Blog
Old Friends
February 18, 2022
After my dad passed away, two of his friends clearly felt an obligation to keep an eye on me and my various endeavors.
“Uncle” John had been an engineer with my father at Hamilton Standard, and a lifelong friend. He made a point of stopping by to monitor Anne’s and my home building progress - which admittedly took forever. We only worked on our house nights, weekends, and in between other building projects, so progress was indeed pretty slow. Not infrequently we’d find notes stuck to the front
It's Sugar Time!
February 11, 2022
Our Sugar Maples came out of hibernation yesterday and the sap is running strong. Oh, happy day!
We tapped our trees, cleaned out the sugar house, and replaced the rusted-out chimney on the evaporator.
Valentine’s Day has always been our official “tap by” day, but the last few years the sap started flowing in January. The sugaring season will last about 6 weeks, either until the nighttime temperatures stop freezing, or the trees begin to bud.
Say what you want my pessimistic friends, but the
Mastodons and Ice Cream Cones
February 4, 2022
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When we were kids my cousin and I spent hours sifting through leaves looking for arrowheads. As an adult I remembered those hours fondly and considered the whole endeavor adorably naïve. That was until, without even looking, I found a projectile point just lying on the ground by our barn.
When I showed it to the state archeologist, he said it was 4-6 thousand years old. He also allowed as how our ridge top property was in fact a perfect place to find spear points and arrowheads considering
Watering Holes
January 28, 2022
Every morning we break up the ice in the animal’s water troughs, and if we’re lucky, it’s a pretty easy task. If enough animals share the same trough, one of them is usually drinking and creating enough movement that the surface doesn’t freeze very hard. However, when it does freeze solid, it’s impossible to break up so we set up another trough and leave the 400-pound ice cube in the pasture until spring.
Getting water to the animals below the ridge has become even simpler. A couple years ago,
Any Excuse Will Do
January 21, 2022
It happens every year.
Just about the time I know I should be preparing year end paperwork and sending in our tax return - the deer start shedding their antlers.
Unlike our sheep whose horns continue to grow throughout their life, male deer drop and regrow their antlers every year. It seems like a terribly inefficient system, and I have yet to hear an explanation as to why they do this other than – “they just do”.
We have lots of deer, and at least a half dozen bucks among them, that consider
Keeping Warm
January 14, 2022
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These frigid temperatures are very stressful for livestock farmers! I constantly worry how our animals are coping with this arctic blast, even though I never worry about the deer, wild turkeys, or any of our forest dwelling neighbors. I just assume they know what they’re doing as they’ve been doing it for thousands of years. They, in fact, have far less protection than our wooly sheep and chubby pigs but intuitively I know they are fine. Nature, over the eons, has a way of sorting this all out.
Of Birds and Bees
January 7, 2022
A few days ago, Anne and I watched as a hundred or more Canada Geese flew over us in a completely disheveled and disorganized formation. They passed over the cornfields in the Meadows, so they clearly weren’t in search of food. They passed over the river, which still hadn’t iced over - so they weren’t looking for open water. They were heading north, following the Metacomet Ridge and as they flew over our farm, they just kept going (so they clearly weren’t looking for the fine companionship of pi
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
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
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
