost, especially if you are guaranteeing the plants. You will often be presented with pages torn from magazines and dog-eared books displaying mature landscapes in warmer climates. Stand firm in your knowledge of what works. Explain the difference between a plant’s ability to tolerate given conditions and when it can thrive. Visit public gardens and arboretums to learn more. Go with other plant lovers. Observe the mature silhouettes of the woody plants. Understand their size in the landscape. A shrub planted with enough room to reach its mature size, as intended by nature, is more likely to thrive and please. Without this practical understanding of size and spacing, many plantings are sabotaged. Visiting gardens seasonally feeds an appreciation for plants that offer three- or four-season interest, earning their real estate in the landscape. Visit friends’ gardens. Share plants and seeds and show-and-tell. If you read gardening books and blogs you quickly understand that there is no one-size-fits-all in gardening. Technique varies. Find what works for you.

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Plant lots of bulbs — the gift that keeps on giving. One of the best investments in the landscape is a bag of naturalizing daffodils. I don’t know how many times over the years that clients have messaged me in spring: “My daffodils are blooming, thinking of you. Let’s talk soon about this year’s garden plans.”

Be practical in your proposals. How much time can be devoted to maintenance and watering by the clients? How much water can be safely drawn from their well? These questions need to be part of any planning process. Know your weeds and invite diversity in your gardens. Many insects prefer a native to chomp on. Leave Evening Primrose to lure Japanese beetles from your ornamentals, berries and beans. Purslane forms a mat that inhibits other weeds and is a prized edible. Never buy soil or compost without first seeing a sample. And always be kind to your back.

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Valley Energy welcomes Michael Vertetis as their new General Manager. Michael has spent his whole life in Columbia County, presently lives in Greenport with Denise his bride of 42 years. They have one son and a beautiful granddaughter. Mike has been involved and active in the local community; he was Chairman of The Hudson Development Corporation, the Hudson Planning Board, the Hudson Development and Planning Agency, President of the City of Hudson Common Council. He presently serves on the board of directors of the Columbia Economic Development Corporation. Mike has been a volunteer firefighter for the City of Hudson for over 40 years. Mike has worked in all facets of the retail fuel oil and propane industry for the past 35 years. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience that will assist Valley Energy in its goal of maintaining and improving our customer’s experience. Mike is happy to be back to work for a locally owned company where decision making is made on a local level, with the best interests of our customer in mind. Under his leadership Valley Energy will continue to grow and prosper, providing fair pricing and exceptional customer service to the residents of Columbia, Greene and northern Dutchess Counties.

Join us in welcoming Mike to the Valley Energy family. Contact Mike at 518-851-3921 or mvertetis@valleyenergy.com to assist you with all your energy needs.

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14, 2015 8 | May Home Hudson Valley

The terrors of pleasure

Old Farm House in the Catskills by Arthur Parton.

Reg Oberlag, surreal estate agent, prowls the Catskills help city folk find country homes in the Catskills. Frankly, it’s a line of work that I’ve been reluctant to have my name associated with for the dozen years I’ve been doing it because of the stigma I’ve always felt for sales jobs in general and for real-estate agents in particular. With a long career as a writer, journalist and filmmaker, slipping into the real-estate business was sort of accidental. I had established the Catskills Film Commission in the 1990s after helping some movie producer friends make a Christian Slater-starred movie in Fleischmanns, a village picked for its down-at-the-heels, godforsaken, decrepit Main Street set amid the glorious natural landscape of

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the Catskill Mountains. I saw the economic boost this little movie gave to the area, and I believed that with such spectacular locations this close to the city the film commission could be an environmentally friendly financial boon to an area. The Catskills was suffering a long decline from its heyday as a prime dairy-farming region and summer recreational retreat for city dwellers seeking to escape the heat and congestion of New York City. Air conditioning and cheap air travel shifted the tourism market from the Catskills in the 1960s at the same time that refrigerated railfreight could bring cheaper milk and dairy from the vastly larger dairy farms in the Midwest. This made the smaller-scale hardscrabble mountainside farms less prosperous, vulnerable to being sold off to second-home developments. These economic blows to a region saddled with a cheesy reputation for Borscht-Belt resorts gave the area a

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negative cachet that has taken it half a century to overcome. Helping filmmakers find locations for movies, TV commercials and photo shoots in the region had me sourcing out lots of different sorts of properties. The proverbial light bulb went off in my head, announcing; “Hey, I could get my real-estate license and make some money,” a solid step up from mostly pro-bono film commission work. That’s how I started down the slippery slope of becoming what I liked to call a surreal-estate agent. Adopting the British nomenclature of “estate agent” helped me to avoid admitting to myself that I was just another real-estate sales guy. Reading one of my favorite ‘Southern’ novelists, Richard Ford, had also helped brainwash me into thinking more philosophically about the job. His series of books had traced the life of the failed-writer Frank Bascombe, who sold real estate. Ford’s early novel “The Sportswriter” was followed by his PulitzerPrize-winning “Independence Day” and by “The Lay of the Land.” These volumes follow the career of a suburban New Jersey broker with a philosophical approach to helping people find homes

