Blog

One of my favorite things about being alive is the never ending supply of “rabbit holes” to explore. I’m endlessly curious about certain things and once I’m on the trail of something, I’m quite content to see where it goes. Often, one thing leads to another, which leads to another, and on – and on.
Having decided we wanted to make hay at Hill-Stead but didn’t want to spend $30,000 on a bigger tractor and all the equipment we’d need to bale hay, we started exploring other options.

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Below ground, a plant’s root system mirrors the size of the plant above ground. For trees and bushes, the root zone spreads across the surface to the leaf zone. For grass, the roots form interwoven mats. The roots help anchor the plant and collect water and nutrients from the soil. But they also do something even more profound – they hold the soil in place. Even during high winds and torrential downpours, the roots in our pastures hold all our precious topsoil in place.

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Early one morning, I found a Green Darner Dragonfly in our pasture. She had beads of dew still visible on her enormous gray eyes. I was completely mesmerized. We stared at each other, and I imagined that each of her 28,000 individual lenses were focused on me. I wondered what she was thinking. Was she as smitten with me as I was with her? Was she contemplating if I was a threat, or just considering if I would be better paired with red wine or would a dry white work just as well?

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There was a time when every livestock farmer made their own hay. The fields were cut by hand using a scythe and the loose hay was collected and stored for winter feeding. The “sickle bar” was invented in the 1880’s and quickly replaced the scythe. The mechanized cutter was pulled behind draft horses and later by tractors.

Once the hay was cut, it was raked into “windrows” and left for a couple days to dry. It was then loaded into a hay wagon and stored either in a barn, or in a haystack outsi

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When we humans look at something, we have one center of vision. Both eyes face forward and focus on the same thing. Sheep, and other ruminants, have eyes located on the sides of their heads and can see almost 360 degrees while grazing. Because their pupils are elongated slits, they can focus on the entire field of view, all at once. They can zero in on several different coyotes coming from different directions, keep track of their flock mates, and search for an escape route all at the same time

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Last week we dropped off our rug yarn at Hartford Artisans Weaving Center so they can start weaving custom-made rugs for us. The Center teaches hand-weaving to Hartford area seniors and to people of all ages who are blind or visually impaired. Their goal is to create a welcoming and supportive place for the artisans to escape the isolation that plagues so many. They utilize a large group of volunteers to provide support, as needed, to the weavers.

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I’m always slightly envious of other people’s bucket lists. Things like bungee jumping or an African safari sound exhilarating. My bucket list is way more pragmatic, it’s a list of things I need to finish or fix before I go. I live in fear of leaving someone else stuck with my well-intended “to do” list – and all of those things that I never actually “got done”.
Last month we were contacted by someone in charge of finding a home for a flock of 6 sheep whose owner had died of Covid. We needed to

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When our sheep first started grazing at Hill-Stead, the pasture consisted of multiflora rose, a few saplings and poison ivy. The brambles were so dense the sheep’s wool would frequently get hopelessly tangled up in the thorns and they’d be completely unable to extricate themselves. I’d rescue them by cutting one thorny branch at a time until they were finally able to yank themselves free – inevitably trailing a branch of thorns which would shred my fingers as they bolted away.

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The poem begins “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”- but really, it’s springtime where hope truly dwells.

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All our sheep are back in the pasture eating grass again, which is truly a wonderful feeling. I imagine after a winter of eating nothing but hay, it’s a wonderful feeling for the sheep as well. On winter mornings when we showed up at the gate, they all bellowed impatiently, as if we’d been missing for days and they’d been left starving. Now that they are “on pasture” and can graze fresh grass to their heart’s content, when we show up in the morning, they lay complacently under the apple tree, ch

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