How We Know It’s Summer
The farm year goes round and round. I don’t know where it comes out. It just keeps going round. It’s hay season again. Because of our long, wet spring, hay is late this year, and folks with more...
View ArticlePoo
At last we are given permission to do some landscape repair! The big feet have finished tromping on the north-side border of the house, the various machines of construction have finished compacting the...
View ArticlePretty Toes
As we are on the subject of mules, here’s a bit of the mule maintenance schedule. As equines go, a mule is pretty easy keeping. He has good sense, believe it or not, and isn’t so prone to the ills...
View ArticleSeeds and Feathers and Things
We might reasonably have mistaken the beginning of autumn for a continuation of our dismal summer of rains. But there are signs things are moving toward winter. Here’s one: The sweetpeas of summer are...
View ArticleAn Autumn Congeries
Ah, the foul weather has come, and we are shuddering and building fires in the stove. We had our first snow last week, gone now and turned to mud in the yards. But there are fine things going on...
View ArticleWinter, Spring, Winter, Spring. Spring? Winter!
February must be the most confused of the northern months. It is made up of gloom, rains, flurries of snow, bursts of joyous sunshine, unexpected hailstorms, frosts and thaws, and wind like witches in...
View ArticleIt’s Here! (Spring, I Mean)
Nothing speaks of spring like this: Meet Penny Rose, the first lamb of the year. Isn’t she the perkiest thing you ever saw? This is busy time for ewes, what with bearing and feeding and keeping track...
View ArticleWhoops
Yesterday it smelled like spring for sure. Catch the scent of new grass, and violets in the air! I can hear those fresh lambs bleating in the yard. It’s the season of blossoms and babies. But this...
View ArticleNames, Names
Ah, spring has slipped by in a wash of showers, and summer has come. Local weather always seems like it must be universal. Here in the Northwest, we’ve had a long, dank spring and a summer with little...
View ArticleMake More Plants
The simplest truth is, plant stuff wants to grow. Given the least helping hand, most plants will be happy to oblige in making more of themselves. It’s late summer, and it’s a good time for propagation....
View ArticleDark and Light
A month or so ago, amongst other winter observances, we hurrah-ed the Solstice as if the sun were about to give us balmy days and springtime. Astronomical markers and conditions on the ground are not...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....