Alfalfa: Art and Alfalfa: Down the Country Lane, Part II

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Art and Alfalfa: Down the Country Lane, Part II

Continued from here

While staying at the Erma Hotel, in Cody Wyoming, a few years ago Gene surprised me by having a Western Saddle made by famous Saddle Maker, Jim Kelly.

Mr Kelly was working on a large order for a riding club in Europe. My saddle would not be finished for another 2 years.

That would give us just enough time to find a few acres to keep a couple of horses near our house in the country.

We lived in the city.

We looked for a place to spend weekends in the country and fell in love with a run down old stone house near Spring City, central Utah. I called it the "Fellini" house. It reminded me of scenes from the movie "Amacord"

I located the owner but he wouldn't sell it.

Instead, we found another run down place, a one-hundred year old simple farmstead.
I called it "my foot in the door" to the charming little town of Spring City.

We needed to add a guest cottage. We moved this one from across the street.

It needed a little attention.

While we were looking for a guest cottage to move to our old homestead, we found a piece of property with an old log cabin. However, it was decided that it was too difficult to move.

BUT THERE WAS THIS BEAUTIFUL POND,

and we couldn't get it out of our heads.

While looking for horse pasture we immediately thought of this abandoned farm and wondered if the owner
would sell us about 5 acres.
He sold us the entire farm and the pond. The pond is spring fed, flowing at 39 gallons per minute. We immediately filed a patent, claiming the water rights and waited for my saddle to arrive.

Two years later, early one morning, clear out of the blue, Gene asked:
How would you like to build a new house by the Pond?

A new house? Why? I was perfectly happy living in the city during the week and in the country on weekends.

Within a week I found our new house...in House Beautiful Magazine. A house that was built for an Italian artist in Callistoga, California.
We contacted the architects.
They provided us with the basic drawings and we designed the rest.
Gene and I had been visiting and studying 16th c. architect Andrea Palladio's country houses in the Veneto Region of Italy.

They all had one thing in common, strict symmetry, a hall in the middle with rooms on either side. Perfect for us!

We were lucky, we found a young builder in our area who was excited about building our new house.

I appointed myself as General Contractor.
Being the General was a little like playing Sherlock Holmes. The Internet, in 1994, was not what it is today. I spent a lot of time visiting new construction sites... gleaning information from builders and contractors.

Building our house was the most wonderful experience.
We only had one mishap and as it turned out, it was meant to be.

While transporting a large custom made glass door to the building site it flew out of our truck and landed in a million pieces on the side of a mountain. I remembered seeing the ballroom doors from the legendary Hotel Utah in a salvage yard. They now became our Library Doors instead.

Our house was built and for only minor finishes, was completed in 6 months.

The problem with living in a small community is that craftsmen are not willing to make the drive from the big city.

Gene and I laid marble floors on weekends. It took us 4 months. The marble is cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
Gene remembered heated floors in a castle hotel in Austria.
For him, it was a requirement.