By the Stream

I can’t believe how late into October the weather has stayed warm this year.  Usually I’m through with plein air landscapes around the first of the month but we’ve had lovely days throughout.   The painting group recently went across a fairly scary little bridge into some fields across from a farm and near a stream.   A couple of us set up on the bridge itself and this was the scene before us.  I’m concentrating more lately on smaller vignettes, more intimate rather than expansive views.  The autumn foliage in its many variations of gold and russet is a lot of fun to work on.  Because we’ve had such a warm year the reds are not as prominent as they have been sometimes in the past but much better than last year when there was some kind of maple blight.  I love reflections–always a challenge but rewarding.  I’ve tried to keep the paint thin for the water but quite thick for the surrounding vegetation.

October Stream  9 x 12  oil on birch panel, unframed  $250

Bread

For years I’ve baked sourdough bread regularly and never tire of the moment when I take a loaf out of the oven. My son and daughter-in-law gave me a wonderful terra cotta cloche that provides an environment for the dough much like a clay oven; it works beautifully. But recently I passed a mini-farm on the way into town and noticed that the woman who runs it was loading something into an outdoor oven. Here was my chance to move to the next level! I asked her if I could bake some of my dough there on her baking day but forgot to find out what time I should be there. Passing by later I asked a young man leading a cow when I should show up and he told me very early–around seven or even as late as eight. So this morning I got up at 4:30 to get the dough out of the fridge for its three hour rise before baking. When I got to the farm, Sue who was up to her elbows in a big vat of dough informed me that she hadn’t even lit the oven yet and that I should have asked her instead of a teenager. She  said she wouldn’t begin baking until noon, but graciously offered to bake my loaves if I’d leave them. I’m always so careful about the temperature and the dough was almost at the optimum, so I was sure it would deflate by the time she got it in the oven. When I returned around 2:30 Sue said she hadn’t yet had room for it but that I could bake it in a little while. To my amazement the dough had risen a lot in her cold dining room but had not fallen in all that time. So I had the great pleasure of baking in a stone oven. I’m not very experienced using a peel so Sue loaded it in. Then I helped out loading the basket with her pear bread for her farm stand. (The first batch sold out in about twenty minutes to people just passing by. ) While I was waiting I did some sketching with a piece of leftover charcoal from the oven and it made a beautiful line. After about fifteen minutes Sue told me she had to drive the tractor somewhere, that in another 15 minutes I should put on the protective glove, remove the metal door and use the peel to take all the loaves out of the oven. Yikes! Sue’s a lot taller than I am and I had a little trouble reaching all the loaves in the back of the oven, but I did it and felt very pleased with myself indeed.

Sue is amazing. She raises livestock–cows and pigs, grows lots of vegetables for sale, bakes huge quantities of various kinds of breads, makes artisanal cheese and is a potter as well. She is also one of the Selectmen for the nearby town of Norwich– a tremendously time-consuming responsibility. I can’t imagine such energy. There are a lot of people around who seem to manage with small-scale farming, handicrafts, etc. It must be a hard but satisfying way to live.

Oh–and my bread? Delicious, with a nice wood smoke tang. I don’t know if I’ll often make the drive over with the dough but in warmer weather, probably. Sue offered to teach me to make cheese and I would love to learn about that. Food, basically, is my life. Art’s good too……

Sue’s oven

Pear and pepper loaves

Ahhh!

Friendly piglets

By the Side of the Road

October has remained unusually warm so I’ve been able to get out to paint much longer than I anticipated. Right after I started in on this one the road scraper came by within inches of me, the driver grinning and gesturing to me that I wasn’t in his way. He returned several times during the morning, turning up a lot of dirt and dust. I feared that I would wind up with unwanted texture in the painting but surprisingly not. Anyway, I liked the shadows on the houses. And it’s such a pleasure to have all the fall color. The big tree has a major split in the trunk and higher up (not visible in the painting) is a supporting rod holding it together. When I was a child my father paid me a dime to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees.” Now I think it’s pretty sappy but I did remember some of it when I was painting this tree.

Morning Shadows oil on birch panel, 11 x 14 unframed, $375

Foggy Morning

A few days ago we had a change of temperature, resulting in a nice fog. The view is from an upstairs window looking down our driveway. It was interesting to have to dull down the colors, reducing the contrast of values, so the palette is quite different. After I finished the painting I scumbled lighter paint over darker to increase the mistiness of the background.

Peak color was just a few days ago and now after a couple of hard rains we’re losing the leaves rapidly. One year we had snow while the leaves were still on the trees, making branches so heavy many of them fell on power lines. The blackouts were widespread and lasted for quite a while. Loss of power is common here. Most people have generators but we have a battery that runs essential equipment. Before we got a more powerful battery a couple of years ago we couldn’t run the pump which meant no water from the faucets and no water for flushing toilets. We kept a trash can full of water in the basement but often ran out before the electricity came back on. (Once we had two couples visiting from Texas and the power went out for nearly 24 hours–a much more intimate experience than any of us wanted!) Now we can run the pump as well as the refrigerator and only once has the battery not had enough juice to keep us going during the whole outage.

Foggy Morning 14 x 16 oil on birch panel unframed $375

Overcast

Ever since I’ve lived here I’ve wanted to paint a particular hill that’s a beautiful shade of brown and ochre in the spring and in the fall. Unfortunately there’s not a good place to park or stand. So I was thrilled when the leader of our painting group took us up to a house across the road and above the spot. The morning was quite cloudy with subtle, muted fall colors. There was a great expanse of landscape but I concentrated on just part of the hill. What I loved about the hill besides the colors were the rolling contours which turned out to be more of a challenge than I would have thought. The low key lighting gives the painting something of an antique look. I got down most of what I needed before the sun blasted out of the clouds and changed everything. Cloudy is good, sun is good, but changeable is frustrating!

Soft Hill 11.5 x 13.5 oil on birch panel, unframed $275

Farm

Although many dairy farmers in Vermont go out of business every year, the countryside is still punctuated with a lot of farms. Most of them have been around for so long they seem organic, like a natural part of the landscape. A friend walked with me up the road to show me where to paint mountains, but the farm below was so still and peaceful in the early morning shadows I couldn’t resist–yet another barn! The mist-covered mountains weren’t really there behind the farm but I could see them off to my right, so I just moved them in order to take advantage of both views–it isn’t just faith that can move mountains!

Farm Morning 9 x 12  oil on birch panel, unframed  $250

Turkeys

These turkeys were across the road from our place. They’re a common sight around here, especially in empty cornfields. Sometimes they come close to the house. Not so many years ago they were apparently rare but then somebody introduced more of them; one time I saw a flock in town behind K-Mart! In the winter they look so miserable huddled in the snow.

Ed wrote a poem:

Tracks

Wild turkeys

Strolling through the snow

Arrows pointing the way they didn’t go….