In the morning, when we wake up, Maria and I talk to one another, ask about our dreams, check on the other. Sometimes we have bad nights, we are both prone to evil spirits coming in the dark. We have been helping each other with that since we have known each other.
I have had some awful nights, especially around the time when we first met. I remember lying on the bathroom floor in Austin, Tex. during a book tour, sweating and shaking and too dizzy and nauseous to stand up. I called Maria and she talked me down for much of the night. She is always there for me, I am always there for her.
I feel good when the first light strikes, the old fears and dreams recede, and that is when the animals listen for us.
We still have some of those bad nights, as many people do, but they are so much more peaceful and brighter. I don’t like to think of those other days. When we wake now, the animals out in the pasture hear us, horses and donkeys have astonishing hearing, as do dogs.
They come and gather at the gate and stare at the house the second they hear us talk. They know when we come downstairs, they know when we turn the shower on in the bathroom, they know when we are getting dressed and gather at the door with the dogs. That is when they get excited, we hear braying and whinnying and baaahing.
They are scholars of the people who feed them and of their schedules.
Animals live by their stomachs in so many ways, they are very aware of food, who brings it, where it comes from. Chloe is the most impatient, she paws and stomps a bit, we are training her not to do that, she is settling down. But she does get excited, sometimes she races Maria to the feeder.
Morning is a turning time for us, the time between night a day, between dreams and wakefulness, sometimes between fear and hope. Our day also really beings with feeding time, we come back to the farmhouse, eat breakfast together, walk in the woods and plunge into our separate work days.
Life is a rich tapestry, it is not linear, it is never a straight line. That is hard to get used to, hard to accept. The animals know it, I think they are trying to teach this to us.
“in the flow of the holy spirit, one feels the divine life force coursing the pathways of existence, through all desires, all worlds, all thoughts, all nations, all creatures.”
We love walking in the deep woods, they are beautiful and spiritual, a cathedral, we walk in silence – silence is not our natural gear sometimes – and soak up solitude and our company at the same time. The dogs love it in the woods, they tear back and forth on the paths, playing tag.
Fate often torments Red, she steals his bones and treats, pounces on him, grabs him by the collar and tries to pull him down. Sometimes, he torments her, as on the path above. Red is a patient dog, he can be still for hours, Fate has a small nuclear reactor embedded in her somewhere, she is like me, a minute is an eternity.
Red’s revenge is sit quietly on the path while Fate goes into her herding crouch, waiting for him to move. I sometimes picture him sitting on the path with a cigar, he is in no hurry at all. Eventually, Fate cracks and charges up the hill and the two of them take off in a race to the bottom of the path. In any contest of patience, Fate will lose, and Red will win.
Many of you are following the back porch gallery, and I thank you for that. There is a new update, Ed Gulley’s Mr. Blockhead has been moved into my study, and replaced with another Ed Gulley creation, one of his turtles, made from farm tractor and engine parts. Ed calls himself a junk artist, I call him a farm artist. (He will be at the June Open House with a cow and some art). Flo was introducing herself to the turtle this morning.
We are planning two Open Houses for 2016, as usual, the first is the weekend of June 25-26, the second is over Columbus Day Weekend. Maria and I have been talking a lot about the Spring Open House At Bedlam Farm, and we both want to call it the Gentle Open House. We want it to be a return and affirmation of its original purpose.
One of the many curses in my life is a tendency to complicate even the simplest things, and I am learning as I grow older to understand and appreciate the beauty and spirituality of simplicity. When we began the open houses, the purpose was clear: Maria wanted to curate a different kind of art show, and we both wanted to share our lives with the people who make them possible – you.
That was it, the idea was a quiet, even intimate chance to open up our lives and animals to the wider world. It was a strange and unusual thing for an author to be a part of, but we have never regretted trying it. Mostly, the open houses have been beautiful experiences for us, and I am grateful. Right after the June Open House two years ago, I ended up having open heart surgery. I was struggling to get through that weekend, I feel a lot younger now. I can’t wait for the open houses.
