| This past summer I had the
pleasure of meeting a lady who grew up on a farm in Seymour
Connecticut and now lives in North Carolina. There was a Red
Astrakhan Apple tree growing on the farm and she wanted to preserve it in
a special way. She had seen some of my work in a gallery
in North Carolina and contacted me about making something from the
wood.
The tree itself was not
quite dead when she harvested the wood, but was close to dead and
probably would not have lasted much longer. She decided to cut it
down and save a few pieces for the purpose of creating some mementos
for the family. Shortly before cutting the tree down she and her
sisters made the very difficult decision to list the farm for sale.
It was probably one of the most difficult decisions they had ever
made because her grandparents bought the farm after coming to the US
from Russia. It was where they decided to put down the family
roots.
Soon after she was born, her
grandparents built a smaller house on the land and persuaded her
father to move his family into the farmhouse. Having wonderful
memories of the place, she wanted something tangible to keep with
her. A piece of an apple tree that had grown on the property seemed
perfect.
She had climbed in the tree,
ate apples from the tree, sat in the shade of the tree, raked leaves
from under the tree, and put buckets of water under the tree for the
deer who came to eat the apples. She thought other family
members might feel the same way so she wanted pieces made to give
them as a remembrance. Hopefully these heirlooms will be handed
down to their descendants who will never actually know the farm.
When she brought the wood by my place I was disappointed
to see that it had split and cracked and had some decay.
However there was still some beautiful sound wood that I could
salvage.
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