The original Frizelle Enos in downtown Sebastopol.

Everybody loves Frizelle Enos, and Frizelle Enos loves us all right back. Whether you’re a rancher, apple farmer, hippy or weekender, we all need our Carhartts, straw bales, wood stoves and chicken feed, all served up with a smile at Frizelle Enos in downtown Sebastopol since 1938. Named after the two proprietors who built the store’s reputation from 1947- 66, Frizelle Enos Feeds, whose motto is “Feeds, Seeds ‘N Country Needs”, stewards the agricultural soul of West Sonoma County.

Need livestock, rooster or truck? Check the community chalkboard at the store’s entry.

The rear of the building captures the region’s agricultural character.

Tagged: california coast, carhartt, deep craft, feed store, frizelle enos, sebastopol, west sonoma county

Daniel Libeskind designed the new wing of the Denver Art Museum, completed in 2006.

Thanks to Airbnb, Ene and I were able to rent a very cozy apartment in the Capital Hill neighborhood of downtown Denver during our recent three day sojourn. The majority of our Tsuru-related business took place in Denver’s Civic Center, a mile long stretch comprising the city’s major cultural and governmental institutions, so our days consisted of commuting on foot from our brick-faced, art deco apartment building typical of the neighborhood, to a corridor of Starchitecture just down the hill. The daily walk gave us a collapsed sense of the city’s history through its architecture, and we agreed that one of Denver’s most unique attributes is its easy juxtaposition of building styles and scale. As the highest altitude corner of the Great Plains, on the edge of the Rockies and with about 300 days of sunshine annually, Denver is the ideal setting for exuberance in architecture.

I love the high modern/midieval mashup of Gio Ponti’s wing of the Denver Art Museum, from 1971, his only building in the US; “AS TO BE IN PLAIN SIGHT” by Lawrence Weiner, in the foreground.

The stairwells in Ponti’s building are sublime.

Most of the brick-faced apartment buildings have names in Denver’s Capital Hill neighborhood. ‘Helene’ on Pearl Street is a lovely example of vernacular craftsmanship and design.

Tagged: aesthetics, airbnb, architecture, colorado, deep craft, denver, denver art museum, gio ponti, libeskind, sustainability, urbanism, vernacular architecture, wowhaus

A barn full of beautiful wood, carefully laid up to dry, is better than money in the bank.

I’ve never really studied economic theory, but imagine there’s an odd relationship/kinship between miserliness and greed. Suffice it to say I learned firsthand over the past week how one might give way to the other, in predictable order.

In the course of single-handedly stacking over 1000 board feet of premium wood I had recently milled, aided only by gravity, levers and rolling bars, I loaded my barn and felt a sense of pride bordering on prosperity. I’ve never been interested in money or accumulation, but the simple act of loading the barn with my own hands shifted my perspective. My new pile of wood drying in the barn might as well be bars of gold, and will likely increase in value at an exponentially greater rate.

Tagged: aesthetics, appropriate technology, craft philosophy, deep craft, economics, scott Constable, woodworking

A glimpse of the deck and cockpit of ‘Suddenly’, our 1978 Hunter 25 sailboat.

Suddenly is the name of our new sailboat, a 1978 Hunter 25 docked at a convenient slip in the Berkeley Marina. The boat is aptly named, for like so many things worth the wait, no matter how well-reasoned and researched the quest, the decision to take the plunge often happens quite suddenly. We’ll be using her as an urban extension of the wowhaus studio, as a family sailing lab for excursions on the Bay and into the Delta, a place to meet with friends and clients and as a tiny apartment for the occasional overnight.

The cabin is ample but minimal, and sleeps five in spartan comfort.

Most significantly, Suddenly will function as a kind of muse for the wowhaus studio and our ever-increasing range of work in art and design in the public sphere. As we continue to build out our studio compound on the rural Sonoma Coast, our over-lapping projects require a near constant flow of new ideas. Experience has taught us that in order to maintain focus and to keep things fresh and fun, sometimes innovation requires a muse.

Tagged: aesthetics, deep craft, innovation, sailing, scott Constable, wowhaus

Shawn trims the ends of the felled trunk before quartering the log.

I met my friend Shawn Gavin at the old Felta School near Healdsburg the other day to mill a Valley Oak. I had purchased the log from the school after it was felled for safety concerns last September, and have been eager to see what the wood looks like. I plan to make a batch of my Deep Deck from the wood after it air dries for about a year, having successfully prototyped a small production run in American Elm. The plan is to make different versions of the deck in different woods from locally-grown, hand-milled logs, each tree telling a different story whose provenance is reflected in each series of decks.

