The Practice

The House Year

The Practice is carried through recurring forms: meals prepared, boundaries walked, objects repaired, weather entered, letters read, and work returned to at the proper season. No house keeps the year in exactly the same way.

Four working seasons

The seasons are operating periods and nothing more. They describe when certain work is possible, and they are kept locally: Cedar House and South House work to their own year.

Repair and correspondence

Winter

Indoors, with the tools out.

The heavy exterior work stops and the houses turn to what can be done at a bench and a desk: records brought up to date, reading periods, winter mutual aid in the towns nearest the houses, and the year's accumulated repairs.

Repair benches worked daily; the ledger caught up
Reading periods at Fell and Karst
Correspondence answered; the letter trays emptied
Winter mutual aid: fuel runs, shopping, visits

Boundaries and water

Spring

Out to the line, and what the winter did to it.

The boundary walks are made, the culverts and drains are cleared, paths are made safe again, and the exterior work deferred through the winter is put on the rota in the order the sheets came in.

Boundary walks at every house
Culverts, drains, gutters, and paths
Planting where there is ground to plant
Water checked: springs, tanks, and standpipes

Public work and residential periods

Summer

Longer days, more people in the house.

The residential periods fall mostly here, and with them the conservation work, the teaching, the archive reading, and the community meals. Workdays are longer and the kitchen is busier than at any other time of the year.

Residential periods and the conservation workshop
Public work with local partners
Archive reading and cataloguing
Community meals in the towns nearest the houses

Harvest, reconciliation, and putting by

Autumn

What is kept, and what is written down.

Food is preserved and records are reconciled in the same weeks, which is either a coincidence or a habit; no one at the houses is much interested in deciding which. Inventories are made, the annual reports are drafted, and the houses are made ready for winter.

Harvest and preservation at Orchard and North
Inventory and the annual reports
Reconciliation of the house books
Fuel, glazing, and roofs before the weather turns

The four shared forms

These are kept at every house, in local versions. A house's own observances are its own and are not replaced by these.

The Quiet Twelve

Twelve minutes are kept before the reading. Nothing is assigned to the silence.

Cadence: At the beginning of every Open Table; first Thursday of the month at most houses.
Setting: The room in which the meal will be eaten, with the table already laid.
Things used: A clock or a bell · The reading, chosen that week · Chairs enough for those present
Access: Seating is provided and no one is asked to sit upright or still. Deaf and hard-of-hearing attenders are given the reading in print beforehand. A person may wait in the corridor and be fetched.
First printed: Notice for pinning in the kitchen, Shore House, 1981 (PRO/1981/02).

Twelve minutes of silence at the beginning of an Open Table. There is no guidance, no music, and no instruction about breathing, posture, or what anybody should experience. A person may leave the room and return, or not return.

What is done

The room is made quiet. The twelve minutes begin when it is quiet and not when the clock says so.
Whoever is cooking continues to cook; the kitchen is not required to stop.
A person who leaves the room is not spoken to about it afterwards.
At the end, one person reads aloud for no more than four hundred words.

What it does not claim

It is not meditation and nothing is claimed for it.
No posture, breath, image, or intention is prescribed.
It may be shortened where access, care, or emergency work requires it, and often is.
Missing it is not a fault and is not recorded.

Local variants

River House: The silence is kept for the same twelve minutes, but the house keeps a longer silence of its own from midnight to noon on 22 May, which is separate and older.
Briar House: Kept in the hour after the evening meal rather than before it, because the clinic rota rarely allows an unbroken twelve minutes at six.
South House: Shortened to eight minutes during conservation workshops, by a standing decision of the house recorded in 1996.

Records: PRO/1981/02 · PRO/2014/02

The Repair Table

A table, a bench, or a marked shelf where ordinary objects wait to be mended.

Cadence: Standing. Cleared and entered in the ledger at the end of each season.
Setting: A bench, a scullery shelf, or the end of the long table, depending on the house.
Things used: The repair ledger · Tool tags · Mending cloth, thread, glue, wire, spare fixings
Access: Benches are set at two heights at seven houses. A person who cannot work at the bench may dictate the ledger entry, and the entry stands in their name.
First printed: Guidance on the keeping of repair ledgers, 2003 (MEM/2003/06).

Every house keeps a clearly designated place for household objects awaiting repair. A person may put an object down there only after mending another object, attempting a mend, or writing in the repair ledger why a thing cannot reasonably be mended.

