Once a month, whoever's got the coffee on.

The gathering is the heart of it. First Saturday of the month, more or less, we meet at a keeper's house — rotating, so nobody gets stuck baking every time. Somebody brings transcripts to check. Somebody brings a ledger they borrowed. Somebody brings cornbread. We read aloud, we argue politely about dates, we drink coffee until it's gone and then we drink tea.

If you've been introduced to the project by a neighbor or a relation, you're welcome to come sit in. No obligation, no dues, no membership card. Just bring something to eat if you remember.

What a visit looks like

When a family agrees to sit with us, here's generally how it goes:

1. i

   A phone call through the cousin, or a note through a neighbor

   Somebody who knows both parties makes the introduction. We don't just show up. If a family has been debating whether to sit with us, they sometimes take a year or two to decide. That's fine. The books aren't going anywhere.

2. ii

   A first visit, no recorder

   Just coffee. We bring a pie. We meet the family, they meet us, we talk about the project, and if it feels right we set another time. If it doesn't feel right, we thank them and go. Nobody is persuaded into this.

3. iii

   The recording visit

   Two of us, usually. One asks questions, one takes notes and minds the little foam-windscreen recorder. An hour or two. Always in the family's own space — porch, kitchen, parlor, barn, whichever feels right. Alma is almost always one of the two. She has a way of asking things so they come out easy.

4. iv

   Borrowing the books, if offered

   We sign a plain hand-written note — a book note, we call it — saying what we've taken and when we'll have it back. Usually a weekend. Sometimes a fortnight if there's a lot of pages. The books ride home in a cloth-lined apple crate.

5. v

   Scanning and transcribing

   Jody does the scanning on the copy stand. Edna and Ruby do most of the transcribing, each taking a book and working by pencil first, then typing clean. A book of average length takes us about six sortings.

6. vi

   The transcript back to the family first

   Before anything goes on this site or into the annual volume, the family reads what we wrote down. They cross out what they don't want shared. They add what we got wrong. They keep the final copy. Nothing is printed that hasn't been read by the folks whose words they are.

A slow calendar

We do about one recording visit a month, sometimes two when the weather's fine. In the hot of summer we mostly stay in and transcribe. In the dead of winter we mostly stay in and transcribe. Spring and fall are for porches.

Here's roughly the shape of a year:

• January–February — transcribe the fall's recordings. Quilt. Talk about it all.
• March–April — first porches open. Resume visits. Sortings begin at the grange.
• May–June — the heart of the recording season. Also planting, so sessions shift around farm chores.
• July — county fair. We take a week off. The keepers enter pies, not always winningly.
• August — steady work. Flies bad.
• September — last porch recordings. Begin fair-copy for the volume.
• October — presswork in Marlin's barn. The smell of ink and hay bales together.
• November — the binding weekend. Linen thread, beeswax, coffee, and arguments over Coptic technique.
• December — copies passed around. Rest.

What we're working on this season

• A cross-reference of the 1973 flood from five household books (four transcribed, one newly loaned).
• A glossary of field names along a six-mile stretch of the river — sixty-one names so far, forty-two placed on the map.
• A small hand-stitched booklet of recipes that kept turning up in the back of ledgers (permissions still being gathered — going slow on this one).
• Transcribing a set of ten books lent by one family. It'll take us the better part of a year and we don't mind.
• A bench-and-chair tally for the grange hall, because Marlin swears there are thirty-seven and Edna swears there are thirty-four, and this has to get settled.