Author: Bette Lambert

We Wait All Year for the Sap to Run…and then it Doesn’t! When does the sap run? Early spring, temperatures above freezing in the daytime, below at night, right? Well, sort of… Every sugarmaker looks at the weather forecast, out ten days ahead, planning and working, hustling...

Wrested from the woods, came the fields and pastures for the farm. Trees cut, stumps pulled, land plowed and harrowed and seeded. And stone picked! Every time a piece was plowed to reseed, up came stones, and more stones. The family went out in force,...

“Did we come in the wrong door?’, visitors sometimes ask, walking in to hear a pump running, and see hot syrup running through a line into the filter press. Or dozens of breakfast boxes on tables, being filled with pancake mix and maple syrup, to...

I spread out all the Maple recipes from Mom’s big envelope, and took a trip down Memory Lane this morning. So many suppers around our kitchen table, featuring Coleslaw with Maple Dressing, Sticky Buns, Maple Bran Bread… Entries from Maple contests at the Vermont Farm...

I stood still and listened to the Laughing Brook today, and mused for the remainder of my hike about the Old Mother West Wind Stories that I was raised on. Many might recognize the term “Old Man Winter”, and my love of the natural world...

Watching, in a state of near hypnosis, a steady stream of fragrant, bright green haylege, unloading from the wagon onto the conveyor belt on the Ag-Bagger, or into the blower for the silo. The roar of the tractor, the rocking motion of the seat as...

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_row_inner row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" css_animation="" css=".vc_custom_1710811648380{padding-bottom: 20px !important;}"][vc_column_inner width="1/2"][vc_single_image image="15116" img_size="full" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/2"][vc_single_image image="15115" img_size="full" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_single_image image="15114" img_size="full" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_column_text]A sad sight is our old barn, sitting empty now and going downhill. The empty stanchions where tall...

An old farm house with little insulation, drips from the roof until the ice is javelins, waiting for bigger boys to spear it through the freezing air. Surely not at each other? Carefully thrust into the snow all around their newly dug fort, a sharp...

See that barnyard fence? As a teenager, I dug the post holes with my Dad. Seems like we were putting in old railroad ties, I'll have to ask David. The holes were stony, and deep. We had a long, long bar - so heavy, and...

Here’s a pile of “shorts,” odd ends and pieces of wood that are not the regular, cut to length, easy to stack firewood pieces sold to customers. Are they pitched over the bank, because they certainly don’t stack at all, sometimes have to be wrested...