Dear Folks,

What a painful month it has been! And what a beautiful month it has been! I guess that means it’s been a month of up and down emotions.

UP — August around here is always so lovely. The midsummer heat is tempered but not gone. The sun rises a full hour later and sets a full hour earlier, and the morning valley fogs begin, a sure sign of fall. But we get crystal-clear days and cool, still nights, so beautiful. And from the garden, in spite of the continuing drought, all our diligent summer’s work and watering is producing a flood of incredible food.

I planted twice as many green soybeans as I usually do — I guess I was thinking of Y2K or something. Anyhow, they did wonderfully, so all of a sudden I had a mountain of beans to pick, boil, and freeze. So for a week I invited friends over for dinner every night and afterward we sat and talked and shucked green soys. Worked great! We now have quarts and quarts of them in the freezer.

Here’s how one of those evenings went. My friend Priscilla came over, and while we were out in the garden picking beans, we snacked on cherry tomatoes off the vine — the kind that just explode with flavor in your mouth. I discovered a ripe Charentais melon out there, so we brought it in for our next course. Kerry was in the kitchen playing with the juicer, so we tried some chilled carrot/apple/cucumber juice — yum! Then I poured out a small dish of tamari, and we dipped hot green soys in it, still in their shells, and squeezed the beans with our teeth into our mouths. This is a common snack in Japanese bars; it tastes a bit like salted peanuts but is much healthier.

We could have declared it a meal right there, but Kerry was boiling up sweet corn, and we had some sourdough bread I had just baked, and a fresh tomato soup. So we feasted on all that while we sat out on the screen porch and shucked beans and chatted and listened to Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and watched the sun go down.

Not bad!

DOWN– our ancient cat gray Simon finally gave up the ghost, as calmly and graciously as he had always lived. We don’t know how old he was. He came to live with us 15 years ago and was already an adult then. He was a cool character; never phased by our big dogs; never fought with our other cats. (But he had cauliflower ears from defending our boundary against the big mean neighbor cat Sven.) He was the best lap-sitter and purrer I have ever known — and I’ve known a lot of cats. He was my ever-present vibrating healing force when I was recovering from cancer. He slept curled against me on my bed for years; then he curled up with our old dog Basil for his last year; this summer he pretty much stayed outside. He was thin and scraggly but apparently functional and cheerful right to the end. He just stopped coming in for meals. I put down milk, cream, anything to tempt him, but he knew what he was about. One morning I found him out in his hidey-hole peaceful and dead.

A cat is just a little thing, and we’ve had so many (and still do — there are three very much alive ones still here), you’d think the parting of just one wouldn’t make much difference. Especially since we knew this old sweet guy had to be nearing his end. I even wondered, if he survived till November, if it might be better to put him down than to move him in his extreme old age to a new farm. But when the end comes, however expected, it still hurts. There’s a surprisingly big hole where that old cat used to be. He’s been such a fine, steady, affectionate, peaceful member of this household for so long. We kind of counted on his presence.

So I’m sad.

UP — I did the most fun thing of the whole summer early this month. I spent a morning crawling around the four Hunt barns at Cobb Hill with Jan Lewendowsky, who is a historic barn restorer. It was kind of like watching Sherlock Holmes at work. Jan sees a couple of notches and says, “This post hasn’t always been vertical; it’s a horizontal beam from another older barn.” He admires a thick upright and says “Chestnut. Must have been cut before 1860,” or “Wow! Straight-grain white oak that thick had to be before 1810!” He sees Roman numerals scratched into joists with suns and moons next to them and can tell us what they mean and when they must have been put there.

It was a bright, breezy day and sunbeams slanted through the cracks in the huge barn lofts — like hay-scented cathedrals. As Jan pieced together the probable (and complicated) history of the barn complex, I fell completely in love with these old, functional buildings. And I hoped in my next life to be a historic barn restorer.

The good news was that he declared three of the four barns structurally in good condition, with a lot of cosmetic problems due to the past 10 years of non-maintenance. The fourth barn — the only one built in the 20th century — needs a whole new roof, including all the supporting beams and joists. Jan’s written report gave us a list of priorities for bringing all the barns up to snuff, with a budget of $45,000.

We don’t have that, of course. And that’s just structural repairs, it doesn’t count the complete rewiring job that’s necessary, or refitting the barns for cheese-making and bakery and other great things we envision.

But we will take it one step at a time. Here’s another upper — the afternoon of the day Jan Lewendowsky went through our barns, we started repairing them. Jay Mead, one of our California CobbHillians and a skilled carpenter, came for two weeks and stayed with his family in the Hunt house and went to town on the barns. Numerous other community members stopped by to help as they could. Some days there were really good work parties. In two weeks they managed to patch the roof leaks, strip all the decayed siding off the south sides of two barns and replace it, take out 50 windows, mostly broken, and paint, reglaze, and replace half of them (have to do the other half before winter), take down about 20 lightning rods (the insurance company insisted on this), and patch various holes.

