PARADISE FOUND

Just yesterday I found these pictures that we both thought had been erased from our digital camera. Dom and I were thrilled to see them and it filled us with wonder, and rekindled in us the sense of excitement we first experienced those many months ago when we discovered this farm.

I had been dragging Dominique up and down the Hudson Valley looking for a suitable farm to turn into a small, micro-batch winery. The original major decision maker, the fact that the farm had be cheap and affordable, had since been discarded as an obselete notion. New Yorkers, and folks form the commuting environs, had recently taken to buying up these houses in droves, for vacation homes, causing each week for new record highs in ever town it seemed we visited.

We had been looking for months and found nothing. We'd argue about a few places. Two I liked that she hated, and one she liked I could not abide. After a reccent spat of disappointing viewings in Chatham and that area, we were headed home, sullenly.

Coming down State Route 66 from Chatham towards Hudson, we passed a few fields that were for sale, and then we passed a beautiful field (in our eyes), and a white house, and as we passed the property's barn, we saw a sign on it. It was for sale.

We parked in the drive way and rang the bell. The house was empty and aapparently had been so for some time. The fields were unkept. The barn needed work, and it had a little, well insulated shack. And it had some really nice, if unkept, fields. We walked the fields back and forth. We walked the parimeter of the whole farm.

We had no idea whether the fields were any good. We had no idea if we could grow grapes there. We had no idea about the traffic, but Dominique and I looked at each other, and we both knew, this was it.

These pictures are from that moment. We took a picture of the barn, not because we loved it (which we did), but because it had all the information we were seeking.

Looking now at these photos, one wonders what the heck we could have been thinking. But I know in both our minds, we were not seeing what was in front of us, but what they would eventually become.