12/05/2025
It started with a quilt in memory of a mom in the midst of navigating throught the first year without her. When sharing about having her quilt made, a friend of hers who is also missing her mother very much decided it was just what she needed, and the two of them requested spots on this year's Christmas list.
Having a quilt made with a friend is a quilt experience of it's own. They checked in with eachother's quilt progress and although both quilts are completely different, they shared the same quilt journey together, right down to the fence pictures.
One asked for the final quilt design to be a surprise, and the other wanted to see everything...and that made this photo shoot a really hard secret to hold for the one waiting for a surprise.
Our cows often seek us out during photo shoots, and leave me dodging arm licks, head butts and photobombs in order to get the best shots. It's almost the norm now, but we overcome.
But this time, our neighbor's herd of water buffalo made it clear that this photo shoot need to include them. As photogenic and curious as they are, the situation was immediately majestic. We managed a few shots without the buffalo heads, but no matter where we moved the quilts, there they were. So we embraced it. But this was definitely a first.
Yesterday, as I was messaging Jennifer about her quilt, I asked her if she was an animal lover because I could finally tell her what happened during her fence pictures.
She responded by calling herself a HUGE animal lover, in all caps just like that. So I told her to sit down when she looks at the picture coming.
"Immediate tears," was her response. Then she told me this story. After her mom passed, she put on her mom's locket necklace and went on a trip with her dad to a farm in Sonoma County where visitors can cuddle with....WATER BUFFALO, and that she had also cuddled one in Vietnam. She said water buffalo are very significant to her and she's slightly obsessed with them. And then she sent a selfie of her, the locket and a very snuggly water buffalo. Now I was the one sitting down.
Don't tell me animals don't know. They know. Go hug your animal.
