Farm house – Cynthia Reyes

A Good Home, Country Living, Doors Open, Family Moments, Farm house, Farms

Home at The Grange – Part 2

May 27, 2017June 3, 2017 Cynthia Reyes

Wendy and Nick aren’t afraid of challenges.

Blog Photo - Doors Open The Grange Hamlin Photo beware of falling coconuts

Nick, a fashion photographer, left his home in the UK and moved to Portugal.

As a teenager, Wendy modeled in Europe for Yves St. Laurent and Valentino. She started her own modelling agency in Portugal at only 18. She and Nick met there, married, and started working together.

Next, they moved to Canada and built successful careers. They and their family had a comfortable life in Toronto.

Then came the big move to the country, 5 kids in tow.

Wendy remembers neighbour after neighbour saying: “I give you 3 years.”

~~~

The big move fell on Hallowe’en, and that was the first problem.

Blog Photo - Doors Open Clarington Photo Cemetery

There’s a tiny pioneer cemetery next door to the farm and the children were convinced there’d be ghosts on Hallowe’en. They refused to come along.

Nick remembers: “We had to farm them out to friends in Toronto for the weekend while Wendy and I dealt with the movers and sorted out to arrange everything in this dilapidated space…… In the end it was a good thing they were not around so we could get everything sorted before they came out.”

Next problem?

Blog Photo - Doors Open The Grange Barn Overlooking trees and Raod Hamlin

The barn’s foundation needed urgent repairs. Those repairs had to come first.

That winter was brutal.

“We literally camped in the house from fall to spring. In a cold house a quarter the size of our previous home.”

Months later, Nick and Wendy knocked down some internal walls, turning three tiny rooms into a kitchen-breakfast room. They also built the pool.

Blog Photo - Doors Open Nick Photo of Kids in Pool

They sent out a change of address card to their friends, titled “The Boothmans are outstanding in their field”.

Blog Photo - Doors Open Nick Early Photo of Family at The Grange

But first came the episode with “Farmer Nick”.

“So now I was living on a farm, I needed a tractor. Of course a big John Deere is most young boys’ dream, so I found myself a great second-hand deal.

There was some tweaking that had to be done to it so a week or so later, I got home from Toronto with Wendy and the children and there it was – perfectly parked in front of the driveshed by the house, facing down the drive and the key in the ignition. Wendy and the children went inside to get organized for dinner and I jumped on my tractor.

Blog Photo - Doors Open Nick early Photo of Top of Driveway

“About 30 minutes later Wendy came running out of the house frantically waving her arms in the air. I was across the courtyard at the top of the drive, by the barn. I turned off the tractor to ask what was wrong, when she pointed behind me. I had ploughed up the courtyard – 2 foot furrows… including the telephone lines! It took 2 days before we could get a car out. Of course the children were thrilled to miss school.”

~~~

As they renovated and settled in, they also learned about the history of their new home. The Boothmans were only the third family to own the house.

Blog Photo - Doors Open Nick Early Photo of Kids in Front of House

Back in 1837, brothers Tom and William Elliott walked nine miles into the Kendal bush from Newtonville and chose this land for their farm. Their parents and three sisters came from Ireland the following year and the family built their first house.

The permanent dwelling – the farmhouse — was built in the late 1850’s. Several generations of Elliotts lived here.

One Elliott was a master carpenter. He added the part of the house that’s now the Boothmans’ kitchen-breakfast room.

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Soon after the Boothmans moved in, a 75 year-old man showed up unannounced, walked to a corner of the kitchen and said: “I’m standing in the spot where I was born.”

It became an annual visit by Reg Elliott, whose ancestors had built the house.

Reg also checked on the renovations. Once, after Nick had installed a brand-new corn-burning stove, Reg glimpsed the corn in the stove and remarked: “That’s a helluva place for a bird-feeder!”

~~~

That first winter, the nearby ski-club was a god-send. The children spent Saturdays and Sundays there.

Blog Photo - Doors Open Brimacombe Ski Hill

That summer, the family “lived” in the newly-built pool and garden – swimming, barbecuing, and playing guitars.

The children loved the farm.

“They found it a safe place for them and their friends. It was friendly, quiet and calm, surrounded by nature. They hiked, swam, hung out, camped on the grounds. And they rode their horses. We all rode.”

Blog Photo - Doors Open Nick early photo of child on horse

~~~

Top 3 Photos by Hamlin Grange, the rest by Nicholas Boothman

Part 3 comes next!

