Brettuns Village
Trunks & Leather
Old Trunks, New Leather.
All from Maine.
August 12, 2011
Finally. It’s
been one of those hot, humid summers upcountry, but now, at long last,
the temps at night are falling back where they should and the one thing
that inspired me to get to work this morning and create this long overdue
piece of literary flotsam was the breeze that blew through the bedroom
all night long last night. Low 50s, low humidity, and that breeze
was like magic. In through the window overlooking the deck, out through
the window overlooking the garden and the woods beyond. That breeze
was just passing through, but man oh man what a night of sleep. The
sheets were perfect, the dogs were quiet, no coyotes nor barred owls nor
whatever the heck that thing is that squawks up high in the old oak tree,
nor fire trucks nor motorcycles with little to no exhaust systems – it
was quiet. At least, I think it was quiet. I slept so deep
and sound that when Indie (That New Pup) woke me at 4:30 I had to check
my head for bullet holes. For a brief moment there I worried that
someone on the other side of the brook had taken a pot shot at a raccoon
in their garden, but the bullet had strayed and given me the gift of uninterrupted
sleep. Finding no holes, no GSR (for you CSI fans), and no splatter
it hit me that I had just done something that seems to be more and more
rare with each passing year – I’d slept through the night. Cause
for celebration, if you ask me.So, here we are at work this
morning, Indie and me, and soon the college kids will be in here counting
this and bagging that and taking pictures of the other and speaking in
that weird language that only college kids can understand, but Indie will
be asleep on the floor and that breeze – yes, it’s still blowing.
Not too hard, just hard enough to keep the air moving along. It’s
a glorious, sunny morning here in Maine. Wish you were here to feel
it. As long as we’re wishing I might as well also wish that you could
be here one fine morning right around the end of January, just for comparison.
There’s a bit of a contrast.The garden is exploding right
now – here comes all the squash at one time, and cucumbers are crawling
into the kitchen under their own power, desperate to avoid being heaved
onto the compost pile. We’re almost to that time of year when you
don’t want to ever leave the house unattended – if everyone’s away at the
same time then when you get back home there’ll be zucchini on the porch,
thanks to the neighbors. Darn it. We run a compost pile out
back, and every year whatever that thing produces gets tilled into the
garden to help push the corn up. We compost just about everything
from the kitchen and some of the yard stuff and then there’s the
pet rabbit’s contribution, but apparently this last winter the compost
pile never reached peak temperature, as now we’ve got hundreds of tomato,
pepper, tomatillo, eggplant, and unidentifiable plants growing all over
the place. It looks like we planted with a shotgun this year, instead
of in nice, laid out rows. Another week or two and it’ll be all hands
on deck to get the red tomatoes into the kitchen so Miss Mandy can work
her magic on them. That sauce she makes gives you the very will to
live in mid-winter up this way.Get uptacamp much this summer?
That’s a popular question here lately. We’ve managed to get away
to the shores of Brettuns Pond a few times, and have a few more trips planned
before the leaves jump off the trees. I’m glad we weren’t there last
night, as with that breeze and all those windows in the cabin I’d have
probably just died in my sleep out of sheer contentment, assuming contentment
is an actual word. I’d have died happy, let’s put it that way.
It’s nice to be at the pond; the boat’s been up there swinging on the hook
all summer (6 weeks now), and the one time we went up there just for a
boat ride (after dark, to get out in the middle and bob around with the
engine cut just to gawk at the stars) I left the gas can at home.
Darn it. So we laid on our backs on the dock and it was almost as
good. I don’t know how many stars you’ve got in your piece of sky
but we’ve got a gazillion of them hereabouts.OK, so I’ll stop with the
whole ‘it’s nicer here than where you are’ treatment and summarize by saying
that weather like this sure makes us happy that we live where we live and
that we raised our girls here and have this business that is continuing
to grow at a frightening pace and that the lobsters taste especially sweet
this year and maple syrup, well, I’d better stop right there. I hope
your summer has been going well, and that you’ve found time to do the things
you like to do come summertime. I also hope you painted the barn
and cut the wood and split the wood and stacked the wood with just enough
air space so it’ll dry right and be ready to burn next month when there’s
frost on the pumpkin.I guess since there’s a big
tuition payment due I should throw some sales talk at you, but you know
the drill. Poke around the website, it’s all posted on there.
We lowered the price on our veg tan calf hides this past week – and we
added almost 50 new items to the Clearance page. One of the best
things about summer is having both of our girls home from school.
Hayley has totally rebuilt the key room (for AntiqueKeys.Net) so that everything
is organized – and let me tell you, this is much better than keeping keys
in buckets, we’ve found. Hayster is an incredible organizer, so we
sure had the right person to manage that project. Becca has spent
her time taking pictures of each and every odd hide we had in the warehouse,
and she put them all on a big database, so now Papa can just paste a few
of them onto the Clearance page every so often to keep that page churning
along. The other day when we added about 40 or 50 items in a jiffy
I sent out a Facebook message to those who chose to ‘like’ us and we sold
quite a few of those leathers right off the bat. Thanks, jolly customers,
for that. Becca’s list is numbered, and she went over 1000 last week
sometime. There’s a lot of leather in this joint.Our Deal of the Week continues
to grow in popularity, and we appreciate the time that you put into taking
a look at that mess every Wednesday morning. You’re really helping
us clean up the storage building – keep up the good work.Hey, there’s that breeze
again. Man, it’s like paradise. But it’s Maine; you knew that
already. Have a great day and a fabulous weekend, wherever you are,
and thanks for reading this drivel.Churchill
BrettunsVillage.Com
Brettuns Village Trunk Shop
Brettuns Village Leather
AntiqueKeys.Net
That-Dog.comAuburn, Maine
Hayster’s key room while
it was still a work in progress
The Becca’s summer work
– just a portion of it. You’ll see each of these hides soon on our
Clearance page.
