Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

Apifera Farm is a registered 501 [c][3]. #EIN# 82-2236486

All images

©Katherine Dunn.





Saturday, December 10, 2005

Mucks make me HAPPY


One of the things I love about being in my late 40's is I can take great pride in pictures like this one and not care what I look like. I just can see I'm happy, all warm in my tundra coat, and new mucks that I treated myself to because my regular garden Wellies just don't keep my feet warm and I was just fed up. And this picture captures my love of my new Mucks. But I did wake up this morning with some worry, as we're going to have to replace Martyn's pick-up. It was inevitable at 200,000+ miles. But just when I felt like we're creeping out of a hole...so I sat in bed and felt all crappy, and scared, thinking things like, "If we never sell any of the lavender, ever, and just continue to pump money into this place, and my art goes belly up, or Martyn loses a leg, or I get sick, or...." Fortunately, this only lasted about 3 minutes, because I hate whiners, and I am not a whiner. And, more importantly, the dogs all started crying at once to start their day and that just blew me into reality. I think the hardest thing about being self-employed is you always have to be out looking for the next gig. Throw in starting a lavender/sheep farm and money gets ...sort of, well, used up fast. But in 10 years, I've always had things come my way that needed to come my way, not always what I envisioned and not always on my timeline- but the universe is so much more helpful and smarter than I am at these matters. So when I do get fearful like this morning, I do always come back to that inner belief system.

Besides, we went and bought beams for our old 100 year old barn we are re-doing, and I get all giddy when we do stuff like that. The old barn was just one of the things I felt drawn to here. It was an old dairy, and I just feel it needs to be restored to it's place of honor. We had a lavender sale last summer and the woman whose parents lived here came to see the place, and she was so pleased we were starting to fix the place up, as it had fallen into disrepair. That made me so happy and proud. And I just really love the time Martyn and I spend working on the property together- which is mostly every weekend at this point - it just feels right. And I get to see the animals walking all around, and the goats are walking freely around eating, horses can be heard all around us, deer come by - it's a hippie girl's dream.