Sorry to announce that our sweet homestead and Meb’s Kitchenwares will be in slow-down-mode till at least springtime. I’m recently home from the hospital after kidney failure. Instead of continuing to try to accomplish stuff, I’m going to focus on my health and just get better!
I admit that I’m not feeling social and don’t want to answer a lot of questions. Nor do I want visitors or phone calls. Sorry. I’m not being mean; I just need quiet and peace without worrying about other people for a while.
Tom can use help getting house stuff together, (firewood, shower, front room windows, snow removal, money can be helpful) so you could leave him a message via my email: though he is also experiencing overload, so please be easy on him.
I will ask for specific help when I need it. Thank you.  Email works best for me, though I don’t promise a response. I’m experiencing chemo-brain and not functioning well mentally—Don’t worry—My brain WlLL come back!
Here are the only answers I have for now: Until April, I’m on chemo 2 weeks on, 1 week off. NO more immunotherapy. That is what caused the kidney failure.
I know there is so much going on with you all and the world right now and please know I will be thinking of all of you with love.
All my best, Meb

Two years ago, in a quick, 7-week preparation for the tv show, PBS’s Weekends with Yankee, Steve, Pat, Tom and I took the empty shell of a new workshop and added in just enough equipment and adornment to make it look like a working shop for the show.
After the filming, we continued clearing out the old workshop and eventually, just stuffing everything in the new shop. We’d go to look for something, thinking of where it was it the old shop, then had to resort to excavating layers of stuff just dumped in assorted piles around here and there. 

Downstairs
Recently, patterns have been found, sorted and banded together for ease of communication. Blanks (hardwood parts that are cut out and ready to carve) have been boxed and labeled. Everything has lids on to keep the ever-present sawdust from infiltrating. This is so much easier on my chemo-addled brain—I can just desire to make something and Voila! Here are choices! Ready to go!

Upstairs
While the downstairs of the workshop is very useable (except for dust collection), the upstairs is a mass of paperwork (custom orders, correspondence, bills, filing, returns) that MUST be dealt with. Six months of ignoring is quite astonishingly scary. Also many technical issues that keep me from moving on: Internet/Verizon, Etsy problems, Microsoft’s new mode, my Android phone, technology in general…
 I’m still looking for someone strong and smart enough to help me tackle this horrific mess. Yes, With the holidays coming, I’m apprehensive of Etsy especially becoming overwhelming. there is payment involved, and I realllllly do need help! Please email me (mebskitchenwares@gmail.com) if you know anyone who fits the bill.
Meanwhile, we are so, so, so grateful to Corlis, Rachel, Mary, Leslie, Dan and of course, Ethan for helping the workshop to come back to life.

Chemo
I still have hair (patchy and thin)! This bout of chemo is much milder, less devastating. I also still have skin and nails on hands and feet. And a prickly feeling (not so much numbness) in my fingertips. How much is due to Tom’s meticulous diet, acupuncture, chaga tea, immunotherapy, L-glutamine powder or yoga I can’t say, And maybe this will change when the weather changes, but for now, I’m pleased to be able to continue working and enjoying this beautiful fall. I’m having tests this month, so before the December holidays I’ll have more news. Fatigue, though, is always nearby, demanding several (sometimes sudden) naps a day…

Open Studios
We’re holding Artist’s Open Studios here in the workshop soon. For the days of the show (November 26 + 27 and December 3 + 4), we’ll shut off Etsy so we don’t accidentally sell something that has already been sold and don’t have the panic of Real Time! Etsy will turn back on the Mondays (28 and 5) following the weekends.

Open Studios is like having a party—clean up everything and make it pretty—not a bad thing! And for us, that means cleaning up the 4 acres of developed property out here.
A friend asked why I put my limited energy into Open Studios and I realized that this off-grid PLACE is my MISSION.
*Teaching and making woodenwares with Solar Power.
*Showing off our systems—water, batteries, composting toilet, heating with the sun, heating with wood.
*Encouraging young people to see how they can fit into environmental issues.
*Living the life—peace and quiet, privacy, self-sufficiency.
*Exposing the difficult side of off-grid life—it’s not always fun.
*Working hard physically and staying young!
 
Services
Since we are so far down the dirt road, services don’t come out our way. We’re also grateful to neighbors on our road for help with daily functions. ¾ of a mile away, we have trash pickup! And a mere mile away, our packages are delivered to a large dry box (we’re still trying to train some delivery folks to actually PUT packages IN the box…) at another neighbor’s house. And when we’re having water issues, several neighbors allow us to fill our gallon water jugs. Sometimes we just go out with a coffee in our robe and slippers to pick up and drop off!

The Hankie Project
Now that I’m older, I have a drippy nose just like my grandmother. Instead of constantly throwing away paper, I’ve taken to keeping a hankie tucked in my pocket. What a good thing for the environment! I think! I was able to find some pretty, vintage-looking handkerchiefs online (and delivered to the box). I liked them so much that I got more and am giving them away to everyone (friends, nurses, receptionists, my pharmacist, our helpers). I’ve been truly gratified at the response. Here’s a link to the ones I like. They’re not very manly, so I’m considering finding more for the guys.