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Six Coldwell Banker Timberland Properties agents were honored for their Catskills property sales achievements at an industry conference at Foxwoods in Connecticut this Spring, including Jill Ogden, Carol Spinelli, Sean O’Shaughnessy, Reginald Oberlag and Christopher DiCorato. Eric Wedemeyer, president and principal broker of Coldwell Banker Timberland Properties, also received special recognition for his 20-year affiliation with the Coldwell Banker company which recently beefed up its efforts with a variety of online features that allow would-be buyers to get a close look at both properties and homes from afar. For additional information, please contact any of the Coldwell Banker Timberland Properties offices in Margaretville, Delhi, Stamford or Boiceville, or visit either www.TimberlandProperties.com or www.CatskillPremier.com. while dealing with his own existential and family crises. I wish they made them required reading for the Real Estate Licensing Exam. In order to deal in real estate and not feel like I’d sold my soul to the devil, I would look at my clients and customers in this more philosophical way. I tried to solve their problem of balancing financial realities with their dreams of sylvan escape. Buying a country home is not like buying a primary residence. It is not a necessity. It’s a dream, a dream of finding peace and quiet and birdsong, crisp clean air, rushing trout streams, mirrorsurface ponds reflecting sailing summer clouds, undulating ridgelines where light and weather changes constantly in a beauty that is heartpoundingly magnificent. You know first-hand why the Hudson Valley painters came into these hills and found scene after scene more stirringly emotive. That’s why all these people like me who may live in the middle of the wondrous metropolitan machine of New York City, with all its cultural, social and career benefits, still require the balance of a dose of nature on a regular basis. We seek to find tranquility in our country homes. These retreats where we can garden, bird-watch, fish, boat, climb mountains, have dinner with friends, take in art shows and antique

shops, or simply gaze out the window at dusk and breathe deeply the balsam-scented breeze. We feel life more richly enjoyed as the urban stress dissipates. I was just invited to a party where I had helped five couples who were all friends find very different homes. All felt their lives incomparably enriched by the experience of having their own rural retreat to which to escape. All expressed appreciation for the role I had played in helping their dreams find reality. “You just can’t imagine how much our lives are changed because you helped us find this place,” they told me.

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skeptic. When I first start working with someone, I like to loan them a copy of the hilarious and cautionary tale of the late great playwright, performance artist and actor Spaulding Gray. His movie The Terrors of Pleasure chronicles the country home search of the writer and his girlfriend in Woodland Valley outside Phoenicia. The ominous mantra of their realty agent is repeated over and over again: “You can change the house but you can’t change the property. You can change the house but you can’t change the property...” His was a variant of the old saying that the three most important things in real estate are “location, location, location.” Hapless artists can be overwhelmed by everything that can go wrong in buying a country refuge…Thus the terrors of pleasure. There are mysterious country-home things that urbanites don’t have to think about. Like where your drinking water comes from and where your wastewater goes. Knowledge of drilled water wells, spring water purification, septic tanks, leach fields and cesspools are among the topics of knowledge which may come to light in your visits to country homes with your hopefully trustworthy and well-informed agent. R-values of insulation? Fireplace versus woodburning stove? Hot-air or hydronic heat? Radiant floors does not refer to a well-waxed and shiny surface. Can you get cell phone reception or cable TV or high-speed Internet? What’s a French drain? Thermal glass? 200 amp? You didn’t know you can’t build a pond without a spring water source? What’s a transfer station? You mean I have to deal with my own garbage? Snowplowing my driveway? These can be among the terrors of pleasure in owning a country home. But when you step out onto your porch and look at that amazing landscape on that giant-screen TV of nature spreading out in front of you as far as you can see and breathe in that wildflower fragrant air, you know it is worth it.

’m paid to do this work, and I’ve been successful at it despite my cringing at the idea that I’m a realty agent. I’m still a writer and make videos and have a business in the city, too. But learning how to get inside someone’s head and heart, to feel what they want to feel, to visualize their ideals with them, and to find the concrete embodiment in the material world for what they are seeking is gratifying for me. There are difficult people in all facets of life, but usually I find it easy to empathize with those yearning for a natural experience in a country home. By and large, these are fine people. But let’s not get too dreamy. I’m a natural

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14, 2015 10 | May Home Hudson Valley

Deus ex machina

Elisabeth Henry comes to terms with big machines

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he spring was already there, bubbling over rocks to a small vernal pool below. Why not build a pond? How simple life was, when we did not know just how much we did not know. So we hired a man with a big yellow machine, and went back to the work week in the city. Coincidentally, the man went to Disneyworld, leaving behind helpers to run the big machine. An impressive crater gaped at us when we returned that weekend, a gouge at least 40 feet deep and 200 feet in diameter. The machine was still digging. As it growled and groaned on its terrible steel treads, most of the town’s people gathered at the edge of the abyss. They seemed stunned, fearful and angry. It’s one thing for someone to make home improvements, quite another to attempt to fix the face of Mother Earth in the same manner as our beloved Joan Rivers wished to fix herself. We made amends to the earth and to the town, and now enjoy a sweet, watery deliverance brimming with life, sized to meet the code. One-half acre in size, twelve feet deep. We learned a valuable lesson. Know when and how to bring in the big machines, and mind the building regulations. There are machines that are very nice for personal use. The riding mower, for instance. Driving it down the straightaway, you feel free and very much alive. If you face a mortgage, that may be all the risk you need. The riding mower is perfect for the dreaded downhill drop. It chugs along at much the same rate Tiger Woods is golfing these days. All in all, it is much more pleasant than the motorized push mower, and let’s not even talk about that thing with no motor at all. I think it’s been banned by the Food and Drug Administration. Consider next the weed whacker. Not much fun, but sometimes things get a little too verdant. The danger of hiring someone to whack for you is this. Inevitably they whack things you want to keep in the garden (the PeeGee Hydrangea that doesn’t bloom until August, for instance.) Next is that most delightful garden asset, the utility vehicle. It looks very much like a sporty four-wheeler, but you can attach to it a snow plow. It also has the wondrous dump body. Until you

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use a dump, you cannot know its value. All those things you thought you had to do no longer matter. It’s like graduating from a particularly demanding Catholic military school.

