August 30th, 2014

It turns out we weren't legally married on that day.  Getting married requires more timely paperwork than either Nick or I care to complete. Which is to say, not a lot, but the combination of marriage license, visits to the town clerk, and the expiration of said license, proved a powerful and ultimately worthy nemesis for me and my "husband". We got married, legally, just recently on January 1st in the living room of our dear friends Melissa and Brent Jordan in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Which was a good 4 months past the day we will always think of as our anniversary.

The exact date of marriage doesn't matter for our purposes here. Nor does it matter for the purposes of the events surrounding August 30th. Because, with or without the seal of the state, Nick and I committed ourselves to one another on that day. We did so on our land, under two wickedly ancient and twisty apple trees, with our son as our witness.

At the risk of sounding like white laced cliché, it was the wedding I dreamed of. At least it was the wedding my thirty-year-old-bohemian-wannabe-exhausted-mother-frantic-farmer-self had dreamed of.

It was a modest affair. Mostly immediate family and local friends. A handful flew thousands of miles or drove cramped hours to be with us and for that we were humbled. We said our vows in the far northern field, overlooking the farm. Our beautiful friend Brent married us. Our fathers read poetry. Nick's entire family cried. My good Episcopalian family kept it together.  My sister and Jacob played us music they had written for the occasion. Leland insisted on nursing while I read my vows.

We walked the whole gang across the farm and at three long tables ate and supped in the belly of the new barn.

Those tiny sentences seem inadequate to describe the love, the joy, the drink, the music that filled the farm on that fine day. But I am not long for words these days as this absent blog can attest. So I allow here the photos to fill in the rest.

Photos 1-10 by Ben Jacks and Photos 11-20 by Ben Fleishman