Birthday Gift
I turned 70 recently and was able to watch the total Lunar Eclipse from my pillow! What a gift!
 
I hope you all have happy birthdays and a great Thanksgiving.

Meb and Tom
 

Happy 2019 dear friends!
​
It’s really Meb here, two months cancer-free after a year of treatments! Many thanks to Allie, who kept communication going throughout: telling you about upcoming shows and other news of “importance”, keeping the website current, plus plugging us into the social media circuit.

At the end of 2017, we’d made a 5-year plan. For several years, I’d been anxious to retire or move on to a different career or sell my business or… something! Now that my chemo-brain is lessening, I’m able to see more clearly what’s really been nagging me; a year of illness brings slow insights.

What I realized during my enforced rest is that I LOVE making spoons, I ADORE teaching and I truly ENJOY meeting you all at shows. I don’t want to stop!

But I don’t love my cold, dark office at the workshop, nor the paperwork that ties me to it. I really dislike the frenzy before shows, prepping lots of work in too short a time. We both get exhausted setting up and breaking down shows. I’m truly not fond of production work (same thing over and over…). And I need to spend more time at our homestead—my life’s work, I feel. My purpose.

Over the year, we’ve come up with several solutions.

Now I’m doing more office work at home in a cozy sun-lit nook next to the wood stove. Here I can keep an eye on the exciting projects going on, lend a hand to Tom when needed and do my part in between the dratted paperwork.

Both Ethan (workshop assistant since 2006) and Pat (final inspection, oiling expert and bill payer since 2015) are taking on more responsibility, easing me out of many organizational roles so I can spend more time doing what I LOVE!

We’ll be doing fewer shows in 2019 and hope to hire more assistance for set-up and load-out. Our newly-indoor-accessible and temperature-regulated root cellar makes gardening a priority.

We’ve begun a schedule of more regular workshop hours during the week, building up stock to prevent the back-up just before shows. And we both want to make more funky, fun, elegant, unique, original work, maybe using some of the bits and stumps and knots and ….. that we’ve been saving for years!

With Allie’s help, I hope to make it easier to order on-line (yes, I know I said that last year....) if you’re not near a show.  

But our big news is that in 2019 we finally hope to build our workshop at home! We’ve had the foundation boulders laid since 2001, so we’re more than ready! We’re not sure when we can begin, therefore when we’ll finish, but that’s another reason for doing fewer shows.

​Of course the new workshop will be off-grid, necessitating more powerful systems than we have in the house. But this will make teaching, Open Studios and workshop visits more exciting as we’ll be able to show how amazing sustainable power is!

So that’s it! Our dreams for 2019. We hope you’ll be part of our future as we continue to explore the beauty of New England hardwoods and sustainable living!

With love and gratitude,
​

Meb: So there we were, my granddaughter Addie and I, at the homestead having a delightful time playing in what we call, “the little house”-- a two-year-old-sized house on stilts-- where every child is entranced because they fit right in.  There is a porch that is open to the woods about three feet up, and suddenly, I found myself on the ground. 

The good news is that I didn’t have bleeding in my head, but the bad news is that my right wrist (yes, I am right-handed), is fractured.  The emergency room said I’ll be four to six weeks in a cast/sling, no driving or typing and certainly no flying pig tail carving. 

Lisa:  I arrived this morning to take Meb to her first radiation treatment, and there she was with her arm in a sling!  Oh dear!  So, now I am the typist. 

Meb: I thought I was done with chemo on March 27th.  Then in May I had the mastectomy.  My hair came back--short, lush and (surprise!) curly.  My finger skin was re-growing, I even tried playing the violin and it worked!  My finger nails were growing back strong, my head was clearing again… and then! 

​In July, I was told that I needed six more months of oral chemo and two months of radiation!!!  What, I’m not done?   It was explained to me then that because I’m what is called “triple negative”, (you can look it up, but essentially the highest rate of recurrence), other treatments including hormones, were not effective on my cancer. 

Lisa: I arrived at the shop to work and Meb told me this news, saying she was shocked to hear the adjective “deadly” used in describing this type of cancer. 

“I guess I have been rather la-la about it” she said.  

Well, I don’t think that she has been “la-la” about it at all, but rather has had an amazingly “keep calm and carry on” spirit in the face of it, and that I think that it has been precisely this in her very positive character that has helped her get through it so well, and I told her so.  Also, always her sense of humor is at the ready and we have enjoyed laughing together often and recently over her special new “swimming boob”.

Today on the radiation table, when the radiologist was tagging her for the new tattoos to mark the specific radiation parameters, Meb said to him, “Ah, a new tat for tit!”… it took him a second or two, and then he and all of us burst out in real laughter together… and it felt good to hear it in that room.  It was a human healing moment.

Meb: I don’t know where I am right now with this new set-back.  I’m very frustrated, a bit depressed and just a little angry at myself.   We just returned from our lovely intense Nantucket show with depleted stock, and Chatham in about two weeks, and I’m in a cast!  Hopefully I will find out tomorrow for how long.    
 
Update: The cast comes off on August 29th! I'm driving myself to radiation every day. Almost ready for Chatham, and it really is raining every day...