A Change of Latitude

It was roughly 10 years ago that Jen and I, along with my parents, bought a small house here on the island of St. Barths in the central Caribbean. It started out as an investment property, the idea being that we would rent it out in the years ahead in order to defray some of the maintenance costs while also coming down to use it for a week or two during the colder months of the year. While we do still rent it out some, having spent the time, effort, and money to renovate and redecorate the place it wasn’t too long after we bought it that my folks decided that they would start coming down for most of New England’s nasty months, arriving here in mid January and staying for 2 to 3 months at a time. All which actually worked out really well for the CCNF side of the family too. It meant that whenever we’d come to visit, the fridge was already stocked and whatever little issues had arisen with the house over the previous 9 months of our family’s absence had been already addressed. Not a bad gig.

At the time we bought the house in 2000 Sammy was only two years old and Max was not even a twinkle in my eye yet, as my dad would say. All of which meant that the boys have really sort of grown up here (it’s the “other” home) and ended up bonding with the house and the island itself over time in that way that only children can. Though we’ve had a pond for many years on the farm it was in fact in the little 20′ x 8′ pool here and on the nearby beaches that the boys learnt to swim transitioning from lifejackets, to arm floaties, to those first swim strokes that really looked mostly like something akin to a form of controlled drowning (submerge, gasp, repeat).

For the last several years now the island has become our February getaway and by taking advantage of the boys traditional winter break and then busting them out of school for an extra 5 days we really get a chance to unwind. This is also our one big opportunity to spend a good chunk of sustained time with my parents whom I feel fortunate enough to consider amongst my closest of friends. Of course it goes without saying that none of this would be possible without the presence of our excellent staff back on the farm and knowing that the herd is in good hands makes all the difference. We do have email and even the dreaded cell phone if the farm really needs to reach us in any case.

Granted, unwinding is of course a relative term. In years past this time down here has developed into a bit of a working vacation for us and for me in particular. It used to be the time period when I would get roughly 90% of our auction animal write-ups done for the National Elite. Though that’s not happening this year, there is still plenty of other sales and marketing stuff to plug away at and obviously this wee blog through which I can waste everyone else’s bandwidth. Though Jennifer is slightly better at relaxing and letting go for several days, her email does nonetheless keep her tethered to her responsibilities with the North American show, which this time of year mostly involves gently haranguing the show’s various sponsors (thanks sponsors!) for their showbook ads. The reality though is that all of those alpaca related activities are mixed in with early morning walks on the beach (which beats the hell out of an hour on my treadmill at home) and long stretches of reading some seriously trashy books. So I am not complaining!