"Windswept, biting, howling, piercing, the snow, the wind, the cold. I love it! Why in the world? Maybe it started with my Mom. She woke us to slide on the hard, glistening crust, knowing that soon after sunrise it often softened, no longer vast, sweeping expanses over...
Twenty six thousand trees? So many acres of land, steep, ledgy sidehills with magnificent views of the mountains across the valley, new sugarwoods, and old sugarwoods that my Dad was tapping since 1943, miles and miles and miles of walking in the woods. How could...
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...
A sad sight is our old barn, sitting empty now and going downhill. The empty stanchions where tall Jupiter, with her sharply defined black and white patterned sides stood, third place down on the right, Anne with her big, soft eyes, and June, solid black...
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...