Lehman's Country Life

By Jurgen Haver

Editors Note: Jurgen Haver is the husband of Judith Costello, one of Lehman’s Country Life long time contributors.

I went to New York as a young man, with dreams of becoming the next great American novelist! Living in the big city, I noticed something about what makes people “real”.

At that time, I was hanging around people who thought of themselves as “cultured”. At literary gatherings and art shows the conversation always seemed to revolve around which authority you could quote. Nothing was said about what they personally believed. It was always a quoting contest. “So-and-so recently said…”
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In today’s fast moving world of blogs, cell phones, and CNN, you may be wondering how we find the thousands of old-fashioned products that pepper our site, catalog and retail store. Who hand dips candles and weaves picnic baskets? Where can you find someone to create custom wrought iron, or make furniture out of old church pews?

And thus begins a series where I introduce you to a selection of our favorite vendors.

Scents of the Season:

I was in Lehman’s the other day, watching customers react to a lovely display of Lehman’s jelly jar candles. With fragrances like mulled cider, pure vanilla, and pine needle, each customer was first drawn to the attractive packaging (an authentic Ball jelly jar with a color-coordinated label), and then to the scent. Without fail, customers would take off the lid and sniff the candle, not once but twice, before repeating the process with another candle. Then, and only then, could the decision to purchase be made.

“Not all candles are created equally,” explains our favorite local chandler, who created this line for Lehman’s. “You might think it just takes some wax and a wick, but there is much more to it. There are specific characteristics of waxes, wicks, scents and colors. A chandler needs to know the science behind the materials.”
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I always think of November as a sort of “gateway” month – a special time between the last of the October harvest activities and the onset of true winter in December.  It’s a time of cleaning up the garden and putting it to bed, pruning the roses and flowering trees, having vehicles winterized and perhaps even changing to snow tires, pulling out the sweaters and tweeds, and of course, shifting from pastimes that avoid producing heat in the house to those that definitely do, on purpose.  “Leaf Peeping” brings out the photography novice in me, and a rare major grocery shopping trip produces a frozen turkey.

This month, however, also held a rather startling realization this year.

Journal Entry November 4th – Election Day

Got out early to vote – home by 9:00 A.M.  Started measuring for the new window quilts and got sidetracked looking out at the most amazing color.  Spent some time with the 35 mm and hopefully, got some shots that will faithfully reproduce the light that the trees seemed to have, shining out from inside themselves.  Between these and a half-dozen taken at lunchtime this past week in Dover, I’m nearly through a whole roll of film.

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