The Design Process

I have a wife with an infectious ambition to be a farmer and it is great. I can't say that I am opposed to it in any way because I too love growing food and I love eating the fresh food that she cooks from our bounty.

One of the best side effects to my wife's ambition is that she keeps my list of projects long and diverse. The greatest thing about the situation is that I get to design how the project will be constructed and she approves my logic and ultimately the design. I can't begin to tell you how many times I have been delegated a project such as a trellis, or a garden box, or a cold frame and once I launch into how I will make the corners mitered or use 4 x 4 posts in the corner instead of simply edge screwing, that I hear "I really don't care, just build it." It's not that she really doesn't care, because she really does, but she let's her creativity end there and let's mine take over.

There is a bit of yin and yang taking place in our lives that makes this design process enjoyable for both of us and in turn we both appreciate our individual contributions to the end result. I make the boxes that she plants vegetables in and I make the cold frame that covers the garden that allows here to grow into winter. I build her the infrastructure and she manufacturers the products. Throughout this blog you will see this theme carried out time after time. Wife says make me "this," I stumble through making it and write about it here.