My birthday is in April and I think this makes me more connected to springtime. April brings the freshness of green grass, emerging daffodils and the promise of an overflowing garden. As the snow melts, the brooks and streams fill up, the leaves begin to bud and life feels hopeful. Something about the change of season at this time of year creates excitement in me. Spring always inspires new ideas and plans for the promising future.
My inspiration to create comes from my mother, I expect. I fondly remember spending time with my brothers and mother, kicking around creative, out of the box ideas. We would redesign homes, create outdoor living spaces and develop business plans. Sometimes things would be sketched out, other times we had to actually go to the space being discussed, always it was an engaging conversation that could last for hours. Some of our ideas came to fruition, others, not so much. This way of thinking helped me learn to examine options with a creative flair and it truly helped me to develop the entrepreneurial approach I have in life.
Living at Cobb Brook Farm for the past 23 years (really? that long?) has required evolution and a lot of creative thinking. We moved into a rundown hillside farm in 2000. Many iterations later we have completely renovated the farmhouse and barns, added a wing on the house, had horses, hosted weddings, created extensive perennial and vegetable gardens and dug a swimming pond.
I have a good friend who recently suggested I watch The Lost Kitchen. On the infrequent non-ski coaching days I had this winter, I would light a fire in the wood stove, get a cup of my favorite Landgrove Coffee and settle in with Tiger to watch a few episodes of Erin French and her inspiring story about creating The Lost Kitchen. What resonates most with me is her non-stop drive toward perfection and her constant retooling of the plan.
I tend to make a plan, then adjust to make it better. Then again, try something else to improve it further. Always striving to be a little closer to perfection, and always reinventing.
As the world changes - especially so recently, what matters to people changes. Comfort, security, freshness, trust, space, authenticity are all words that come to mind when I think about the values necessary in life now.
After thinking we might sell our farm property in 2022 and realizing we weren’t ready to do that yet…we are now reinventing ourselves again. There are many things yet to happen at Cobb Brook Farm and this is the season to apply some of them.
Come visit our new shop, Collected, LTD. We will be open the last weekend of each month, beginning in May 2023.
Check us out on Facebook too! @Collected, LTD