The female Indian Blue Peafowl is referred to as a Peahen; the male, a Peacock. They are between 35 and 50 inches tall and can weigh up to 13 pounds. The male’s tail feathers or “train” can be as long as five feet and sport a variety of colors including blue, green, red and gold. Peafowl can in fact fly and typically roost on a tree branch during the night.

Deb and I came home the other night to find a Peacock walking around our yard. Our landlord, Susan, thinks it could be one of the twenty-five she used to own and that it may have, “Flown back to it’s old home.” Susan has three horses, four donkeys and a bunch of chickens. Not only do we get fresh eggs all the time but the variety of animal crap in the yard keeps me occupied for hours.

We live on sort of a farm right now. We’re renting a studio apartment above a garage, which we also rent, and I use it as my workshop. The Olympic Mountains are visible through the front window…It’s fucking cool here.

When we moved out of Providence, we didn’t want to have to deal with neighbors or people. I hate people. So we moved into a 24’ yurt, and lived there for six months. Our yurt was basically a glorified tent, with some plumbing and a wood-burning stove, way out in the woods. We deposited our humanly waste in a composting out-house (without a door) in the yard. The stove and fridge came out of a VW bus. We had propane tanks and enough wood to chop for years. I bought a chainsaw and diced up a lot of the felled trees. The coyotes howled and the moon was so intense at times it would cast a shadow.

Yurt life treated us well. But we found an even cheaper deal with DSL so we had to move. The Internet rules, I can’t believe I missed out on half a years worth of German shizer videos. Anyway, that’s how we ended up here, on the farm.

I’ve been attending the NorthWest School of Wooden Boat Building for the past six months. The program I’m in is called Small Craft. About fourteen students are making four beautiful boats. Two are of the same design and are referred to as Grandy: one is a tender, the other a skiff. The other two boats are Davis boats. They are historic and are being constructed to match the original.

This is the Grandy Tender.

And this is the Davis.

Most of the work is done by hand, which means very few power tools. The lumber we use is “rough sawn,” which basically means huge slabs of trees. The slabs are meticulously milled down to the correct dimensions, then cut and planed using various techniques. Wooden planks and frames are steamed in a huge box at around 200 degrees for 15 minutes per inch. The hot wood is then bent and forced into different shapes. Do that a bunch of times for six months under the supervision of two master boat builders and, boom, you got a bunch of boats. Pretty sweet, huh?

So anyway, I’ll be tuning in every now and again to tell stories about the North West, about woodworking, and about my hilarious misadventures with Mr. T!