Somewhere along the way the rotation settled. The same names kept showing up, at saxophonist Imraan Khan's house sessions, at a Wednesday night spot in North Raleigh where Rony held down the piano chair and Thomas Owens played bass, at gig after gig where Gore found herself reaching for the same three or four players. Eventually it stopped feeling like a coincidence. "This guy, this guy, and this guy, we might have something," is how Gore describes the realization, the sense that a rotation of favors was quietly turning into a band.

With Two Dachshund Farm, everything connects. The animals are not separate from the craft. The craft isn’t separate from the land. The land isn’t separate from the people who come to visit, to learn, to carry a small piece of it home.

“Just write. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling. Get it on paper. You can get help with all the rest. A friend once told me, ‘Do it now.’ If she hadn’t said that, I might have just kept thinking about it forever.”

“I don’t do normal,” he says with a grin. “But I do love figuring it out.” that’s the secret to Craig’s work: it’s patient, serious craftsmanship fueled by a childlike sense of wonder. A love of puzzles, of motion, and of building something no one else dares attempt.