At Home with Phillip Saul

Not everyone can escape the city for a life in the country, obligations like work and relationship tie a person to the urban areas, but that doesn’t mean elements of the bucolic life can’t be brought into the home. Boston resident and shopkeeper Phillip Saul has created a home that feels like an escape the urbane using antique pieces and vintage finds. Phillip, a lover of the New England coast has brought in a variety of nautical elements into his home. Within the apartments limited square footage he he a place that feels cozy but inspired and unique to Phillips lifestyle. Frequent trips to Brimfield for antiquing ensure a continually rotating collection to add varied interests for every visit.

Merry Christmas

May your home hum with old songs and soft laughter,

your kitchen smell like butter and something baking just a minute too long,

and your heart feel full in that quiet, holy way Christmas brings.

Here’s to twinkling lights that stay up past January,

hands wrapped around warm mugs,

stories told for the hundredth time,

and love that feels handmade and well-worn.

May this Christmas be gentle, magical, and a little whimsical—

the kind you tuck away and remember on ordinary days.

Strawberry Jam Season

There is something special about strawberry jam—it is instantly nostalgic. Perhaps it is the red, perhaps it is the humble flavors of the jam, or the action of spreading it on toast, but whatever it is strawberry jam is undeniably nostalgic.

It is time for the annual jam making. Strawberry season has come and gone here in Kentucky, and it was savored for those fleeting weeks of daily pickings. The jam we make becomes the reward of the season, a reminder of how delicious life in season is.

This is our annual week of offering the farm fresh jam to you. Shipped from the farm, where the berries were grown (commercially “jammed” elsewhere of course) to your kitchen table, wherever that might be.

This year we made a smaller batch that usual as we are only offering this jam for a single week. If you would like the very best strawberry jam you’ll find, made just like your grandmother did, order today. It will ship the same day it is ordered.

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When I was a kid we grew strawberries here, just as we do now, all in the spirit of my grandmother growing them years before, long before I was born. The inspiration for the annual strawberry jam offering came from the deep-freezers full of freezer jam from my childhood, the stacks of wooden strawberry crates, and the stories of my grandmother growing strawberries with abundance during her house wife years.

These days the strawberries are grown the same way and in the same place. I wanted to create something that felt like it truly came from this farm and is a part of my own history. The jam is, in my opinion, the best strawberry jam you’ll find…because of how simple and classic the recipe is.

This year only one hundred jars were made. Order before these sell out.

ORDER HERE

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2011: Our First Magazine Signing

After this many years you have a lot of memories to look back on. Some are admittedly horrible memories, but many are absolutely wonderful and life changing. There is a profound beauty to savoring the journey. There are many things I wish I could go back and do differently, but that isn’t how life works. Every day must be treated as a day to do better, to celebrate better, and to grow ever forward. Lately I’ve been looking back at back issues as we’ve been reformatting them to be reprinted and I find myself waxing poetic about the journey from that first time a friend of mine told me I should start this business, to where we are today.

These images are from our first signing, a wonderful barn sale in eastern Kentucky. I wish I could remember more about it, but I honestly don’t even remember where it was. It was perhaps somewhere off Highway 23 north of Pikeville and south of Ashland. I remember the pumpkin soap, it was the best soap I’d ever come across. I remember our booth, it was a collection of things out of my apartment. A stack of magazines, that very first issue, gosh I loved that smell of freshly printed paper back then.

These photos are from that event, I know there are more, but these are all I could find. I know there is a photo of a bench that still haunts me in the “things I should have bought” dreams.

If you’d like a copy of that first issue, they’re available below.

A Visit to Farmhouse Pottery

I, like many of you, have a love for Farmhouse Pottery. I am not sure when or where I first discovered their beautiful pieces of hand thrown pottery, but I do know that for many years I dreamt of owning a piece or two myself. If you’ve seen any of my cooking videos you know I own a growing collection and it has become my go to kitchen brand.

Whenever I am in central Vermont I make a point to stop in to their Woodstock, Vermont studio and shop to see what I’m missing, what I need to dream of owning, and what is new. I think there is something special about being in a makers studio be it a single maker or a collective of creatives like Farmhouse Pottery has assembled to bring their works to life.

These are photos I created during an early spring visit to Woodstock. If you go for a visit you will see it much like this, the large windows between the shop and the studio allow everyone to watch what is being created.

In a world of fast fashion and over-seas-factory-made places like Farmhouse Pottery are a rare treat, a place where you can actually meet the hands that create the pieces you’ll likely be passing down to future generations. | FARMHOUSEPOTTERY.COM

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A Visit to Folkling (in Virginia)

Back in February I went to visit my friends Folkling in Virginia. I wanted to see their shop, but mostly I wanted to see their quilt collection. I am not sure I had ever seen such a large collection for sale before of quilts that I truly loved every single one of.

For years I have loved, admired, and collected early American and Americana wares…be it furniture, firkins, or quilts. To see these all in one space was such a sight to celebrate. I was especially blown away by the eye and the knowledge of the young couple that owns the business. Their commitment to detail, to history, and to the expert care of these pieces of our past was nothing short of inspiring.

At the moment Folkling is between brick and mortar shops but has a wonderful online shop. | FOLKLING

A Wilder Dress

Back in the spring Wilder Collective sent me a dress to photograph here at the farm. I had a vision of photographing this very nostalgic dress in the fields and garden of the spring. The soft greens as a background for a dress that feels in many ways like it could have been here on the farm a hundred years ago.

I was really smitten with the noticeably handcrafted feel of the dress, the quality is really beautiful, a rejection of fast fashion and instead a piece that will last for decades, even perhaps, a generation to come. The following are a collection of the photographs I created that day. || THE DRESS

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A Path Through

There is no one linear path through life, but there are ties that bind. There is no one out there writing the rule book for a life well lived, but for many of us there are common themes. These days it seems so many of us are in search of something simple and pure, easy yet strenuous. A life of meaning and a life of purpose. For so many of us the craving for video games and shiny lights doesn’t exist. Instead we go in search of quiet moments, open fields, the cliched wide open spaces, yes read in the tune of the Dixie Chicks.

In a world filled with absolute nonsense and racket it seems inescapable to get away from the round-the-clock news and the doom and gloom, so I won’t mention it here. Instead I will say, put down the phone, step away from the bright blue lights, and return to life in community.

We once lived within our communities, yet for the past couple of decades we’ve been led to believe that the digital world is the greatest form of community, but that isn’t true. The human was meant to live in community, not in the dark of isolated rooms only illuminated by tiny screens.

We need a revival of community, not communities of political or religious silos, but instead communities that gather around tables, communities that life life together, like in the olden days. I don’t know the answer to how we get there, but I do know the journey starts with a single step. Somewhere we have to decide that we would rather visit with neighbors than doom scroll, we would rather pull out the supper-ware, welcome people to our porches, attend the functions, care about those around us.

Somewhere along the way we have forgotten the joys of seeing folks, folks in real life, not reading their Facebook updates. Today may not be the day to dive fully in, but hey, maybe it is. Today, even for just a moment put the phone down, go outside, see a friend, wave, serve a glass of iced tea, you are not alone.