I used to get on a stove wood pile at 5-6 years old and I would have a piece of stove wood and kindling bark as a pick, and I was a star.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was a kid of six or seven, I used to get up on the stove woodpile for a stage and I'd put on the wildest show.
My wife, Daniela, and I live in an old house from 1810 with three fireplaces at the end of a dead-end dirt road on Cape Cod, so I turn the trees into firewood for us and a friend of mine sells the rest.
I spent my childhood outdoors on my grandparents' farm. I learned to ride a motorbike when I was about six, a little PeeWee 50. I'd climb trees - there was a big weeping willow.
I had one of the most outdoorsy childhoods you could imagine. I basically lived in the woods until I was 13. My dad and I built a huge treehouse in our backyard in Chesterfield, about 30 feet in the air. And we'd vacation on an island in Michigan, where I hunted a deer that we ate.
I grew up on a farm - it was a lovely life; we'd make tree houses all day - and my parents worked from home.
I went through a wood-chopping phase when I was nine or 10.
My parents had a gardener when I was growing up, and he and I would dig in the dirt together - my mom and dad were definitely not digging with me! When I was 5, he helped me plant some corn in our backyard, and I remember how fascinating it was to watch it grow. Little did I know that 50 years later I'd be growing corn in a different way.
I could cook from quite an early age - purely because I liked it.
When I was born, my parents and my mother's parents planted a dogwood tree in the side yard of the large white house in which we lived throughout my boyhood. This tree I learned quite early, was exactly my age - was, in a sense, me.
I bent my head over a stove in my early 20s and picked it up in my 30s.