Downton Abbey Fever

There is much to love about Downton Abbey. Airing here on PBS as part of "Masterpiece Classics" and now ending its second season, the series is filmed in an historic English estate, there are marvelous clothes and real settings, and the characters are feisty and largely likeable, with fast-paced plots just sudsy enough to keep our interest. It is written by Julian Fellowes, who also wrote the equally frothy motion picture Gosford Park (and whom you may remember as the rascal Killwillie in the Scottish-based Monarch of the Glen, a more modern take on the aristocratic and sporting life that remains in Great Britain). The series is a glimpse into the large scale country house era that once existed on both sides of the Atlantic and, seemingly, something of which we can not get enough. Of course, there are pantries and larders and silver vaults, too.

Carson, the loyal butler of Downton Abbey, awaits his supper below stairs.

As in Gosford Park, Fellowes has created a world where the servant and sire know their position and everything runs within well-oiled systems, precise order, and an awareness of one's place. World War I was a game-changer for all of that, even for our American "aristocracy." What I like about Fellowes' approach is that he pays equal attention to the domestic staff, which outnumbered the family members several times over, as he does the lives of those who are on the receiving end of such loyal service. In the past several decades, the museum world in Britain and the United States has begun to take notice of this importance. No house museum tour is worth its admission without seeing a glimpse into the "below stairs" life. Kitchens, sculleries, pantries, cellars, laundries, and servant bedrooms are now regular parts of most house museum experiences with the names, faces and histories of the domestic staff of a household often researched in detail. [Of course, a love of these spaces fueled my interest in writing, The Pantry-Its History and Modern Uses.]

Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio is an architectural nod to English manors and an

example of the country house expression in the United States in the early 20th century.

I have always been an Anglophile. This is motivated by architectural and historical interest as much as great literature, a rainy and lush climate (but notice how it never seems to rain at Downton Abbey?), stodgy nursery food and a good cup of tea (OK, and for a brief few pubescent years I read a lot of Regency romances). My great-grandparents, of German and English heritage, were über Anglophiles. In 1912 they set out with their architect and decorator on buying trips to Great Britain to find suitable furnishings–even buying old bits of manors and castles that were for sale–for the Tudor Revival estate they were creating back in Akron, Ohio. Enamored as they were with their British travels (Compton Wynyates and Haddon Hall were especially inspiring), they decided to stay a few extra weeks and went ahead and cancelled their homeward trip on the Titanic in April 1912. Stan Hywet Hall likely owes it ultimate completion to that fateful decision. That it even exists today is because it was signed over in 1957 by the six Seiberling children to a non-profit museum foundation and left as originally furnished and decorated–complete with paintings, china, silver, full cupboards, closets and drawers.

Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, c. 1925.

The house, which opened in 1915, had all of the grandiose trappings of its era and yet always maintained a cozier sense of home and family. There were balls and galas, events in the Music Room, garden parties and large family dinners (F.A. Seiberling, my great-grandfather, was one of nine children who lived in the Akron area and he liked to gather the clan together often). Christmas was a beloved time and my father's childhood Christmases at the manor were a source of many happy memories. On certain occasions, the manor and its grounds were also opened to the public or to employees of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. The English would have scoffed, I'm sure, but the attention to detail in the house is transporting and the intended effect has succeeded in the appearance of an estate that has evolved over centuries. Charles Schneider, a Cleveland architect, won the commission because his design was warm and appealing, not at all like the marbled halls of many of the Gilded Age homes in Newport and New York that the Seiberling family found wanting.

Lord and Lady Grantham–

to the manor born in Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey incorporates aspects of the American Gilded Age in the newer wealth of Cora, Lady Grantham's heritage paired with the aristocratic, but slowly impoverished, Edwardian English estate of her husband Lord Grantham. Despite his wife's money, and their three daughters, the estate and its contents must pass by law to the next male heir, ideally with sufficient funds for its maintenance to keep it within direct lineage–an example of the male heir primogeniture holdover of feudal law. Marriages of this kind were not uncommon during this time when wealthy women from American industrial families were paired with English noblemen to infuse dwindling estates with cash and uphold their preservation. Thus, a tentative "marriage of convenience" was forged between pockets of the American nouveau riche and a few bastions of fading English aristocracy.

