November Hill farm journal, 200 (a winter solstice edition!)

 First, happy winter solstice! I’m so happy to see this day this year. For me it is more about the longest night than the returning of the light that follows. 

Wendell Berry wrote a poem about this longest night:

To Know The Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

I love the light but I also love the darkness, and its blooming and singing, the movement that happens there, the dark wings. 

This morning I ventured out early and fed the herd their warm wet tubs, and checked the troughs while they ate. 

This year Cody is in Keil Bay’s double stall, and I noticed he came in and hung his head over the doors into the barn aisle while I prepared the tubs, just as Keil Bay always did. 

I walked out to say happy solstice to the Big Bay and Salina, and their graves were quiet, peaceful, and blanketed with fallen leaves. It’s so peaceful there. The blue-eyed grass I planted is doing well. The new plants are still not here but when I put them in, it will be another moment of marking the passing of the Big Bay. 

In the front pasture the hollies are in full berry.

Yesterday my daughter took this photo which makes me very happy. The herd without Keil Bay is still a herd. He and Salina gallop the farm in their big bold spirits. 

Another favorite poem, this one by Robert Frost, which is the first poem I chose to learn to recite in the second grade, and which I’m sure I chose because of the little horse, who turned out to be a very big horse, red bay with a white star.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE!