DeJoux House

The free food that turns up on our property never ceases to amaze me. It's gastronomic heaven.   You may remember the Morels and the neighbors eggs. Free Morels Then the wild asparagus: Free Asparagus Not to mention the mountains of blackberries that we harvested this year: This is the season.   This weekend we found to wonderful bounties.   The first was our annual Paw Paw harvest.  We've had a bumper crop this year and took several of them to A Tavola where Bonnie made some amazing Paw Paw sorbetto.   If you go to the restaurant they have it on the menu.  A rare culinary experience. For those of you who don't know Paw Paw it is an amazing native fruit in the US.   Went out of popularity when supermarkets and mass production took over.  It does not keep or travel well. It's sort or a cross between a banana and a mango. Paw Paw straight off the tree When it is soft you can cut it in half to ...

Well, what can I say that hasn't already been said on Facebook.    To everyone who came to Daniel's 50th Birthday party a big THANK YOU. It was a total triumph.  Everything I could have hoped for and more.  Rather than repeat all the photos, here is a link to the growing gallery on Facebook .   This seems the easiest place to collect together all the pictures from multiple sources.  Enjoy. Daniel's whole family came from California and Virginia to be here with him.  They stayed at the house so we tested out the plumbing and AC with a full house...everything seemed to work as planned.   The family were here for a couple of days prior to the party and we spent that time simply sitting around eating and drinking (more of the latter with this family!). We rented several picnic benches for the Peninsula and some small tables and chairs for the garden.  These tables and chairs became a wonderful dining table for everyone at...

It's been a whirlwind.   I haven't written on the blog for many months and so much has happened that I have forgotten.   The three biggest triumphs have been the addition of the kitchen table and stools.  The kitchen table I made myself out of some left over floor boards and two saw horses left by the old contractor.  The stools came from Sawkille and were featured in the Times the week our stools arrived (6 weeks after we ordered them). Big kitchen table Hand made...by my hands! 11 foot table Stools from Sawkille The screen porch is the other amazing part of the house which I had not expected and which we now spend most of our time in, even now the weather is cold I am sitting here writing my blog.  Screen porch Where I am writing my blog today Finally, the master bathroom shower.   Oh my God...it is the best thing.   There's something amazing about such a large open shower wher...

As always, the house is filled with wonderful stories of both past and present.  The last couple of weeks we really felt the house was no longer a building site (although work is still going on).  It started to feel like a house again.  Back to what it was but restored for the next 270 years.  The grounds too have been cleared and we really are starting to see the property restored to it's former glory.  The view from the porch when we first bought the house was a curtain of vines and vegetation and not a hint of the pond. Now, we have our own screened porch and we were entertaining Cindy Gallop on the 4th July.  As you can see, the view from the porch is very special. View from the porch  - 2009 View from the porch - Now Which got me thinking how the rest of the house had changed.  Fundamentally, the footprint and the structure of the house has not changed at all.  We've simplified, stripped out and stripped back to the fundamen...