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 […]
How the Sausage Gets Made
No. This is not pornography. This is artificial insemination. Winter is a time of intimacies….and not just for humans. This week we separated the rams from the ewes, their breeding cycle complete. And we’ve been monitoring the pigs for when they come into heat so that we can artificially inseminate them. In January, my […]
It wasn’t always like this
(See below for info on this photo.) It wasn’t always like this. This is what I think as my pen taps the yellow pad on my desk, waiting for someone to pick up at the Schoharie County Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse. The opioid crisis is hitting closer and closer to home, wreaking havoc […]
Do this one thing to eat better, save $ and help the planet.
“Once you cross 104 degrees Fahrenheit, photosynthetic rate declines rapidly.” My older brother can really take the buzz out of a cup of coffee. He’s a marine biologist, working for NOAA. That means his job is pretty much all about climate change. His world is the oceans: fishing rights, rising sea temperatures, endangered species. My […]
The Consummate Gentleman
This story ends with Bob dropping his pants on the edge of a lake in the Adirondacks, mooning a group of people on a motor boat. My task is to figure out how we got to this moment — Where a 65 year old man — dignified, kind, and recognized by our community, friends and […]
The Farmer’s Daughter
We call it her men-strual cycle. Every six to eight weeks, Saoirse sets aside Mordecai (her cat), her novels, her school books, her 18th century Italian gown that she’s hand-stitching. She goes online and starts sifting through her dating offers, filtering out anyone who shows a predilection for desecrating their coffee by contaminating it with […]
The View From Here
It’s Thanksgiving, and this is the view out my window right now. This is Bob’s view every morning. It is my view a few mornings each week…A dramatic change from home. And as I sit here contemplating it, I think about how we landed here. We first detected Bob’s elevated PSA in […]
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