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ou may still wonder about those mammoth yellow beasts, and you may have a legitimate need for one. You need a trench dug, a row of field-grown trees planted, yards and yards of topsoil and mulch brought in. Well, machines aren’t all alike, you know. The bulldozer pushes the earth around. Say you want to shape all that topsoil for your new lawn so that there is proper drainage. A lot depends on the operator. We hired a man who was an absolute artist. His work had nuance and style. Very little collateral damage. But there are those without that sensibility. So watch out. It’s a great force. The excavator does what its name says. It digs. The backhoe digs and loads. You might wish to

donate or sell the material you dig up. The backhoe will dig it up, and load it into a dump truck. A tractor boasts many attachments. Post-hole digger. (Note to new residents: No one has dug a hole by hand since laws against indentured servants were enacted. I’ve been told that digging holes in the region is rumored to mark the beginning of the social justice movement.) Log splitter. Mulcher. Tiller. Trencher. Horror movies aside, chippers are very useful. And all these things can be attached to what becomes a tricked-out tractor. Mechanical engineering is a wonderful thing, but there are costs involved. The skid steer (ours is named BobCat) is useful because you can put attachments on it and it has tires, not treads. According to Blue Line Rental (www.bluelinerental.com) in Kingston, it will cost you $260 a day, $790 for the week. A mini-excavator is $290 daily, $870 weekly. And these are not the big boys. The big ones

May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley cost much, much more and require skilled hands at the helm. Don’t try them yourself. There is a Cinderella Clause that applies to timing. When to bring in machinery? The best time is at the beginning of your new house construction, or the installation of your garden. The machines require lots of room in which to move and turn. There can be damage to existing structures and plantings. And to you. The operators cannot hear you, and oftentimes cannot see you. My children were forbidden from leaving the house when machines were working. Don’t forget the underground pipes and wires. Rolling heavy equipment over pipes — irrigation, septic lines, electric lines, etc. — goes one way: remorse.

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here is more to know. As flour, egg and sugar are to KitchenAid stand mixer, so is soil to backhoe and tiller. The difference is that once the mixture leaves the Kitchen Aid for the oven we get cake. Everyone loves cake. It’s a creation. Once the soil is subjected to the big machines, it is both ripped up and compacted down. The big machines not only make things raw and ugly, they actually hurt the soil. The soil is not just that stuff

you get out with Tide. Soil is alive. Joan Kutcher, executive director of The Mountain Top Arboretum, gives a for-instance. They might use a backhoe to prepare a new home for a field-grown tree. “If you wish to plant a tree, have the hole dug a third wider than the circumference of the root ball, and the same depth as the root

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ball. Tree roots grow laterally,� she advises. “Add no special supplements, no rich additives. If you do, the roots will not adjust to the native soil, its new home. Instead, I recommend adding mycorrhizal fungi.� Mycorrhizal fungi, which form a close symbiotic relationship with plant roots, have been in our soil

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14, 2015 12 | May Home Hudson Valley for millions of years. They colonize and increase the plant roots’ capacity to absorb water and nutrients, thus reducing watering needs and to the detriment of blue-green algae. And the network of mycorrhizal fungi connect trees to each other. Holy Avatar, Batman. Once the soil gets turned around, even with a personal-use rototiller, there is damage. Mrs. Kutcher is of the school that eschews the tiller because of the damage to the soil. Others claim that the aeration that comes with tilling is good. The decision is yours. But one thing is true. Soils that have been disturbed by residential construction, or intensive cropping practices, such as the applications of fertilizers containing pesticides and other chemical products, have considerably diminished mycorrhizal fungi and might have become insufficient to significantly enhance plant growth. Considerable thought must go into the decision to push dirt around.

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May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley The notable Dean Riddle (of DeanRiddleGardens.com) recommends thinking about the overall environment first. Trust that more about your environment will be revealed to you as time goes by, he says. Gardens take years to perfect, and the inherent beauty of any environment unfolds with our ability to recognize it. As our awareness grows, so unfolds the possibilities of what is already there. “When people are new to gardening, they think about plants first,� Riddle explains. “But that may create notions that make no sense. The task of the landscape designer is to make the most of what is there, and to educate the client. This sort of symbiosis can lead to relationships -- client to garden, client to designer -- for many fruitful, rewarding years.� While combustion engines and horsepower make for light work, the same result might be better won with many hands. Hands will be required

at some point. And you will get on your knees. It is the cardinal rule of gardening. You get dirty. And maybe after getting dirty time after time, mychorrizal fungi magically connect you to all the roots and bulbs and tubers in your land, and the land begins to talk to you. It tells you what and where to plant, like what happens at the miraculous

