Pic: Shannon Hayes dressed as Uncle Sam with a sheep dressed as a soldier for the costume theme: Uncle Sam Wants Ewes, clipped from the Times Journal Newspaper sometime back in the late 1980s(??). It’s August. Everything feels like it is in suspension. The hermit thrushes and winter wrens have grown silent on our morning walks. […]
Who gets the land?
We called it berryin’. The landowners might have called it trespassin’. What they didn’t know didn’t hurt them. They got to own the property and pay the taxes and say what was theirs. Sanford and I got blueberry pie, blackberry pie, raspberry pie. And lots of jam. The summer I was 15, Sanford was 83. […]
Failures Fit for a Castle
“The bear pit was my grandmother’s idea,” Dracula tells me. This is probably the closest I’ll ever get to royalty. Dracula, or at least the man playing Dracula, has what my British friend Becky calls a suspiciously “posh” accent. But, of course, he’s not royalty. He’s the owner of the castle we’re visiting, bereft […]
House vs. Barn
A barn can build a house, but a house can’t build a barn. I’ve never forgotten the story I read in first grade. A homesteading family was settling on a new plot of ground. The wife felt they should build a house first, so that she could cook and care for their family. But the […]
That Ol’ Cloak of Shame Again
“I’ve seen an odd ant as weather warms up, but this guy makes the place out to be a temple of doom,” Kyle tells me. Kyle works on the farm and oversees Tibbets house, the old center hall with the field stone foundation across the street. The Airbnb guest never spoke with us once. […]
Stop Scrolling & Listen Up! Let’s talk about farming and vaccination.
This piece, written by Shannon, originally appeared as a story at SapBushFarmStore.com. “Do you vaccinate your animals?” The call comes in as I’m getting ready for bed early last week. “We vaccinate the sheep,” I tell the caller. “They get a C, D & T vaccine, for Clostridium Perfigens type C & D, and Tetanus.” […]
In My Expert Opinion
Photo by Growtika on Unsplash It sounded like such a sweet gig. I’d have to take a few days off from the farm, but I’d get to travel to the Pacific Northwest where I’d advise for a living history project about meat production and cooking during the Pioneer days. “So we just need you […]
(Trying not to be) An Angry Farmer
This story first appeared on the Sap Bush Hollow Farm website on April 2nd. Jean-Michel Sibelle and his wife Maria are selling their farm in France. It has been in their family for over a century. I don’t know Jean-Michel and Maria. But my stomach churns as I read about them in the NY Times in a […]
Feed
Photo courtesy of Jasper Gribble, Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@jaspergribble The email query from last week keeps swishing around my brain. A customer wrote to ask for all the ingredients of our livestock feed. She was looking for chicken that had been fed no corn or soy. The feed had to be processed in a mill where there was […]
Worth It.
Every year I forget. I think, when the cafe closes, life will slow down. I’ll have time to work on my novel. I’ll have time to work on the interview transcripts I have of Mom and Dad talking about how and why we’ve done things on the farm. I’ll have time to rest. I’ll have […]
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