Dear Folks: March 20, 1994
Dear Folks,
TRIPLETS!!! Born on the hour of the equinox! What a way to start the lambing season!
The lambs are not due for two more days. I turned Wally in with the girls on October 23, and it’s a 150-day gestation period. The ewes that are in heat when the ram arrives usually pop precisely 150 days later. The others all [...]
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and Trust Your Common Sense
By Donella Meadows
–March 3, 1994–
Out there in readerland some folks live at an amazingly high level of environmental consciousness. For example, here’s part of a letter I got recently from a concerned Vermonter named Gretchen.
“I live on a steep hillside that no one wants to mow, and I’m using sheep to keep the land open. They fertilize the land as [...]
Dear Folks: February 20, 1994
Dear Folks,
WOW! It’s PLUS FIFTY out! The snow is still piled high, but it’s MELTING! It’s dripping off the roof and trickling down the driveway and sounding like tiny streams running everywhere. The SUN is shining! We in this valley, who can barely remember a day above zero, who automatically pull on three layers before venturing outside, who thought the [...]
Dear Folks: October 24, 1993
Dear Folks,
It’s a glorious Sunday morning. Everything was coated with frost when the sun came up, but the air is warming fast, and we’re predicted to reach the 60s this afternoon. The maples are bare, but the oaks are still glowing orange and red. John is out front with his chainsaw, attacking the last of our log-length wood. Yorinde is [...]
Dear Folks: May 22, 1993
Dear Folks,
Every year I remember, too late, my vow from the past year never, ever to leave this farm in May — or in the month between mid-September and mid-October. Those are the times of rapid change, the times when we wake up every morning to something new. In May the daily newness is in the arriving voices of the [...]
