he is here

well he is here, who is he you ask? well as a very talented friend is clearly on her way to giving birth to her second child( so exciting) bisou aran!!!!!. we have brought home another member of the family. a (big) percheron Friesian horse. i have named him tolstoy( although no one seems to care for the name). until a month ago he was a stallion, for you horse lovers you know that can spell trouble! I want to tell you how we came about getting him, his bittersweet story. i want to introduce him properly to you, but i am learning him right now and he is learning me and the others so till there is that moment you know the one that says it will all be okay..well till that moment i am going to wait to share tolstoy's (aka captain crunch) story.

the sun is out today and feels lovely!

* update aran gave birth to a little girl miren lili! so wonderful to bring in life full of hopes and possibilties!! oh i am so happy for the happy parents, grandparents and little jon who is now a brother, there was once three but now there is four!!

happiness is

Hi everyone! let me start by saying thank you for all your b-day wishes really touched my heart. Now for the snow it was truly a special gift, it snowed a lot more that night but unfortunately i did not take more pics( but winter is coming) and i want to enjoy the fall a little more:)

I would like to share with you a few things, such as our day in NY, but i thought i would start with our harvest thanksgiving dinner party. It was wonderful, what i mean is i enjoyed it very much. Our friends arrived, some i have not seen in far too long( thank you for coming) they toured the house, warmed up by the fire, nibbled on hors d'oeuvres; such as warmed goat cheese roasted tomatoes and garlic, muhammara, olives, cheese and breads. then we headed out on a sunset walk minus the sunset(cloudy) . we walked out to the pastures where we got to see deer and the ponies. we went to meet clarabelle the cow and mike the horse, you must get a lick from clarabelle or the tour would be incomplete! then we headed to the corn maize where six adults managed to get lost, maybe the fact that it was dark helped, yes lets blame it on that! we also left someone behind:)! Then we headed back in, warmed up by the fire while we feasted on thanksgiving dinner. I loved having everyone here, to be able to share the farm house and a good meal with friends makes me so very happy! it makes a house feel like home and the fact that couples where arguing who will watch the house for us has to be a good sign right?!. we ended the night with apple crisps, pie, meringues and roasting marshmallow by the fire an experience my mum had never had and i am not sure she will ever have a smore again:)

thank you all for coming the friends that where with us at the farm and those who are visiting here!

*it was hard to pick up the camera and shoot but here is few from the evening!

ps. bill everyone wants your wing recipe!

i am well now

my mum is here for our annual harvest weeks, usually we spend these two weeks traveling across new england, visiting bed and breakfast, going antiquing and eating good food. this time we will spend it mostly at the farm with a visit to ny and a bread company cafe in maine that i just adore. this all makes me so very happy, she is my best friend and we love the same things she inspires me daily. going to the market with my mum is so wonderful, yesterday we bought vegetables, cheeses, fruits, fish, grains that put together on a farm table would inspire the great masters to raise from the dead. i hope you are all well and then you can spend time with people who make you very happy. more to come..but right now my mum is introducing me to a fruit i have never eaten, how is it possible a charamoya.

forward

this weekend thoughts came rushing through me- oh how i stir easily now. i thought about blogging and why i do it and how it started. to be truthful i was feeling a lot of deep painful emotions so i started onesilentwinter a place where i can out things on paper instead of carrying them around and dropping them at the most inconvenient of times. then came la porte rouge, it became exactly as i hoped, bringing me little bouts of happiness on grey days ( although i like grey days). lately i have asked myself why am i still doing it? i think one of the biggest reasons is to document things that i might one day forget, i can remember what i wore or what you wore three years ago at a certain event, what street to take even though i only went through once in the dark- but big chunks of my life have disappeared, perhaps buried or maybe just gone for always, so here is where things can stay for safe keeping.

Another thing i have been thinking about is how i miss film and wonder about this freeing technology and what if, like a light switch it too will vanish. k and i stare at a pile of old video tapes and although the vcr still exist for how long and yes i do understand we can convert our old videos to cd and use our dvd player but then what i wonder. I must begin to print my images, i must. nothing can replace the emotions that are felt while looking at old photographs from a shoe box while sitting in the middle of the floor..

so back to blogging maybe there is a part of me that sees the change that has happened, the farm and the simplicity of it, the still life that is here. it is gift to live this life, i know this with every morsel of being i am more myself here but i am that while climbing mountains, walking the streets of paris and being at the end of deadlines- those are me too. me's i like. for now i will keep walking forward, pushing my camera skills while never making this place not personal because this is where my story is told.

