Jen O'Connor
Jenny comes from a long line of spirit speakers, soothsayers, artists, shamans, farmers, horticulturalists, photographers, death ritualists, and story tellers. A strong empath, Jen takes great care in honoring the ancient ethereal spirits of the living and the dead. Her gentle spirit allows her to befriend the wild animals + the ghosts of her ancestors who visit her day + night.
Jenny is the primary horticulturalist, overseeing the haunted 19th century family farmstead, managing projects ranging from growing + curating seed collections to designing and nurturing the organic gardens. She is the artisan behind our apothecary. These handcrafted items originate from Jen’s original recipes created from tested techniques, age old herbal properties, and the ancient + sacred relationship between humans + plants.
An eco-historical designer, Jenny designed and curated the farmhouse, combining the house’s original heirloom elements with her own designs. Bringing the same level of care and planet-consciousness as she does to the gardens + apothecary, she utilizes a combination of reclaimed, vintage, handmade, and timeless pieces, pairing ageless patterns and textures with natural materials, creating a fluid boundary between the indoors and the natural world, between the past + the now, between the spirit realm + the physical one.
Writing, recording, and performing with Eric, her partner in all things under the band The Parlor, the multi-instrumentalist, producer-composers create intimate psychedelic-art-pop intended to reflect some of the most powerful aspects of the human experience. Their unique brand of immersive soundscaping and aural synesthetic-composition is the vessel through which they share their most vulnerable moments with grace and joy, in ways both gentle and thought provoking.
Eric Krans
Eric’s soul-centrism + enthusiasm collide, creating a space of deep exploration of the inner + outer worlds. Eric can often be found leading passionately guided mushroom identification + foraging tours through the adjacent woods + waterfalls, on his hands and knees identifying plants + animals that happen to cross his path, and keeping his eyes, ears, and heart open to the messages of the world around us. His interest in the natural landscapes of earth + soul allows for a genuine felt sense of metamorphosis for all who venture here.
Eric is filled with optimism, perseverance, and vision. Helping to maintain the health and vigor of the permaculture, tending to over two dozen fruit bearing trees and bushes, and managing larger projects such as building and structure construction and design. But perhaps the biggest project Eric engages in is the one of self-actualization. Finding our true selves, our true calling, our true natures. and inspiring those around him to do the same.
A musician since he was a small child, Eric transports people, sprits, energies, and memories through sound. Writing and performing under various pseudonyms: [The Parlor, Bozenkill, John John the Baptist, among others] his music is as diverse + meaningful as his interests.
Carol Kirk O'Connor
Carol is a fourth generation Kirk, having lived here in the 1970s. As Jen’s mom she has passed on much inspiration, knowledge, and skill. From the ages old techniques of seed saving that was taught to Jen as a young child, to the joy and wonder of growing and tending flowers –the magical relationship between the scent of a crushed marigold in autumn, or the electric rush of the first breath of lilacs in the spring. Carol was integral in imparting this in Jen as a young child.
Having saved the house from being sold in the early 2000s, she now honors the space through her meditative work of herb and seed processing. She delights in the Zen-like practice of getting to the bottom of a giant bushel basket, meticulously separating seeds and herbs by hand. Over the course of a season Carol processes dozens of bushel baskets, giant paper bags, and jars filled with wispy dry beans, spiky echinacea heads, enlivening peppermint, delicate bachelor buttons, and savory oregano. Making each seed and herb in our shop not only grown by hand, tended by hand, and harvested by hand, but also processed by hand.
Frank O’Connor
Frank spent his youth digging graves for his father’s funeral home. His work at cemeteries helped him to fall in love with trees. Their shapes, their varying sizes. How their branch structure suddenly appeared in winter. The delicateness of their leaves, the stories held in their wood. His love of trees is passed on to all who spend time with him. It was his passion that helped start the arboretum in earnest. Frank has been caring for this land since he was a teenager, dating Carol. They planted the apple trees here in the 70s. They have built greenhouses, perennial gardens, herb gardens, vegetable gardens and they passed that love of growing and nurturing, tending and noticing on to their children.
Doris (Lansing) + Jim Kirk
When I look at the work we've done on the house, much of it has been undoing what my Grandparents did in the 70s. Tearing down drop ceilings to cover up less than perfect plaster, ripping up shag carpet to reveal worn maple flooring, peeling beige wallpaper to uncover intricate, colorful Victorian originals. Thankfully for us and for history, while my Grandparents weren't keen on historical accuracy, they preserved it quite well beneath the synthetic stuff of the 70s.
My grandfather was a WWII survivor who lived his entire adult life with undiagnosed PTSD. I can see how moving from a new one story modern ranch in the city to an old Victorian farmhouse in the country, complete with its leaky pipes and drafty walls, was most likely triggering for him. But he did it for Aunt Margaret, who needed full-time care. I am grateful that the work they did to the house was mainly cosmetic and fairly easily reversible.
Growing up, I only knew the house from this time, and even as a child I could sense its discontent. How the asbestos tiled ceiling was incompatible with the antique china cabinet. The overstuffed recliner confused the eight foot gilded mirror that was so big it was bolted through the wall. But that was how it had always been. With white frilly curtains my grandmother made for every window (all 35 of them), her paintings of oceanscapes and barns adorning every wall, her quilts on every bed, and on every table a quilted runner.
My grandmother was not one for interior design, but she was one of the most prolific artists I know. She was always working on three different quilts. One she was cutting, one she was piecing, and one she was hand quilting. She was always winning prizes at quilt shows and she was the first example of anyone I'd ever known to make money from selling her art. She showed me what it meant to be an artist.
My grandfather adored her. They were introduced by his mother, who owned a photography studio. My grandmother (always an artist) had been hired to hand tint the photographs. They went on to marry and have four children, my mother the second youngest.
Margaret (Kirk) + Luther Warner
Married in 1922 -with their reception in the parlor where Eric and Jen now record their music. They left so much of themselves in this house, on this land. The pear trees, the jam jars, the handmade soldered metal shelves in the shed and seemingly every closet, the delicate wallpaper, the lilacs.
Luther lost his finger in WWI where he was an ambulance driver. They were friends in high school and corresponded throughout the war. She saved all his letters. I found them in the house. They had a child that died at birth. My grandmother's sewing room, which is now my soap studio, was once painted pale pink for her. The little girl nearly took Margaret with her. I wish I knew what her name was.
Had that little girl survived, I very likely wouldn't be in this place. Instead, my Grandfather moved into the house to care for his aunt + uncle. And when we moved in we reintroduced the concords and my father told stories about the syrupy juice Aunt Margaret used to serve him. We pruned up the pear trees and my mother remembered each fall when her family would drive to Altamont to pick up boxes of firewood and bushel baskets of pears, individually wrapped in newspaper, that Aunt Margaret + Uncle Luther had set aside for them. We stopped mowing the back garden and heirloom peonies grew from the soil.
They are here around every corner. And it helps to remind us that someday, we will be too.
Aurena (Albright) + James E. Kirk
James E. bought the house in 1904 as a country home where his family could reside year round while he lived and worked in Albany throughout the week and took the train to Altamont each weekend. The land provided so much food that during the Great Depression, their son Richard sent his three children to live with Rena and his sister Margaret (James E. having since died) as food was scarce elsewhere.
James E’s tenure at the posthumously named Kirk Estate was short, only 15 years, but the impression he made has lasted. Rena’s time was lengthy, from 1904 until her death in 1951. In 1922 she welcomed her son-in-law Luther Warner as the new patriarch of the family.