Blog
Everything Everywhere
December 8, 2023
Motley flocks of small black birds have been hanging out in our trees at dusk and dawn. I haven’t figured out if they are migrating flocks or if it’s the same ragtag mob I keep seeing - I’m not very good with faces and they all pretty much look the same to me. In late autumn, Red-winged Blackbirds, Grackles and Starlings will often band together in very large mixed flocks, either for safety, migration purposes, gregarious partying or just the pure joy of making humans nervous.
Connecticut Grown Beauty
December 1, 2023
Long after the autumn leaves are off our trees, and their color has completely faded, Connecticut’s native witch hazel comes into bloom. The timing seems self-defeating as only a few cold tolerant insects can withstand the temperatures this time of year and are available to pollinate it. The thermoregulating moths are attracted to witch hazel’s showy yellow flowers and fragrance - and songbirds are attracted to the protein rich moths.
On this cold December morning, the witch hazel in our wood
Mashed Potatoes
November 24, 2023
Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday. For us it has always been about family, land, and gratitude. When my mom was growing up on the property there had always been a very formal Thanksgiving meal, after which the minister and his wife went home, and the family had a very informal bonfire by the pond on the old Clatter Valley Road.
When my grandmother died, my mother and her siblings dispensed with the formal gathering and decided to just have a picnic dinner in the field instead. It’s
Hay and More Hay
November 17, 2023
Our pastures are done for the season, which is always a bit sad to see. We do, however, have a barn full of hay and a barnyard strewn with pumpkins so life is still pretty awesome. A full hayloft is truly a beautiful thing - it has the same zen-inducing-magic as a well stocked pantry. The intense self-satisfaction though, when the produce is of your own making, can start to slide into smugness – and I’m totally there!
Our inaugural haying season was epic, as we had to figure out everything
The Power of Pumpkins
November 9, 2023
Personally, I think the day after Halloween should be a national holiday. For years, we’ve spent it collecting leftover pumpkins from various churches and farm stands. We haul trailer load after trailer load to our pastures. The piles last for months as the animals happily work their way through them. Such an abundance of readily available food makes for a very content flock, be it chickens, pigs or sheep.
The pumpkins are a wonderful supplemental feed for all of them and have some therapeutic
Some Days
November 3, 2023
A couple lifetimes ago, Anne and I played on an indoor soccer team that was made up of mostly 40- something-year-old “soccer moms”. Very few of us had ever played in high school, much less at the college level. The teams we played against, though, were younger, more experienced, had fewer children, and took themselves way too seriously. Indoor soccer is an extremely fast-paced game and defeats can be demoralizing as the score can get racked up quickly. We were proof of that.
Golden Years
October 27, 2023
Anne and I aren’t the only ones preparing for the coming winter - our trees have been thinking about it for weeks. Sugar Maples use the final sunny days of fall to manufacture and store the carbohydrates they’ll need in early spring. Those carbs will also provide us with the sap we’ll boil to make maple syrup next year.
As trees sense the colder weather and shorter days of fall, they begin to cut off circulation to their leaves and the chlorophyl, which gives the leaf its green coloring, star
Out The Door
October 20, 2023
I put on warm socks and lace up a pair of work boots as she shifts her weight from one paw to another. I can feel her judging me as she watches me get dressed. The temperatures dropped this week, and it takes me that much longer to get out the door. I button up a long sleeve shirt and then pull on a sweatshirt - which of course needs zipping. Her ears go back as she shifts her weight again, her tail gently sweeping the floor. Her eyebrows rise when I reach for a jacket, and zip that up as well.
Late Again
October 13, 2023
Shortly before my mom passed away, she encountered a skunk with an empty dog food can stuck on its nose. She wanted to help but wasn’t sure how she could without getting sprayed. She was heading into the church for a meeting, and someone called out to her to leave it be and she did. She told me later that she felt like a hypocrite going into the church when she was too afraid to help what was surely the “least of these.” I told her, I for one, was very glad she didn’t try, as I would have had
Lion's Mane
October 6, 2023
Every spring we inoculate a couple hundred logs with various types of mushroom spawn. Shiitake, Maitake, Oyster, Lion’s Mane and Comb Tooth are a given but this year we branched out a bit and added a few new ones: Chestnut, Turkey Tail, Wine Caps and Almond Agaricus. We also made a fundamental change in how we handle the logs, and I’m extremely pleased with the results. In fact, Anne says I’m bordering on gloating.
Inoculating logs involves cutting them into 3-foot lengths, drilling several
