Horsekeeping Read Online Free PDF

kiss, making these boards speak.
    I heard about the barn the boys burned down, explaining the mysterious bits of concrete foundation I pondered at the base of the huge willow. We respect the tomb of the family Newfoundland interred beneath the stand of tall hemlocks outside the pine-paneled library bay window, and have a visual of the old dormitory-style layout of the children’s bedrooms, now a spacious master bedroom suite. The pantry bell panel still carries the Borden family designations—“John’s room,” “parlor,” “library” etc.—evidently still in use through the fifties. Some still function, not that anyone remains to do the servanting. My husband tried ringing for breakfast once, but remained hungry, feeding only upon my “yeah, right .” Several years ago John and his family returned to scatter his mother’s ashes on the property of the house she treasured.
    Onto this history we have layered our own experiences. I wielded my thick black notebook of room dimensions and fabric swatches in eagerness to do justice to the beauty the house, one we never dreamed we’d ever be able to own.
    â€œCan you believe this is ours?” I asked Scott as we wandered through the empty rooms after the closing.
    â€œIt is hard to believe. We’ve come a long way, baby,” he joked.
    As we admired the molded archway segmenting the long entry hall I pictured kissing him under the Christmas mistletoe.
    â€œLet’s not muck it up,” my lovebird added.
    And it was Scott’s desire to start from scratch, incorporating few furnishings from our first house. Undaunted and true to our sign of Taurus, Scott and I are nesters. We moved frequently as kids, and neither of us had the pleasure of adhering to a long-established homestead, so this house was for keeps. We wanted a permanent familiarity for our kids and
set about filling the house with art and personal knick-knacks accumulated from twenty-plus years of life together while adding ongoing collections. We decorated to please ourselves. We took angled photographs and countless measurements, and I lost myself in fabric books emulating the professional we didn’t hire. Weekdays, Scott met me for lunch at ABC Carpet and Home and Ethan Allen to debate rugs and sofas, neglecting food. Combing local antique stores, both the precious and the junky, occupied us weekends for two years. We each seriously took ownership, with a sharp eye for every detail—I’d turn the carved snow goose on the dining table one direction and on his next walk through Scott would reverse it, or even shift it to the sideboard, the nervy bugger. I would put it back. Why did I have to get a husband who cares so much and notices everything, I wondered, when my girlfriends complained their husbands couldn’t care less. But our battles for decorative control resulted in an eclectic home of tender care and affection, and we can both point to every “treasure” in our house and recall its provenance.
    Faced with filling up this overwhelming house on a limited budget, our first purchase was a purely decorative, two-hundred-year-old wooden slatted, oval-shaped barn vent still attached to a portion of the New York state barn that once proudly held it. An artful piece of Americana, built when nails were hand-forged and square, we splurged when we really needed mattresses, chairs and curtains. It holds prideful place inside the main hall and reminds us of those early exciting days creating our first real home, one that our children will grow up in, revisit after they are released into the wild and perhaps return to marry in, one in which we hope to grow old, entertain our grandchildren, and, when tired and ready, die in. Encompassing our family mythology as a living museum curated with love and memory, the “Borden House,” as it is still known locally, makes us extraordinarily happy. We may live, work and school in New