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PHOTOS CARE OF CATSKILL FOREST ASSOCIATION

Glorified forest gardening Ryan Trapani remembers the woods of his New Paltz childhood ach spring many people can be found clearing a small patch of land for their garden. There seems little outrage over such clearing of land for tomorrow’s vegetables. In other spaces, farmers clear land for pasturing their livestock: dairy and beef cows, goats or sheep. Gardening and farming have it easy. They are readily acceptable, since more people are familiar with the fruits of their labor. Forestry, on the other hand, is less fortunate. A forester who cuts a patch of trees down invites all

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sorts of complaints and bad press that can grow not desired trees but town ordinances. Forestry differs from gardening and farming in one particular manner: length of time. When a large cut is made, everyone and their brother are around to complain about it. Where are those same people three years later to witness the excellent wildlife habitat that grows in, or 15 years later to see the diversity and abundance in forest regeneration, or 60 or more years later to harvest a crop of timber for homes to live in? They are long gone doing other things — perhaps gardening.

But the forester, the glorified perennial gardener, remains. Or so I hope. The forest — the woods, as my friends and I called them as kids — was a great place in which to get lost. I rode my Mongoose BMX bicycle throughout the small patch of woods that extended over a mile or so to the village of New Paltz. It was easy for me to recognize even then that those woods were not something static. It was changing all the time. Sure, our patch of paradise would never be submitted for national-park status, but it was special

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14, 2015 16 | May Home Hudson Valley to me. There was always something new to find or somewhere to explore. For all we knew, we may have been the Five Ponds Wilderness Area of the Adirondacks. Evidence of change in these woods were visible throughout. We found old apple orchards with vole screens still wrapped around their bases, foundations, stone walls, car and tire cemeteries, abandoned barns, former pig pens, and piles of Coors cans from one area and stacks of Bush cans from another. We were happy to find the cans. We brought them to town for cash. We made camps, built forts, and lit fires; one almost got away. It was me that it was tending This patch of woods wasn’t only a place to lose oneself in, but a sort of garden, too. I had nothing to do with the creation of this patch of woods. It was me that it was tending, changing and developing. This forest garden would eventually shape my life and land me into the field of forestry and silviculture, the art and science of tending trees. How did it do that? Well, between building forts and lighting fires we got hungry. Instead of going home for lunch, we’d stay out there and look for something to eat. There was plenty of fruit. I knew where one mulberry tree was. I’d climb into its canopy and feed like a small bear for a while. My hands, shoes and clothes would be stained black, but I could care less. There were wild strawberries in one section, but they were frustrating to pick since they were so small. There were apples and pears, too, enough to keep my appetite satiated. But nothing beat the blackcaps (black raspberry); they were my favorite. We picked so many one day that we sold some at Stewart’s; probably illegal, but we didn’t know. We thought we were fruit farmers for a day, and we were proud of our harvest. We also saw a lot of wildlife: rabbits, many

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birds, my first turkey (in the 1980s turkeys were rare), grouse, deer, deer hunters, snapping turtles, and other creatures. I went back to that hot spot where we picked those blackcaps, but few remained, and I wondered why. Still, the seed had already been planted. I associated trees and shrubs with good times, good eats. I wondered what else they might be good for. As I learned more about the woods I realized why those blackcaps had disappeared. I realized how silviculture could shape the forest to be more fruitful or fibrous (timber) or better for wildlife. The woods where we played and explored had no perennial gardener — or forester — responsible for their development, no deliberate management that made them so fruitful. It was merely accidental. It had once been farmland, probably sometime in the 1960s or so. After it was abandoned many shade-intolerant species grew in: gray birch, eastern red cedar, aspen, white pine, mulberry, and volunteer apple trees. In one section, I learned, there was supposed to be a housing development. The roads were built, the land was cleared. When the development failed to occur, the berries grew in, especially blackcaps, as well as other young seedlings and shrubs used by an

for e e S self! r you

abundance of wildlife species. We used the roadway to ride our bikes. Choosing your forest By the time I reached high school, the blackcaps were already shaded out. Fruit trees were less vigorous. The forest had matured, and the more shade-tolerant trees were shading out less shadetolerant trees that formerly bore fruit. Perhaps the changes ere better for timber, but it came at the expense of fruit and some wildlife species. The events of that patch of woods are related to forestry. The abandoned farms and failed housing development mimicked a silvicultural clearcut. A clearcut, not to be confused with land clearing, involves cutting trees to enhance forest regeneration of shade-intolerant vegetation. The accidental clearcuts in this case were successful if the intention was to enhance fruit-bearing trees and shrubs along with wildlife habitat. Since no deliberate forest management occurred afterwards, some trees lost and some won as the overall forest matured. A forester would have remedied the situation by marking crop trees. Crop trees could be fruit trees, or other desirable trees that met established goals.

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Crop trees could be then weeded by cutting those too close which competed for sunlight: perennial forest gardening. Or more drastic cuts could be made to start the stand over to benefit many of those plants, shrubs, and trees we experienced as kids. Leave your hand-pruners and hoe at home. Bring your chainsaw instead. Mature forest is beneficial for some wildlife species and is required to harvest timber. However, the landscape — especially in the Catskills — is stocked mostly with mature forest. An aging for-

est exists at the expense of a younger forest — one that often bears more fruit and wildlife species, similar to the woods I stomped around in. To this day I have yet to see blackcaps in such abundance, size and quality as I remember. Since then, I have only experienced one section of woods that has been as fruitful, one that experienced a large forest fire that released blueberries, chestnuts and blackberries for my happy hands (and bear paws) to pick. But that’s another story. If you’d like to learn more about how to make

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your forest more fruitful — whether for yourself, wildlife, timber, maple syrup or more — please call that unfamiliar gardener or forester. We’re used to waiting, and we have thick skin for those unfamiliar to our gardening techniques: www. catskillforest.org.

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14, 2015 18 | May Home Hudson Valley

Farming the mountains Jen Holz follows the rhythm of farm life where all works in concert

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ight feet up, cool in a cocoon of trembling green leaves, with heat waves swerving around us, we perched on delicate limbs. There we watched the others sweat in the fields, picking rows of okra, cotton, corn, squash. There, above it all, we were picking peaches. This was a job for the smallest and easiest to hoist, least likely to break the upper limbs as we swung up to tip the highest fruits with little-kid hands, picking sweet, fully ripe, orange-cheeked orbs. We would walk by the orchards for weeks before, breathing in hopefully, searching with our noses for the sticky scent of ripe fruit. Then one day the air would burst with sugar, and we’d scramble up, barefoot, and fill our wicker baskets. The Southern plains were easy farming. Gran said plowing was like cutting butter. Crops elbowed up eagerly on acres of sandy loam that surrendered itself nine months a year as cattle ambled behind barbed wire, chewing their cuds, distant and aloof while we farmed dirt. Easy. Simple. Today, I look outside at our gardens: dry ragged vines, gates hanging open for chickens, goats and sheep to scratch and pull. Our pastures are tangled with brambles and burdock. Farming here is not so easy. The ground does not yield. The sun lurks behind mountains, hides for days while we look up, hopeful. We wrangle rocks, haul manure, coax green spouts out of unruly ground that lies dormant six months a year. Farming the mountains is not like farming the Southern plains. Not easy, not simple. Beautifully complex.

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e do not rely on dirt. Each year the frost heaves up a new crop of rocks, which we nominally clear from the gardens but not the pastures. Instead, we layer wagonloads of manure to form a thick, tenacious carpet. Without it, our pastures would be too boney to support sheep, and they would erode. It is important, therefore, not to graze ruminants before the pastures are green. We fence off the upper pasture and feed grain and hay until May. During this time, we haul manure up to the high pastures. Meanwhile, we leave the garden gates wide open and invite ruminants and chickens to churn up the soil, pick at old seeds, nip new insects, and clear old vines. Chickens are especially good at clearing weed seeds and aerating new soil. They enjoy taking sunny dust baths in fresh manure. They continue to work as we haul new layers of manure to the garden. While we do occasionally rototill, we rely most on livestock and the manure/hay mix for garden fertility and workability. We leave the gates open until it is time to plant seedlings. We keep two gardens: One is low, near the pond, where we grow most of our produce. The other is higher up, near the chicken coop, on bonier soil. This is where we grow all our squash varieties. Squash do not play well with the other vegetables. They splay their broad leaves, shading and crowding out less assertive plants. Years ago I banished them to the chicken garden. There, they enjoy extra hours of sun on their southern plateau. The chickens’ garden is a raised bed of ruminant manure topped with aged chicken manure. We let it age in heaps before layering it on the garden, since poultry manure runs hotter. Keeping two gardens not only allows us to remove rude squash vines from our other crops, but it also allows us to diversify garlic locations to accommodate for different weather events. Some years, the garlic does best on lower ground, Others, it is safer on higher, drier ground. Monoculture is risky. Diversity works. I like a mixed flock. Home-bodies like Buff Orpingtons and Japanese Bantams stay close to the coop inside the run and eat kitchen scraps and grain, while Red Jungle Fowls police and protect beyond the fences, eating a diet of mostly forage. The Buffs lay more eggs. The RJFs alert the flock

PHOTOS BY AUGGIE MCGILLICUDDY

when predators approach. RJF hens are also excellent broodies. The other hens lay their eggs in shared nests for the RJF hens to raise. Goats and sheep are complimentary grazers: Goats graze up. Sheep graze down. You may coerce a sheep to eat your brambles, but it’s not her first choice and it sticks in her wool. Sheep prefer to mow the grass and keep a pasture green. Goats are great to clear stickery hillsides and borders.

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he barn swallows appeared today. I expected they might. Last night we watched a single bat jag along the pond, harvesting a new hatch. Bats and barn swallows usually appear about the same time and I often have a hard time telling one from another except for their different flight patterns: Swallows fly in neat controlled swoops while bats zig and zag. They both dance along the surface of the water, just skimming the tiny insects which hover there. They are both excellent at controlling the insect populations. I like the barn swallows in spite of advice to expel them from my barn. They swoop down on strangers who enter, but they tolerate us very nicely –– I suppose they can tell friend from trespasser. A small gang of Red Jungle Fowls has invaded my barn, which they do each spring so they can brood their clutch of chicks. I let them have the

back stall until the chicks hatch. Then they’ll move out and I’ll retrieve the chicks to the brooder light in the house. I usually take the hen as well. One year, an RJF rooster named Tyrone (originally named Thai, the presumed origin of the Jungle Fowls) raised a clutch. He is still a welcome guest in my kitchen. The RJFs dig and scratch the manure for bugs, clearing the ground even as the swallows patrol the air. They’ll move out as the barn floor is cleared and their chicks hatch out.

