The boys from the St. John’s Home For Boys in New York City came up for another visit to the farm, we had a blast and I think they did too. They met the donkeys and the pony, watched the dogs work with the sheep, toured Maria’s studio and fell madly in love with Red and Fate, who returned the favor.
It is wonderful that all of our animals love people and are patient and loving with them. I’ll put up more photos and words later tonight. These kids have suffered some hard luck but are in a good place, they come to the farm two or three times a year. This was the orphanage where Scott Carrino lived after he found himself homeless, and he welcomes kids from the home to his own farm several times a year as well.
Nothing but a gift to us, they are great people to meet and talk with and intensely interested in our lives with animals.
Robert Frank’s wonderful book “The Americans” was much reviled and criticized when it was published more than a half century ago, but changed the way photographers look at the world and has always been an inspiration to me. One reviewer called it a “sad poem,” but I thought it was a beautiful poem.
When I look at some images, I think “this could be a Robert Frank” picture.
Frank did not look for beautiful or glamorous subjects, he looked for images that capture the lives of ordinary Americans, snapshots of the real lives of real people. I thought of Frank when Maria and I stopped for lunch at the funky old Hillsborough Diner in Hillsborough, New Hampshire this week on our way to see the ocean.
We both felt as if we had been brought back in time to another place, a place that brought back a feeling of timelessness and community. Everyone in the diner seemed to know one another, and the cooks and waitresses spent as much time talking to the diners as they did running to the kitchen.
The pace was slower, the interactions more intimate, it spoke of a more peaceful and simple time. I love taking photos like this and my new black and white monochrome camera is helping me to do it, and to honor the great courage and penetrating vision of Robert Frank.
In this photograph, a waitress leans over the counter to talk more intimately with a friend who is eating there, another woman leans over her soup hungrily, the whole diner speaks of a kinder, simpler time. This is a focus of my photography now.
We are getting ready for a special weekend for us, the Bedlam Farm Open House, June 25 and 26, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. You can share our lives with us, our dogs, donkeys, pony, chickens, sheep, barn cats and with some of the most gifted artists in the region. This year, we are returning to our roots, we are celebrating the art in our lives and the art all around us in rural live.
There will be artists and painters and poets and farriers and shearers (and Joshua Rockwood from West Wind Acres) and Ed Gulley from Bejosh Farm (with a dairy cow) and Maria in her studio with all of her wonderful art and Red and Fate taken turns herding (or circling sheep). I’ll talk about my work with animals and my next book and will do frequent herding demonstrations.
You can meet Lulu and Fanny and check out Chloe the pony and meet Maria the cow, who will be summering with us. I hope you will also check out some of the wonderful elements of our town, Cambridge, N.Y, the Round House Cafe, the Battenkill Bookstore, the Over The Moon beads and socks shop, Jack’s Outbacks antiques and art. Scott Carrino will be singing in the afternoon.
There are B&B’s in our town, but Saratoga Springs, Bennington and Manchester, Vt. are all close-by.
You can get more details here. Food is available in town, we will have two portable toilets on hand. This year, for the first time, we put up a poster in front of the farm. The open houses began as art shows and expanded into other things, perhaps too many. This year we are returning to the roots of it for the June Open House (there will be another Open House on Columbus Day Weekend in October.)
We are happy to celebrate the art of rural life in many of its different forms. It is a part of our life now, and we hope to share our lives with you. Hope to see you in June, I know people are coming from all over the country, that is exciting and humbling.
For me, the Open House is about creativity and the process of opening up. More than anything else, my life is shaped by learning to be more open – to new experience, to love, to ritual and spirituality. Good things, all. Come see us if you can.
