I’m a big fan of ‘before & after’ photos.  It’s just that more often than not, I seem to get to the completed stage and realize that I never took a ‘before’ shot.  Well, when a project takes 2 or 3 years, it’s a little easier to ensure those photos get taken, and in the case of our refurbished milkshed pottery showroom and large wood-fired kiln, the changes are pretty dramatic.  (By the way, the kiln is not quite done, so I felt I had to put the “after” in quotations!)

This Memorial Day Weekend, we’re proud to be part of the 20th Annual Vermont Studio Tour, happening at over 200 studios all over this beautiful state.  As we prepare for this open studio event, I can’t help but reflect back on what past visitors have seen, and how far we’ve come since the last time we opened our doors.  (I can’t believe that during our first studio tour, we literally showed folks the giant hole in the ground ‘complete’ with concrete slab for the kiln we would be building.  Now that we’re nearly done, two years later, I hope some of those same people will come back and see that we were actually serious: we actually built a giant kiln!)

For more information on the Vermont Studio Tour, including a downloadable-for-print map, check out the Vermont Crafts Council site here.

For a direct link to our Google map location, including driving directions from your house, click here.

Hope to see you!

Well, voila, the finished results!

{this moment} – A Friday ritual.  A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ at SouleMama for all to find and see.

Lately, we’ve been . . .

- pounding six inch spikes into the freshly cut hemlock (milled by our neighbor and carried home in our old manure spreader).  yup, we are busy building retaining walls to hold pounds and pounds of stone against the sides of our kiln.

- talking with another neighbor about using his mechanical bucket to deliver said stone . . . rather than a wheelbarrow, that is.

- realizing that this is the LAST big thing that needs to happen before we light our first fire in our kiln . . . to burn out the form inside . . . wow!

- cutting next year’s heat from our winter timber harvest, and loving the contrast of freshly cut wood against the green, green grass (er, burdock) of spring.

- watching our peas, garlic, and spinach emerge from the soil and grow, thanks to much needed rain and a good mix of sun.

- marveling at the germination speed of the nasturtiums in our kitchen, and thinking they will like very much the black gold- composted goat and chicken manure- gift from our neighbors

- sitting on a sizable stash of pottery-in-waiting . . . our largely unfired, glazed, and slipped collection now occupies a large part of the dreaded awfully handy storage unit in our front yard, as well as a good portion of an upstairs bedroom, a few shelves at the studio, the back of one car . . . you get the idea.  (and yet we still have only a very vague inkling as to how full a kiln load we actually have. to say we have much to learn in the coming weeks would be a gross understatement)

- making a reasonably successful attempt (don’t look TOO closely) at diagonal ship lap siding on our chicken coop (twelve chicks arrive in two days!!) and being grateful they will spend their first few weeks in a warm box in our mudroom so Becca can find time to finish building the doors, installing the windows, cutting saplings for roosts . . .

- laughing at the fact that we have a knack for acquiring animals at the same time as we have major life events (move out of NH studio, pick up a puppy the next day; approach very first wood-firing after two years of kiln building, get chickens.)

- loving that our small town has, among other things, a family-owned organic feed company from which to feed our chickens, a printing press for our business needs, and one of the oldest continuously operated businesses in Vermont- powered in large part by the water that flows over the nearby dam- for building supplies.  yes, that’s right, we’re talking about tiny, often overlooked Bethel!  (note: a little town-tour blog-post might be in order)

- looking forward to sharing the countdown to our first firing in the coming weeks . . .

We had an unexpected visit from some new neighbors this week.  Apparently unsatisfied with the fresh grass offerings in their field, Red, Rolly, and Rosie broke through their fence for greener pastures . . . in other words, they ended up at our place.

As per usual, Lego kept an eye on everything (‘guarding’ us is his favorite job), and with a little training and guidance from Nathan, had his first introduction to large animals.  He even got a little nuzzling from the smallest of the bunch.

Aside from the frolicking and the abundance of tasty grasses, the biggest hit of the day was this handmade planter-turned-water bowl we keep at the kiln site.  The horses were really into it.  Pretty awesome . . .

Note:  As it so happens, these horses are looking for new homes.  (No, I don’t think we’re ready to keep them ourselves!  I can’t really see filling up the kiln shed- our only barn, as it were- with hay . . .)  If anyone out there is interested, be in touch!

{this moment} – A Friday ritual.  A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ at SouleMama for all to find and see.

Check it out!  And thanks for supporting the handmade work of independent artists and craftspeople!

And then I realized that the best place to start is almost always where we are right now.   As messy and imperfect and incomplete as it may be, what matters most is where we are presently.

When our neighbors asked me to care for their animals over Easter weekend, I jumped at the chance.  (Crazy as it might sound, we have future farming ambitions of our own . . .)  And since Nathan was ‘working out’- as we sometimes refer to our off-farm jobs- it would give me a great excuse to stay at the homestead, hide my pottery business to-do list, and start a long-awaited farm project of my own.  At the neighbors barn, I bottle-fed three newborn kids at regular intervals, and fed and watered 12 angora goats, 1 draft horse, 30 chickens, two dogs, and four cats.  What fun.

Between feedings, I uncovered a stash of salvaged boards from the old collapsing dairy barn Nathan dismantled ten years ago, and began putting them to new use . . . as our chicken coop!  Everything about it was a joy, most of all knowing his work of saving these relics hadn’t gone to waste, and using what we had on hand to build a structure that will bring new life and food to our home felt great.  Not to mention the fact that I get much satisfaction from swinging a hammer, and my four-legged sidekick loves having new things to climb on.  (I promise you I don’t try to deliberately include Lego in every photo . . . he just likes to be quite close at all times, and as a result, simply ends up in nearly every shot.)

Oh, and just a quick editorial note . . . when my dad saw these photos, he said “so the coop is right behind the kiln shed?!”  Nope, that’s just where I’m building it.  It’s actually on skids so we’ll be able to drag it around the fields for fresh pecking places for the hens!

This winter, thanks to the generosity of the ‘shareholders’, we were able to purchase beautiful new and new-to-us silicon carbide kiln shelves for our new wood kiln!  We love that we were able to get the bulk of the shelves from a small, independent business in the rural midwest.  (Thanks, Billy!)  The shelves arrived over a period of a couple of weeks, packed snugly in very heavy crates, and are now waiting patiently at the kiln site for us to be ready to use them.  (Soon, very soon.)

A HUGE thank- you to those of you who helped us get to this point.  We are so grateful for your support and encouragement, and will be thanking you in the form of new pottery very soon . . .

If you have questions about your share, or our kiln shelf shares program, please feel free to contact us at nathanandbecca@gmail.com.