2011: Our First Magazine Signing

After this many years you have a lot of memories to look back on. Some are admittedly horrible memories, but many are absolutely wonderful and life changing. There is a profound beauty to savoring the journey. There are many things I wish I could go back and do differently, but that isn’t how life works. Every day must be treated as a day to do better, to celebrate better, and to grow ever forward. Lately I’ve been looking back at back issues as we’ve been reformatting them to be reprinted and I find myself waxing poetic about the journey from that first time a friend of mine told me I should start this business, to where we are today.

These images are from our first signing, a wonderful barn sale in eastern Kentucky. I wish I could remember more about it, but I honestly don’t even remember where it was. It was perhaps somewhere off Highway 23 north of Pikeville and south of Ashland. I remember the pumpkin soap, it was the best soap I’d ever come across. I remember our booth, it was a collection of things out of my apartment. A stack of magazines, that very first issue, gosh I loved that smell of freshly printed paper back then.

These photos are from that event, I know there are more, but these are all I could find. I know there is a photo of a bench that still haunts me in the “things I should have bought” dreams.

If you’d like a copy of that first issue, they’re available below.

The First Issue

$18.00

The First Issue

$18.00

A Visit to Farmhouse Pottery

I, like many of you, have a love for Farmhouse Pottery. I am not sure when or where I first discovered their beautiful pieces of hand thrown pottery, but I do know that for many years I dreamt of owning a piece or two myself. If you’ve seen any of my cooking videos you know I own a growing collection and it has become my go to kitchen brand.

Whenever I am in central Vermont I make a point to stop in to their Woodstock, Vermont studio and shop to see what I’m missing, what I need to dream of owning, and what is new. I think there is something special about being in a makers studio be it a single maker or a collective of creatives like Farmhouse Pottery has assembled to bring their works to life.

These are photos I created during an early spring visit to Woodstock. If you go for a visit you will see it much like this, the large windows between the shop and the studio allow everyone to watch what is being created.

In a world of fast fashion and over-seas-factory-made places like Farmhouse Pottery are a rare treat, a place where you can actually meet the hands that create the pieces you’ll likely be passing down to future generations. | FARMHOUSEPOTTERY.COM

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A Visit to Folkling (in Virginia)

Back in February I went to visit my friends Folkling in Virginia. I wanted to see their shop, but mostly I wanted to see their quilt collection. I am not sure I had ever seen such a large collection for sale before of quilts that I truly loved every single one of.

For years I have loved, admired, and collected early American and Americana wares…be it furniture, firkins, or quilts. To see these all in one space was such a sight to celebrate. I was especially blown away by the eye and the knowledge of the young couple that owns the business. Their commitment to detail, to history, and to the expert care of these pieces of our past was nothing short of inspiring.

At the moment Folkling is between brick and mortar shops but has a wonderful online shop. | FOLKLING

A Wilder Dress

Back in the spring Wilder Collective sent me a dress to photograph here at the farm. I had a vision of photographing this very nostalgic dress in the fields and garden of the spring. The soft greens as a background for a dress that feels in many ways like it could have been here on the farm a hundred years ago.

I was really smitten with the noticeably handcrafted feel of the dress, the quality is really beautiful, a rejection of fast fashion and instead a piece that will last for decades, even perhaps, a generation to come. The following are a collection of the photographs I created that day. || THE DRESS

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A Path Through

There is no one linear path through life, but there are ties that bind. There is no one out there writing the rule book for a life well lived, but for many of us there are common themes. These days it seems so many of us are in search of something simple and pure, easy yet strenuous. A life of meaning and a life of purpose. For so many of us the craving for video games and shiny lights doesn’t exist. Instead we go in search of quiet moments, open fields, the cliched wide open spaces, yes read in the tune of the Dixie Chicks.

In a world filled with absolute nonsense and racket it seems inescapable to get away from the round-the-clock news and the doom and gloom, so I won’t mention it here. Instead I will say, put down the phone, step away from the bright blue lights, and return to life in community.

We once lived within our communities, yet for the past couple of decades we’ve been led to believe that the digital world is the greatest form of community, but that isn’t true. The human was meant to live in community, not in the dark of isolated rooms only illuminated by tiny screens.

We need a revival of community, not communities of political or religious silos, but instead communities that gather around tables, communities that life life together, like in the olden days. I don’t know the answer to how we get there, but I do know the journey starts with a single step. Somewhere we have to decide that we would rather visit with neighbors than doom scroll, we would rather pull out the supper-ware, welcome people to our porches, attend the functions, care about those around us.

Somewhere along the way we have forgotten the joys of seeing folks, folks in real life, not reading their Facebook updates. Today may not be the day to dive fully in, but hey, maybe it is. Today, even for just a moment put the phone down, go outside, see a friend, wave, serve a glass of iced tea, you are not alone.

A Garden Update: End of the Season

I am never a fan of the end of the season, but I realize it is necessary, and in many ways is a metaphor for life. The end of the season comes with the overgrown beauty of the untamed, but with the knowledge that that freeze and frost will soon bring it all to its knees. The return to the earth is a beautiful one, but one that is filled with sadness. Soon the ground will be bare and uncovered, dormant, at rest for the cycle to begin again.

