The Farm

I must admit I'm getting fairly excited by the way the new group of Native American style flutes are shaping up. They're at a stage where the final flute can be imagined. That's a danger sign because I'm tempeted to rush to the finish line. No major mistakes so far. A few glue lines I'm not happy with but other than that quite clean. This is perhaps the most error free group of flutes I've done to date. I changed the angle of the splitting edge a few degrees to make it more acute. My friend and fellow flute maker John Kulias has been using a flat splitting edge perhaps a 1/16 " thick and says that it helps prevent over blow. His ceramic flutes sound great. He showed me a flute by Colin Peterson (a flute maker that I had not heard of) who uses this type of edge. It played nicely. I'm not ready to go that far quite yet.



There always seems to be room for improvement. That's what keeps the juices flowing. Now, just when the urge to switch to a mental attitude of 'wrapping it up' is strongest - I must slow down. Monday, hopefully, I will start tuning. This is where I must avoid routine and stay focused on the smallest details. It looks like I'm going to make my deadline if the polyurethane finish goes well. Finishing has a strong element of chance. Runs, sags, temperature, humidity, dust all come into play. If something goes wrong, then I will have to take a step backward.



I grew up in a family that had it's roots in the land. My grandfather on my mother's side was a farmer. And, my maternal uncle too. They came from generations of farmers streaching way back. All the way back to before the Revolution. Many of the formative experiences in my life came from being on the farm. One of my earliest memories is of the men threshing wheat that had been heaped into a great pile in a field. The threashing was done by feeding the wheat into a big machine with pitch forks. As the mound of wheat got smaller rats, that had taken up abode under the mound of wheat, would run out and the men would try to spear them with their pitch forks. A rat would break out of the wheat into the field and a yell would go up, a pitch fork was thrown or stabbed at the rat. Men in the prime of life, working under the Sun, full of the energy of early adulthood. And, me probably no more than 4 or 5 years old watching and learning. Getting a taste of a days work well done. Learning the ways of strong men and women - on the land - doing the things that men and women like them have done for thousands of years. Strong, simple people - with the meaning of the land in their hearts and fresh air in their lungs and things to do. Grow plants, raise livestock, bring up children to take their places in the Circle of Life. They knew how to feed themselves and others. Everything they had coming from the land and the labor of their hands on the land. Resting in the Winter. Growing in the Spring and Summer. Harvesting in the Fall. Year after year, generation after generation. The Salt of the Earth.

Cleve was a man who loved/lived on my Grandfathers farm. They calle dCleve a hermit. He didn't work a steady job - except for my Grandfather once and a while to pay for being allowed to live in a cabin in the woods. As a matter of fact, there came a point where Cleve thought that Oliver - that was my Grandfathers name - was demanding too much work for the rent so he moved over to my uncles place and lived in a woods there for the rest of his life. My Uncle Charles was evidently not as demanding of Cleve's time. Cleve was a person who treated children just like he did adults. As equals. And, I loved to go to his place in the woods and listen to his stories of the old days, and the things he had seen and done in his life. Cleve was born into the days of horse and buggy. He had learned the trade of a blacksmith in his youth. But, when horses went out Cleve must have decided to quit working at a regular job. He did a variety of things to support himself. Shot varmints for the bounty and trained hunting dogs for the wealthy landowners. He helped if there was a corn crib to be built or a well dug.

Cleve's cabin was always full of wild cats. The Tom cats who had decided they could make it on their own in the Wide World. Cleve knew ever cat and from which farm lineage it had come. The cats came and went - they would stay a while, fattened up, have their wounds doctored and moved on. When I opened the door of Cleve's cabin after a polite knock, they would dive for their escape holes and disappear. Nobody but Cleve could touch them. Often there would be another barely employed individual there before me. But, I was always introduced and invited to stay and listen to conversation that I had briefly interupted. I felt more at home there in that little cabin under the trees than I did in my own house.