It felt so good to see the barns finally turned around from their downward slide! We’ll be working on them for years, but at least the work has begun. And we know what historical treasures they are.

DOWN/UP — Saturday before last I spent the morning over in Hartland on the barns, got home at noon, and found 8 messages on our answering machine. Each one was from a neighbor, successively farther away, saying, “Your cows are in our yard!” I could follow their progress by the messages, down Daniels Road to the village, along the state highway 12A. Near as I could tell, they were at least a mile away.

So I grabbed a bucket of grain, got into my car, and went cow-hunting. (Stephen and Kerry were at the farmers markets and wouldn’t be back till mid-afternoon.) As I drove through the village, everyone just pointed — they knew exactly what I was looking for and the direction they had gone. Finally I found them way across Stage Road, happily munching in the middle of a green 20-acre hayfield. Our pasture was essentially gone with the drought, so they had simply, sensibly, moved on to where the grass was greener. The town cop was there, and the neighbor whose field it was, and several curious onlookers, trying to figure out what to do.

Having my doubts about my ability to walk 5 cows along a busy highway and through town by myself, I talked everyone into leaving them there until S&K came home. They clearly weren’t going anywhere; they had found cow nirvana. I promised the cop that I’d keep an eye on them. Which I did, sporadically, in between harvesting in Jim’s garden, till S&K got back. I drove them over to their wandering herd, and we made a procession back through town. Stephen and Kerry leading with the bucket holding two cows on ropes, the other three following fitfully behind, and me at the back in the car with my blinkers on to slow traffic on the highway.

It all went smoothly, and they’re on a new pasture now, and it gave the town something to talk about on a sleepy Saturday.

UP/DOWN/UP — Last Wednesday was Cobb Hill’s Act 250 hearing, the culmination of a year of work on our part. Act 250 is Vermont’s great land use law, something I really admire. It requires any developer of more than 10 units on more than 10 acres to submit evidence that the project meets 10 Criteria. Will there be any impact on water supplies? On air pollution? On traffic? On the local school? On historical or archeological sites? etc. etc. etc. Our application was a notebook easily an inch thick. It contained the site plan, the engineering plans for water and wastewater and storm drainage, a traffic consultant’s report, a letter from the school principal saying there is room for our kids, a letter from the fire chief saying he can turn his engines around on our road, a letter from the land trust saying they’re ready to accept our conservation easement, from the fish & game department, from the historical society, from the state wetlands folks, etc., etc., etc. We felt triumphant even to get it finished.

The hearing is conducted by three District Commissioners, citizens appointed to this job, and is open to all interested parties. Invitations were sent to all town officials, all state officials, and all 26 of our abutters. I think this is a good idea. I think it’s wonderful that in Vermont the neighbors get to hear about and question and object to all aspects of a development before it is allowed to proceed — or to stop it from proceeding.

And I found the day very trying.

It was hot. We had outlined all the houses and roads with colored tape up on the site, so the Commissioners and neighbors could walk around and see how it will be laid out. They arrived at 9:30 AM, with reporters and photographers from the papers, and the town planning commission and town manager. They walked around and asked questions for an hour and a half. Jeff Schoellkopf, our architect, did most of the talking. I was encouraged to see that the commissioners were all women, competent and businesslike. I was discouraged that there were at least half a dozen neighbors loudly complaining about what we were about to do to their view or their wells or their taxes.

At 11 the hearing reconvened in the town recreation center and went on till 5 pm. Now it was official, everything tape recorded, everyone sworn in. Act 250 hearings are by nature controversial; the last two these ladies had conducted (the previous week) were about a big gas station complex at the Hartland interstate exit, and a big propane gas storage facility in Sharon — both vigorously opposed by most everyone in town. There are strict rules to keep Act 250 hearings systematic and civil. They made a heaviness about the whole proceedings, as if we were all in court and on trial (which, in a sense, we were).

We went through the 10 Criteria in detail, and out of order, addressing the ones of concern to our neighbors first — view, traffic, water. Unfortunately Peter Forbes, who normally would have been our community spokesperson was away, so I had to do my best to fill in for him. Jeff and our engineer David Boehm answered all the technical questions. They did a much better job of keeping their cool than I did. I felt very defensive; our years of plans and dreams were being dragged out into a harsh, unforgiving spotlight. Our neighbors were criticizing us for preserving forever 95 percent of the beautiful view of our farms and for clustering at one corner, right next to the village where there are already plenty of houses and cars, a lovingly planned development of environmentally conscious houses that will be surrounded by beautiful gardens. Given the ecological atrocities that these neighbors live in, which are in OUR view, I was feeling very cynical and put-upon.

It was only a few neighbors. Most of the others are friendly to our project and to us and didn’t even show up. I think their complaints cut no ice with the District Commissioners, who must have never before seen an application like ours that honestly does its best to address every environmental concern.