What is done

Mend something, or try, or write down why the mend is not worth making.
Enter the object, the date, and the hand in the repair ledger.
Return the tools to their marked place before leaving the bench.
Carry anything still unfinished at the end of the season into next season's sheet.

What it does not claim

It is not austerity and it is not a discipline of self-denial.
Broken objects are not treated as relics and are not displayed.
Nothing is withheld from a person who needs a working thing today.
A house may buy what it needs. The ledger only asks that the decision be written down.

Local variants

Cedar House: Tools. A blade is not retired while any bench in the workshop can still restore it.
Fell House: Books and bindings, worked on the long table in the reading room during the winter reading period.
Lantern House: Fixtures, shades, and shielding, worked at the shield bench and logged against the county ordinance file.
North House: Household objects: crockery, chair joints, window furniture, and the archive blankets.
Orchard House: Agricultural equipment. Ladders and picking crates are inspected before the harvest period and again after it.

Records: MEM/2003/06 · REP/2025/09

The Boundary Walk

At the start of each season the practical boundary is walked and what is wrong with it is written down.

Cadence: Four times a year, at the start of each local season.
Setting: The property line, the service route, or the building perimeter.
Things used: The seasonal boundary sheet · A pencil · Boots, or whatever the weather is offering
Access: The line may be walked in parts, over several days, or driven where a track exists. A resident may take the sheet and not the walk, and the entry is theirs.
First printed: Seasonal boundary sheet, first issued 1991 (FRM/1991/04).

Residents walk the boundary of the property, or the equivalent boundary of the house's work, at the beginning of each season and record what they find: damaged fencing, changes in water, path conditions, invasive growth, missing markers, unsafe access, work left unfinished.

What is done

Walk the line in full, in whatever weather is offered.
Note damage, water, growth, markers, and access on the sheet as you go.
Carry the sheet to the repair rota the same week.
Sign the sheet. Two hands may sign one sheet; nobody walks a difficult line alone.

What it does not claim

It is observation and maintenance. No communion with the land is claimed or implied.
Nothing is read in what is found.
A house without land adapts it, and the adaptation is the form, not a lesser version of it.
The walk may be postponed for weather, illness, or work owed to somebody else.

Local variants

Fell House: The established walk: the property boundary in full, by whoever is in the house, in whatever weather is offered. The hill road and the culvert are inspected with it.
Orchard House: The established walk: the rows are walked and every tree is looked at, whether or not anything is wrong with it.
Lantern House: A night route through the streets nearest the house, recording failed and over-bright fixtures instead of fencing.
Briar House: The visiting round: the addresses on the current list are checked for access, steps, handrails, and lighting.
Karst House: Water first. Sinks, springs, and the two culverts are checked before anything else on the sheet.

Records: FRM/1991/04

The Weather Entry

Before the first shared meal of the month, one person writes the weather in the house book.

Cadence: Monthly, before the first shared meal.
Setting: The kitchen or the passage, wherever the house book is kept.
Things used: The house weather book · A pen kept with it
Access: A person may dictate, sign, or type the entry, and another hand writes it in. Where an electronic copy is kept, the house book remains the authoritative copy.
First printed: Instruction on the keeping of the weather book, North House, 1976 (PRO/1976/03).

A short entry in plain language, made in the house book before the first shared meal of each month. It exists so that the house can remember its own conditions: when the path was soft, when the frost held, when the road was shut.

What is done

Look outside. Write what is true.
Two or three sentences: sky, wind, ground, and anything that changes how the house will work this month.
Sign it with initials and the date.
Leave it. It is not read aloud and it is not discussed at the business.

What it does not claim

No omens, no divination, no symbolic reading of weather. It is operational memory.
No forecast is required and no accuracy is expected.
It is not a diary and is not about the writer.

Local variants

Cedar House: Entered against the forest survey, which uses the southern-slope readings; the house keeps its seasons by the local year and not by the Maine one.
South House: Kept in the same book but in the southern seasons, so that the winter entries fall in July. The book is not reordered.
Shore House: The tide and the state of the landing are entered with the weather, in the same hand.

Records: PRO/1976/03 · PRO/2014/02

A residential week

This is one week at one house, printed as an example and not as a rule. Care work, weather, emergencies, and obligations to local partners override the printed schedule, and do so regularly. A resident who sleeps through the morning work is woken for the meal and not spoken to about the morning.

