This post marks the beginning of what will be a new series of post on Changing Aging. The topic is GROWTH.
In particular, I want to write about growth that Jude and I are experiencing as we wend our way into late adulthood. Our early and mid-adulthood was spent on Summer Hill, an off the grid farm, retreat center and family home. We raised children, made hay, sugared off, calved. logged, fenced, mowed, trimmed, cut , chopped, fixed and built year round and we loved that life.
One winter day, when I was away, the heifers broke out of their paddock and the water in the barn froze and Jude called me with the weight of the world on her shoulders. She asked what I thought about “downsizing” the farm. I had been thinking the same thing. It was time to move on.
We looked for a house in Ithaca and found one we liked and six months after that first fateful conversation we held an auction and sold the farm lock, stock and barrel.
Once we moved to town, we were released from the burden of farming and we discovered that we had an enormous amount of free time (we’ve never owned a TV so all of America’s “TV time” is actually free time for us). I picked up a dusty guitar that I had purchased (but not played) twenty years before.
I started to play.
That first Christmas in Ithaca I bought Jude a mandolin. We both started taking lessons. It took us about six months to learn our first song, it was an old time tune called “Over the Waterfall.” I decided that our band needed a name and, after much back and forth, we agreed on a name,,,
Hot Koko.
After all, everybody loves hot cocoa.
Stay tuned there is much more Hot Koko to come!
UPDATE
Sneak previews of Hoto Koko in the recording studio:
