All Dear Folks letters are licensed under a Creative Commons License. DMI encourages you to share this content by following these easy steps.
Dear Folks: July 23, 1995
Dear Folks,
Well, the puppy’s name is Emmett. We arrived at that name after two weeks of trying out a hundred or so others, suggested by all members of the household and many visitors. We tried exalted names, such as Solstice and Wendell Berry. We tried plain doggy names, like Buff. There were names that popped out spontaneously in the course [...]
Dear Folks: June 19, 1995
Dear Folks,
WE’RE GETTING A PUPPY!!!
I’m so excited you’d think I was 8 years old! It isn’t often that we get a new puppy — it’s been 11 years since I brought home the small golden butterball we named Basil.
Now Basil is slowing down so much that he can snore peacefully on the back porch while a raccoon scampers freely over [...]
Dear Folks: May 20, 1995
Dear Folks, Because I have permission from you to write about where I actually am, wherever I am, because you and I have made this a blessed space where I don’t have to put on a mask, you are about to discover that life on a farm is not always the peaceful, well-manicured perfection ofCountry Life magazine.
Last night I was in [...]
Dear Folks: April 28, 1995
Dear Folks,
Slowly, haltingly, tantalizingly, spring creeps toward the farm through all of March and most of April. Until this week we were marking time, moping at the gray, stormy weather, wandering outside on the occasional nice days, kicking at the ground, poking for signs of life, and making up work to do. Too wet and cold to till the garden. [...]
Dear Folks: March 25, 1995
Dear Folks,It’s a typical March day, which means not cold but not warm either, not completely cloudy but only fleetingly sunny, no longer muddy but not quite solid underfoot. March around here is a month that tries one’s patience. We are desperately ready for spring. Signs of spring are dangled before us. But we can’t yet strip off layers of [...]
