We had an especially wonderful and well-attended Open House last weekend, we are still aglow from it.

Lots of people came, the refugee kids sang, lots of art was sold, lots of animals fussed over,  the Mansion residents showed up, it was what one attendee called “Bedlam Farm bliss.” That’s the idea. It felt to me like our best Open House yet.

Our next Open House is on Columbus Day weekend in October of this  year, and we have to start preparing almost immediately. The Open Houses are a great deal of work and a significant disruption in our lives.In some ways, they are too successful, if such a thing is possible.

Maria and I have been talking a lot about our plans, and we have some ideas we like for next year.

I wanted to share them with  you.

First, we are thinking of scrapping the Spring 2018 Open House and just hosting the October Open House. There is only one reason for doing that, to be honest, it is just too much work to have two and both of us are busier and more active than ever. Maria has to take apart her studio and curate a large and complex art show.

It will be another week or two before her studio is put back together and both of us are back to work.

That’s too much disruption, and nobody to blame but us. We are immensely grateful to all the people who travel to see us.

There is just a lot to do.  Our new idea is to have a Pop-Up Gallery art show on Main Street in Cambridge next Spring instead of our June Open House.

We’ll find a big and empty space, and hopefully bring some excitement and lots of visitors to Main Street, the focal point of our wonderful community.

It would be exciting for us and especially for Maria, and we hope it would benefit our downtown, which is beginning to pick up some steam after years of decline and struggle. The New  Round House Cafe is causing a lot of excitement and a new micro-brewery is bring newcomers to our town.

Our small town is fighting hard for community, and we would like to join the fray in creative ways.

Our weekend farmer’s market is busier than it has been in years, and Scott Carrino’s Friday pizza night has become a town tradition. We’d love to pursue our own passion for encouraging the kinds of creativity that are often shut out of galleries and media. Rural artists have a hard time getting  recognition and sales, a pop-up gallery – renting an abandoned space for a single show – could be exciting for us, and  hopefully, for others.

We would hold our Fall Open House as usual, on both days of Columbus Day Weekend. We’ll reassess next year, we might take a year off from Open Houses and then return, or we might just keep on going, we don’t have to decide that now.

We are also discussing whether or not to sponsor another Creative Workshop. I think we have too much else to do this year, Maria is figuring out how she feels, we’ll talk about it and decide.

We will keep you posted. We are committed to sharing our lives, online and in the real world, and neither of us wants to quit on that. We just have to be flexible and do both in a way that works for everybody.