Next spring, I’m going to build a house from scratch. Today, I made a box. It was kind of hard, but I don’t plan to make any more boxes for awhile, so who cares? It’s easier than finding land.

My wife and I are (still) at that special stage of the aspiring homesteader’s journey known as “Pretending To Look For Land.” We aren’t actually looking for land; I’m too busy sending out stories, trying to get video games to work on Linux, and blogging about homesteading. But one of these days, come hell or high hair in the White House, we are going to get online and click ourselves to a homesteader paradise.

That immature jab at Massachusetts coiffure reminds me that I missed the New York deadline for voter registration. Woe unto he who changes states, especially during election year. I guess it takes them a whole month to enter your name, SSN, ISBN, and favorite occasion on which Bush said “War on Terror” into their big database. Well, it’s hard work.

B I L L Good. First name is done. Wait, that is a B, right? Maybe Q? Qill? Could be. I knew a Gil once. BKSP BKSP BKSP BKSP Q Perfect. What an art. Oh, wait. What was I thinking! Now I have to type the I L L again! Forget it, Qill. It’s soda time.

Probably I should have played it safe and registered for 2008 while I was there, but will I still live in NY by then? Where am I moving, anyway?

The mind of the homesteader at this stage moves in one small circle.

But building the box (also known as a “cold frame” although there’s no picture and it’s trying not to be cold) took my mind off the Land Question. Also the Election Question, the Video Games On Linux Question, and even the If A Tree Falls In The Forest And An Old Guy Would Have Heard It If He’d Left His Hearing Aid On But He Didn’t Because His Wife Hogs The TV And He’d Rather Not Hear Fear Factor, Then, Ah, Sorry, What Was The Question Question. Instead, my mind was free to hammer boards.

Granted, October 30th is not exactly the right time to launch a garden, but why not try a few cold-weather crops? Crop. Ha. More like bowl. “How’d the garden do this winter?” “We got a fine bowl. Let me just hop over this afternoon and bring you a leaf.”

Still, even one tray holds a fair bit of seedlings. We put some garlic in the ground and scattered some salad mix in one of the two cold frames (let’s name them Hope and, er, McGillicutty), but I’m betting on the tray of mache, salad, and scallions we’ll keep indoors. Something will have to sprout in that tray, and then I’ll finally know that I didn’t leave the living world behind in the secret mountains of Maryland.

It was so good to open the chintzy bag of peat moss/vermiculite, pour it in the tray with some soil, and dibble in the seeds. For one thing, I remembered what it was like to feel proficient. (One day, Linux, one day.) On top of that, it was absurdly easy. After seeding three or four bread trays of soil at a time, this was like blowing your nose. I mean, if you find that easy. There is a trick to it.

Perhaps most people would have a cute little garden first, then go learn the mystic rites of the produce farm. Having gone straight from computers to compost, I now aspire to the cute little garden. But then, most people wouldn’t associate Halloween with knuckling down and starting the garden.

Yet doing things backwards has its own peculiar pleasure. Today happened to be one of those days in autumn when the air is too warm for even a sweater and the scent of moist leaves swears there is a Heaven. If I’d done all this when I should have, it might have been on one of those freezing days a few weeks back and today might have been squandered at the computer.

And I like that our garden will be small. Having learned to grow food on a “huge” scale first, there’s a hidden door of wonder that waits at the entrance of my own garden, a door the cradle farmer might never find.

Lovely thought.

Where am I going to buy land?