*five minutes after i wrote this post and ten minutes after taking my morning walk and these pictures i dropped my camera on the kitchen floor and my favorite lens Nikkor 17-80 ( i know but is my favorite and 98 percent of my personal pictures are taken with it) broke, broke, broke i write this three times because i have checked a dozen times just to be sure and yes it is broken! needless to say i am devastated. dear friends if you see one gently used can you let me know! but the sun is out and i baked my grandmothers cake and we are going to walk our dogs so tears are wiped and forward i walk.

a rainy sunday

we had a good weekend. saturday we walked to our library with the dogs and backpacks on, stopped at a safety fair.met all our volunteer policemen and fire department. sunday it rained , but i still found myself walking and exploring mid afternoon. nature she is magical. the other night i went to check on clarabel and mike, clarabel wanted so much affection it was if she was one of the dogs. she leaned on me( i don't think she knows how big she, it wouldn't be rude to call her a cow:)) well i scratched behind her ear and petted the side of her neck when i look up i was surrounded by a half dozen deers i inhaled and pinched myself once again.

I am also feeling a bit anxious, i have to build a structure to house a couple ducks, a goat and perhaps a horse with so many outbuildings already i feel the task to be daunting. i find myself driving around looking at tiny barns, visiting with neighboring farms and seeking advice from others. although i can draw up plans in a few hours it is the financial part that has me worried. I would like to build everything with reclaimed wood, hinges. windows and doors but such things take time to gather. I am already feeling like time is running out since i could not picture going through the winter without animal it would be much to quiet and i would have nothing to do... i must take a deep breath and think things through.

what things would you like to accomplish before winter comes?

brown

i used to wear brown almost exclusively. i have dark brown hair and brown eyes, well now they are green. i love chocolate and drink mochas. the early years of my marriage with k. he used to work for ups, brown uniform, brown truck then he would come home to his wife wearing a brown dress, with her brown hair and brown eyes drinking a mocha... have a good day friends..a little bit tired today because someone showed up-like clock work, thought she would not be visiting this month...hoping she would not be visiting.

the subtleness of autumn

it is the suttle changes that take place that has me falling for autumn year after year.
although as previous posts have shown big fat pumpkins scream out the fall is here as well as the chill in the air and all the apples falling from trees to be displayed in the middle of your grocery store in those paper totes from our childhood. there of course is the foliage that has many people driving leisury on sunday all across new england snapping pictures of deep reds, bright yellows. I appreciate all the above i do very much, but it is the small first stages of change that has me walking the pastures early mornings and at every sunset, it is a single leaf that has change that gets my attention, the wild flowers that have gone to seed that for some reason look as if they too have grabbed a sweater and it is the spider webs covered in morning dew that glisten in the sun.

the changes on table go from red and greens of summer salads to the spiced colors of pumpkins soups, stews and the deep burgundy of harvested beets. it is the bowls of apples that are calling out for pies to be baked and crisp to be eaten. it is the blankets that are pulled out of chests and folded on the back of chairs and placed at the foot of the bed. it is the browns and cream colored sweaters you can’t get enough of. it is the books you cozy upto and the familiar tunes from your favorite sitcoms returning to your living room. it is opening your tea cupboard picking just the right one for this moment and warming your hands around a hot cup as you inhale the aromas of the stuffed peppers coming from your kitchen...

happy fall to you..

back on the farm

hi, sorry i did not pop my head in on sunday, well although Hollis nh was stunning with it's rolling hills colonial historic farms, orchards and quaint eateries i was not able to photograph such things since i worked from daylight deep into the night. I have to say when i was working all i thought about is the farm and how i missed it so. how just before i left a big pile of wood was dropped off and how i would love to be stacking it. i thought about all the recipes i wanted to try from the books i got at the library and how i was going to try to make mozzarella from scratch! how the farm stands would be over flowing with deliciousness and how i would like to walk in the pastures with sophie, grace, mike and clarabelle.

we arrived back very early sunday morning, went to ct for coffee. we came home and started stacking the wood and decorating the barns with pumpkins, bittersweet and under vines i found on the farm. then there was a football game to catch so we drove to a little tavern surrounded by antique stores, ate, perused the lovely shops then headed to our favorite farm stands. we came home and i stacked some more. monday i woke very early, more stacking ( very large pile:) and hayed all afternoon under the gorgeous sun, it was hard worked but i loved every minute of it!

our 5 o'clock ( well six)

pretty much the minute k. gets home we walk the dogs through the pastures. yesterday we went through the corn field. did i tell you we have a corn maize? well we do. k, the dogs and i walked around in it, when i decided to go a different way and so did grace before you knew it we were calling out to each other" are you out yet" i would say yes as i thought is saw the glimpse of an out, but wrong i would yell out "not yet" we found ourselves running in every direction. victory was mine as i was the first to find my way out, then grace, k and sophie how fun was this, in our own backyard! how i wish all our niece and nephews could play, in fact i wish every one could feel like a kid again in the maize!

all the animals are now comfortable with each other, both mike(horse) and clarable are in love with sophie perhaps it is her white as snow color and her sweet and shy demeanor, grace on the other hand thinks she can take down clarable and out run mike! have a wonderful weekend everyone, i am headed to new hampshire for work, leaving the farm and the dogs in friends care i do hope they have a good time here! you might see me pop my head again on sunday!