Hillfarm Journal, Winter on the Farm

It’s been a mild winter here in the southwestern corner of New York State.  December was mostly green, the outdoor heifers moving from one pasture paddock to the next, ignoring the hay that Stan put out.  We had only about 10 inches of snow here on the hill and most of that was ‘here and gone’ snow, melting in only a day or two.  Early January has given us a couple of good lake effect snows, Lake Erie being still at 39 degrees F, but even that has settled nicely in the warmer weather.

I started out with the intention of going to the woods, and Blaze, our male Border Collie thought that a fine idea.  When we got to the lane gate, he scooted under the wire, but I had run into a problem.  The gate had been rearranged to tighten the wire so the heifers couldn’t step over it, as they had apparently done once.  I couldn't open it so called Blaze back and we settled for a ramble around the buildings.

Behind the older of the two machinery sheds, there were rabbit tracks between Stan’s ‘resource pile’ and the blueberry hedge.  Blaze stuck his nose down into several of the tracks to make sure he was getting all the smell he could.  On the western corner of the shed, there were some cat tracks, which also got a good sniffing.  We have only feral cats that live in the haymow and sheds, avoiding all contact with both humans and canines.  Our dogs seem to think of cats as just bigger, more intelligent rodents, and see them as a fine challenge.  I miss having a nice domesticated cat around, but these wild girls help to keep the real rodent population thinned.

We walked around the barn, and the wind hit us full on.  It was blustery, but with the rounded edges that only a southerly can have. Below the barn, the little orchard still had some apples hanging in the trees.  I’m sure the deer would love them, if it weren’t for the heifers and the dogs and the quarter mile of hay meadows and pasture between the orchard and the woods.  The deer don’t visit our yard very often, and then only if they are on the run from hunters.  My gardens appreciate their absence.

There are four old catalpa trees down along the fence line on the southern edge of the orchard.  If I were still a tree climber, I would spend time in the first with its long sloping secondary trunk on summer afternoons reading adventures like Robin Hood and Treasure Island and The Sherwood Ring, books that filled my summers back in my tree climbing days.  It’s not even a possibility now, but maybe a grandchild will find it.

Blaze and I headed back to the yard and I walked around the studio and came into the lawn from the eastern drive.  The fairy circle stones still had snow on them, so I scooped some up on the big stone that marks the southern compass point and built a little snow fairy, giving her black rose hip eyes from the Scotch briar, an O mouth using a red winterberry and some bleached Crocosmia leaves for her long blond hair.  I doubt she’ll last long, but she was fun for the moment.

Our walk complete, I came in the house for a cup of tea and Blaze parked himself on the back porch in the sun with a deep sigh.  He expends a lot of energy protecting me from myself.