Day: June 23, 2015

For Maria, this is the most fun part of the Open House, we drive around to talk to the artists who are showing their work and Maria picks what she wants to show and we bring it back to the farm. It is always a kick to see these artists and their work in their homes. Carol does gorgeous Batik work – prints, cards, wall hangings, trivets. She is a former dairy farmer and when she and her husband retired, they couldn’t bear to sell Steppy or send her to slaughter so she lives the good live with Carol in  her new  home just down the road from her old farm.

This is a sweet old cow and a very lucky one. Carol is an amazing person and a very gifted artist, Maria and I couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful she and her work are. Steppy lives like a Lab, she is much cuddled, although she is old for a cow and struggling. Carol will be at the Open House this weekend, Steppy will not.

Just a few days to the Bedlam Farm Open House, June 27-28. It’s our first Open  House in a few years without Simon, and people will miss  him, he loved attention. It seems we have another equine who loves attention, Chloe loves bits of apple and carrots. I think she will touch a lot of hearts, as she has touched ours.

She will be here, and I’m excited about sharing Red’s wonderful work and Fate’s herding education. Maria and Chloe, not surprisingly are very connected to one another, she loves having a pony again and the two of them share a lot of moments together. We have some great things at the Open House this weekend – six wonderful artists sharing and selling their work, four wonderful poets. Joshua Rockwood is planning to come from Glenville to talk, Ken Norman our farrier is coming by. We are getting excited. We are thinking of adding three or four additional workshops – art, blogging, writing, drawing, creativity – at  Pompanuck Farm later on this year.

We are getting fired up again over our initial plans to be a place for encouragement and creativity. We went to see Mary Kellogg today and pick up some of her books. Her newest book, “How To Dance,” will be on sale Saturday at the Open House. She will come by about 1:30 to read from this new work, her 32d. We will have two outdoor portable toilets on hand, Tyler, our friend and neighbor will be helping with traffic and crowd control, Deb Foster will be helping with donkey and pony tours, Kim McMillan will be helping Maria keep track of art sales and selling her great purses. We are ready.

My dogs teach me that when I have work or a problem, I  need to look it right in the eye. Today I took Fate and Red out to help train Fate in her sheepherding. They work extraordinarily well together, I’ll do some demonstrations with them both at the Open House this weekend. Red is a tremendous presence in the pasture, the sheep respect him and respond to him instantly. Fate is still a pup, and they will challenge her and try to drive her away at times.

That’s when Red comes in and gets close, and this boosts Fate’s confidence. Today I lay down in the grass – always a thrill and surprise in a buggy sheep pasture to get an idea of exactly what the sheep are seeing. I would definitely move if it were me, Fate has the same purpose and focus that Red has, and that blue eye is positively ethereal.

There are a lot of challenges when it comes to training a young dog to work sheep. I want Fate to be with the sheep, but not willy-nilly or unsupervised.  I don’t want to overdo it, or underdo it, the line isn’t always clear. The biggest thing in this phase of our work is for her to build confidence. I leave her alone for 10 or 15 minutes each day (I am there) to be with the sheep, get used to them. I want to do things that build her confidence. Notice that Red is in the rear of the photograph, sitting in front of the Skip-barn. She knows he is there and draws strength and direction from him.

I also make him stay back so she can have her own experience with the sheep. This morning, Liam came out to challenge her and she had some decisions to make. I don’t like these standoffs because she might as easily lose confidence as gain confidence. She seemed ready to stand her ground against Liam, so I let her. He lowered his head as if to butt, she lowered  hers and gave him a dose of eye. He lowered his head, turned and backed away. I ended the lesson, that was a good note to end it on. Fate has a lot of confidence, I want to build on that, especially while she is so small. Red is a great help in that.

A woman wrote me this morning and talked about only asking her young dog to lie down when he was looking at the sheep and in command, I like that. It is pretty much what I do, but good to have it reinforced.

It is wonderful to have an artist living on the farm,  Maria is a feminist and she has redefined the very notion of the farm wife. Sometimes, she wears her wedding dress out to do the farm chores, otherwise, she could be  wearing anything. I am especially fond of the vest she showed up wearing in the pasture this morning, the animals seemed to love it as well. When I met Maria, she told me that she did not own and had never bought a piece of clothing that was retail, or purchased news.  I bought her a new shirt in New York City as a present, that didn’t go over well. She loves putting together her own look, her own identity.

Everything she owns and wears is from a thrift shop, or might come in one of the amazing boxes of fabric that people send her from different parts of the country.

You don’t see a lot of brightly-colored skirts or vests out in too many pastures around her, but it makes sense. She does wear boots (thirft-shops) and has never ruined a piece of clothing that I have seen. Maria brings her art to every single thing she does in her life, and it always lifts me up to see her out there. I am a fashion setter as well, I call it the blue look. Once or twice a week, I change my blue Chambray shift for another blue Chambray shirt, and then change my blue Levi jeans for another pair of blue Levi Jeans and tie it all together with my blue suspenders. It’s a look.