I was frantically trying to get ready to go away for two weeks on Saturday with a million errands to run, so my friend Cyrena took Maia, India, and her friend to the beach with her. At one point, Cyrena told me, Maia called out “Look!”, and there, overhead, was a seagull flying by with a big fish in perfect silhouette in its feet flying by.

“Congratulations!!!!” Maia yells at the top of her lungs.

I had a boxer in my late 30’s, Maddie, that I adored. I showed her in obedience and she was a wonderful friend to me. When she died I realized I didn’t have a really good photograph of her. Her ears were kind of funny and she had a snaggly tooth, but she was the sweetest dog ever. After that I vowed to always have my animals photographed. It may silly to some people to have photographs taken of your pet, but not to me.

An old friend that I went to school with in grades 1-5, Lisa Printz, is now a photographer — primarily an animal photographer. She does stunning photographs of all kinds of animals and does a lot of work with rescue dogs. She found me through Facebook some time back and we finally got together yesterday to have her take some farm photos. She does not normally shoot people in anything other than an abstract way in the background of shots, but agreed to do some ‘people’ shots for me. Being my usual un-photogenic self, I’m sure she was regretting that decision by the end of the day. I think the final choices were pretty limited, and she’s not done sorting through everything yet, but here are some of the best photos.

This is Amanda and our dog, Bullet. I ADORE this shot.

I love this shot of me and Grace. She and Kiki were both exhausted. It was about 95 degrees and they had already had a very full day when Lisa came to take pictures.

Grace giving me kisses. Well, she's actually sucking on my ear hoping that some milk might come out somewhere, but I'll call them kisses.

My little Kiki peeking out from under the goat house. Her eyes look a little scary though for some reason.

I don't care for this photo, but everyone else seems to like it. I think I look like I'm in pain.

To see some of the amazing photos that Lisa has taken, you can check out her website and portfolio by clicking here.

I can’t wait to see what else she’s got when she’s done sorting though everything.

In my effort to pick every fruit as it comes into season, the girls and I headed up to Sharon, Connecticut in Litchfield County to pick the just-opened picking season of raspberries. We had a really nice day. The weather, after the gloom and rain of yesterday, cleared off nicely. That is one of my favorite areas of the state, and we watched rafters and fishermen on the Housatonic River, the kids saw baby foxes romping on a lake’s edge, and we stopped for lunch in one of my favorite towns, Kent.

We didn’t arrive at the farm until probably 2:30 or so, so although it wasn’t crowded at all, the picking was a little thin. However, if you took your time and looked under leaves we were able to find some very nice berries. Delicious. After the abundance of strawberries at our first outing this summer, it was hard to leave with our measly 3 pounds of raspberries though.

The girls were having more fun with my camera than with picking, and you can see that my “view” through the lens is reflected a bit in their photographic style as well.

India, surprisingly, has an interest in boarding school, so on the way home asked if we could stop and see the campus of Kent School. It was small and lovely.


But even on a good day they have their moments of not getting along.

I’m home now. Re-entry into the ‘atmosphere’ of Connecticut is always difficult for me. It’s late at night. We had a long day of travel. It’s hot, humid and raining here. It was warm, sunny and dry in Wyoming today. The first few days there we had some pretty funky weather; it was cool to cold, drizzling one minute and sunny the next, often windy and quite cloudy. However, the last two days have been the summer weather that I am used to. You awaken to crystal blue skies and bright sunshine. The kind of weather that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning.

I had a lovely time there. In total we had 4 full days and 2 partial days. One of those full days was spent getting the boys off to camp. It was nice spending the time with Lorraine, who was a friend, but we hadn’t spent too much time together before. We certainly know each other a whole lot better, and I thought we co-habitated pretty well. It didn’t bother her when I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. most nights puttering around with q project or baking something, and it didn’t bother me a bit when she headed off to bed to read around 10:00 most nights. I did put her to work one night pitting cherries and shredding a roast for pulled BBQ, but other than that I pretty much left her alone. Without a family to feed, I got to cook whatever I felt like. I made a delicious nectarine frangipane tart, a roast that was wrapped in tightly in heavy butcher paper and cooked at a very low temperature for 12 hours that came out perfect. I had lorraine shred that up and poured barbecue sauce over it. We had BBQ beef sandwiches on the plane today, and the rest I froze for our next trip out there in July. I also made some really easy fresh cherry turnovers that were crazy delicious. I threw together some hummus for the plane last night as well, and Lorraine said I should start selling that at Free Range Friday’s it was so good.


I had fun showing her the sights in and around Jackson, and she was patient with me running errands and visiting friends and horses. I did, finally, go riding on Tuesday. Although we’d visited her several times before then, it great to get Jive saddled up and see how her leg was after the terrible injury she’d sustained this winter. I didn’t work her hard, but there wasn’t any lameness much to my relief.



The wildlife cooperated for the most part, with several moose sightings, a few elk, lots of bison, trumpeter swans and lots of beautiful birds. No bear though.

As we were heading out to visit Kelly and Mormon Row there was a crowd of people just past the visitors center and elk refuge on the highway. I pulled over and right there on the side of the road was a pretty good sized adolescent bull moose. What was great about it was he was behind a fence, and there was a viewing deck that allowed us to get so close you could practically reach out and touch him.

The old Teton Valley Ranch Camp property in Kelly

Have you ever seen a cow with such an attitude in her expression? She's practically swaggering she's got to much attitude. Of course if I had horns like that I guess I'd swagger too.

The river on our hike to Phelp's Lake

As always, I feel the tug like a Push-Me-Pull-You in a Dr. Doolittle book; it’s wonderful to see the horses and ride and it always makes me realize how much I miss it when I can’t be there, but my animals at home miss me and are never cared for quite as well as when I am there.

It was a great trip and a very much needed break after the crazy hectic time the end-of-school-year always seems to be. I feel like I’ve re-charged my battery a bit now and am ready to tackle summer. And I come home feeling like I’ve made a new good friend, which is always a nice feeling.

It has been fun being in Wyoming with somebody that has never been here before. To see it through the eyes of a newcomer.

We arrived on Friday late in the afternoon. As you begin your descent into Wyoming we saw some beautiful, snow-covered mountains. Then the plane does a sharp bank and the Grand Tetons are right there in front of you. That sight has never, even 16 years later, failed to bring tears to my eyes.


Even silly little things that I don’t even notice anymore, like the elk arches as you enter the airport, are exciting to somebody that has never seen them before.


After a quick stop at the town hall to register the expired registration on my pickup truck, we did the obligatory stop at Yippy-I-O Candy Co. I knew I would be cutting it close getting to the town hall before they closed for the weekend, so I called them from the Denver airport to see what their hours were. I got a message machine and left a message. Lorraine asked me if I really expected to be called back. I said I did. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later they did call me back, and they didn’t just call once; I didn’t hear it ring the first time so they called me back again! That, in a million years, wouldn’t happen with the Connecticut DMV.


You couldn’t imagine my surprise when we pulled up to the restaurant I’d made reservations at and across the street the old sheep herder’s wagon that had sat at Puzzleface Ranch forever was now in the front yard of a cowboy antique store. I came so close to buying it on more than one occasion as a guest house for our yard here. It still looked exactly the same, down to the quilt that my friend Melinda had on it when she sold it.


The boys posed in front of the stuffed elk on the square.


and we all went home and crashed into bed. It had been a very long day.

In the morning we went for the mandatory breakfast at Norah’s Fish Creek Inn in Wilson where Evan fueled up on a chili omelette before the journey up to camp for the month. I always seem to run into somebody I know there, and this time was no different, running into our real estate agent. The moose that had so kindly appeared for Lorraine and James the night before as we were heading home for dinner, once again showed his face to send James and Evan off to camp.


Although it was quite cloudy, the drive through Teton National Park on the way to Dubois is still quite stunning with the Tetons so close.


There is one particular spot that, in the peak of the summer, can be covered with hundreds and hundreds of bison. That day there was only a small herd, but it was still exciting for Lorraine and James, who had never seen wild bison before.



But I don’t think anything could have prepared Lorraine, or me for that matter, for the amount of snow that was still up on Togwotee Pass. I think Lorraine, who was already extremely anxious at the thought of dropping her boy off in Wyoming for a month, was just about to have a heart attack.



It was pretty incredible to think that it was June 18th and there was still that much snow on the ground. It wasn’t just in spots up there, it was covered in snow, and lots of it. Even the ponds and lakes up there were still frozen solid.

Thankfully, as we started our decent down the pass the snow turned into patches of snow, and by the time we got to the turn for Teton Valley Ranch Camp there was no snow to be found anywhere but patches still up in the mountains above.
We got the boys checked, made their beds, showed James and Lorraine around and had some lunch. It’s pretty hard to imagine any swimming in Lake LeBotto with the weather they are having right now.