Section of an oak showing medullary rays.

The Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) is a true white oak native to California’s hot interior valleys. Like its eastern cousin Quercus alba, the Valley Oak has large medullary rays that make an interesting pattern while adding strength to the wood when it is ‘quarter sawn’ from the log. The medullary rays radiate from the center of the tree to the sapwood to carry nutrients, so they run across the wood’s annular rings. When boards are cut from the log with the annular rings perpendicular to the face, they are called ‘quarter sawn’, and the medullary rays, or ’silver rays’ are exposed. If the milled boards are carefully stickered in stacks with good air circulation, the grain orientation and slow curing will add to the strength and stability of the wood, ideal for my innovative Deep Deck design.

The ends are trimmed and sealed with wax.

The log is cut in half lengthwise along the log’s primary ‘heart shake’.

The quarters are cut perpendicular to the heart shake, along the center of the tree.

Quarters are loaded onto the mill to be squared and milled into boards cut perpendicular to the annular rings.

Milling goes fast with Shawn’s expertise and hydraulic Wood-Mizer. The two of us processed a 4′d x 10′l log into about 1100 board feet of quarter-sawn lumber in just 13 hours, including loading and delivering the material to the wowhaus studio.

Even when rough-cut, the medullary rays are visible, so characteristic of quarter-sawn white oak.

Tagged: california flora, deep craft, longboard, milling wood, quarter sawn, scott Constable, skateboard, traditional craft, white oak, wood-mizer, woodworking, wowhaus

We launched our boats in a lingering morning fog.

Some days just call for a picnic, and some picnics call for adventure. So went my thinking when I invited my friend Cal to join me on my favorite six mile paddle down Estero Americano to a remote beach on an unseasonably warm day in late February. Like so many intrepid leaps into what lies beyond, ours began at the end of a dirt road, where we launched our boats in a lingering morning fog.

The rugged shore at the mouth of the Estero, looking towards Bodega Head.

The day warmed as the fog lifted and the slough opened up. We bucked a strong headwind on the last leg and beached our boats to find the waterway’s mouth closed to the Pacific despite the high tide. Finding shelter from the wind in the dunes, we spread our picnic on scraps of driftwood and enjoyed a delicious repast of boiled duck eggs, salami with cheese, olives and walnut bread, finished off with apples and strong tea with honey. Weary from the long paddle, we laid on our backs in the sand and watched the gulls drift by in the wind and a solo hawk hover uncannily still.

We used our paddles as sails on the journey home.

With a strong wind at our backs on the voyage home, we were able to use our paddles as sails for long stretches. Our plan was to find a protected cove on the way to stop to try a little drawing and painting, but the wind was too persistent so we opted for an early return.  I look forward to breaking out the art supplies next time, but was happy enough to have the company of an old friend on real picnic adventure.

Tagged: cal peternell, california coast, estero americano, picnic adventure, scott Constable, sonoma coast

Ene builds towers for her peas to climb.

With help from friends we’ve been reviving our vegetable garden over the past few weeks. It’s been about 5 years since we built the raised beds, and with the demands of projects and travel over the past couple of years, the garden has been sorely neglected. The grounds are now weeded, paths mulched, beds topped off with close to ten yards of compost, and Ene has been busy planting. By spring we’ll start to see lettuces, spinach, peas, strawberries, blueberries, asparagus and greens. Meanwhile, we’ll enjoy the bounty of kale that survived our neglect.

Kale and other cabbages thrive in the cool maritime climate of the Sonoma Coast.

Scott’s Sake Greens:

Pick and rinse a few handfuls of dino kale, collard or other leafy cabbage. Shake off most of the water. Remove the spines if they are too tough and chop the leaves into 1″ strips. Heat olive oil in a large skillet or wok over a medium-high flame and toss in the greens, mixing them constantly as they cook, about one minute. Salt the greens, add a little more oil and toss in a few cloves of finely chopped garlic. Continue mixing over a medium flame for another minute and sprinkle in a little chili pepper (I like nanami togarashi) and/or dried seaweed (I like nori komi furikake). Pour about a half cup of dry sake into the pan and deglaze it by mixing the ingredients with a large spoon or spatula. Add a little water if the greens seem too dry. Lower the heat, partially cover the greens and let them simmer a few more minutes until they are tender but retain their glossy green color. Serve as a side dish with rice and black-eyed peas or with grilled fish.

Tagged: california coast, gardening, kale recipe, sonoma coast, wowhaus