Dear Folks: January 22, 2000
Dear Folks,
They say it might get up to +5 degrees today. It was -20 last night and will be again tonight. We’ve gone from one of the warmest Decembers ever to a January that is about to break the all-time record for the number of successive days in which the temperature drops below zero.
There is a lot of wind to [...]
Dear Folks: December 26, 1999
December 26, 1999
Dear Folks,
“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” That sentence, which opens Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, always makes me cry, because of its past tense. Had a farm in Africa. The whole book is a hymn of sorrow for that lost farm.
Even when I still owned Foundation Farm and thought I [...]
Dear Folks: October 24, 1999
Dear Folks,
It’s a brisk Sunday morning, 40 degrees, half-cloudy. The sun, just lifting over the eastern hill, is turning Mount Ascutney brilliant red. As I look out my window (probably the last time I will be looking out this window as I write this newsletter), the land is revealing itself again, as the leaves stream down and the long views [...]
Dear Folks: September 26, 1999
Dear Folks,
Sunday morning, crisp, bright. Ah! September! One of the glory months!
Bugs are gone, nights are cool, approaching freezing but no frost yet, days are warm but not too hot to work. Just a hint of the tree colors to come. The flood tide of food from the garden is beginning to abate — the melons and corn are over, [...]
Dear Folks: August 30, 1999
Dear Folks,
What a painful month it has been! And what a beautiful month it has been! I guess that means it’s been a month of up and down emotions.
UP — August around here is always so lovely. The midsummer heat is tempered but not gone. The sun rises a full hour later and sets a full hour earlier, and the [...]