06:30Household work: fires, water, the kitchen, the animals where there are any.
07:30Breakfast, and the notices — the rota, the weather, who is expected.
08:30Land work or public work, off the house's current sheet.
12:30The midday meal, served by those who did not cook.
13:30Rest. An hour in which nothing is asked of anyone.
14:30Quiet period: study, reading, or the archive room.
16:00Repairs, archive work, or local service, as the rota stands.
18:30The shared evening meal.
19:30Practical business: repairs, deliveries, the rota for tomorrow.
20:00Unstructured. Most people read, walk, or go to bed early.

Ordinary habits

Things people do at the houses that are not observances, have no names, and are not taught.

Someone carries or hands something to a person at their first attendance — a plate, a chair, the salt. It is not a form and nobody is taught it.
The meal is served by those who did not cook, and cleared by neither.
Practical business is done after the meal and written down while people are still at the table.
Things are mended before they are replaced, where the local work allows it.
Prior correspondence is read sparingly. A house that reads all of its letters gets nothing else done.
Weather, repairs, and unfinished work go in the house books, in whatever hand is nearest.

Things kept in use

A short list of the objects the houses maintain. None of them is rare and none of them means anything.

The house weather book

Every house

Holds the monthly weather entry, and in most houses the record of road and path conditions besides.

Material: Quarto ledger, cloth over board, ruled feint. Bought in threes from a stationer in Bangor until 2011 and since from wherever will still supply them.
Upkeep: Rebound at Fell House when the spine goes, usually every eleven or twelve years. Full books are boxed by decade and kept in the house, not sent to the archive.
First recorded: The North House book runs from January 1976, which is the date of the instruction that established the practice.

The Weather Entry

The repair ledger

Every house

Object, date, hand, and outcome for everything that passes across the repair table, including the things that were not worth mending.

Material: Foolscap ledger, four columns ruled by hand at most houses, printed at three.
Upkeep: Ruled and re-ruled in pencil. Cedar House keeps its ledger in a slipcase because of the shop dust.
First recorded: Kept in some form at North House from the early eighties; standardised by the 2003 guidance.

The Repair Table

The kitchen bell

North House · Shore House · Fell House · River House · Orchard House

Timekeeping. It is rung for the meal, and at most houses to mark the end of the twelve minutes.

Material: Cast brass or iron, on a wall bracket. The North House bell is brass and has been rebracketed twice.
Upkeep: Wiped, not polished. Three of the five have been rehung; the Shore House bracket was replaced in 2019 after the frame moved.
First recorded: The Shore House bell came with the building and predates the house's use of it by a considerable margin.

The Quiet Twelve

The archive blankets

North House

Worn in the archive room at North House, which is kept cold for the paper and is uncomfortable for people.

Material: Grey wool, undyed, blanket-stitched at the edges. Nine of them; two are recent and do not match.
Upkeep: Washed twice a year, mended at the repair table, and hung on the hooks by the door. Two were retired in 2017 and the wool reused for mending cloth.
First recorded: First mentioned in a house inventory of 1988, already described there as old.

The Repair Table

The white cups

North House · Shore House · Marsh House · Fell House · South House

Tea, at the table and at the bench. They recur in house photographs from the late seventies onward, which is an accident of ordering and not a design.

Material: Plain white vitrified earthenware, no maker's mark on the older ones. Heavy, and hard to break.
Upkeep: Replaced from catering suppliers as they go. Handles are glued at the repair table and the glued ones are kept for the bench rather than the table.
First recorded: The earliest identified in a photograph is in a Shore House kitchen picture of 1978.

The Repair Table

The kitchen aprons and mending cloths

Every house

Cooking, serving, and mending. The cloths are cut from aprons that are past wearing.

Material: Heavy unbleached cotton drill; ties replaced with tape when they fray.
Upkeep: Washed with the kitchen linen. An apron is patched twice and then cut down for cloths, which is written in the repair ledger like anything else.
First recorded: Not recorded. The practice of cutting them down appears in a Shore House rota note of 1979.

The Repair Table

What the year does not mean

It is not a liturgical calendar. Nothing is owed to a date.
Seasons are handled differently across climates and hemispheres. Cedar and South keep their own year.
No spiritual meaning is assigned to weather, harvest, or the turn of a season.
Missing an observance creates no fault and no debt, and is not entered anywhere.
An obligation to a real person outranks the printed schedule, always.

The operating dates for the current year are printed in the house calendar, and the order of a Thursday evening is set out at gatherings.