By Sam not-the-farmer's-wife Stone:
At lunch one day, my 3-year-old son Luca looked down at his plate and asked, “Mommy, who made this pasta?” Since moving to Vermont from Manhattan a year earlier our family had plunged headlong into mini-farm mode, raising sheep, growing food in our enormous garden, keeping bees and chickens, and getting all our meat, cheese and milk from neighboring farms. During that first year, Luca had become fascinated with the origins of so much of what he consumed. So when I said I didn’t know who made his pasta, he looked exasperated. “Everything is made by someone mommy,” he said. Duh.
At lunch one day, my 3-year-old son Luca looked down at his plate and asked, “Mommy, who made this pasta?” Since moving to Vermont from Manhattan a year earlier our family had plunged headlong into mini-farm mode, raising sheep, growing food in our enormous garden, keeping bees and chickens, and getting all our meat, cheese and milk from neighboring farms. During that first year, Luca had become fascinated with the origins of so much of what he consumed. So when I said I didn’t know who made his pasta, he looked exasperated. “Everything is made by someone mommy,” he said. Duh.
This basic insight, so clear to three-year-old Luca on his farm, is not so obvious to many of us. Disconnected from the sometimes simple, sometimes incredibly complex processes that bring food to our table or put shoes on our feet, we can get lulled into thinking that stuff just is.
I thought then, wouldn’t it be wonderful to somehow share this experience with our less, shall we say, “earthy” friends. I stared at my sheep, and my sheep stared at me. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if someone made baby booties out of the wool of individual sheep, and paired them with a little book that introduced the sheep and farm they came from? Huh.
I shared this idle thought with my friend, Nora, who surprised me and said, “Let’s do it!” Turns out, my slightly...uh..."rustic" mountain-top friend Nora lived a fabulous former life making hats for Broadway in pre-bubble New York City. (You really never know what you’ll find in themthar hills!)
Sooo, over the next few months I taught myself to felt and Nora dusted off her old hat blocks and got to work designing and making patterns for our line of baby booties, hats and other increasingly whimsical accessories. We plunged ourselves into the arcane yet...arcane world of bookmaking, and started developing a series of tiny books to accompany each of our products.
It's all been so much fun (well, except for the sheep shelter blowing over in the wind. Twice). Our kids are in and out of the studio all day "making stuff to sell" and generally causing mayhem. And the studio is becoming a place for people to come and hang out. Our dastardly plan is coming to fruition!
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