58 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 Jack Baumgartner starts his day at 4:30. His wife and four children are still asleep, and early on a November morning, outside his tin-roofed house on the plains near Wichita, Kansas, it’s still dark. But there’s a lot to do. “Downstairs,” he says, “I start the hot water for coffee. I stir the coals in the wood stove we heat our home with, remove some ashes, and place two mulberry logs on the embers to ignite. This is priestly work and an art near to my heart, The Perfect Tool On a Kansas farm, Jack and Amy Baumgartner are crafting a family. S U S A N N A H B L A C K “I am chiseling a socket for a butterfly joint on the edge of a walnut table. Popularized by the Japanese American woodworker George Nakashima, the butterfly joint is used to bind together a crack or split in a piece of wood, allowing us to showcase its natural beauty.” —Jack Baumgartner maintaining a fire for my family. It is a part of my worship.” Baumgartner, age forty-two, is a farmer. He’s also a woodworker, painter, musician, and puppeteer. “I have invested a lot in each area over time,” he told the writer Elizabeth Duffy in a 2014 interview, “so I feel comfortable in each realm.” This November morning, he brings his coffee and homemade bagel – his wife makes them – into the insulated garage