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In an attempt to protect their monopoly on the wool industry, England tried hard to discourage one from ever taking hold in its American colonies. To that end, the exporting of sheep to America was expressly forbidden, but by 1655, a few smuggled sheep had multiplied to 10,000. Oops! I’m not sure what I find more amusing; that colonial sheep smuggling was actually a thing or that breeding sheep became such a subversive (and successful) act of independence.

Clearly unable to completely stop Am

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15,000 years ago, our farm (and the rest of New England) was covered with a sheet of ice a mile thick. As the glacier receded, it left behind barren rock, glacial till and valleys filled with lakes. The surface of New England had been scrubbed clean of whatever topsoil, earthworms, and megafauna that had lived here before. We had to completely start over from scratch.
Lichen recolonized the rock – while shrubs and moss grew along the shores of the glacial lakes that were left behind. Grasses f

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Our first lamb of 2025 was born this week, so if you had any doubts, you can now rest assured that spring has officially arrived. And as if to not be out done by the lamb - our shiitakes have woken up from their winter’s slumber and hit the ground running.
Mushroom farming is, in fact, the perfect antidote to livestock farming. It is, by comparison, a completely stress-free endeavor. When I finish up in the mushroom yard at the end of the day - I just walk away. When I return in the morning,

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Our bluebirds reappeared yesterday. It was a brief visit – just long enough to check out the house we built for them outside our dining room window. We always clean it out by Valentine’s Day and make sure it’s ready for their spring inspection. This year was no exception, so, I know they’ll be back when the time is right to start raising a brood.
Today we heard peepers, which has to be about the happiest sound I know. The male frogs are looking for love and the faster they can sing, the more

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As soon as the sap in our sugar maples started flowing and the ice all around us began to thaw, I got swept away with the euphoria that the end of winter inevitably brings. It happens every year, but that euphoria never lasts. Spring has a way of unfolding herself slowly - she comes on strong and then quickly backs away. Last week, as soon as we tapped our maples, the winds picked up, the frigid temperatures returned - and with them all my doubts settled in.
I’m sure it’s just a matter of days

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I think, given a choice, I would not like to come back in my next life as an earthworm. Worms have a lot of fine qualities and a truly amazing work ethic, but their ability to survive New England winters depends on encasing themselves in a blanket of slime and not eating for several months. I'd quit immediately.
Perhaps, I could learn to migrate to avoid the cold, but I'd have to figure out an alternate means of transportation and honestly, leaving isn't really in my nature. After spending all

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Seeing the holidays in the rear-view mirror is not unlike getting over a virulent stomach bug. The relief of simply getting back to normal is so satisfying as to be positively transformative in nature. The gratitude, the deep contentment, the blissful solitude - it possible that I have just gained a whole new lease on life.
Our dogs have come out of hiding and are sound asleep - sprawled across the living room floor. Happiness for them is found in the simple things as well. Like being able t

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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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Years ago, we built two stone cairns on our ridge that mark where the sun sets on the summer solstice to the north, and the winter solstice to the south. The distance between them represents the span the sun travels on the horizon as it sets each night throughout the year. The change in location from one night to the next is imperceptible, but in aggregate it becomes substantial. On the summer solstice, the sun sets in the center of our dining room window, and 6 months later it’s just shy of the

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I often refer to spring as our busy season, but really, we don’t have a non-busy season. Our life fluctuates between busy and extremely busy as we try to keep up with whatever each season has to offer - or throws at us. I’ve begrudgingly come to accept the fact that schedules are like closets – they just magically fill themselves up.
Wintertime, as marked by the first snow and consistently freezing temperatures, is always a bit of a relief as our life calms down to simply “less busy” and that

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