View from the North 40: What makes my peasant heart sing

My husband, John, and I come from a long line of peasant stock, hellbent do-it-yourselfers, who don’t put a price on our time but feel all the richer for our experiences, skills earned, pennies saved, materials reused and reimagined, and wheels reinvented.

No time is wasted DIYing project until money is wasted on buying something new.

But it takes a certain mindset to value the homemade and jerry-rigged over shiny new things. Plus, we have had to tolerate some hurtful language leveled at us, like junk hoarding, slapdash, haphazard, time wasting, inappropriate use of tools and not OSHA c...