A Good Home, Faith, Family, Family Moments, Farm house, Flowering shrubs, Flowers, Gardening, Gardens, Gratitude, Home, Homes, Inspiration

Flowers, Memories, Diaries

July 9, 2014July 9, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

Memory is the diary we all carry about with us, wrote Oscar Wilde.

But for me, diary is memory. Years of memories.

Family, home, garden, daily life.

Diaries played a small role in my overall life, but became a huge part of my post-accident experience. With little sense of time, and often no memory of events just minutes after they happened, I started writing in my journal again.

Little things. Big things. Write it down quickly.

A doctor played a key role. She told me to record events as they happened, figuring I could share these entries with the medical professionals I visited. My memory and speech problems were so bad, she noted, that “No other specialist will take two hours to try to figure out what you are saying. Write.”

Of course, that’s not word-for-word. But I scribbled down her order.

I returned to keeping journals. Some of the entries were so painful, I vowed to never re-read them.

The best? Entries about time with family.

Next best: time in the garden.

I used to keep a journal to track my gardens’ progress. The major triumphs and minor tragedies, the plans carried out and those forgotten.

Now, no longer able to garden, I was reduced to observing. But observing led to writing and writing led to “remembering”.

The first spring bulbs to bloom.

The first night-bloomer of the season.

The first time the fern-leaf peonies – presents from friends Les and Sandra – bloomed.

The hollyhock that bloomed in two colours.

The mysterious flower that showed up one summer.

Red currants, seeds planted by birds or breeze.

When your brain doesn’t work efficiently, you misplace things. When you’re in too much pain to move, you can’t go looking for things somewhere else. So I learned to keep the garden journal on the verandah, and other journals in every room of the house.

An onlooker, seeing me writing on that lovely verandah, might have thought: “What a charmed life.”

But as my mother always said : “Never envy others. No-one knows what troubles they have.” I was – quite literally — writing to save my life.

Looking back, I’m astonished at some of the lovely things that happened. Things to be grateful for. People to be grateful to.

I’m shocked at the development of this garden, as captured in my journals.

Grateful to my husband, for building arbours, dividing plants, maintaining the garden — in addition to everything else that landed on his plate.

Some of what I read evokes real memories. They bring tears, laughter, delight, wonder.

Some of it is not at all familiar. It’s like reading about someone else’s life, but knowing it’s yours.

Interesting, that.

Photos by Hamlin Grange

A Good Home, Animals, Art, Artist, Country Living, Farm house, Garden, Gardening, Gardens and Wildlife, Home, Life in canada, Nature Paintings, Rabbits, Spring, Wild Rabbits, Wildlife, Winter

It’s A Wild Life

June 19, 2014June 20, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

It is a truth universally suspected that a family in possession of a wildlife painting must be in need of some wildlife.

Years ago, my husband’s family had a farm and he and I became custodians of it. The farm was on a hilltop so we cleverly named it Hill Top.

Husband, children and I summered and weekend-ed there. I loved that farm and wanted a name sign for our front gate. So my husband commissioned a local artist to make one for my birthday. Author-illustrator Beatrix Potter – she of Peter Rabbit fame and a farmhouse named Hill Top — came to mind.

The moment that sign went up, Peter Rabbit, his parents and all their friends took up residence in our gardens.

They ate us out of home and land. As soon as we planted vegetables, herbs and flowers, they ate them. There was soya and wheat growing in the fields. But why travel so far, when there’s good stuff nearby?

My husband couldn’t bring himself to hurt them — not with that sign out front. So there we were, hoist on our own petard.

When our family moved to another home, there were no rabbits — we thought.