One last photo down at the barn, some hugs and kisses but surprisingly no tears by any of us, and we were off for our journey back to Jackson, leaving our boys for a month of fun and adventure in the wilderness of Wyoming.

If my house was burning down I would save my children, my husband, my pets, my computer and my KitchenAid. Everything else I can replace. Even my computer can be replaced. My KitchenAid mixer – this KitchenAid mixer – however, can never be replaced.

Sometimes I actually feel like setting a match to the house and just starting fresh. All the STUFF just gets a little overwhelming sometimes and seems so unnecessary.

There’s a long story to this mixer. First of all it’s probably 28 years old if my memory serves me correctly. Still going strong. I still have all the original beaters and bowl. I’ve added 2 new “swiping” beaters in the last few years which almost eliminate the need to scrape down your bowl. If you don’t already have one I highly recommend you seek one out. It’s never overheated or stopped working on me. I know there’s debate among Kitchen Aid fans as to which is better – the model that has the crank lift or the model like mine where the top lifts up. I prefer mine.

I’ve been cooking practically since I could stand on a stool and reach the counter. I didn’t start with anything fancy. Cake mixes mostly. Sometimes I’d branch out and make some brownies or Jiffy corn muffins, but I made a lot of cakes.

My parents divorced when I was around 8 and my sister and I then lived with my father. I started cooking more then. Experimenting with actual meals. At that time my sister (who is 20 months older than me) wanted nothing to do with the cooking — she’s a wonderful cook now.) For a child 8 to 12 year old, I did a lot of cooking.

We didn’t have a lot of money, but my dad and I were saving to buy me a Kitchen Aid mixer. Every week we would put money aside for it. We finally had enough and were going to go buy it that coming weekend. That week my father, who was a carpenter, fell off the roof of a house he was working on and broke his back and crushed his foot and spent about a month in the hospital. My sister and I ended up using up that ‘mixer fund’ for essentials, like food and stuff, while he was in the hospital. I never did get that mixer, but I did get my father back in pretty much one piece.

So, I survived the rest of my childhood with my electric hand mixer. I think maybe we had one of those really awful electric stand mixers that had the glass bowl that fell off the stand as you were mixing too.

My parents moved on. Both my father and mother remarried wonderful people.

I think it must have been my 19th birthday. Maybe my 20th. It also may have been a Christmas present and not a birthday gift; that was a long time ago and my memory is fuzzy. My father and stepmom gave me my long-waited-for Kitchen Aid. Truly one of the best gift I’ve ever been given. Certainly the most useful. This mixer moved to California with me and went through some serious cake decorating courses. It survived professional pastry school done part-time. It moved back to Connecticut with me and has been with me through 1 fiance (never married) and 2 husbands, 5 dogs, 4 kids, and three houses. It never complains. It’s never cranky. It will work at whatever time of the day or night I need it to.

I cook for comfort. When I’m troubled with something or upset about something I cook. When my best friend Patty was dying last year of cancer and it was really close to the end I was frantically cooking. Morning, noon and night. It gives me comfort. It was Christmastime and I made three gingerbread houses. Not simple ones either. Elaborate ones. All different. They were exactly what I needed then and my mixer mixed all of that hard gingerbread dough without a single complaint. I gave two of those houses away to friends. That seemed right. The one my kids decorated I kept for our house.

I have another Kitchen Aid mixer out in Wyoming. It’s that great new Tangerine color that they make. It’s just not the same. It doesn’t seem as sturdy or strong. The engine makes a funny noise. It’s not familiar. Maybe it’s the history behind this mixer. Who knows. Cooking makes me happy. Cooking with my Kitchen Aid makes me very happy.

Originally published on December 2, 2009. Modified June 9, 2011.

This weekend I was in New York Friday afternoon through about 8:15 Saturday night. Last night India had her first of what I’m sure will be many bar mitzvah’s to go to. Today was Jim’s 55th birthday, India played fiddle in a concert and Maia was displaying a piece of art in a local art show. Now we normally have pretty lazy weekends. The most we have going on typically is riding lessons for all 3 kids Saturday mid-morning through early afternoon. This weekend was nuts.

Crazy.

Hectic.

Exhausting.

Fun.

I do not need a weekend like this again for a very long time.