The F.A. Seiberling family around 1915, after Stan Hywet was completed. My grandfather, James Penfield, is at the upper left, alongside his sister-in-law Henrietta Buckler Seiberling (who would later be instrumental in the creation of Alcoholic's Anonymous), brothers Fred and Willard, and in front (from left), sister Virginia Seiberling Handy, parents F.A. Seiberling and Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, flanking youngest sibling, Franklin, Jr., and sister Irene S. Harrison.

One of the many reasons I continue to enjoy Stan Hywet today is because it is the only repository of family memory that I have left in Akron: we long ago left the small house across town where I grew up and my grandparents' home, just up the road from Stan Hywet, was sold in 1983. Where there were once several dozen staff, by the end of World War II there were only a few servants (and the once well-manicured grounds more or less went wild). Meanwhile, my father's household in a comfortable 1923 Spanish Mission style house nearby had two live-in staff and several hired as needed. He and my mother spent their married years in a much smaller suburban Colonial, across town, with no maids. By the 1960s, the world that my family had known no longer existed and paralleled the demise of the midwestern Rust Belt's industrial heyday. While I can't deny that I am grateful for a glimpse into this other world––or that I take pride in my heritage on both sides of my family––at the same time I am blessed to have had a grounded upbringing from each of my parents that focused on values, kindness and the merits of a good education: part middle class suburban offerings and part New Hampshire farm.

F.A. Seiberling in front of Stan Hywet in 1942.

It's fun to speculate "what if?" What if the family had returned on the Titanic? Would Stan Hywet still have been built? What if there hadn't been a hostile takeover of Goodyear Tire & Rubber in 1921? What if the family had still been involved with Goodyear and never founded Seiberling Tire & Rubber (when F.A. lost Goodyear he turned around after a few months and started another tire company, which stayed in the family until a corporate raid in 1960)? What if the family still owned Stan Hywet? Would there have been a pattern of primogeniture as there was in Great Britain or would my grandfather, the second of two sons, who ran Seiberling Tire after his father passed the baton, been the heir apparent to the home? The speculation is fun but the reality is that, in deeding the entire estate and its contents in 1957, the six siblings guaranteed that the property and grounds would never be divided, sold or destroyed. Today it continues to live up to its noblesse oblige Latin motto carved over the door: "Non Nobis Solum" (Not for us alone) with a well-preserved house, collections and accurately restored landscapes and gardens. [Meanwhile, Highclere Castle, the very English and historic setting of Downton Abbey, remains privately owned through direct lineage of the Carnarvon family since 1679, and is also open to the public.]

So as my husband and I watch Downton Abbey from our humble doublewide on our Kentucky farm, it seems a rather strange way of glimpsing a reassuring sense of order and family life in a changing world. While the fictional characters in the household of Downton Abbey mourn the way it was before World War I, nearly one hundred years later we look back at a past we did, or did not, know with the same, odd kind of longing. No matter what era we're in, it's usually about one's sense of place in the world, family hierarchy and relations, a well-appointed house (or hopes and plans of one), great dinner parties, and the intricacies of romance and relationships. Strong and imperious no-nonsense matriarchs with great one-liners go a long way, too, even if snark was probably not very fashionable in those days. I want to be like the Dowager Countess when I grow up! And, while we're being silly (sort of), a devoted butler would be fabulous.

The Afterglow

A locally-made wooden painted turkey kit from nearby Bear Wallow Farm and a lovely pumpkin from Casey County, just a bit nibbled on by our chickens. The kit would be an easy thing to make with your children if you are crafty. (Alas, I am not.)

Here's what I love about Thanksgiving–it just extends into a nice, long weekend of leftovers and doing whatever it is that we want to do. Like hunker in on our ridge: playing games, watching old movies and family programs on television, chopping wood, general puttering around. Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday, even though this year it was just our immediate family (minus our daughter, for the third year in a row, who works at a ski resort back in Vermont where the holidays are a blur of accommodating skiers and their families). Our boys even had an entire week off from school, which we appreciated, even though we didn't travel anywhere. [And who wants to these days?]

