A bit of nostalgia. The years pass, and our lives change, but the memories last. (this is my 100th post)

My recent post on fall in NZ got me thinking about making wood and that triggered further memories.

Jeanne, when she read this recently and kindly encouraged me to submit it to my vast readership of several family members and friends, called it bittersweet. I guess it is that, sort of.  As I write this, I am engaged in selling our house with the manicured lawn and everything that was part of our lives for so long. We have moved on to a new life, she and I. It's a great one, and I wouldn't change a thing, even if I could, but with my senior status has come an appreciation for all the stages of my life.  And a bit of sentimentality. 

This was written several years ago. I had been retired from Khoury, Inc. and was now working part time for Lakestate Industries. My brief association with Lakestates is a story in itself. It was short-lived, but it gave me the proudest months of my 35 year working career. Building furniture doesn't compare with helping to build people. 

This essay or whatever it is, was written mostly for me. And it was written to remember what a life Jeanne and I lived. We made decisions early in our lives together that set in motion a life style that I don't regret. We could have made much more money had we followed other paths, but this suited us. And the years disappeared so quickly...at least it seems so now. 

So, here it is for what it's worth. 

At the Chopping Block

by Doug Foster

Fred and McKenzie, Mike and Kim, and I were perched on stools in our kitchen one late afternoon in November while Jeanne worked at the counter, chopping vegetables. She had one of her fancy knives flying, the blade almost a blur, and she was making short work of dicing a progression of vegetables. As each was finished, she tilted the cutting board, and added to the mirepoix she was preparing for the osso buco, our main course that evening. Those of us not wielding a knife at 4 strokes per second, were enjoying our choices of adult beverages. Restoring our tissues P. G. Wodehouse would have said. To be fair, Jeanne also had her glass of chablis off to the side and the occasional sip had done nothing to diminish her knife skills.

It occurred to me then, that we had all come together again, at the hub of our home, our kitchen, and around the hub of the kitchen, the cutting board.

We are all in our 50’s now, and enjoy a fine standard of living. We have come to the point in our lives that allows us to partake of some of the finer things of life. That point being, of course, when Fred and McKenzie, the most generous guests any host could ever imagine, come to visit. They never fail to impress us by bringing luscious and exotic edibles that are just not available from our local market place. Or when Mike and Kim honor us with a platter of marinated woodcock breasts wrapped in bacon and grilled.

And so we gather, with other friends as well, a few times a year, around that point in the kitchen that begins the journey for the food stuffs from provender to fine dining.

I realized, during a lull in the conversation, and possibly as a result of the mellow mood generated by my scotch, that it wasn’t very long ago, not a day over 35 years, back when Jeanne and I were first starting out together and contended with a much lower standard of living, that the point that started our dinner’s journey to the table was very different. Back in those days, there weren’t any middle men cutting and wrapping and marketing most of our main courses. We did it ourselves and we did it, not around the cutting board on the counter in the kitchen, but around the chopping block in the backyard.

Now, I don’t know what your experience has been with cutting boards, but mine has not been good. We have had a lot of turnover with that particular kitchen implement. They crack, warp, discolor, or otherwise make themselves unappealing to use in short order. Then off we go to the store for another. It’s very disheartening.

I had no such problem with my chopping blocks. My first chopping block especially was carefully selected and through use, became seasoned and beautiful to me.

When I began to ‘make wood’ at our first home, I recognized immediately that I would need to split much of the stove length wood I was hauling home. The chopping block on which I would do this work logically needed to the biggest, most solid hunk of stump I could find.

We had, at the time, a problem with Dutch Elm Disease working it’s way through our part of the Midwest, and this meant that we had a good supply of dead elms in our woods. It made up most of the firewood I collected for many years. As I hauled each of my first drays of wood home and unloaded it, I would toss aside any likely looking pieces for the position of chopping block. From all the candidates, I chose one that was 14 inches tall, and 22 inches across. It had a nice twist I noticed, in its growth pattern, and that meant that it would be even more impervious to being inadvertently damaged as I split each piece of wood it supported.

It served me well that first year, accepting thousands of strokes from my 15 pound maul as I split my way through many cords of wood. By the time all of it was deposited in the basement that fall, I had a wonderful pile of chips around my block, attesting to my industry, and the top no longer looked like the brand-new chopping block of a wood-making neophyte. I had taken the bark off it all around to avoid rot. The sun and rain had begun to bleach it nicely too.  The chopping block was now a permanent part of my rural homestead.

The fall meant also, that our flocks of chickens, ducks and geese had, for the most part, come to the end of their short but happy lives. A few of the more productive chickens were chosen to continue with their egg laying duties during the upcoming winter months, but the remainder of the fowls were systematically introduced to the chopping block one busy Saturday, and took a major step toward becoming our dinner.

With time, other main courses began their journey toward our table on the chopping block as well, some of them unique enough to qualify today for a spot on Andrew Zimmer’s Weird Food television show. Back then, it was just living off the land. It was having a good meal that I didn’t have to buy.

Over the years, my chopping block acquired an increasingly used look. It’s edges became beveled as I braced innumerable thin branches against it and cut them to length with my axe.

I noticed too, that it was slowly forming a depression in the soil underneath it. Tens of thousands of strokes were compressing the dirt and raising a slight berm of soil around it. One night, as I watched the 1984 version of Dune, and saw the Fremen setting up “thumpers” to disguise their movements across the desert from the giant sandworms, I wondered if my rhythmic thumps were noticed by or affected any of the regular-sized annelids that lived in my vicinity.

Finally, the years took their toll on my old friend, and I was forced to find a replacement. I never did get another chopping block quite as big and solid as that first one. With time, my needs for a chopping block diminished as well. Oil, and then propane became my heating fuel of choice, and we no longer raised any animals. I still kept my chopping block however. It’s one of those items you just don’t throw away; you never know when you might need it again.

I am happy to say that even now, all these years later, I still have a chopping block. I admit though, that it has been removed from the environs of our home. Our gently sloping lawn is well manicured and Jeanne’s crescent of flowers and dwarf apple trees curving gracefully through it lend our home a certain level of tidiness that our first house definitely lacked. It would not do to have my chopping block a few feet from the back door.

It sits now between my storage shed and garden house, near the far edge of the property. While I no longer ‘make wood’ because I need it to keep winter at bay, I do still accumulate stove wood now and then as I thin my woodlot, clean up storm damaged trees, or otherwise maintain my three acres. I therefore still have at least a minimal smattering of the chips around my chopping block that are so necessary to give it the proper look. Just a few days ago I sharpened a few cedar stakes that Jeanne could use to lay out straight lines in her garden.

I sit now at leisure, beneath an apple tree, and sometimes look across my yard at that distant chopping block. Its distant location reminds me of the distance in years I’ve come since it was my daily companion. I feel a bit of nostalgia for those times I remember when it was hub of my homestead.

I know that Jeanne is planning chicken for dinner tonight. It’ll be put on the grill, halved and anointed with truffle-infused olive oil and spices. I wonder if she’d mind, just this once, that instead of splitting it in half with her 10-inch cleaver, I took the bird out to my chopping block, and split it with my double-bitted axe? I’ve been practicing lately, and I’ll bet I could still split its wishbone right down the middle….just for old-times sake? Maybe if I poured her a glass of wine now and asked later...