I

t all works in concert. Our livestock are not ambling behind barbed wire, not off in the distance. They are as integral to garden and pasture management as the gardens and pastures are integral to the overall health of the farm. This is not monoculture, not neat. It is lively. Petunia follows her nose along a cool breeze and finds me spreading manure under peach trees. She saunters up and tilts her wooly head just so, that I might scratch behind her ears. I search for ticks. Instinctively, I look to the pond where a flock of barn swallows are zooming wide circles. I look to the barn where an RJF rooster is on patrol. We’ll shear in three days, the barn will be nearly clear, the chicks will hatch, bugs will be eaten by swallows, bats, and hungry Red Jungle Fowl. The cycle continues. Complex. Beautiful. Easy.

May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley

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PHOTOS BY LISA CARROLL

Our gardening secrets Lisa Carroll learns about tomatoes and strawberries remember as a young girl holding my dad’s hand. It was always warm, but during the summer it would be rough with calluses and cracked, with garden dirt embedded in the lines. He’d putter in his garden on weekends, staking up young tomato plants with the same precision, ease and confidence he showed elsewhere. I’d squat down beside him, intertwining the garden twine and tomato stalks — reaching the places only little fingers could reach, my dad would say. Along the way, as we attended to each plant’s needs, he shared his gardening secrets, life secrets and time. We did this summer after summer into my young adulthood, working the land, or filling fivegallon buckets as the case may be, and enjoying our bounty with sun-warmed tomato-and-mayo sandwiches. A few years back he got sick, and that summer didn’t have the heart or energy to garden. We tried, but it was too much work between doctors’ appointments, his chemo and my distance. I lived an hour away, I worked and I was pregnant. Time passed. My dad passed as well. Gardening took a back seat to a new baby. And besides, my husband, child and I moved in with my mom for a spell, easing a lot of burdens. Then we moved to our home in Ellenville. It’s a starter house that we might be in forever. One of the perks was the yard. It has a sun-drenched

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front yard perfect for a garden. The first summer we started with the meager flower garden already established by the front stoop. And a cherry tomato plant. Watching the tomato plant take off, watching our Shelby excitedly rip the ripened fruit from the plant and pop it into her mouth, made the place feel like home. It also made my dad part of it. The next year, after the snows melted and the perennial plants took off, our flower garden took off with tomato plants. By early summer, it seemed like thousands of young tomato plants had sprung up overnight. Not a single one did Tom, me or the girls plant. They seemed to be a magical gift. I told the girls the plants were from grandpa, and we’d have to take care of them. hat has happened for the past two summers now. The girls, as they’ve grown, have helped me more and more in the garden. Shelby and little sister Sammie tie the stalks to our porch columns…or attempt to do so. They shower the plants with their little watering cans, and what seems to be their most favorite job, picking off the red fruits. Sometimes, the yellow — barely red — ones get in the bowl, too. This spring, our perennials have started coming up. The flower bed was alive with tulips, hostas and emerging lilies. Our garden box — that we

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added last year — has defrosted and has offered up its own bit of magic for the girls by way of a returning strawberry plant. They are super-excited this plant has made a miraculous return. With only a handful of fruit picked last season, I had just about given up on it. I even told the girls, as we were cleaning out the garden last fall, that we should consider planting something else in its place — much to their dismay. The tiny, sweet fruits are by far their most favorite treat. We had decided to check out what was going on this spring and realized we had never scooped out the old strawberry plant. Shelby pushed back some of the dead, brown leaves. Lo and behold, green shoots were appearing. Strawberry plants are wild creatures that may take over the garden. While Tom and I envisioned a variety of plants in our garden — tomato, cucumber, beans — we’ve decided to give the garden space to the girls. They can decide what they want to plant. As summer approaches, I miss my dad more and more. But as the cherry tomatoes take off in the flower bed, and as I spend lazy spring and summer afternoons with my girls, teaching them to care for their tender shoots, sharing secrets, my dad will be with us.

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14, 2015 20 | May Home Hudson Valley

Joining a CSA Eve Fox explains the ins and outs of a flexible model for getting local produce f you’ve ever considered making an effort to eat more locally and seasonally, now is the time to give it a go. There are honest-togoodness leaves on the trees. Leaves, people! Asparagus spears are pushing their proud green heads through the rich dirt. Crisp sugar snap peas are ripening on their vines. Wonderfully tender, flavorful lettuce, spinach and herbs are ready for picking. And that’s just the beginning of many months of incredible local edibles. Color has now crept into every corner of the landscape. You could plant a garden. But if you don’t have