This little fellow has the right idea after a hearty bowl of slop.

Henry chops pumpkins for the pigs.

We were thinking of going to the Liberty Christmas parade last night, and to the Clementsville Variety Show later on today (MCed this year by our friend Joberta Wells: and check out her new blog at The Casey County News where she is a columnist–she is our local "hoot" and deservedly so, as well as having coined the phrase). We were even going to see the new Harry Potter movie (which would be Henry's second time in a week). But we're not.

A late fall bull calf, born just before Thanksgiving on our farm.

Instead, our entertainment over the past few days has consisted of moving some cattle (including some of the neighbor's that had escaped). We watched our great friend, Chuckie Willard, back in New Hampshire, and the coverage of his trebuchet-building for Science Channel's On the Road to Punkin Chunkin [on the link, click on the "Tired Iron" video]. We also watched The Fabulous Beekman Boys first-season marathon on Planet Green (what a joy they are, and their animals, friends and Farmer John, who lives on the premises, and we can't wait for their Christmas special on December 8–on so many levels this is a worthwhile new reality series). Oh, yes: my husband's favorite actress of all time, Marjorie Main, had several feature movies on TCM this week, too. And who can not watch the annual reshowing of The Wizard of Oz? I still cry each time that Dorothy goes home again and it is delightful to experience this movie with our own children.

A daily reminder on my mantel.

Our wine glasses!

This year our holiday mantra will continue to be "simplify." Our Thanksgiving set the tone for that: we were all clean and well-scrubbed but changed into our comfortable pajamas after feeding the animals on the farm. Our boys wanted a "Jammy Thanksgiving" and they got it. If you are not entertaining anyone but yourselves, I highly recommend it! I didn't even pull out all of the decorative stops that I usually do. And we used paper towels for napkins! (OK, so I haven't ironed in a while.)

Part of my "Country Fare" in the hutch in NH.

We did pull out our silver and paired it with our Country Fare–my favorite every day pottery, made by Zanesville Pottery from the 1940s-60s (eventually bought out by Louisville Stoneware in Kentucky). Who knew one day that I–an Ohio girl, born and bred, raised in New England–would eventually be living in the state that adopted my favorite Ohio pottery?! Those are our farmer friends Peter Sawyer and Eric Tenney in our kitchen in Hancock in early December 2007, when we had another Thanksgiving dinner all over again, but our last in New Hampshire. [Our dear bull mastiff, Lucy, is curled up for a nap: she passed away here in Kentucky almost two years ago now.]

John, Tom and Patch in January 2009. Today was their second birthday (but Patch disappeared when he was six months). This is my favorite photo of them altogether, on my favorite chair.

Our former Hancock home in a Wallace Nutting print.

Thanksgiving is time to give pause to our many blessings, the love of each other, and memories of holidays past. I'm glad that I am at a point in my life now where I can remember the magical holidays of childhood and beyond without a full immersion of bittersweet sorrow, or even a tinge of it–where I can be in a memory or a feeling or a place in my mind and linger there, a bit, but not dwell too much in what has past. It's not always an easy thing for me. ["Dwell, Stew, Obsess!" in the words of cartoonist Roz Chast.]

Edward Henry Corbould (1869), Cold

I know why the holidays can be the hardest time of year for some people: I have been in that place. I now embrace the winter months like a warm, cozy throw. It is admittedly less wintry here in Kentucky but still just as dark, cold and bleak as any mild winter we have experienced in New Hampshire. Winter is now something I am happy to put on and to wear, like a shroud, as I tuck in for a few months of reflection and repurposing. It's a necessary system reboot for the soul.

What Sting said so poetically about the winter season of darkness in his notes for his beautiful album, If On a Winter's Night, captures what I feel about winter now:

Peter Ilsted (1861-1933), Woman Reading by Candlelight

Walking amid the snows of Winter, or sitting entranced in a darkened room gazing at the firelight, usually evokes in me a mood of reflection, a mood that can be at times philosophical, at others wildly irrational; I find myself haunted by memories. For Winter is the season of ghosts; and ghosts, if they can be said to reside anywhere, reside here in this season of frosts and in these long hours of darkness. We must treat with them calmly and civilly, before the snows melt, and the cycle of the seasons begins once more. 

A Footnote:

Seeing the credits roll past at the end of On the Road to Punkin Chunkin, we realized it was Chucky's tractor trailer driving out of town, east on Main Street in Hancock where we used to live in New Hampshire. But seeing it, in such a blur, we were able to stop the frames with the slow motion feature of TeVo, and there was our old house, in the top photo (at left, with the brick end). A strange encounter, indeed. The whirring of the sped up film also reminded me of how I process memory: that it flies through me in a blur and then it is gone again, like the wind. But where does it go?

The Things He Carries

One of the things I love about doing laundry is discovering what is in my sons' pockets. Unlike my husband, they tend to forget to empty their pockets before tossing their stuff in the laundry room (perhaps this is a learned behavior only when one does their own laundry?). Eli, in particular, is a pack rat (like his mother) and thinks nothing of cramming in his pocket a few pebbles (he is an avid rock collector) or recent fortunes from a Chinese restaurant dinner. He is also sentimental and I suppose that tweaks a few extra heart strings in me. Just as long as he doesn't become a hoarder, like his mother!

Little boys are so different than little girls. It's trite and stereotypical, but true enough.

Pebbles and pocket knives and keys to the tractor: that's what little farm boys are made of.

Our son is also an "old soul" who appreciates the the wisdom of his elders––on occasion!

A Sultry Summer Sunday

One of our two new Hereford bulls in with the ladies (and some of their new calves).

I don't know what it is about Sundays lately, but I do seem a bit obsessed with them. Yesterday it was hot and humid, probably the muggiest day of the summer so far. We spent much of the day in the air-conditioned house, the boys and my husband exhausted from wrangling calves on Saturday morning to tag and give shots. [One lesson learned: wait until it's cooler to do so as the calves get even more stressed in the heat.]

A palisade on a back road in Pulaski County.

Later in the day we thought it would be fun to take a little Sunday drive. This is something we've always enjoyed, usually with a destination, but this was on some back roads we wanted to explore to the south of us, down near Lake Cumberland. Here where you reside is defined by what ridge you live on or underneath: the geography defines your community. Our farm is on the southern edge of south-central Kentucky's knob region. What this affords is a rolling, hilly landscape with deeply etched hollers carved by creeks, and higher ridges or plateaus where most people prefer to build upon. It is not as jagged as parts of eastern Kentucky, more plateau-like with finger like-ridges, bumpy hills and secret valleys. Either ridge or holler have large pastures for hay or cattle, dotted by copses of trees or wooded hillsides. It is beautiful countryside and, while it can be rough and tumble on occasion, it has a particular kind of untamed, almost untapped, wildness that we appreciate.

On our little journey, we came upon this old country store, now closed. Of course I had to jump out and take a photograph but I did spare my husband my best Eva Gabor-as-Lisa Douglas imitation. And where is Sam Drucker when you need him, any way? We would have liked a cold drink, at least.

Our boys preferred to stay home and watch a movie and, with cell phone in hand, we set off solo. It is always a chance for us to talk, one on one, and we really hadn't had this opportunity for a while without some kind of interruption (it's summer vacation, after all!). Our favorite way to "off road" is to not take a map (OK, well on longer trips we do bring a Kentucky Gazetteer for backup). As I have a built-in understanding of maps and direction sense, and only usually need to look at a map once or twice to absorb its spatial relationships (yes, this is an idiot savant skill I seem to have been born with), my husband has learned to trust this about me. Doing this kind of "off-roading" (or off-mapping?) is not being afraid of making the wrong turn or the thrill of the wonderment of where we might come out. I rather live my life this way, too: taking many roads and exploring new ones around the constant fixture and presence of home and family. And, as long as I can catch a glimpse of our little "monadnock" here, Green River Knob, I always know where we are.

Green River Knob rises to the west of our own knob pasture on our ridge. It is not only the highest knob in the region but the highest point in Kentucky west of its eastern mountains. The Kentucky knobs, I've realized, are very much the last western gasp of the Appalachian mountain range that forms a long spine up to the northeast.

This same phenomena occurred when we lived back in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire, too, as wherever you go, or soon nearby, you can see the great mass of Mount Monadnock as both a presence and beacon. These geographical fixtures define our places and provide an odd kind of security, too. When we are on top of our knob looking out and I see Green River Knob watching over us to the west, I always find it rather comforting. There is wisdom, truth and solace in the hills around us.

At dusk there was an odd, brilliant light from the east that cast itself on the lawn in an eerie glow. We soon realized this was created by the reflection of the setting sun on the edge of a large thunderstorm system which went around us to the south. A perfect night for a "Thunder Moon."

The chicken house at dusk, just after they'd gone into roost.

So we drove along seeing old homeplaces, new roads and different pastures and felt refreshed by the drive, the company and the air-conditioned car. To take a drive like this, whether for an hour or for the day, is always like a mini-vacation not too far from your own backyard. We came home to a build-up of thunderheads that didn't rain on us, unfortunately (it was the full "Thunder Moon" last night) and shucked some fresh corn a neighbor had given us. That, with some grilled chicken breast, was supper. Ah, a summer Sunday, to paraphrase Henry James, two of the most lovely words in the English language.

I Tremble With Gratitude

In recent years our table has been a "groaning board" of good friends, our immediate family and beloved kin who "enter and pass among us in living love and in memory." As one of my friends likes to say, "as we get older, we make our own family."

Yesterday, a quote I posted by Wendell Berry on "pacifist chickens" led to all sorts of other great quotes over on Facebook. One of my favorite readers of this blog (and a local friend on Facebook and in person, even though we have met only a handful of times) shared a favorite quote with me. It turns out it is an entire poem from Berry's Leavings collection. If you have never read Wendell Berry in any genre, you can't go wrong with anything he writes: he is one of our finest environmental essayists, poets and novelists and he happens to live and farm here in Kentucky where he was born and raised. His essays have always been ahead of their time and they speak of sustainability, the dangers of living outside of our means, of the beauty and power of simplicity and honoring our land. He is like a humble sage of our time, quite unknown by those who should know of him, beloved by those who do.

Wendell Berry–a man of letters and the land.

The owner of an independent bookstore group, Willard Williams of The Toadstool back in New Hampshire, said he always judges a bookstore by its inclusion of Wendell Berry in the poetry, novel, philosophy, environment and essay sections. When I read this poem today it reminded me of my "Sunday Dinners" blog post, below, and the poem that inspired it, the other day. It is also of note that Berry composed the poems in Leavings on a series of Sabbaths over the course of several years. The Sabbath is something we are trying to better honor in our family, returning it to what it should be: a completely suspended day of only essential work but more importantly, to have fellowship with our family, friends and our spiritual selves. To find the quiet within the center of who we are or the place around us and then to carry that into the rest of our week. There is just too much pace and not enough pause in our world any more.

Not having read Leavings, I can only assume that the poems are, as this one is, the best kind of prayer or spiritual moment, perhaps Berry's own benedictions:

VIII.

I tremble with gratitude
for my children and their children
who take pleasure in one another.

At our dinners together, the dead
enter and pass among us
in living love and in memory.

And so the young are taught.

~ Wendell Berry [From Leavings, Counterpoint Press: 2009]

Sunday Dinner

Ham awaits preparation at a Sunday dinner we had with our Shaker friends in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

"Sunday Dinner" by Dan Masterson, is a pleasant conjurer of so many things for me: family gatherings, good food, communion, fellowship. [I highly recommend the daily poem in your email via Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac."] We used to entertain a lot more in New Hampshire, sometimes to the level that the poem describes (remember that my pantries had stuff in them that needed to be used once in a while!). But what it reminds me of most is the family dinners we used to have at my grandparents' Ohio house where we gathered together with my grandparents at the helm (who were raised during the last gasps of Victorian formality), their two children (my dad and his sister), their two spouses (my uncle and mother) and we six grandchildren (all cousins and siblings). We didn't get together on Sundays in any formal way but about once a month we would gather for either a birthday or a holiday dinner, or some combination of the two. My grandmother, if anything, was a great matriarch that way. Now we are deceased or scattered across the lower-48, as so many families are today, rather helm-less at times.

In New Hampshire, on my grandparents' farm (on my mother's side of the family), my grandmother would frequently roast one of their chickens for Sunday dinner after church–or just because–and serve it with vegetables and new potatoes from the garden. We would drive over to Silver Ranch (now Kimball Farms) for homemade ice cream for dessert. While the farm was a less formal environment, it was just as filled with that family sense of gathering and purpose, of old and repeated stories, of new thoughts and ideas, or laughter and foot nudges under the table. The last family gathering we had there was at Thanksgiving in 2003 when my mother brought us altogether for the last time. Now it seems like a pleasant dream from another lifetime.

Thanksgiving dinner in New Hampshire.

The poem "Sunday Dinner," which really seems like more of a winter or autumn poem to me, is about the formal trappings of gathering and ritual, even though it does not mention a person in it. Family and fellowship is only implied. A reminder of the Victorian age when the sideboard was a kind of gastronomic altar of abundance and plenty, the poem also evokes a simple Sunday dinner, too. You could say that this poem is just about food, inanimate objects and their presentation. When I read it, I also think about who might have cooked the food, how it was presented, what was the feeling behind it, who may have served it, and who were those who gathered to eat it. I think of the communal nourishment that is the essential part of so many gatherings of family or friends.

In some way, every family has had a Sunday dinner on occasion. I want to strive to make it more of a routine again in our household and not just for holidays. I hope that I am a matriarch-in-training for my children, and perhaps grandchildren, one day. I do believe, from both observation and experience, that every family needs a loving but declarative, no-nonsense but objective, matriarch or patriarch (or both) at its helm to be successful as a unit. Otherwise we can feel rather adrift and rudderless. And because there is nothing like a mother ship in a weary world.

Sunday Dinner

Linen napkins, spotless from the wash starched
And ironed, smelling like altar cloths. Olives
And radishes wet in cut glass, a steaming gravy bowl
Attached to its platter, an iridescent pitcher cold
With milk, the cream stirred in moments before.

The serving fork, black bones at the handle, capped
In steel, tines sharp as hatpins. Stuffed celery,
Cut in bite-sized bits, tomato juice flecked
With pepper, the vinegar cruet full to the stopper
Catching light from the chandelier.

Once-a-week corduroyed plates with yellow trim,
A huge mound of potatoes mashed and swirled.
Buttered corn, side salads topped with sliced tomatoes,
A tall stack of bread, a quarter-pound of butter
Warmed by its side. And chicken, falling off the bone:
Crisp skin baked sweet with ten-minute bastings.

Homemade pies, chocolate mints and puddings,
Coffee and graceful glasses of water, chipped ice
Clinking the rims.

Cashews in a silver scoop, the centerpiece a milkglass
Compote with caved-in sides, laced and hung
With grapes, apples, and oranges for the taking.

~ Dan Masterson

[from All Things, Seen and Unseen. © University of Arkansas Press, 1997]

Low, How a (Lenten) Rose E'er Blooming

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.

Old English Carol

This has been an unseasonably cold winter with either constant flurries or enough snow to keep people hunkered in or our kids home from school–a lot. I realize it is all relative to what we were used to in the northeast but when there isn't sufficient salt or snow-clearing equipment to treat the roads, you realize how treacherous a few inches of packed snow-turned-ice can be on a back road. And after a few months of colder-than-usual temps for what are usually balmier winters, and snow upon snow, well, it gets old. Spring will never be so sweet. That said, I do love that we still have four seasons here and that the spring and summer are both longer in duration.

This week I've been taking advantage of the warming weather and have been hiking up our knob almost every day: sometimes with the family and always with the puppies and other fauna. Today I went alone to the top of the knob (remember all of those hay bale images last summer–where it looks like you will fall off of the Earth?) and lay down on the warming ground and just took it all in. The "merry little breezes"swirled about, sometimes gathering leaves up into the air. Remember those in Thornton Burgess' Old Mother West Wind stories? My grandmother shared those books with me and I thought of them today and Burgess' love of nature.

The earth is different in spring: it is warm and fecund, full of promise. The same ground is cooler and more fallow in the fall as the woods release the wet, dank smell of decay. The sun is lowering in the sky and by spring it is climbing higher again. SUN! What a glorious thing it is! I always enjoy the inward time of winter but welcome the sun again like some kind of crazed animal.

So I lay back on the ridge and breathed in the air around me, listening alertly to the few sounds around the knob (where we can see 365 degrees around), and drinking in the sunshine. The animals were playing and lying around or near me, too, and we just all seemed to be in the moment together. When I came down a bit later, I was struck that over an hour had passed. It's not that I had walked that far, all told, but that I had allowed myself to enjoy the space–and place–without interruption or attention to time.

The other day when we all walked together after school, Henry turned to his Dad and said, "We sure do have a nice farm here, Dadda." It made me happy to hear that. I am starting to send out new growth shoots here into the land but to our boys this has probably already become their homeplace. We don't have the dream farmhouse yet, we long ago left the mansion. Ultimately it's not about the four walls but who is within them. A friend of mine said the other day, "Home is always where the people I love are." Like the "home tree" in Avatar, we now connect with each other and with the world from our farm on a ridge in Kentucky. It's been the journey of a lifetime.

IMAGE: In our first winter here, two years ago, we discovered two colors of Lenten roses (helliobores) blooming on the north side of our doublewide. They start to emerge and blossom in late February.

Snow Days

Eli led the way to the sleds, which surprised me as I'd forgotten all about them, and then I only had to give Henry a nudge out the door and the promise of homemade cocoa later on. Once outside they had an absolute blast. Who knows, I might even join them tomorrow!? [But I don't have a Carhartt® jumpsuit!]

Assembled winter decor on our mantel. The little log cabin came with balsam incense years ago. Our son Eli made the popsicle stick snowman in school this December and the painted outhouse was made by local artist and historic Penn's Store owner, Jeanne Penn Lane, over in Casey County, near the Forkland community and Gravel Switch. [I've blogged about Penn's Store several times in the past few years.]

I didn't realize how much I actually missed having snow around in winter until our two "snow events" in the past month. The first storm was a sloppy slushy snow which barely lasted a day but gave us about 4 inches for a brief time. The snow didn't pack on the roads and melted quickly–those kinds of storms can produce ice or a treacherous "icy mix," however. It happened a week before Christmas and just got us all into the spirit of things, especially while I was getting packages shipped off via the U.S. Postal Service's "if it ships–it fits" campaign (not only that, the packages got everywhere they were supposed to by Christmas Eve: for one price, flat rate and mailed within a week before Christmas Eve–I'm sold on that concept or maybe it was the luck and good spirit from a festive snow storm).


I bought that lit cabin a few years before we moved here–little did I know that it is a reminder of a Kentucky-style home place. The "Frosty" hat was bought at a nearby local craft store in Liberty, Kentucky. I like to pick up handcrafts whenever possible, especially for the holidays.

The past few days we've had flurries and periods of snowfall. We've also had sustained cold which guarantees that the snow will stick around a bit. While it's just barely a few inches, at least on our ridge, I now understand why they cancel school so readily down here: our ridge road is 8 miles long and it hasn't been plowed, or at least sanded or salted. Meanwhile, the state highways and parkway are supposedly fine. However, our road, more like a long driveway/lane that connects between two points of our ridge road (which makes it lovely and private), is quite hilly and treacherous right now because it has nothing on it to treat it. Our wimpy Toyota 2-wheel drive remains at the bottom of the driveway. Even our 4-wheel drive Honda Pilot is not too happy about climbing our hills with these road conditions.


Dashing past the chicken house...

