“The trouble with having an open mind, said one writer, is that many people will insist on coming along and putting something in it.”

Maria took down the “Welcome To Bedlam Farm” banner we hang on the porch during our Open Houses.

This one was the best for me, the right scale, the right purpose, the right time.

It was, of course, about sharing our lives, enjoying the rich stream of good and warm people, sharing our art and creativity, advancing the idea of encouragement.

Maria brought some wonderful artists together, some good friends, and the dogs and animals all did their thing, showing off, welcoming strangers, getting hugged, rubbed and kissed within an inch of their lives. Our humble little farmhouse seemed a lighthouse, right in the middle of farmland and hills.

They came all day Saturday and Sunday, in a stream, not a flood. It was comfortable, easy, it felt good. It was nourishing.

This year, we wanted the show to focus on the art and the animals, we dodged a hurricane and some showers, had hundreds of people coming from as far away as Canada and England and Idaho. We loved it, we are exhausted. We are always amazed at the work involved, we always forget before the next Open House.

Every Sunday night after an Open House, we collapse and look at each other, one of us will ask: “do we really want to do this again?” Every year we do. Next year, two Open Houses, one in June, one in October. Details to come. The only promotion we ever do is on our blogs. Everyone who comes, comes from them.

I did a ton of herding demos,  donkeys tours, shook hands and listened to many stories. Maria was on her feet and in her studio explaining and selling art all day for two days. Now she has to settle all the accounts and re-arrange the studio. She has the most astonishing energy.

in a sense the Open Houses are a celebration of our wish to lead (within reason) open lives. To share one’s life doesn’t necessarily mean to share all of it – we rarely share what happens inside of the farmhouse. We keep the private parts of our souls private. .

We have often been warned about being open. It is out of fashion.  Don’t you read the news? Somebody will rob us, or sue us, or stalk us, or steal our identity of personal papers, or insult or alarm us, or hack into our e-mails. What about the Internet? It is considered dangerous to be open, to share feelings, let alone farms.

I suppose there is a risk to anything, but the Open Houses have been rich, warm, connective, celebratory, affirming for us, and we are told, for others. We chose to be thoughtful, but to never live in fear.

Being open is not just about inviting people to see our farm and art and animals. It is a state of mine, a cause, a philosophy for me, and also Maria.

“The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind,” wrote E. B. White, and that is true. A closed mind often leads to a closed life, and I have written several times that the closing of the mind is the first death, and the real one. The rest is just biological matter.

I do not wish to live a substitute life, as Joseph Campbell called it, or a hollow one, as T.S. Eliot named it.

There are joys and challenges. The vast majority of people approach us lovingly, openly and in good faith. There are those few with needs we cannot meet, and whose boundaries are too fluid and indistinct. We sometimes hear more than we need, or want, or should. Those encounters are very rare, a handful out of many hundreds. Some people want more than we can give, we have learned the power and value of boundaries.

We seek to share our lives, we cannot give them to people, and no one can ever  have someone else’s life. And no life is perfect.

Sometimes I want to cry at the good people who drive hours to hug a donkey, buy a potholder, watch Red herd sheep or Fate run around, tell me about a book they read, show me a photo of a donkey or a dog, or even a grandchild. Or just shake my hand or hug me. The word is still powerful. (And then there are people who carry albums of their grandkids (and dogs) around, I look at one and run away.)

Some people have been coming to our Open  Houses for  years, and we have come to love and know many, they are part of our family, part of our community, they support and sustain us as much as we try to support and sustain them.

They visit the Battenkill Book Store, eat at the Round House Cafe, visit Heather and buy her beads and socks, go and see George Forss in his gallery. They often come to love my town in much the same way that I do.

I am sometimes drawn to tears when I see Helen hugging a donkey, or Janet brushing one, or young Jacob resting his head on Red, who is happy to oblige, or Sam sketching our hay feeder. I love the laughing and clapping at foolish and joyous Fate, who races from gate to gate, looking for work, and then lap to lap, looking for hugs. Silly dog. I love Mary Kellogg reading her beautiful poems, or the gruff artist Ed Gulley talking farms and art.

We have our traditions by now, they are rich.

I do not ever tire of the sight of Maria, in full Curator mode, glued to her table in the Schoolhouse Studio, fighting for her artists, and her art, mulling for days where each painting, pincushion, scarf, tote bag,  potholder or cutting board ought to go. She is so at home in there, in her element, eyes shining with excitement and passion.

She loves her life, as I love mine.  She is so alive in that studio. That is such a beautiful thing to share.

But E.B. White also wrote to his readers “that there are 10,000 of you and one of me,” and he couldn’t, he said, remember them all or be open to them all. Or reply to all of their letters. I used to be able to. At the Open Houses, people tell me how much it meant to them when they messaged me five or six years ago, and I answered. Sometimes, I remember them.

People often assume that I know who they are when I don’t, and the people you most want to see and talk to are the shyest and most reserved – they dread being pests.  The people who are sometimes intrusive are never fearful of being pests. I am a master at figuring it out quickly. And openly: “who are you?”

There are people who wish to fill my open mind, online and off, they tell me how I feel, what I’m thinking, what I will feel, they project their lives onto mine, and mine onto theirs. Sometimes they are right, sometimes not. I cling to the idea of Walden Pond, my successes and mistakes are mine to make, I share my life, I don’t give it away.

I never like being told what to write or think, I have never learned to be gracious about it. Being open is much about acceptance, you get the good me and the bad me, but you will always get the real me.

The joys of the open life are much richer than the trials. I have no secrets for the first time in my life, my story is open to the world and told authentically. I have nothing to hide, thus nothing to fear.  Openness drains panic out of the psyche, like a toilet flushing.  I make no false claims, and have no pretense about myself, I am no better than anyone, and everyone has it worse than I do in some ways. I do not speak poorly of my life.

I have heard and listened to the worst things about me, and survived. I try to meet every doorway with an Open Mind. It is my faith, even though I often stumble and fall. I am learning what it is to be human. Most of all, I share my love for Maria, without whom few things that are good in my life would have been possible.

Maria is the color and light in my life, the hope and the meaning, the inspiration and the companionship. The love. We live our open lives together. And so many people come here to tell me that is the reason they come, to see and feel the openness of love that emanates from our work and our farm. It is, I promise you, unconscious, I never think about what I write, which is sometimes obvious. And I never know what I think until I write it.

When, in all of my long life, would I ever have imagined such a thing, to be so lucky and blessed?

Openness is a choice. I respect that so many people dread it, for many reasons.

I am proud and happy to live an open life, it is a much a way of life and state of mind as anything else. Openness, like light, kills fear and opens doorways. It is the spiritual underpinning of the Open House.