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the space, the time, the energy or the desire to garden, you can just join one of the Hudson Valley’s many excellent examples of Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), a model in which farms offer subscribers a share of the season’s bounty in exchange for an annual payment. This arrangement gives farms the support they need to purchase seed, equipment and more while giving subscribers a steady supply of fresh food. Everyone wins! I remember feeling rather overwhelmed when I joined my first CSA about eight years ago. What would happen if I was away on pick-up day? How much cabbage could one family really eat? And what would I do if I got a veggie I wasn’t familiar with? But I’ve come up with ways to overcome these hurdles. I am now a huge fan. In terms of the logistics, the CSA model has become more sophisticated and flexible as more farmers have adopted and refined it. For example, most CSAs now offer multiple pick-up sites in various towns as well as the option to pick up your share directly from the farm. You can usu-

ally either split your share with someone else or just purchase a half- or quarter-share individually that you pick up every other week or once a month. This is a great option for an individual, a couple or a small family. If you’re going to be away on pick-up day, some CSAs make it easy to put your share on hold. If not, you can always try to find someone to switch weeks with or gift your share to a friend or family member. I’ve never had any trouble finding someone who wants a week’s worth of gorgeous, fresh vegetables… As for how to make use of the bounty your CSA provides, I’ve found that the joys far outweigh the challenges. There is something exciting about having to figure out a good way to make use of four butternut squash at once. Or to suddenly have the task of finding out what a watermelon radish is and how to make use of it (hint: it’s great raw in salads and also pickled). The Internet is your friend! Here are some tips I’ve come up with in my years of participating in a CSA to help make the most of your share.

May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley

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Ready, set, find your CSA!

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ow that you’ve got your strategies straight, how do you know which CSA will be right for you? There are three primary considerations: Location. Since you’ll be visiting the pick-up site regularly, make sure it’s a reasonable distance from your home or work. Types of products. Although most CSAs provide vegetables and some fruits, some also offer milk and cheese, eggs, meat, baked goods, fermented foods, cut flowers and things like dried herbs, tinctures and salves. Price. Although there is not typically a huge disparity in price between different farms, it does vary somewhat, especially if you end up tacking on things like pasture-raised eggs, freshly baked bread, etc. Check out the resources below to find the CSA that’s best for you. • Hudson Valley Bounty lets you search by county and type of product you’re looking for – anything from a CSA to a farmers’ market to a caterer: http://www.hudsonvalleybounty.com/ • Valley Table has a listing of CSAs by county (but keep in mind that most if not all CSAs deliver to other counties): http://www. valleytable.com/csas.php?csa=ALL • Local Harvest is a national search engine: http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ • The Eatwell Guide is a national resource that allows you to search by keyword and location: http://www.eatwellguide.org

1. Plan ahead and look for inspiration

4. Don’t forget freezing and canning

When you find out what you’ll be getting that week (most CSAs email you this info in advance), take a few minutes to think about meals you might like to make that week. Search out a few recipes and bookmark them. I find that this planning helps get me excited about the possibilities and increases the likelihood that I will actually use everything and cook some really good meals in the process. If your usual go-to cookbooks and blogs don’t yield much, you can always google things like “asparagus and green garlic recipes” or “what can you do with two bunches of parsley?”You’d be surprised what you find.

If you’ve got too much of something, it’s a great idea to make pickles or jam or just freeze a big bunch of chopped fresh greens or herbs for easy use later. Not only do you keep good food from going to waste, but you’ll thank yourself later when you’re munching on spicy pickled carrots or grabbing a bag of chopped kale out of the freezer to add to a stew.

2. Only take what you will actually use. If your heart sinks when you see that big bag of summer squash or that umpteenth bunch of collard greens, I give you permission not to take them! Some farms have a box where you can leave anything you’re not interested in so that someone who is interested can take it. And all CSAs have a plan for the food that goes unclaimed. Many deliver to local soup kitchens and shelters as well as sharing leftovers amongst their volunteers. Rest assured that anything you reject will go to hungry mouths that appreciate it instead of slowly rotting in your refrigerator and making you feel guilty.

3. Wash the greens when you get home I’ve found that I am about ten times more likely to actually make use of, say, spinach if I take a few minutes to wash and dry it right when I get it home. That way, rather than throw up my hands and order a pizza when I haven’t started dinner yet at 6:30, I just grab the bag of pre-washed spinach out of the crisper, quickly sauté it with minced garlic, and then toss in some currants and pine nuts while I make a pot of couscous. This also holds true for arugula, kale, chard, herbs, lettuce and more. If you don’t have the time to wash them, make sure to at least remove any rubber bands or ties around the bunches, since they bruise the stems and leaves, making them rot more quickly.

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5. Consider signing up for just a half-share While I like the way the CSA forces me to explore new foods and plays a role in what I end up cooking, I don’t enjoy being a complete slave to what I get from the farm. I like having the flexibility to make something that’s not in the box or

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to pick something up at the farmers’ market just because it looks great without having to feel guilty about it. So every other week works perfectly for me.

6. Clear the decks before CSA pick-up day. I use the fact that I know another big load of great, fresh stuff is coming soon to motivate me to use up the last of the veggies in our fridge. Plan a big salad as one of your meals, whip up a stir fry, make a big pot of soup, or start a batch of refrigerator pickles. It will taste good and you’ll be thankful for the space in your crispers when the new load of produce arrives.

Jesse Cunningham

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14, 2015 22 | May Home Hudson Valley

On painting houses According to Ed Breslin, completing the job provides an exhilarating feeling

six-foot stepladder. But I had to buy a twelve-foot stepladder and two extension ladders, one 24 and the other 28 feet long.

