I do not believe that I am famous and do not consider myself a celebrity, but every now and then, I am reminded that I am not quite normal either – as when the bank teller asks me to sign an autograph for her dog or my cable repairman tells me I changed his life. It seems I am always working to figure out and build a boundary between a private and public life. Not easy, when you put out so much of your life in books and on a blog every day. This balancing act has come up again in the question of visits to Bedlam Farm, a question I have stirred up myself.

This has evolved quite a bit since I moved here. For most of my years at Bedlam Farm, I didn’t permit visits, few people came to see me, I came to understand my beautiful farm was something of a fortress designed to keep people out.

I  has some reasons to be cautious. I was unnerved by several stalkers, one of whom broke into the farm and tried to make off with one of my dogs, and by others who came into the house uninvited, walked their dogs in the pastures, or simply pulled in at odd hours wanting to meet the dogs or shake hands. Some of these people were nice – there was a busload of retired Michigan school teachers that pulled in one morning, my farm was included on their tour of the Northeast, there was no turning them away. Some were not so nice. I found one man sitting in my living room with one of my books and he said he wasn’t leaving until I signed it because that’s what his daughter wanted – a signed book – and he wasn’t leaving until he got one. Rose, God bless her, persuaded him to leave the living room by nearly tattooing one of his ankles with her teeth and the sheriff arrived to escort him off of the property.

There was a rare day when someone didn’t drive by, point video cameras at the windows, wave or honk or knock on Maria’s studio door looking to chat.

Then Maria came, and I began to open up in a lot of ways. One of them was to open the farm up to open houses. I could show the donkeys’ off, show Rose (now Red) working with the sheep and Maria showed her art and invited other artists to sell theirs. It worked very well, so we are doing it again at the new farm on July 21 and September l. We’d love for the people who follow us to get a look.  I’ll run donkey tours, show Red working and Maria will show her art. We are looking forward to it, (details on her website, look for “events). This has raised a peripheral issue, I am getting a lot of e-mail from people who can’t make the open houses but are planning on coming through the area on vacation – we are near the Adirondacks, Lake George, Vermont, New England. Some are checking out colleges, visiting friends, heading for Maine, going camping or heading for Boston and the Old North Church. They want to stop by, say hello, shake hands, see the dogs.

It is quite lovely to have a place people want to visit, and I am flattered. Maria too. I wish I could open the farm up every day. But I need to make the point ( I can’t answer all of these messages individually, alas) that Maria and I are not on vacation, we work hard every day just like you all do, and it is disruptive and sometimes disturbing to the animals and the dogs to have strangers coming by. It is surely distracting to us. I was surprised at these requests at first, there are lots of them and I suppose the open houses put the idea out there that the farm is a public space, on  the way to so many places. I need to define that a bit more clearly.

The farm will be open to visitors from  from noon to 4 p.m. on July 21 and September 1, but this doesn’t mean the farm will be open to visitors the rest of the summer as well. I’m sorry if some people can’t make it, but Bedlam Farm is a residence, a farm and workplace, and apart from the open houses we’ll  revert to our (mostly) private selves. You can, of course, follow us on the blogs. I thank you for your understanding. If is fascinating to define the very new rules and boundaries of a very new kind of relationship.