The other factor about roads here is that they are usually narrow with few, if any, guard rails, let alone any shoulders for emergency breakdowns. I'm not complaining except to say that people drive way too fast in general and it's always the other guy I worry about. [Or maybe it's just advancing old age and I'm becoming more cautious.] Our neighbors and friends tell of us of heavier winters, back in their childhoods within the past fifty years, of such heavy snow fall that school would be canceled not just for a few days or a week, but often a few months. Talk about cabin fever! An ice storm hit our ridge several years ago, before we moved here, and people were without power for several weeks–the same thing happened just a bit north of us last January. It's good "in these parts" to have a full pantry and root cellar, a reliable spring, a wood stove and perhaps even a generator. [Just remember if you have a tomten or two around your farmyard to leave him some food and warm hay to keep on his good side.]


The red tin match holder was an eBay purchase a few years ago–part of the estate of a Kentucky farm and only a few dollars.

Another eBay "find" and a gift to my husband a few years ago was this Warfield cardinal, a rare catch on eBay and I was astonished at the bargain. Robert and Virginia Warfield used to carve and paint birds (he carved and she painted) in my hometown of Jaffrey, New Hampshire and became quite renowned for them. Their cardinal graces our mantel year round and I was reminded today–with a flurry of birds raiding the dog food on the back porch–that I need to get a good feeder and seed this week.

With the sustained cold for a few more days we're guaranteed that the snow will stick around a bit longer. We're making the most of our possibly brief glimpse of winter weather–a window on the old-fashioned kind of winters we used to know that aren't mixed with sleet or just damp rain for four months. It's still a great pleasure to know there are four seasons in Kentucky–but with a shorter, generally milder, winter. [But hey, remember all of those squirrels running around all fall for nuts and how cold October was here? If you believe the old-timers and folklore, which I generally do, signs were pointing to a colder, snowier winter.] PHOTO–What, you don't have a bobble-headed gnome in your home? A gift from my friend Linda a few years ago with a "Snow" ornament sent from my dear sister-in-law (the gnome is out all year).


Aunt Cynthia amidst the post-Christmas decoration pick-up. We both like to make "meany faces" at each other. Sometimes it is a guaranteed cure-all for cabin fever! [And she loves the Christmas sweater we gave her a few years ago.]

This weekend I've been (slowly) putting away our Christmas decorations. It's not that I want them lingering around but that I actually hate to pick them back up again and put them away–but once I do, it feels like a new year and a clean slate again. So, because I also enjoy some holiday decor throughout the seasons, and we are down to one mantelpiece, I decided to do an homage to winter for another month or so–OK, until the end of February. PHOTO–My sister-in-law gave me this primitive-style snowman just this Christmas (with a Cracker Barrel® gift certificate–yee ha! We all enjoyed that last weekend already) and I love it.

I have a growing collection of snow men–some vintage, some made by our children, some made locally, and some made in Occupied Japan or more recently, China. [Sometimes I wonder what I don't collect...] It was fun to redo the mantel with some lingering Christmas decorations, that didn't exactly say "Christmas" (alright, yes, two of the snow people are holding a "Noël" sign)–and that could segue well into "winter decorations." And, to be honest with you, right now it is the most orderly part of the house–so I look at that mantel and its tranquil snow scene and I think, yes, it is possible to organize things and have them in some kind of harmony around here. PHOTO–The salt & pepper snow people were $1 finds at Dollar General last Christmas. And yes, I'm not above buying cheap "junk" from China on occasion, especially if it's well made. And besides, the kids love them.


We're hunkering in for the rest of the weekend and dealing with some frozen pipes at Ida's house across the street. I'm doing a lot of cooking (I'll post some recipes tomorrow) and relaxing. I was supposed to have friends for lunch on Monday but with the freeze lasting through then, pipe stress, and the state of our driveway and lane, I decided to enact our "snow date" instead. By Martin Luther King Monday, who knows? It will likely be back in the 50s again, our winter magic put away for another time.

Some winter scenes from a vintage c. 1950s linen Christmas apron in my collection–the recent snow makes it feel like Christmas all over again.

Snow or no snow, may your days be merry and bright all the year!