I roam the garden each day, especially in the golden light of the warmest hours of the day. I notice the small changes of color, of remaining growth, of the breakdown of the once mighty stalks and blooms. I still find beauty in it all, even if all the zinnia blooms have been harvested for seed.

The gourds continue to dry, but soon must be taken in to the barn so they can properly dry. My goal is to have five giant bushel gourds for next year’s displays. There will be two dozen loofas to turn into sponges for Christmas time gifts. I believe gardening should be a communal thing. I grow an abundance so that I can give it away. I believe a fruitful life is parallel to having a garden that produces an excess.

The tobacco sticks, used for staking the tomatoes and for fences, are slowly removed so the bush hog can come through. My fear is if the garden is left totally to its own it will be a mud filled mess come spring. I envy those that can left their garden winter on its own, but soon the technologies of man will be used to clear the garden in a way that’ll ensure an early spring planting….one that I will soon begin to prepare for.

An Attempt at Blogging...Here Goes!

I’m not good at blogging. I’m good at story telling, but that implies you’re around my dining table, or perhaps on my porch. We’re rambling and ranting, telling of the old days, the glory days, or the days yet to come. Blogging though, well it feel like talking to a wall. They say there is value in it though, especially if you’re as good of a story teller as I am. Especially if you have the wide range of experience and friends and contacts and lives lived, like I have. Perhaps that sounds cocky, but it isn’t, it is the result of a life well lived. My greatest strength in life is a fearless spirit that always wants to roam. I crave experience, connection, and conversation. I do not crave the monotony of the day to day, the laborious life does not appeal to me in a way I wish to share. I believe in a strenuous life, but one that is lived humbly in one’s own garden with one’s nose to the ground. I believe in tending one’s garden first, for how else will you have the fruit of the spirit necessary in which to live.

I have never been good at blogging. It is hard for me to feel like I have stories worth sharing here, it is hard for me to believe that anyone will read what I have to say, but I am told I should write anyways. So I will.

For a very long time I have had extreme burnout, crippling burnout. The year before the tornado I saw myself finally come out of that, only to go right back in as I navigated reconstruction, repairs, and the stress that came with that. I wasn’t feeling very inspired. In reality I was just depressed, and it felt like a slingshot after the amazing year I had had before. Loneliness crept in on top of it all, and in the two years since I truly felt like I had nothing worth saying. However I kept living, I kept exploring, and I kept documenting the journey. I knew eventually I would return to life and to my passions of story telling. Perhaps I might even develop a new found love of blogging.

I did write and photograph a book during those two years. A task that I shouldn’t put lightly. It was a great undertaking. A task that forced me to muster all my confidence both for my words and my ability to use a camera. I had pages to fill. The result was a beautiful book, one that I am very proud of, and one I hope you own. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I simply didn’t have the confidence in myself to create it without great delay.

Now life has settled down. Construction is almost complete. Most days I do feel like getting out of bed, even if today was a day I did not feel like it, even though I did. I sit here at my window desk, a country Carrie Bradshaw if you will. I ponder out the window, the leaves continue to fall down. Life has returned to the farm. Bon Ive plays over the speakers in the other rooms. A candle burns, a candle I poured myself, after learning how to make candles a few moons ago. I sit here pondering the future, pondering the past, and wondering what will I have to say…

Late Autumn at Orchard Beach: An Essay

The light was perfect that day, a perfectly overcast day in early November, the first week of November, the very best week to visit New York City if you ask me. He asked if he could show me Orchard Beach, his favorite beach in the City. I’d never been there before and agreed that we must go. The map said it was out in the Bronx, a stretch from where we were at some corner flea market in Bushwick. I’d bought a box of of transferware, the pattern just felt right. A memento of a very good week, perhaps the best week of the year to visit this city. The pattern was made of brown leaves and ivy, a reminder of the changing and falling autumn leaves. The beach would carry those very same shades.

The beach, a place that was man made, back during the Robert Moses years, was a wide curved swath of land, part sand from New Jersey, part landfill from the old days of old New York. The island and the forests and the bay around the beach and its extensive parking lot, this week home to a circus, promising to be the best you’ve ever seen, is where the true magic was. He took my hand and led me into the woods, old worn foot paths guided our way. The colors of the late autumn leaves made everything feel so alive. The City has a way of holding on to the autumn color long after the Hudson and the Catskills have marched towards the winter months. Geese and ducks filled the waters just beyond the cattails and the weathered reeds. The landscape had a way of creating a soundtrack to mix with the crunching of leaves underfoot. The crashing waves echoed over each foot step and the hushed mumbles of our voices. We walked together as one, arms covered in jackets, intertwined with each other in a way The Judd’s sang about in Young Love. We’d pause for me to take these photographs. I wanted to remember every view of this day. In my mind these images would tell the story of perhaps the beginnings of my next great love.