Late Autumn greetings, writers, readers, and lovers of historic farms:
We hope this finds you hunkered comfortably, safe and reasonably sane during this tough, strange time.
Jill and I are buttoning down for winter, the raised beds in the kitchen garden weeded and covered, the fields cropped from the season’s final mow, and fallen leaves heaped against our old trees and the still-colorful furze of our weedy lane.
Nearly every day, big V’s of Canadian geese wing low overhead, clacking and honking as if to clear the way and, nearly every night, the coyotes have been noisy too, yipping and yapping in the forest behind us. They seem to be getting bolder and no doubt account for the disappearance of Ruby, our most recent barn cat who went MIA about a month ago. As we live so close to Nature, we reluctantly accept such loss as part of the bargain we’ve made.
Our two basset hounds, Maisie and Oliver, spent a good part of autumn nosing through the Kousa berries under our large, aged Japanese dogwood. The berries are edible and the dogs seem amazed that the grass is full of them.
