red and the sun!

The sun is out today shining bright and beautiful after some snow again yesterday! it is truly a miracle of a day and what i hope is the beginning of an indian summer!

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!

it's my birthday and it is snowing!!!!!

Yes, there is snow falling outside my window! oh one more time there is snow falling outside it is playing with the fall colors, the green grass, softening the hard edges of the barn!!! oh my this is making me very happy- little gifts from the universe for sure!

okay i am headed out to bring in the ponies Annie and Pepper( they are visiting for the month) and if it keeps snowing, i promise to take better pictures!

waiting for his love

i have so much to say about this guy, silver weed is his name. he fell in love as we stood there.

canadian

today is thanksgiving. i am canadian. we will be having our thanksgiving harvest dinner on saturday. my mother and i turned on the televison the other night and caught a movie called ten items or less, it was sweet. so i thought i would list my happy items today. please join me.

ten items or less or more

my family
my dogs
the october sun
making mochas at home
the morning dew on my walks that get my wellies wet but make everything glisten
all animals
the sound of elle and dylans voice on the other end of the line
beautiful letters from bloggers in my in box
all the farm stands especially catherine's at chaplin farms that allows me to be a chef in my kitchen
my new friends farmer fred and his wife in chepachet for their advice and guidance
k, for everything but most of all his love.

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.

being kinder to mother earth and our bellies

today i went to the hosmer bottling company, tired of plastic bottles and my husbands bad corporate soda( i seem to have gotten addicted too these last few weeks). i wanted to find a company that used natural products, recycled and family owned. i loved learning more about them, picking different flavors, hearing the glass clicking and looking at all their old bottles and labels from years past. I also stopped by the chaplin farm stand picked a few things up, spoke to catherine the owner . could not help but take a photograph of the fresh picked apples. I have so much more to tell you, but that will have to wait. for now i hope you are enjoying the glorious october sun.

* americans throw 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour

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.

october

i waited for you patiently all these months. yes i know there was plenty of good times like the daffodils in spring and the late night swims but it is you i secretly longed for. it is within you that i am most myself. you are here now and i will put it all behind me. i will listen to all you have to say and selfishly with no regret take all that you give me

living

two pigs brought up together since they are young give birth at the same time. one of them is not able to deliver all of hers alive. she is not doing to well. the pink little ones need to eat on there own, they are confused and scared. everytime the healthy mother calls her babies to feed the unhealthy mum cries out wishing she could feed her young, but she does not have it in her. this all takes place at a farm down the road. a lump in my throat forms larger and larger but i continue to check on them hoping that mother pulls through. life is clear to me when i stand and look at the scene before me, the injustice of life, i have been reading a lot for a little project i will be working on "circumstance". i have to say i do not think i can ever develop the thick skin that is needed for such things.

Well just so we do not all get sad, i did visit the mum the other day and she is still living which is good and the babies are getting fat on goats milk and feed. I could not get a pig, although the owner wants me to take a couple they grow up to be huge and i have been thinking that i want to give all the animals in my care a lot of space to roam..