What I’m most worried about is the state agencies, all of whom seem to have contradictory mandates for our land. The Fish & Game people have declared our entire forest a critical deer yard, which upsets our delicate negotiations with the snowmobile people about relocating their trail (away from our houses and pastures). The taxation department, on the other hand, has required us to submit a forestry plan that orders us to clear away all that worthless hemlock under which the deer shelter. The Wetlands department is demanding a 50-foot no-mow buffer around the tiny brook that goes through the Curtis hayfield — there has been no such buffer for the last 50 years of farming there, it would cut seriously into our hay crop, and it would build up a barrier of brush that would make the brook both inaccessible and invisible. The Water Supply department is requiring us to sink test wells to monitor whether our new supply well (uphill and deep in bedrock) will suck up any discharge water from our graywater leachfield (downhill and shallow in gravel). The Water Discharge department will not let us use the compost from our composting toilets on our land; we must have it hauled away by a septic-tank company.

I think these requirements are really stupid. It was hard for me not to say so. To get our permit, we’ll probably have to agree to all of them, and then negotiate further and submit amendments to our Act 250 permit. Once we fall under that Act’s mandate, we have to be responsible forever for what we promise; we can be sued if we don’t.

So it was a heavy day. Only two people said good things about us. The deer yard guy said he was impressed by the scope and vision of the whole project and our concern for wildlife. And one of the town planning commissioners said he thought we conformed completely to the town plan (but the other commissioners haven’t yet voted on that.) The District Commissioners were carefully noncommittal. They will now go away and cogitate for a few weeks and probably call further hearings, for which we may have to gather further evidence. Sometime this fall, we should get our permit (I can’t imagine that we won’t), probably with requirements to try to ease the impact of our project — such as planting evergreens to screen the neighbors’ view — which is fine with us, as we’ve told the neighbors all along.

Ick.

DOWN/UP/UP — the Cobb Hill folks have been very busy. Several of our “away” members from California and Kentucky came for a week or two, so we took advantage of their presence to have lots of meetings and do lots of work, not only on the barns.

We had a Construction Summit with our general contractor, architect, engineers, and finance committee to do the next round of budgeting and plan the schedule for permitting, financing, and building. That was a downer. Budget discussions are always downers, because at every one our costs go up and we have to cut things we want — especially green, quality things — out of the plan. The one part of this project that is perpetually frustrating, despite our constant efforts not to waste money, is the budget.

But that night we had a picnic in the Hunt yard, with lots of newcomers, and it was a festive gathering. Then we had two days of meetings on the zillion topics before us at the moment, and they were great meetings. It’s rare that a group wrestles with a problem and comes out with solutions wiser than what anyone brought into the discussion. But that’s what it felt like we were doing, consistently, and with hard topics. (Whether to seek subsidies to make at least some of our units affordable to lower-income folks, how to write the bylaws that will govern us, what to do about several recent applicants about whom we have some reservations.) We are getting good at group decision-making. Our progress is visible — and we’re still working at getting better.

Then we had a clearness meeting to welcome Marsha Carmichael to the group. She’s a widow, who has a farm in southern Michigan, she’s a funny, acerbic, radical thinker, upbeat, fast and creative mind, hard worker, I like her a lot. She will be my nearest neighbor, because we will both have single-bedroom apartments in one wing of the common house. We will form the radical corner of the community.

There are three more families on the verge of clearness. I love these people who are joining our crazy endeavor! I can hardly wait to start actually living with them!

DOWN/UP/DOWN — Beyond the Limits. I have stopped fighting it, which means I’m actually making progress, about half as fast as I had hoped. I wanted to have a complete draft before Balaton, but there’s no way I’m going to make that. I have no idea how I will get it done, with Balaton and a move coming up. It depresses me. But I’m in deep and dirty enough now that I might as well keep going.

If I had nothing else to do, I would be enjoying this work. It’s great to have to read all the data and reports that have come out during this decade — good stuff, strong voices, so much more evidence than we’ve ever had before (that the planet is going to pot). Dennis and I have been working on model reruns, and that’s always fun. We are amazed at how well that 27-year-old model actually holds up as actual history unfolds. Here’s some really good news — the one number we have had to adjust this time is the population — it is rising more slowly than anyone, including us, predicted. That makes all the other parts of the simulated world less stressed. And it means it’s still possible to churn out good, desirable sustainable scenarios.

Working with Dennis is stressful this time, not because of the model or the work itself — we always like doing that stuff together — but because, I suppose, of the imminent sale of the farm and transformation of the Balaton Group, both of which are raising in our relationship some long-buried issues that we never resolved. Well, now is as good a time as any to resolve them, I guess.

If only I didn’t have so much else to do.

Hurriedly, Distractedly, Emotionally high and low, Love,

Dana