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It's Gonna Be Great!

December 31, 2021

Farmers may talk a cynical game, but the truth is, if we weren’t eternal optimists, we would have all given up years ago. As we happily show 2021 the door, I just know 2022 is destined to be “totally awesome”.
During the summer of 2020 we had an epic drought – the likes of which no one in New England had ever seen before, followed by the summer of 2021 which was the wettest on record. So, I figure how can 2022 be anything less than perfect? Right?

Because of the drought

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Our Shortest Day

December 24, 2021

We built two cairns, years ago, marking where the sun sets on the ridge during the summer and winter solstice. Since June, we have been watching the setting sun as it made its way along the horizon. Every night it set a little further south from the pile of stones that marks the summer solstice. The progression has been incremental and imperceptible but in aggregate - it’s come a long way. This week it paused over our southern cairn and soon will start to make its way back north again. Time

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In Praise of Belching Bison

December 17, 2021

Every year about this time, I dutifully fill out our U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) survey for livestock farmers. It’s a fairly lengthy survey and I used to balk at taking the time to fill it out, but as a friend who worked at the Department pointed out, it is from this information that the agency determines where funding gets allocated. “So, stand up and get counted!”

The survey data goes back to 1857 and is actually an interesting retrospective, showing trends, over time, in American a

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The Scruffiest Tree

December 10, 2021

When we were kids, we were fortunate enough to be able to cut our own Christmas trees, and of all our holiday traditions, getting the tree was definitely my favorite.
We’d head out the back door and climb up the quarter mile path through the ravine to a grove of spruce trees that my Grandmother had tasked my uncles with planting years before.
Our Christmas tree lot was deeply magical. The trees, by then, were magnificently tall, perfectly formed, and densely packed. We'd wander about and look

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The Bellwether

December 3, 2021

Breeding season for our sheep is coming to an end, and I for one will be deliriously happy to be done with this ram. He is conniving, aggressive, and I never seem to hear him coming. He innocently eats his hay as I walk past him, and only when I have my back to him does he run at me, leaping into the air and hitting me full speed in the middle of my back.

Since I can’t trust him, I spend all my time in the pasture either walking backwards, which is extremely challenging, or constantly looking

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Lion's Mane

November 26, 2021

We finally put our shiitake logs to rest for the winter, restacking the piles and chasing away the leaves.
It took over a year for the oyster mushroom logs we experimented with last year to really start producing. I had given up on them and their sporadic and unpredictable ways - but I’ve grown to really love them, and as long as I have them set up correctly, they are in fact easier than the shiitakes.
Most of our shiitakes are varieties that are strong producers but require soaking in order

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Running Out of Light

November 19, 2021

It seems like a cruel joke that the closer it gets to winter, the less daylight there is to prepare. We have so much to do and too little daylight in which to get it done. And whoever came up with the idea of setting clocks back clearly never owned a dog, I waste precious time each day trying to convince our dogs that 5pm is now 4 pm and they have to wait another hour to be fed.
We have firewood to cut and split, fences to repair, trees to plant, and miles of hoses that are getting lost in the

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The Luckiest Squirrel

November 13, 2021


Halfway up the path through our ravine is a shagbark hickory tree that never seems to grow. It appears happy enough, but it’s been the same size since I was a kid. Presumably the limited nutrients from the rocky talus slope and the struggle of living in the shade of larger oaks has taken its toll.
Not only does the tree itself never seem to age but the hole in its trunk never seems to change either. It’s neither healed, nor deteriorated, in all of the years that I’ve known it. Waist high and

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Signs of Life

October 29, 2021

When I head out to the barn each morning, I can’t help but take in the view from our ridgetop home. Farmington is blessed with so many trees that most of its houses are hidden under a canopy of leaves. The result being that when I scan the valley, there is very little evidence of human “civilization.” That suits me just fine! The view is timeless, the feeling is tranquil, and I cherish the early morning solitude.
Once the weather turns cold though, there is always one sign of life that never

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The Redwood of the East

October 22, 2021

There is a chestnut tree, nestled among the cedars in our sheep pasture, that has been raining down nuts as fast as we can collect them. I suspect it’s an early experimental hybrid that my Dad planted 40 or more years ago. It clearly has a strong American Chestnut influence, so I sent a sample off to the American Chestnut Foundation to see if they want any of the nuts. I’m sure it will be a while before we hear back from them, but just on the off chance that they do want them, we’ve been

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