a home for now

my friend rachael reminded me of the site cabin porn this weekend and i think i may have spent a solid two hours on the bus home from boston monday drooling. its so easy to have home envy when there are so many creative people out there doing such an Incredible Job at living indoors.  but i love the 2 room home we live in right now. it isn't ours. and knowing us it won't be the last place we live. but we are making ourselves at home despite this. and in lieu of spending today sulking that we don't live on a scraggy cliff in a brightly-white painted hut overlooking snowy mountains, i thought i would celebrate the home we do live in. in all of it's small and clunky glory.

so here it is. home for now. in photos.

1. bedroom with requisite kitty AND the fan that meg gifted to us last weekend. bless her.
2. my try at house plants. the lemonade bottle is always filled with water to tempt me into watering them more often. it hasn't worked yet. i may need to set up some indoor irrigation.
3. that heavy wooden bust is something nick traded his shoes for in southern africa many years ago. we have lugged it nearly everywhere we've lived and only once tried to unload it on brent and melissa (who did schlep it from san francisco to carolina for us).
4. this dining room table and the two chairs have been mine since i was a baby. my mom gave us a photo of me and my sister sitting at the same table in the same chairs. i must be 4 and fiona 2.  in the photo it appears that i am yelling at my baby sister. but i would never yell. i have always been a lady. a lady doesn't raise her voice. i was probably just scolding her poor baby-posture.
5. with the afternoon sun and our wooden-everything home there are some days when life is too orange and you have to sport sunglasses inside. it makes one look Ultra Cool.
6. moldy countertops.
7. an uncommonly empty sink.
8. we need more cabinets and less mice. then i wouldn't have to put everything under the lock and key of jars and tins.
9. the tiny stove.
10.  the hammock is forever beckoning.

too quiet

the first thing i did sunday morning, bleary headed, after driving the jordans to their early morning flight out of burlington was strip the bed, throw the washing in, and remake it with fresh linens. i thought i'd be so glad to be back in my own bed. i collected dish towels, beach towels, and wash cloths and threw them in line for washing. i purged the fridge of the week's collections, giving the chickens a massive bowl of leftovers. i scrubbed the sweet potato mash off the side of the small, much abused oven. i swept. i vacuumed. i put every pillow back in its rightful place. i had nick take the appalling number of beer and wine bottles down to the mouth of the barn. i took the baby un-friendly vases and typewriters down from safekeeping. i quietly and efficiently almost excitedly reverted the house back to Just So.

i breathed deeply and tried to relish the quietude of this little house that just hours before carried 6 adults 2 babies and 2 dogs. melissa had said we would surely be glad to have the quiet back. and during breakfast as arlo was banging on the big pot with a heavy wooden spoon nick had brought back from tanzania, i thought she was right. i thought i did miss the quiet.

but now that melissa and brent and everly and arlo are back in raleigh,  and meg and vini and their puppy beans are back in boston i find i don't like the quiet. i want the mess of 8 humans living in 2 rooms back. i want the chaos of dinners and the endless sink of dishes. i want the pillows and the all the blankets back in the corner of our bedroom where they had made an impromptu bed for everly. i want to tiptoe into the bedroom to check email while one of the jordan's sleeping babes naps. i want to hear brent walking up from the milking barn playing the mandolin. i want to try a new beer that vini has collected.  i want everly to help me pick this morning's peas off the vines. i want her to shake her finger at me and say no ma'am in the most crushing southern baby drawl.  i want to see nick hold our beautiful godson. i want to have meg and melissa right there in the sun of the living room to chat and snack and drink lemonade as though we all still live in san francisco.

i certainly don't want the quiet and so i miss the loud.

the house, the farm, the whole mountain all feel too quiet now. 

it is heartbreak to live so far away from such good good friends. it kills me to see everly and arlo grow up so quickly, only being able to hold them and kiss them once a year. 

but our roots are set in new england, and theirs in north carolina. and so we must forever shuttle to and fro to see one another.

melissa took many more photographs than i this last week. so you can read and see more about their visit here. 

an outhouse

i am always so pleasantly shocked how each and every one of our friends don't bother to blink twice at using the outhouse. it isn't very pleasant to have to use. especially when its pouring rain (or pouring snow) or blowing wind. or hot and still. but our friends are good sports,  they persevere and so do we.

that is all.

have a good friday. and an even better weekend ours will be filled with milkings, garden-work, a picnic on the mountain top, many jumps in the pond, and good carolina friends.

monday's iPhone blur

yesterday through the lens of an aging and seldom appreciated iPhone

in photos:

1. lambs! they don't have names yet (fiona!! get on it!) but it doesn't stop them from being adorable. also, they seem to have an affinity for npr and air conditioning. high class sheep.
2. covering ourselves up to avoid being eaten by hay while we load the loft.
3. hay that had only been rained on once...wonderful.
4. rudy taking a lie down among the old stanchions.
5. chugging some good cold milk....
6. before the long uphill back to the house.
7. the kittens awoke...
8. to accompany us to the pond.
9. me and my favorite lamb. she is a SnuggleBug.
10. the outside table is just begging somebody to take 5 and have a meal there. too bad there are no 5s to be had.

cake in the city and dinner in the country

cake in the city

dinner in the country

this was one of the times where we so generously grace a friend's wedding with just one of us. and it was my turn so i got a blistering night and day away from the farm, many miles logged on the car, and a brunch with mom and marie in somerville in the backyard. eating cake for breakfast and keeping our feet cool in the kiddie pool. 

the wedding was beautiful. on her father's farm. amongst a pine grove. the drink was a mint julep. i had many many virgin juleps, which amounts to little more than lemonade and mint, very quenching. the pulled pork was from one of her dad's pigs. and his toast to her was one of the more beautiful wedding moments i have witnessed. i had scrupulously washed my feet and was wearing a pretty silk dress that had never been used to garden or feed pigs.  i managed to find the only two farmers at the wedding and talk to them all night. and i had to leave before the cake was served. i was home by midnight. and the next day made up for my farm delinquency by putting up 173 bales of hay

i was told, by a farmer helping us throw that hay, as i was covered in sweat and dried grass, and as my hands were numb from blisters, and as i was counting Every Bale, that he and his dad used to put up over 10,000 bales a summer.   

KATE you Do Not Know what real work is my dear girl. is not what he said, but what i thought. 

i'm so happy to be home but so happy to have had a brief and needed overnight from the farm. it reminded me that i have a wedding to plan (oh). and it made me feel less awful to be able to give a partial yes instead of a resounding no to dear friends. 

today i am off to pick up three little ewe lambs. they are the beginning of my flock for fiber and meat. my beautiful sister, who turns 26 today, is in charge of naming the girls, so stay tuned for that, and for photos of them riding home in the back of my subaru. and for the adorableness that will rival the kittens.