Energy — a key concern for your tiny house. Especially for you off-gridders out there. In the vid below, I show how to build a tiny house mobile solar cart. This is Don from Piedmont Pine Coffins. Click here for a guest column I wrote for the website Tiny House Listings on our tiny house […]
Checklist for those dearly departing
December 10, 2017
I’m not dying, the old soldier told me, I’m just going on a long trip. Well, I just started a long trip in Central America. Here’s my checklist for those dearly departing. Lemme ‘splain. If you’re catching up, this is Don from Piedmont Pine Coffins. I’m in Costa Rica — alone for a time, before family […]
So that our love may blossom
December 5, 2016
I always listen to this one special song in December, and I catch a weep. Listen below, and you’ll catch some monastic wisdom. If you’re just joining us, we are Piedmont Pine Coffins. In our death work and off-grid farmstead life here in central North Carolina, US of A, we take inspiration from monks and […]
Countercultural coffins and urns
September 19, 2016
In a radio interview I did recently, here are words that came out of my mouth: We always wanted to be countercultural — in an ADMIRABLE way. Revelatory. Never knew I thought that till that moment. Really, the things a soul will pronounce on when you’re distracted by wires and microphones. I was referring to the […]
Decline and fall of the Romaine Empire
September 8, 2016
At Melleray Farmstead, cottage-industrial home to Piedmont Pine Coffins, there’s a big garden with a deer-proof fence. Go to market with lettuce? Yes, please, that’s the dream. But that was before the decline and fall of my romaine empire. For new readers just joining in, we operate on 32 pleasant acres of fields and woods […]
The outhouse joke
June 15, 2016
The outhouse joke. Recently, when coffinworks visitors Marshall and Donald toured our place, it called to mind their growing-up years on a dairy farm in Iredell County and the following outhouse story: My father had an outhouse with two seats. One day one of the hired hands went down to use it. Well he was […]