A Finished Space, Finally

I have a long tradition on this website– and in life– of not actually finishing things in such a way that there is a beautiful “after” picture for everyone to enjoy. Guys, it’s the journey that’s important and blah, blah, blah… okay, fine. I mostly just don’t have the patience for staging gorgeous after pictures, because you know I’ve started at least a dozen other projects in the meantime.

But this time?

Yes. YES. Look at this beautiful thing that I built.

THE CHALUPA GONDOLA PERGOLA IS DONE.*

I don’t even feel bad bragging about it because I’ve spent three years looking increasingly uglier variations of this…

Not good.

Not really any better.

Looks completely half-assed.

And listen, I’m okay with that. I don’t mind living in the middle of the mess, I don’t mind the part where things get worse before they get better, and I don’t mind weekends full of long hours and hard work. But dammed if I won’t celebrate a little when it’s all done. There may have been a little jumping for joy when the last couple of rafters went up…

I waited until I got back on the ground for the jumping part.

And finally…

Done.

This is usually where I’d leave things and move on to projects like the kitchen renovation that I definitely have not started. Ahem.

But, the last week has been anything other than “life as usual” on the farm, for two reasons 1.) I can’t tell you about yet. Ugh, sorry. I hate the guts out of people who say shit like “Hey I have this really exciting thing going on but I can’t tell you anything about it and I can’t tell you when I’ll be able to tell you anything about it.” Fuck that. So let me say this… An opportunity fell unexpectedly in my lap and over the last two weeks I had to make some big decisions, fill out massive amounts of paperwork, dust off and update some old business plans, revive some dreams I’d stored away on a dusty shelf waiting for “some time in the vague future when the timing is right”, and I’ll be able to tell you all about whether or not those dreams will come to fruition next Monday. But suffice it to say I’ve been running on little to no sleep for a fair number of days now. Oh, and also, totally unrelated, 2.) There was a camera crew at my house all weekend filming me build shit.

Hey there camera guys.

So let me tell you a little bit about filming…

I don’t know exactly what we thought we were going to film going in to this, but I agreed to at least build the fourteen-foot long table to go under the pergola on camera. So maybe it was going to be a little bit of a “how to” with a pretty “after” shot of everyone eating around my table under the finished pergola. But when the team came out to the farm Friday afternoon I think the same thing happened to them that happened to me the first time I saw this place: They fell in love with it. So we did spend a lot of time shooting the construction of a really long table…

The table itself turned out really well… although I’m not sure I said one coherent thing to the camera during the entire build.

And then we also shot a bunch of things around the farm– in the garden, with the donkeys, chasing chickens, some of the “finished” rooms in my house (and some of the not-so-finished rooms too)–plus the set up and gathering of my friends and family in this new and awesomely finished space.

You know, I’m not the kind of person who jumps at the chance to have someone else tell their story, but I will say this… my weekend was full of pretty amazing people. I saw enough to appreciate the time and care they put into their work– into telling the right story, and getting just the right shot–and, even more importantly I felt like they got a glimpse of what the farm means to me. There’s so much work and beauty and fun and pride and laughter and beer and swearing (which I first misspelled as “sweating” and that’s true too… so much sweating this weekend) most of which happen when it’s just me doing my thing out here every day… I don’t know if I always capture all of that in what I share here, but they just might have managed to catch a little bit of it, and I’m really excited not just to see what story they tell about life on the farm, but to share it all with you guys too.