Maria wanted to showcase gifted artists from our region, she loves introducing artists to the world and she loves curating. I wanted to open up my cloistered life, talk about my work and about sheepherding. We wanted people to be able to see our animals, especially the dogs, donkeys, and now, a genial pony. We wanted people to be able to buy good and affordable art. Maria wanted to share her art.
The Open Houses have been a big success – 1,500 people last year.
But in the past couple of years, we drifted away from our simple intentions. My fault, really. Maria kept to her simple intentions – holing up in the studio with her artists and talking about their art. My role got more complex, as often happens.
The open houses became bigger and more, of course, they were all great fun and exciting, but they drifted somewhat from our original purpose. We drifted too much into thinking about selling the art, not just showing it, trying to draw bigger crowds, sell a lot of art, trying to please too many different people for too many different reasons.
People began traveling to the open houses who were not much interested in my work or Maria’s, or in life at Bedlam Farm. They had their own agendas, and I lost track of mine. It is so hard to keep your bearings sometimes, people tell me I am strong, but sometimes, I am amazed at my own weaknesses.
The weekends were exhausting, the crowds sometimes overwhelming. People who traveled great distances to meet us could barely find us or get a few seconds to talk to us. I was getting up early to meet people for breakfast, I invited people to the farm for dinner, took walks in the woods with aspiring writers, looked over manuscripts brought to me, brought drama and their troubles. It felt like chaos and drama, not a nourishing experience.
It was too frantic, it needs to be gentler. That means I need to be gentler.
This year will be different.
Maria and I were both drained for days afterwards, and I could see that she loved being with the artists in her studio, but was less drawn to the festivities and activities on the other side.
The best parts for me: doing herding demos on the hour, doing guided donkey and pony tours in the pasture, listening to the poetry readings from Mary Kellogg, Tom Atkins and others, talking about my life and my work, inviting interesting people in our lives to come and talk. People like George Forss, the brilliant photographer who comes to the open houses to do portraits for visitors.
I have so memories of people sitting in a circle, all of us coming together in a common love of art, animals and creativity. Special days. I won’t lose track of it again.
So we are giving rebirth to purity and simplicity. Maria has some wonderful artists lined up, and we are inviting some amazing people to come and visit with us and talk. The themes are art and rural life. Our shearer Jim McRae, is coming to shear the sheep at the June Open House, and our farrier, Ken Norman will be trimming hooves. Ed Gulley, a friend and blogger and dairy farmer and farm artist, is coming to milk a cow for us, and talk about the life of the small family farmer.
We are inviting Jen Baker-Porazinski, a physician and a student in my writing class to come and talk about her book-in-progress on a doctor’s view of health care and the problems of healing in rural communities. We hope Lisa Carrino will come and talk about the art of baking, and we are inviting Rachel Barlow to come to the open houses and talk about and paint her amazing watercolors. Carol Law Conklin will be here to talk about her beautiful batiks and the process of creating them.
Poetry, art, and rural life. We are sticking with our goals and intentions, a celebration of our lives, and of art, rural life and farming.
I am thinking of asking my writing class to come to the open house and talk about what they have learned about writing and creativity, they are a fascinating group.
A gentle time. We want to tamp things down a bit, and remember why we are really doing this. The June Open House is always quieter than the October Open House, which coincides with foliage season. We feel we have regained our original vision and purpose.
Details on Maria’s website. There are lots of neat places to say in town, and also in nearby Manchester, Vt. Bennington, Vt. and Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Admission is free, although we are asking for a $5 donation this year (voluntary) to defray costs of staff, portable toilets, and publicity. Bring carrots, but no dogs, please.
You will get to meet Red and Fate, of course, and the barn cat Flo (you won’t see much of Minnie), Chloe, Lulu and Fanny and see the dogs show off their very diverse styles of herding sheep. I conduct pasture and barn tours and talk about the process of teaching border collies how to herd sheep. We are very excited about this return to the roots for the open houses, we hope you share one or the other (or both) of the open houses with us.
