If you live near here, you’ve been encased in ice for the last day or so. A quarter inch of it wrapped around every surface, everything glimmering. There is a brittle beauty to the ice-encrusted landscape. The pasture is paved… Read More ›
Archives
AgriCulture: What, Me Retire?
All this week I’ve been appreciating my farm chores as welcome breaks from the stresses of my day job. As a lawyer, I often represent people with serious illness whose insurers are denying them access to treatments. This week I… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Warm Bedfellows and Other Sources of Heat
Do you “spoon” when you sleep with a spouse or bed partner? Outside, the shutters may be banging against the house in the stiff western wind; the windows encased in white frost; the wind chill at minus 20. But inside,… Read More ›
AgriCulture: The Push and the Pull
There is nothing linear about life, history or society. Nope, it’s all push and pull, fits and starts, up and down, step forward and step back. Former President Obama used to quote Martin Luther King Jr. to the effect that… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Away and Happily Home
On the rare occasion that I ever leave the farm for more than a day, my recurring fear is that something will happen that can’t be handled by whomever I’ve entrusted with its care, requiring me to abort my trip… Read More ›
AgriCulture: What Sheep Trolley Problem?
Last week after I pondered culling my two oldest ewes for the benefit of the rest of the flock, my friend Steve excitedly texted: “I love the sheep trolley problem…. But it doesn’t mean as much if you don’t really… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Stop the World, I Want to Get Off
On a cool but sunny late November day, I enjoy observing my flock of sheep dotting the pasture. On the whole, they look sleek, fat and healthy. But the two senior ewes, Nilufer (13 years old) and the unnamed number… Read More ›
AgriCulture: The Right Mann
When friends tell me I’m too old to be going up on ladders, I resist. When the storm windows have swelled over the summer with basement moisture, barely fitting in the window frames, I persist. Yet finally, when I reach… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Silver Linings
In the fog of a frosty fall morning, I trudge across white crusted grass, brushing past ice-laden mugwort leaning into the path, on my way to the barn. The milkiness of the air seems replicated somehow inside my brain, as… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Mushrooming Anxieties
Last night was one of those nights when I woke up at 5 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. On such occasions, which thankfully only occur every few weeks, my mind hums with the recollection of tasks undone. Counting… Read More ›