Friday afternoon we drove the kids to Brooklyn (what without traffic is a 45 minute drive took us 2 hours and 45 minutes!). We dropped the kids off at Kelly & Nicks apartment. I call Kelly my “my 5th daughter”, but we’ve all been so busy we haven’t really seen them since their wedding almost two years ago! Kelly & Nick graciously offered to watch the kids so Jim and I could sneak away to Manhattan for a night and day. We were running so late and were worried that we might miss our reservation at Craft in Manhattan that we practically pushed the kids out the door while the car was still moving.

Kidding.

With Kelly and Nick in Brooklyn Heights on Saturday afternoon

We dropped and dashed into New York. We called the restaurant and managed to push our reservation back a half hour, so we had time to check into our hotel and quickly change our clothes. We stayed at the Bryant Park Hotel. It was really nice. Our room was on the 8th floor and overlooked Brant Park. Beautiful views. Comfy bed. Really great pillows (I am very picky about my pillows).

Our lovely hotel room at the Bryant Park Hotel

The views of the city from our hotel room. We also had lovely views looking out over Bryant Park.

We ate dinner at Tom Colicchio’s Craft. Delicious. The restaurant was beautiful, the service was terrific and the food was really great. It’s not fancy food, just good food done really well. After dinner Jim took me over to see Mario Batali’s new Eataly. Wow. He opened a small market in Port Chester that my friend Justine turned me on to, but this place is the same but on steroids x 20. And at 11:00 at night in Manhattan it was packed.

There was case after case of beautiful italian prosciutto and salami

And row and row after row of italian jams

We got up pretty early and headed out to the Union Square farmer’s market. I bought some of the first strawberries of the season that I plan on making strawberry pie with tomorrow, and we bought several cuts of bison meat. We eat a fair amount of bison in Wyoming, but have yet to find a good source here. Then we wandered over the ABC Carpet & Home and strolled around the many floors there. There’s always fun things to see there. Then we walked the High Line Walkway; the renovated elevated railroad tracks that have been transformed into a beautiful walkway with gardens and fountains and amazing views. It was pretty crowded and a large section wasn’t due to open for another few days, but it was lovely and certainly a great use of the old rail line. On to Purl SoHo where I bought some fabrics for a project for my sister’s baby shower gift, and a book for Cyrena who had bravely taken on farm sitting and bottle feeding for me. Jim even managed to find a few things for himself in SoHo, which is good because I’ve been so busy these past few weeks they would become his birthday gifts. We went back to Brookyln, toured Brooklyn Heights quickly where we met up with the kids, Kelly & Nick, and went back to see their apartment and have a quick dinner with them. Luckily our traffic wasn’t quite so bad heading home.

The High Line elevated walkway

I’m heading to Manhattan for a day off from the farm. I can’t remember the last time my husband and I snuck away by ourselves. The kids are excited because they get to go stay with our dear friends Kelly and Nick in Brooklyn and explore their neighborhood. I’ll be exploring the farmer’s markets, fabric & knitting stores and other fun things in lower manhattan. I don’t plan on posting while I’m gone, but I’m going to bring my laptop just in case. I do plan on taking a lot of photographs.

Update: I’m going to add photos as the day goes on because they are just to cute not to. I’m trying to get them to nurse well and it’s a bit of a struggle. I am covered in goats milk and have just been slapped in the face by a diarrhea-covered tail (Cissy’s got it after the trauma of the birth). Gross. The joys of ‘farming’.




Well the wait is over. Around 8:45 last night I heard Cissy bleating loudly over the baby monitor and by the time I got out to the goat house the first baby was already half-way out! I couldn’t even grab a camera fast enough to get a single picture of the delivery! It was pretty chaotic for the first 10 minutes or so. She was still in the big pen and Melina was very upset and I was afraid she would harm CIssy or the baby, so while this poor baby is half-way out of Cissy I’m trying to shove a distressed Melina and Princess Kate out the stall door, call Jim and the kids over the baby monitor and help Cissy all at the same time. Once all that was done I could settle down to help her. She hadn’t even finished cleaning the first one off when we were delighted to see another one coming. This one was much smaller than the first, and looks very much like Cissy. Both are girls and are doing well. Cissy seemed tired but content. I’ll write all about it tomorrow, but I just wanted to post a few photos.

Two girl kids arrived last night safely - and quickly!

It was truly amazing to watch, and I am so happy that Jim and the kids got to see it too. They were so excited to see them born.

This was the first girl born. She's a beautiful red color with white markings.

She was completely worn out from the ordeal of being born and once she'd had a little milk she took a nap under the water bucket.