And then two auspicious things happened:

We visited the old farmhouse. Our daughter noticed that the new owners had removed the Hill Top sign and begged them to give it back. They graciously agreed.

Soon after, our resident red fox – a predator of rabbits — upped and died. It might have been the sight of the sign that did it. But there was his carcass, lying across our stream.

It took gallons of expensive fox urine to protect our gardens that year. (If you want to learn more about that inauspicious episode, you’ll have to read my next book.)

And now?

Years after moving to our current farmhouse, we’re besieged by wild rabbits — again. Squirrels too, but they don’t eat shrubs, herbs, flowers and vegetables.

Last winter, the rabbits were so starved for food that they ate all my clematis vines, plus the barks of several tender young trees and shrubs.

My husband did a very manly thing: he shouted at them. The rabbits ran — and immediately returned.

We decided to sympathize. Wild rabbits, too, have to eat.

But soon it was spring — time to plant vegetables.

Husband decided the rabbits should be moved to a nearby nature park. He set a humane trap filled with things that Beatrix Potter said wild rabbits love: carrots and lettuce and cabbages. But we might as well have posted a sign saying: “This is a rabbit trap.”

Truth is, these particular rabbits mostly eat grass and clover so far this spring.

Truth is, our daughter has named them Fred and Penelope. (At least, she thinks there are only two. But where there are two, there are — or soon will be — a dozen.)

And truth is, my husband has put the sign up again.

Methinks it’s a sign of surrender.

Photos by Hamlin Grange.

A Good Home, Architecture, Canadiana, Country Living, Couples, Daydreams, Downsizing, Dream Kitchens, Farm house, Following your dreams, Home Decor, Homes, Interior Design, Kitchens, Lifestyle, Renovating, Restoration, Restoring old houses, Wood, Woodwork

House Proud

February 9, 2014May 24, 2015 Cynthia Reyes

Every house has a story, and so does this one.

“I walked through the front door”, owner Beth says, “and, without seeing the rest of the house or knowing anything about it, I burst into tears and said ‘We’ll take it’. The realtors replied: ‘But you haven’t seen the rest of the house’. I didn’t need to.”

Beth was immediately drawn to the “magnificent staircase”, the sight lines from the front door, and the kitchen’s stained glass window.

Set on 5+ acres, this large brick house north of Cobourg, Ontario, has been beautifully renovated and lovingly cared. Beth and her partner Gerry were enthralled with the original features throughout the house: the woodwork, the 18- inch baseboards, the stained glass windows in 4 of the main rooms, and the back staircase that leads up to the bedroom once used by the household staff.

The house goes back to 1892, one of several built by the Atkinson family on “crown land” (deeded to them by the government). Descendants of the Atkinson family still live and farm nearby today.

But in the 1970’s, the house was in such sad shape that it was slated for demolition. Then a family bought it and lovingly restored it over 20 years. Next, the house was sold to professional renovators. By the time Beth and Gerry came along, it was already in great shape.

Beth has a passion for Victorian homes, and while some of the woodwork is painted, most of it has been kept original. “I have a mission to preserve old houses from being ‘painted’ – as so many of the décor magazines seem to advise right now, e.g. ‘Paint that staircase white’. Or, ‘get rid of that ugly wood trim’.”

It’s been a good home for Beth and Gerry.

With 5 bedrooms and spacious common areas, the house accommodates their large family gatherings and also provides separate office spaces for this couple.

They love the views. The sunsets from their west-facing living room. The trees. The fields. And the “free horses” – two Belgians belonging to their neighbours – that come to live in the field from May to October.

Realtor.ca — Photos by Steve Leach – Realty Services

A favorite space is the screened- in porch/sunroom.

“It’s heaven. Listening to the sounds of nature. Enjoying the fresh breezes. From the first minute the temperature rises to +5 in the spring, we are sitting out there for three seasons. In the mornings with our coffee, at lunch taking a break from work, and after work with a glass of wine.”

But the time has come for Beth and Gerry to downsize. Their lovely house is for sale. And though there’s the inevitable sadness when leaving a cherished home, they know that others will enjoy it for years to come.

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