From the Shoebox to the Silo

For the first time in my life, I have my own front porch. And from this porch, oh what a view:

But it's more than just a pretty view. It's the culmination of years of hard work, dreaming, scheming and planning. One week ago my husband Milé and I moved from a shoebox apartment in downtown Toronto to an old farm house on 87 acres of land in Ontario's Prince Edward County.

The last week has been gruelling: lifting, sweating, stressing, painting, fixing, shopping, driving, going up and down thousands of stairs, all on very little sleep. And it’s been one of the happiest weeks of my life.



Why “meet me at the silo?”

One of the buildings on our property is an old concrete, roofless silo. In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would one day own a silo; but this one literally came with the territory, so a silo is what we’ve got.

And you know what? We love our silo.

Our friend Mike and his son Lucas came over yesterday, saving us from a messy marathon of wallpaper removal. We opened a bottle of wine - and the lone can of Sprite – and gave them a tour of our disheveled, mid-move home. It was a gorgeous, sunny afternoon, so we put on our boots and waded through snow and mud puddles to explore some of the property. Milé and I had been so busy moving, we hadn’t even had a chance to walk around since we bought the place in October. It was every bit as beautiful and intriguing as when we first saw it.

Stands of red cedar, clearings and trails, deer tracks in the snow, a cluster of ladybugs hiding under an old piece of wood, clean air and country quiet. And there were also tires, car parts, an old couch, and an overgrown swing set. Apparently acquiring loads of junk is a commonplace occurence when buying a place in the country. I don't mind too much, we'll work all of it into some sort of sculpture.


In my mind, I remembered the silo as having a door. It doesn’t. It has a low window that you can crawl through; that is, once you hack your way through a bunch of bushes. So, the four of us climbed into the silo, wine glasses carefully passed in once the threshold had been crossed. A silo – and one with no roof, at that – is a pretty cool place to hang out. First off, it’s just an unusual shape to be in. When else do you get to hang out in a giant cylinder? Secondly, the acoustics are amazing. When your voice sounds that good, it imbues every conversation with a sense of importance. And laughter sounds really, really good as it echoes up to the sky above; and that afternoon there was a lot of laughter.

Milé and I contemplated the name of this blog for a long time. The writer in me relishes naming things. A name is like an ultra-short short story. What kind of story do you want to tell with the name of your blog/play/song/company/baby? After our afternoon of adventure with Mike and Lucas, the image of the silo become obvious; as you approach our property, it is the first building that you see, an unmissable landmark that tells you that you've arrived.

And why do we want you to meet us at the silo? Well, the story of our company, Small Pond Arts, is a story about visitors. It is about the artists and art-lovers that will come to visit us, and leave a beautiful little piece of themselves behind. So meet us at the silo, and together maybe we'll sing to the stars.