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n the case of actually having to paint your own house, you may at first feel the urge to kill. This impulse is especially common when the house is an old clapboard Victorian. In underworld jargon, the question “Do you paint houses?� is code talk for “Are you a contract killer?� If, when faced with a daunting task, you’re prone to melodrama and self-pity, the person you may feel like killing is yourself. This probably does not apply if you’re in the growing movement of people living in “tiny houses.� Such houses are defined as being 400 square feet or less, about right for a dachshund. It wouldn’t work for me. Twenty-five years ago I was faced with the task of painting our Victorian, reputedly built around 1845. It has 1600 square feet and lots of scrollwork and gingerbread. The contractors I talked to about doing the job were unfortunately operating under a pay scale out of sync with my wallet. I decided I’d do it myself. I had of course to bone up on things. I went to the hardware store, where the people were incredibly helpful and patient. I bought an orbital sander, a caulk gun and tubes of caulk, various grades of sandpaper, two scrapers (one large, the other small), wood putty, a palette knife, and of course cans of primer and cans of finish coat. When we bought the house, it had been painted with Sherwin-Williams English Ivory, which we liked so much we stuck with it. I fell in love with the names decorators come up with for paint. I’ve always had a secret ambition to name a racehorse because I find their names so poetic and evocative. Now I think I’d like to name a paint color, too. Then again, I fear I’d be hopeless at it. Still, the names for paint are also poetic and evocative. At any rate, my wife and I decided to retain the original color scheme the house had when we bought it, so I would at least have the considerable advantage of painting over old paint of the

same color. “Cover,� as painting contractors call it, would not be a problem. That is, the old color would not show through and spoil the new color, necessitating an extra coat. The trim was named simply Exterior White, the pedestrian winning out over the poetic. I had to buy ladders, too. We already had a

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n trying to hire the job out, in addition to talking to painting contractors I had spoken to several handymen. As with cleaning women who don’t do windows, handymen set limits on painting and on climbing ladders. The ones I tried said they didn’t do any work involving ladders or any outdoor painting because it was “dirty work.� I didn’t know then but would soon find out only too well why they felt as they did. There was one other ominous word of warning issued. This came from my wife. She is an artist and paints away blissfully in her studio behind the house (I also have to paint this 500-square-foot studio). She said: “Painting is 90% preparation.� This is a classic example of understatement. No one warned me about being up on ladders — especially extension ladders — when bees and wasps come to call. Also, no one told me wasps like to build nests under eaves and in attic vents. I had realized in my tutorials at the hardware store that I would be on a steep learning curve, but no one forewarned me of the incidental hazards to overcome. I was like a neophyte golfer never warned of the rough, of sand traps or of water hazards, or of obtrusive trees complicating your lie after a wicked pull or a berserk slice. In my youth I had to do dangerous construction work and even more dangerous demolition work. Though depressed at the prospect of this daunting paint job, I was nevertheless determined to face down the challenge. Some readers, I know, would consider me brainless for this. Probably they’re right, but bear in mind I am still here to tell the tale.

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plunged in. The “prep work� was brutal. The orbital sander threw off paint over a century old and loaded with lead. My wife ran to the hardware store and bought me facemasks to thwart lung cancer. She also insisted I wear goggles, and with dirt and debris flying off the clapboard I soon found out why. Not only was the work dirty, it was exhausting. My arms, shoulders, back, knees, feet and legs soon ached. I could only do six hours a day. This shocked me. In my youth, without fuss or trouble, I routinely did eight hours of construction or demolition work and took my wife to dinner and a movie that night. Now, when finished for the day, I soaked in a hot bath for 30 minutes and then took an Aleve and a two-hour nap. The sun was yet another hazard. I wore a floppy

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May 14, 2015 Home Hudson Valley

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me the act of writing. This was a good thing. Every time I start a book I feel overwhelmed. Yet the satisfaction of standing back from finished work is the same, whether it’s a freshly painted Victorian pile or a pile of manuscript. Your patience has paid off, your persistence has prevailed. The finished product more than justifies the effort. Thoreau remarked in Walden: “There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged?” I could never build a house safe for habitation, I fear. Yet painting my house gives me as close an approximation to that sense of accomplishment as I’ll ever get. When the work is finished, the satisfaction is exhilarating, a real killer of a good feeling.

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hat, long-sleeve shirts and pants, and sunglasses under the goggles to protect me from sun poisoning and blinding glare. My hands had calluses, cuts and torn fingernails, but these were minor in comparison, as was the fine dust accumulating in my ears, nose, hair and eyes (despite the goggles). Painting my own house was indeed arduous. I was soon fantasizing being cast in low-budget remakes as an inadequate substitute for Dustin Hoffman in Papillon or for Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. I skipped Charlton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy on the grounds it was too preposterous a stretch, even for my outsize solipsism and paranoia. Even as such paranoia hectored me, my denial sustained me. At some level I still think I’m 20 years old, lopping off decades in my delusion. I’m now approaching the age where you’re supposed

to ask your doctor if your heart is safe enough for sex, yet I still think I could pin The Hulk at arm wrestling. The sad truth is, though, that on an off day when my arthritis is acting up the effort of opening a bag of chips can wind me.

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ut here’s the kicker. When it comes to painting our old house I’m addicted to the thrill of the “finish.” Once you’ve done the weeks of prep and then applied primer, finally comes the ecstasy of the finish coat gliding on to the boards as easy and satisfying as slathering a cake with icing. Then you stand back and admire your work after enduring phases of seemingly endless torture. What was even better than gloating over your work was discovering a hidden lesson in all this. The experience of painting a house replicated for

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