Every year our friend Russell and his wife Carmen invite their friends and family to gather at their house and cut Christmas trees on their property.  Russ puts hay bales on his wagon for most of us to ride on out to the power line.  I must admit that this ride borders on scary for me – open wagon, crowds of people, rutted, steep road.  As Carmen told one of her daughters who was afraid of falling off (or tipping over), “It’s all part of the experience.”

Once out on the power lines everyone fans out to find that perfect tree.  We all have something in mind, the trees we cut seem just right until we get them to the car and realize they might be a little bigger than we thought.  We cut extras for people not there.

This was Chester’s second tree outing.  He was in heaven.  Although he stays around Bill he is especially fond of the kids.  This seems to be his job, to help any child overcome any budding fear of dogs.  One of the gentlest animals I’ve ever known.

Once everyone has their tree it’s time to bring them back to the trailer.  This is where I think that you should pick the first tree that strikes your fancy otherwise you have to carry it a long, uphill way to get it loaded for the return trip.  Many hands make light work they say so the long walk wasn’t too bad.

The tractor and trailer make their way back to the farm and we all walk behind it.  This is my favorite part of the day.  Russell’s farm is on the top of a hill that allows you to see some beautiful views.  In the mowin’ you feel like you are on top of the world.

Truth be told my favorite part of the day is watching Russell.  He looks forward to this event probably more than any other.  He is surrounded by all of this favorite people.  His children, grandchildren, friends and family – he beams.  As we sat around the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate and eating the soups and chili we caught up on our lives.  We met children we’d only seen photographs of.  This is a holiday tradition that brings nothing but lightness and laughter regardless of the subject of conversation.  We all enjoy each others company.  We may see some of these people during sugar season or bump into them at a local watering hole but it’s only when we get our tree that all of us get together and laugh.

Winter Scene Postcard from about 1910

I’ve had this postcard for a number of years.  I found it on Ebay and it was unused.  I have others with notes to friends while the authors spent some time relaxing in the quiet that is Rowe.  Around the turn of the century Rowe was quite the vacation destination and the people that came to visit really were very fond of this little town.  Poems were written, postcards and letters were sent.  All espousing the virtues of quiet and clean air.  The people that received these cards kept them and years later they made their way onto the market by way of the internet.  I supposed in years past they would have ended up in a tag sale or perhaps in a small antique shop somewhere.  I have to confess to spending hours in local antique shops going through photos and ephemera from local residents long gone.

These messages to friends were sent all up and down the eastern seaboard.  It’s hard to say how long they took to get to their destinations.  I remember sending cards on the first day of a vacation and they’d arrive at their destinations the day we got home.  Most of these cards cost a penny to mail.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve made some new friends on Facebook.  It’s done an interesting thing to what I post and what I’ve been watching and commenting on.  The friendships are from a number of different places both geographically and in my life.  Some from high school, some from photography school, some from the life I’m living right now.  All of them are from the gentlest of people who are seeing the same things I am right now which is the need to slow down and bring everything closer.  We all are seeing a need to build communities of like minded people, mostly to help us maintain our sanity I think.  There is so much craziness around us all the time and we are all trying to build something slow, something sustainable for ourselves in our own space.  At the same time we understand the need for a community of like minded people that let us know we aren’t insane for thinking  this is a possibility and that share their wisdom to help move the dream along.

The real irony in this for me is the fact that I’m using social media and blogging to connect with these people in a way that simply would not happen otherwise.  So the thing that sometimes makes me crazy is also what makes this small community possible.

“The Internet has turned what used to be a controlled, one-way message into a real-time dialogue with millions.” – @daniellesacks 

heir·loom

noun \ˈer-ˌlüm\

1: a piece of property that descends to the heir as an inseparable part of an inheritance of real property

2: something of special value handed on from one generation to another

3: a horticultural variety that has survived for several generations usually due to the efforts of private individuals

On Sunday I posted this photograph to Facebook with the comment – new heirlooms.  The table was just finished by lifelong friend Russell Donelson.  He’s a contractor but is one of the best finish carpenters I know and he loves doing it.  He knew I wanted a table 3 years ago when we were doing the renovation on the room it’s in.  He got the rough lumber from a neighboring town and had it drying in his barn – waiting.  I had the base made in Vermont because the price was right and I wanted turned legs which Russell thought was a good idea.  He then went to work on the top.  The Friday before Thanksgiving I arrived at the house to see it sitting in the living room.  Visually it’s beautiful but when you touched it it was like silk.  I spent the next two days oiling and waxing and getting to know my new table top.  Rubbing and reading the wood.  This is one beautiful piece of furniture and is wonderful that it was made by a good friend who took pride not only in his work but in the provenance of the wood.

The hooked mat I made while Russ was making the table, it was a large surface that would be screaming for a runner.  I’ve just begun hooking rugs and thought this would look good.  It was a challenge I gave myself to get it finished by the time the table came into the living room.  It’s fun, relatively practical and I was only a week off in finishing it.

I was thinking about the things we put value on and why.  For me it’s so much of an emotional thing.  The table means a lot to me because of Russell but I also envision gatherings around it to eat, converse, play board games, bond with family and friends.  Over time it will mean much more to me then it does now and I’m hoping it will mean more to others as well.

