Dear Folks: December 20, 1987
Dear Folks,
Last week we passed from November to Winter and there’s a sense of relief in the air. November (which can go on into December) is gray and stormy and the ground is bare. In November you know winter is coming and you scurry around preparing for it, getting the last of the wood in, leaving fence gates open so [...]
Dear Folks: July 19, 1987
Dear Folks,
It’s Sunday morning, bright and clear, fairly warm but not as bad as the pressure cooker we were living in all last week.
Last week we had a rare Bermuda High, sweeping air from the southeast up to us relentlessly for five straight days. Southeast of us is a large ocean, of course, and also the biggest megalopolis in the [...]
Dear Folks: June 21, 1987
Dear Folks,
Ah, June! This is the time when we remember why we endure five months of winter to live here. Everything is overwhelmingly green, the birds are singing, the air is sweet, the salads are beginning to flow in from the garden. Fresh young dill. It’s worth at least one month of winter just for the fresh dill. And spinach [...]
Dear Folks: May 18, 1987
Dear Folks,
The whole farm smells of lilacs. We inherited a lot of ancient lilacs that surrounded the barn when we moved in here. The sheep have pretty well killed off the ones in their yard, but outside it there are lilacs 20 feet tall. We’ve encouraged the growth of others around the place — there’s one by the back door, [...]
Dear Folks: April 20, 1987
Dear Folks,
It’s changed a lot around here since the last time I wrote. The transformation from March to April is hard to believe in this North Country. One month ago everything was white and frozen. Now the snow is gone, the grass is beginning to green up, and the forests have taken on the subtle pinky-brown color of the maple [...]
