Village News

Mennonites are a driven people. As the Leaving Canada exhibit at Mennonite Heritage Village (MHV) shows we often don’t stay in one place for long. We build new villages, new businesses, and never look back it seems. We like to keep long lists and fill our time fulfilling specific tasks. However, every once and awhile there is a Saturday where our heart takes over and declares the day as a puttering day. Enough of hurrying along, it is time to do what our heart is drawn to and only move on when something else catches our attention.

Puttering is when work becomes playful. It is not about getting results as quick as possible but enjoying the moment and finding creative solutions to benign problems around us. For me it is going into the garage and seeing what needs a little tune-up or how I can deal with the messy overflow that has occurred since my last day of puttering.

Surely, generations of Mennonites before us had many days of puttering during these cold months. I can just see the men going into their housebarn, standing on the threshold of the door and after a couple minutes deciding, “today, is the day I’m going to get rid of that annoying creak in the barn door.” The calm puttering begins and it goes all day till supper. First the creak, then the hinge, then while getting a nail, he remembers something else that could use a couple nails.

An editorial in the June 24th, 2011, New York Times defines it well: “Puttering is small-scale, stream-of-consciousness problem-solving. It is setting sail on a sea of random course changes. The day passes, and you have long since forgotten what you were looking for – or that you were looking for anything at all. You feel as though you’ve accomplished a lot, though you have no idea what. It has been a holiday from purpose.”

We all need days of play, for some it may be a sport, going out into the woods, but sometimes a good day of puttering is enough to restore our well-being as well as our household. Hope you can putter around our galleries and gift shop one of these Saturdays!