The runner I see as one of those things that will be on the table for a while then be relegated to the closet until such a time when things are cleaned out and it gets passed to someone else who has a sentimental attachment to it because some great grandmother in the distant past made it.

There is a silver sugar spoon that my mother always had in her sugar bowl – it’s still in the kitchen.  On the handle are the initials W.R.C.  She told me that she always hoped that it belonged to some long lost relative but came to the realization that it stood for “Women’s Relief Corp”.  She always laughed about it.  Not too long ago I found a silver sugar spoon in the attic with all of  my great grandmother’s things and brought it home to use in my kitchen.  The initials on the handle are L.G.D.  I was doing some research on the Gilbert side of my family tree when I realized that the spoon had belonged to Lydia Gilbert Duncan (1811-1898), my third great aunt.  It was one of those fantastic moments of discovery in the family tree world but all I could think about was my mother wanting that family heirloom and it had been sitting in her attic all along.

“Family stories make the most valuable heirlooms.” (Author unknown)

On Sunday I decided it was time to get serious about this blog and have it be a repository of so many things about Rowe and Fort Pelham Farm.  This includes being more diligent with my photography.  I don’t know if it is because I was a photographer for so many years in a commercial situation where value was placed on minimal shots due to the expense of film and processing or that I just don’t place that much value on it anymore but I’ve all but stopped taking photographs.

This became so clear to me over the past weekend at a Words and Wool workshop I attended at Cold Antler Farm.  Jenna Woginrich had put together my dream day with her and two other bloggers I read every day.  They were all full of amazing information but also such dedication to their writing and their blogs.  The eye opener for me came from Jon Katz after the workshop broke and we were walking around Jenna’s farm.  He is fairly new to photography and was snapping away while we were outside.  I complemented him on his growth and style that I have been watching over the past few years.  He thanked me and said how much he loved the camera he was using and wanted to know what I shot with.  Dear God I thought, my phone, Instagram.  I was a little embarrassed.  We went on to talk about the quality of light and chasing it.  It was quite wonderful for me to meet such a gentle and generous man.

On the drive home though all I could think about was the difference between his style and mine.  He told me that sometimes he doesn’t even know he has a good photograph until he sees it on his computer, so much of it was luck.  I really think this is the difference in photographers that have spent their lives using film and the photographers that have come into it during the digital age.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my digital cameras.  Digital sets you free in a lot of respects, your shots are unlimited these days.  But is that really the way to be?

There was a light snowfall overnight Saturday to Sunday and I decided to take my phone (yes, my phone) out and take a couple of shots to put on Facebook.  My shots were limited, deliberate.  I didn’t load them onto a computer because there isn’t one available and part of me WANTS immediate results.  I also edit while I take photographs  – often deleting what I don’t want as I go along.  I probably took about 15 photographs in all yesterday and kept 8.  Of the 8 that I kept I would probably post 5.

I’m thinking maybe Jon has something good going on, everyone has their style, maybe I can really take something away from that experience.  Take more pictures.  I think maybe I’ll now look more at the opportunities to take a photograph but I don’t think I’m ever going to get away from trying to make every single shot count.  I think that method teaches you to slow down and see exactly what is in front of you and that, for me, is always what photography has been about.

I have been doing genealogy for well over 15 years.  These days I will do research obsessively for a few days then not come back to it for a few months.  There rarely are exciting breakthroughs anymore, I seem to be doing more cleaning up of things than finding new relatives and the new relatives I do find are so far removed that it almost isn’t worth writing them down.

Recently I decided to do the family tree of Fort Pelham Farm since Olive had written down so much about her family history.  All of what I had has to be considered oral history until it could be tied to public record so I started with Olive and worked my way back.  I now use Ancestry.com for most of my research because I can sit at my desk and pop in the information.  Through the miracle of the internet there  are records from our ancient past available at the click of a mouse, truly amazing.

I’ve been working on the Wright/Gould/Haynes tree for a while and today a name and place from the distant past popped up on the Gould side – Sarah Baker from Ipswich, MA born in 1640.  When I saw that she was from Ipswich in the mid 1600’s I wondered if my family and hers knew each other because so many of my mother’s relatives landed there at about the same time, so I opened my tree alongside of Olive’s.  My tree has an Elizabeth Baker born in Ipswich in 1645, they were sisters.  Our distant Ipswich relatives not only knew each other, they lived under the same roof.  John Baker (1598-1678) was Olive’s 5th great grandfather and my 9th.

I have known for a long time that if you trace someone’s lineage back far enough we are all related, this was just one of those happy little coincidences that make studying your family tree so much fun. (That and sometimes I feel like I work for CSI).  It also makes Fort Pelham Farm feel even more like a family home.

When I started this blog I thought I could at least contribute something on a weekly basis.  How wrong I was.  The summer arrived and with so many chores around the property this had to go on the back burner.   As of yesterday the garden is a memory.  I pulled everything except the carrots and rutabagas and will probably amend the soil and till it this coming weekend.  I was sad to see this garden go this year.  Some years are not as successful or beautiful.  This garden, for the most part, was a great one.  It was photographed often.  It yielded more produce than I even cared to preserve.  It was a place for the wildlife to leave clues to their existence but left me wondering weekly what had transpired in that patch while I was away or asleep.  Now I’m starting the plan for next spring – what to plant, where to plant it, how to lay it out so it will call me to photograph it once again.