I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been reading. It is, in fact, hard for me to measure that I’ve completely changed my life. But I did.

A recent xkcd reminded me of L. It is exactly what she would say to me, probably word for word. I suppose that’s what drew me here, but there is nothing really else to say about that.

I have been working on a tractor. I bought it off ebay, some assembly required. Getting it here from Massachusetts required a convey of two trucks and trailers, and still didn’t get everything. I may go back for the cab if he still has it. Matthew, my grandfather and I spent Saturday carefully attaching the two-ton backhoe to the nearly four-ton loader, then draining all the fluids and identifying the filters for replacement. At one point my aunt and uncle from down the road were up, my uncle from Winterport was over, both my grandparents and Matthew and I, all standing around “The Turk” as my grandfather calls it. Sunday I was replacing the fluids while my uncle used the chainsaw mill nearby and my grandfather winterized one of his lawn tractors, and I was quite pleased with my situation. I’m definitely where I want to be.

Sunday night I was restless. I told Kate if I was in Seattle I would have gone to the 9lb for a drink. Instead, we watched Star Wars and drank together. It’s different. Contra dancing instead of house parties. Community history projects instead of urban farming. But Kate and I are homesteading, and it’s great.

Yesterday morning, Kate and I drove up the hill to get the waste oils and take them to the dump. We found my grandfather looking over the tractor and Kate commented on how happy he was. This morning I finally got back to working on the brakes on his 1951 Chevy 6400 series 2-ton dump truck. Kate and I bleed the brakes again after I finally got good fittings and washers everywhere. Still, they weren’t as good as I wanted so I rebuilt the master brake cylinder using the rebuild kit I had bought just in case. It went fairly smooth and was fun having my grandfather around as well as he had done the same a few decades ago.