Silverpoint

Many of you might remember - my friends and mentors from art school came to visit this summer . When Chuck and Nancy came they shared a ton of art and inspiration with me that has really carried me - as those who follow this blog know I've really been painting a lot this winter! ... On this visit Chuck gave me a beautiful drawing tool it's a stylus handle with a piece of silver wire in it.. it's for doing 'silver point' - which is drawing with a piece of silver wire in a pen type stylus on a hot press paper with a many layers of a casein 'milk based' ground - it's something you build up with many many stokes and takes a pretty delicate touch - the fun added bonus the marks are made as a result of a chemical reaction between the silver wire and the ground and it tarnishes with age and eventually turns a warm tarnished brown color and is totally archival unlike pencil. The other big difference with grafite is you can not erase you can only build up lines not ever take them away - it's very fun!

Spring!!

It's almost April - hard to believe - the wood stove is still cookin' but not too much longer... thankfully as we are almost out of wood and had to go gather some this weekend and let's just say it's not exactly dry... ah well not to much longer now..



the plums have started blooming and the apples, cherries and pears are close on there heals!! We did a bunch of farm work Sat and that evening our friends kim and scott come to visit from Napa : ) - it was a nice visit with lots of eating drinking, some hikes in the woods and even some working horses - scott seems to be a natural with the horses!!






a trillium flower from our woods

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not a great photo but this is the first pair of bluebirds I've seen this year on one of my two boxes!! yippie!


My three farovite men! (with one being a little higher in the pecking order of course:)






some of the spring bounty around here!

Simpatica Dinning Hall + park Kitchen

Our eggs are featured at two fabulous eating establishments in Portland!

I just recently contacted Scott Ketterman at Simpatica I brought him my eggs to try he loved them and is not only willing to pay the very dear price for my oganic and grass fed eggs he's featured them on him menu! "Raviolo filled with Big Table Farm’s Egg Yolk, Fresh Ricotta, Arugula and Parmesan Reggiano" yum!! thank you Scott!

And then there are also my good friends at Park Kitchen who you have seen on this blog frequently! I love Scott and Dave's cooking and the vibe there is just great! They have been buying our eggs for a long time now and in addition save weekly meat scraps for my chickens - now that's a farm circle - I drop off eggs and they give me a big old bag of premium scraps for my girls!! NICE!!

The Portland Restaurant scene is truly farm to you !! go out and eat tonight! there are some truly amazing chefs and restaurants! cheers! - Clare

todays painting

Tuesday is the day I paint and boy was it a spectacular day! I think it was high 60's and a crisp clear spring day. Here's today's work -


11" x 14"


this is a study @ 4" x 8"

out with the old in with the new

Today we got our new spring pigs and boy are they cute!

Over this past fall/winter we ran the pigs right at the north edge of the trefoil field and they did a good job at tearing it up and turning over a good bit of brush.

So today Brian broadcasted seed in that strip and Laura and I and the boys harrowed it up and to our great luck tonight it rained!! nice!! The boys were great and it was pretty friggin excited to be actually farming with my team here on Big Table!!


the boys resting after a good run


the pasture harrow

dear blog readers

Hi all - As you know who have been following this blog for a while... I can't spell - I write terrible run on sentences with lots of --'s or ...'s hardly ever use a comma (I missed the day they taught punctuation in grade school, again in high school and art school profs didn't seem to care that I was illiterate)... and I can barely type.

The results of all this are more of my posts are random comments I think up on the fly and LOTS of photos : ) which I love sharing... so long story short I'm thinking of changing the photo size to a little bigger but don't' want to be a bandwidth hog? do you like the old size or this new little bit bigger size??? let me know your thoughts people!

fondly - your "occasional story telling lots of photo taking" blogger - clare


large size


med size


large size (the other way)


med size (the other way)

non farmy post

This post has nothing to do with our farm or with wine - but is something I've been "at" for a long while now - today I tested for and got my green belt in The Shaolin Kempo Martial Art - the test was difficult but satisfying when I was finished --- now I'm going to take a nap : ) and if any of the animals around here get out of line they better watch out ...

if you are wondering what the ranking system is it's the following

white - yellow - orange -purple - blue - blue-stripe - green - green - green stripe -brown- brown - 3rd degree - brown - 2nd degree -brown - 1st degree - black - black -1st degree - black -2nddegree - black- 3rd degree - etc to tenth degree (my teacher is 4th degree and that's pretty amazing)

Farmers Market Poster

The Town of Mcminnville (my county seat) juried my art to be the poster for this seasons Farmers Market : )

I love this market it's a good one and lots s of my friends sell there wears there!!!

beautiful morning on the farm

The weather is amazing today in the mid 60's and warmer in the sun!- I was inspired to go out to do chores today with camera in hand so you could come with me on my morning rounds!! everyone was so happy this morning it was great!!


the baby chicks get checked and fed first!


Then I feed the layers and collect eggs
this is El Gallo the rooster - he's the big man on campus


then I head out over this field which is trefoil we planted last year and it;s doing great!
you can see the chicken bus in the background


here a close up it's a legume like alfalfa


Then I go give hay and alfalfa pellets to my goats and edward the Lama






This is a close up of the buds on my trees sooo close but not yet!!


Clementine waits close at hand as I feed each group of animals


Then I go up the big hill to the horses and cows who have been mooing and whining ever since they saw me head to the chickens --- "hey lady up here hey what abotu us!!!"





Haley "does this baby in my belly make me look fat"










Huston what a sweetie : )


in case I get lost after chores I know which way the wine is...

lookin' like spring around here

Josephine is looking pretty darn pregnant!



the baby chicks are in and darn are they cute and the green grass is really coming in!!!



Now I'm impatiently awaiting my fruit trees!! come on guys just one stinkin bloom!!!

EGGS in Portland!

I'm starting up an official egg delivery 1x per week in Portland
The drop site will be the front porch of a good friends home in
SE (email me for details)

Please let me know if you would like to sign up for weekly eggs delivered on Thursdays
Eggs are $6 per dozen

What you can expect are - eggs that are tasty, fresh, rich in color
These eggs are from chickens that are always on pasture (a very important part of their diet!) and fed 100% organic certified food for their entire lives!