“Life meanders like a path
through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves
fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
― Katherine
May, Wintering: The
Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
In our first 9 years we only missed a handful of weekly updates. That is 😉 = ((9×52)-handful). In the 10th year and through the first ¾ of COVID times we managed to share farm news roughly monthly. But now, a whole quarter of a year since we reached out! It isn’t that there aren’t stories to share or things you need to know. It is more akin to what we’ve been seeing across the landscape.
Snow makes it seem like everything is quiet, frozen in time. But really snow just buries and blankets over a whole bunch of scurrying. As the snow melts one sees evidence of industrious tunneling everywhere.
Laura and I feel we kind of just went subnivean, scurrying through a busy winter without full time staff and when the cold nights went dark and long, we wintered. And thank goodness On Being’s podcast, with Katherine May, came in time for us to embrace the giving in, allowing Winter to replenish.
This week however, rapid onset Spring is melting our snow pack fast.
Winter greens are bursting and bolting and the hoop houses are open trying to help the shoulder season starts not suffer from this heat wave.
And weasel’s recent attacks have led us to dig out the hen wagon and suddenly, hens are out on “pasture”. Speaking of old newsletters, a search of “weasel” on our website reveals many an entry… 5 of the gems can be enjoyed via these links where weasels weave into the weekly updates (Loving What is Plentiful, Head Over Heels, Scramble of Restoration Ag, Nov in Photos, Teachers).
Where had we left off dear readers?! Yes, Dosa!
The prime subject of the pre-Thanksgiving update continues to be big news as Dosa gears up to apply her instinct and hard won learning to help protect poultry from predators. Teaming up with Uno and the farm cats Cabo and Tome of course.
And a team is what is required. While the four legged mates deter wildlife, Donna continues to be our packing wizard. After assembling your GrazeCart orders she transforms her farmshare into delights, sharing them via Instagram. We love that her ordinary affable exchanges in the farmstand, coaching many of us on cooking techniques, regaling all with recipe tweaks, etc. wasn’t lost to the closed farmstand but instead just shared in a new way!
https://www.instagram.com/donnafarleyvt/
And together with Hannah we are bustling to get the next generation of greens established in this false Spring (let’s face it, it snowed half the days in May last year) and we are advancing our “bridge” partnership with Field Stone Farm. Some look for economies of scale, we are more compelled by alchemy via collaboration. Could the prize of Hannah finding Tiggles with her newborn piglets be a down payment of thanks and such a fruitful partnership?