Make no mistake, the colorful home Anne Williamson found on the internet in 2014 wasn’t the most practical option for her and her husband, Patrick, to move to as they prepared for retirement. For one thing, the property’s remote Plainfield location was an hour from Amherst College, where Patrick, a biology professor, was still teaching, and almost as far to River Valley Coop in Northampton, Anne’s preferred grocery store.
Also, to get to the study, Patrick would have to climb a hairy-at-any-age ladder to the third floor. Finally, the long birch-lined driveway — though unspeakably dreamy — would require both the services of a 13-year-old neighbor and, on occasion, another neighbor with a pickup truck, to dig them out after snowfalls.
Nonetheless, when Anne, a former librarian at Forbes Library in Northampton, Jones Library in Amherst and Springfield Technical Community College, clicked through the photos that accompanied the online listing, she was smitten. “A friend joked, ‘I’m just going to take your computer away, Anne,” she remembers now. “It was for sale for five years, and they just kept bringing the price down.” Not to mention, “our oldest friend, who was Patrick’s best man at our wedding, had just bought a place that was even crazier than this one,” she adds.
The one thing she asked her husband before they went inside, Anne says, was, “Keep an open mind.”
It’s easy to understand the pull of the property. The main house, a teal-colored custom-built contemporary, features huge windows that look out onto forests and gardens. “We walk out the door and we’re in the Kenneth Dubuque State Forest with miles of trails,” Anne says.
The two-story red barn houses an apartment that comes in handy when the couple’s adult son and daughter visit. And the purple “garden shed,” which, like all three buildings, has a slate roof with subtle scalloped detailing, looks like something straight from a fairy tale.
Inside the main residence, the downstairs feels happy and sunny inside even in winter, with nary a window treatment to block the view of chickadees swooping among trees and feeders right outside. “We had a Colonial Revival in Amherst, and all our rooms there were painted Benjamin Moore Historical Colors,” Anne explains. That’s not the case here. Each wall of the open plan downstairs, which includes a kitchen, living room, and dining room, is painted a different wild shade: electric lime, school bus yellow, cobalt blue and chili-pepper red. “I didn’t pick any of these colors, but I love living with them,” Anne says.
The fearless colors — united by white Japanese Akari lanterns — turned out to be the perfect complement for Anne’s collected antique finds. A grand piano that once belonged to Smith College anchors the cobalt-colored alcove, while traditional pine drop-leaf tables, velvet wing chairs, gleaming copper pots, and faded Persian rugs play off the red wall. “I got 90 percent of our furniture at auction or tag sales,” says Anne, pointing out a huge brass tray table she scored — along with two others — for $50. “It takes a certain kind of temperament to go to auctions because you just sit. What you want the auctioneer to say when you buy something is ‘good deal!’ But once I got into a bidding war over a pair of lamps, and when I finally got them, the auctioneer said, ‘thank you for coming,’ ” says Anne, laughing.
In the bright lime kitchen decked out with custom cabinets, a chalkboard on the side of the refrigerator carries a handwritten quote from Vincent Van Gogh: The great thing is to gather new vigor in reality. The stove faces out toward the dining room table, like the set of a cooking show, making the space especially conducive to entertaining. The Williamsons throw an annual Enlightenment party in December, with quizzes, elimination challenges, and crowns for the winners. “Either you love it or you don’t,” Anne quips. They also celebrate Charles Darwin’s birthday with dinner parties where guests are asked to share stories about the pioneering biologist. “I have Emma Darwin’s cookbook,” says Anne, who loves to cook.
What she didn’t expect was the vibrant social life she’s found in Plainfield. Every Wednesday, Anne meets up with other self-described Fiber Fanatics at the Old Creamery Grocery in Cummington for knitting and country-store companionship. (She keeps a loom in the bookshelf-lined master bedroom for weaving towels and tablecloths, and the Scotch bottle canisters she covers with marbleized papers to repurpose as knitting needle storage are a sight to behold.)
Perhaps one of the greatest pleasures the Williamsons have discovered is how much they enjoy sleeping outside on the back porch. “Originally we did it July to September, and now we sleep outside April through November wearing long underwear under three duvets,” she explains. “There is silence up here, but we also hear owls, coyotes and foxes. The little choices you make like that can be revelatory.”
Katy McColl Lukens can be reached at katymccollwork@gmail.com.