Cabin Fever Cures

Kevin Coolidge and Kasey Cox

Winter is a disease, and it comes every year – soon to be followed by the dreaded Cabin Fever. Symptoms include a tendency to eat too much chocolate, making flight plans to tropical destinations, and howling at the moon. Cabin Fever happens when you think you can't stand the cold and dark any longer and you just have to get out and do something or you’ll go stark, raving mad. Spring is the cure. Here are some books that will help your symptoms and plan your outside projects.

Tioga County is farming country and most farms in these parts used to have a sugar shack. Vermont might get better promotion and produce more, but there’s nothing better than Grandma’s flapjacks topped with homemade syrup from the farm. If you’ve a hankering for homemade and want to try making your own, then Backyard Sugarin’: A Complete How-To Guide, by Rink Mann will show you how.This book tells you how you can make maple syrup right in your own back yard without having to build a sap house or buy buckets, holding tanks, and other expensive paraphernalia. Think of it as sugar on a shoestring. The author goes over the basics of selecting your trees, homemade evaporators, the boiling down process and includes tips from small-time sugarers from across the country.

The country life is about chopping wood and carrying water, and even those who use chainsaws still need to be familiar with the hand tools of the craft. The Ax Book by D. Cook discusses – obviously – axes, but it is also a book about saws, fuel, wood, trees, forestry, steel, history, morals, and much more. The Ax Book tells you how to use an ax safely and efficiently for every task it can perform, especially in connection with cutting firewood and felling trees. A hundred years ago, the ax was the most important tool in America . It’s still important in these parts. Before the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum reopens in April, get yourself inspired about local lumbering history by reading Robert Currin’s short but sweet book focusing on The Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, a part of Stackpole Book’s “Pennsylvania Trail of History” guides.

Any time we have a warmer day in winter, I begin to dream of spring. Thaw brings the smell of dirt, and with it, thoughts of growing things, playing in the garden, birds tugging worms from soft, sun-warmed soil. Yes, squelching around in giant boots can get tiresome, but reading William Bryant Logan’s new cult classic Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth may just give you the renewed perspective you’re looking for. In poetic, meandering, fascinating mini-essays, Logan teaches about dirt – and history, farming, bugs, water, chemistry, the mysteries and facts of dowsing, the joys of composting, and even some of the beauty hidden in life and death. Reading Dirt brings a new appreciation for the stuff you yell at the kids for tracking into the house.

In preparation for your garden, or just to save on the amount of garbage you put on the curb every week, why not start a compost pile? There’s something quite satisfying about taking the bread crusts and apple cores and leftover salad already rotting in the refrigerator and putting it together to see what happens to it. Remember mixing all the leftovers from people’s junior high cafeteria lunch trays into one bowl and daring someone to eat it? That’s what compost is like – only more socially acceptable and scientifically redeeming. To get started, or to become more advanced, in your – er – science experiment and efforts to be green, try reading Stu Campbell’s enthusiastic book, Let it Rot! Helpful and popular over many years, this user-friendly compost guide is in its third edition.

So, throw on your mud boots, eat your chocolate Easter bunnies, watch the real bunnies in the yard, play Paul Bunyon and Nessmuk, tap your inner sap, plan your garden, and exchange the dreaded Cabin Fever for a full-blown case of Spring Fever!! See you outdoors soon.


How does your garden grow? Stop by, and let Kevin and Kasey know, at From My Shelf Books in Wellsboro, or email them through the website: www.wellsborobookstore.com