anniversary - part 6 - mud season
Here we are in spring 2023! At this point I had started blogging, so I can move a little faster. We had a few interior projects in progress when the weather turned warmer, but we couldn't waste good weather indoors! You have to make hay when the sun shines after all. We cleaned up the tools and supplies (basically opened the door to the garage and chucked them in) and moved on to new projects.
Over the winter I drew plans for what I've been calling here the 'perennial food garden'. It's not a good name, it doesn't roll off the tongue or inspire images of a lush kitchen garden. I'm taking suggestions for the name of the garden! At this point in my life, I have limited time for gardening, so we focused on planting perennials and in particular, plants that would take a few years to start producing. I ordered everything during the dark days of January and February and at this point they started to roll in.
Looking back through the photos for this post, there are a lot that are labeled 'barn clutter'. When we moved in, we just dragged everything into the lower floor of the barn and hoped that we would get to it within the first 5 years. Well, we are ahead of schedule!
This is a room in the interior of the barn that we call the work room. I have BIG PLANS for this room. One of the big draws for the move was that there was an obvious place for a pottery. It was one of those moments where Chris looked at me and we said, 'the pottery' simultaneously while the background faded away, like in a movie. (Pottery is the name of the items made from clay and also the name of the place where it's made, we meant the latter.)
I am an enthusiastic potter and by that I mean that I am not very good at it, but I like getting dirty. I started learning in 2020 from a neighbor while social distanced and wearing masks and happily took lessons and worked out of his wonderful studio. This was such an important part of my mental wellbeing during that time. I loved being on the farm all the time and was extremely lucky to work from home, but it was pretty lonely. George's pottery was warm (almost too warm for a Michigander), smelled of woodsmoke, and there was always good company (usually me and one other student). My preference would be to work there forever and never have my own pottery, but he decided to spend the winters in the desert and also downsize his northern abode, regardless of my ceramics education. Rude!
Despite this, I am so excited to have my own pottery. One of the first things we bought when we moved here was an old pottery wheel, the same one my teacher has been using for probably 50 years. I haven't ever used a modern wheel, but I liked the idea that this wheel could last the rest of my life and beyond. Chris carried it in - that flywheel weighs around 100 pounds and I sat on it for this photo and then we got back to the task at hand. At some point I decided to throw a pot and I made the bowl that you see below, but I don't have a kiln yet and as you saw above, there wasn't room for one anyway, so this bowl went back in the bucket. I actually made two bowls, I'm just posting the nicer one.
Fast forward to this summer which is when the after-ish photos were taken. We cleared the rooms and hired the Mountain Men to help whip the rooms into shape! That work is still in progress, but one thing I want to share is the ceiling. The guys wire brushed away all of the loose whitewash, cobwebs, and dust and I love it. I suppose it's possible that I could be happy with a new barn with smooth concrete floors that I could drive the tractor in, but I wouldn't have this... or the ghosts of all of the farmers that came before me.
I'm going to sign off here, next post: Spring and Summer!