November Hill farm journal, 6

They (the ancients) knew, as all honest people know in their bones, that in any true sense there is no such thing as ownership of the earth and that the shadow of any man is but for a time cast upon the grass of any field. What remains is the earth, the mother of life as the ancients personified the mystery, the ancient mother in her robes of green or harvest gold and the sickle in her hand.

-Henry Beston, Northern Farm

Today I worked in the back field, under the cloudy damp sky, wet but not raining. I mucked and set up the jumps the donkeys knock down on a regular basis, wondering when it might be that anyone actually sails over these poles and barrels again. But I like the possibility and so I set them back as they should be. On occasion I see a horse or a pony or even sometimes a little donkey free jumping these obstacles and my heart leaps with joy. It's worth it for that alone.

Today I had to clear branches from the fences where they were tangled in the tape. All the while I was working I heard a tiny bleating sound which I wondered about, cupping my ears to hear it better, never sure exactly what it was. My guess is a young animal in a nest. 

The area behind the back field is quickly becoming jungle-like again, as it does in the late spring and on into summer and fall. It's too late to do the work I wanted to do behind the fence line but fall and winter will roll back around again and I'll have another chance. Meanwhile the muscadines are growing like wildfire and carry my mind to fall when the grapes will be ready to eat.

It was satisfying to get things tidy: manure picked, fallen branches raked, chairs uprighted. The donkeys love tipping things over - jumps, chairs, dressage markers. If I am ever bored with nothing to do I will teach them how to set them right again.

I looked for tracks but found none. The horses and pony and donkeys were up in the barn, happy to get into stalls and eat hay even though it's cool today and they don't need the fans.

Mostly I enjoyed the physical work and the sense of completion of a task well done. The back field is private and quiet and when I'm there I feel as if I'm on the edge of things, a mysterious between-place where elves and trolls and November Hill deer live. 

Rain rain rain

Again!

What would I give for this day we had late last week when I was sitting at the end of the arena thinking it was a great day to ride?

The arena needs harrowing but look at that sky! It was perfect.

I just mucked stalls and cleaned water buckets and filled them and served hay in stalls while Keil Bay and Cody stood in the rain at the hay tent munching on a bale Keil pulled off the stack and to the front of the tent (over the locked gate). 

Ready for sunshine and dry ground.

Dinner Bell (no words needed)

November Hill farm journal, 5

The chromium millennium ahead of us, I gather, is going to be an age whose ideal is a fantastically unnatural human passivity. We are to spend our lives in cushioned easy chairs, growing indolent and heavy while intricate slave mechanisms do practically everything for us as we loll. 

-Henry Beston, Northern Farm

To get to the barn and the farm at large I must first pass through the well-guarded back gate:

Pippin extracts a belly rub from everyone who passes.

This week I have spent time raking fallen branches and twigs to the base of the trees from which they fell. We've had windy thunderstorms and the trees are shedding the weak and dead branches in much the same way the dogs and cats are shedding fur. The fallen wood mulches down fairly quickly and the larger pieces are good for kindling for the wood stove and also for my garden fencing project if I ever get to it.

While I rake I take any stones that have made their way to the surface and stack them by fence posts. At some point when I find holes I retrieve the stones again and use them for filler. Sometimes I think on a farm much of what I do is move things from one place to another and back again. Horse manure, compost, sticks and branches, stones. There is always too much of something that needs moving and then later is needed again. In a way these are chores of maintaining balance, which is probably why I don't mind doing them.

The vegetable garden is doing very well and with all the rain we haven't needed to water in weeks. We are eating big salads nearly every day and have enough rainbow chard and other greens to feed a small army. 

The various squash and pumpkin plants are blooming, the blueberry bushes are laden with tiny blue berries, and the garlic and onions are doing their thing too. The tomatoes and cucumbers are growing, and the herbs as well. Broccoli and cabbage are growing taller. I haven't yet looked to see if the heads are forming yet. 

I still have a few things to plant. Sunflower seeds, chamomile seeds, catnip, and I need to pot a Meyer lemon seedling and lemon grass to summer outside and come in each winter along with the house plants.

There is still some weed-eating to be done and fence maintenance. After this next rain moves through today and tomorrow it will be time to harrow the arena again. 

We also have a very young tulip poplar that volunteered at the edge of the vegetable garden. It has come back from the frost which killed all its leaves and needs to be transplanted to a more suitable location. We'll need to protect it from deer and equines but since we have lost two huge tulip poplars in the front field to marauding horses and donkeys I'm grateful for this young one that might grow and replace the foliage that gives us so much privacy each spring through fall.

This week I have been able to walk the farm and note what needs doing without going into a panic about how much there is to do and how far behind we tend to be. There are always things that pop up needing attention that pull us away from the ongoing work of keeping things in order. 

Again, the issue of too much and not enough and finding ways to balance it all so that what needs doing gets done, what can wait does, and sometimes the things I think need doing take care of themselves without any intervention at all on my part. That's the beauty and possibly the real lesson of living on a patch of land. It's alive and has its own mind and way of being. If you stop and pay attention, especially to the things you think you need to do but don't quite get to, you learn about how the earth and the animals, the wind and the rain, and the process of natural decay often do these chores for you. 

It's May on November Hill and it is so green and beautiful!

garden envy and some ducklings!

I was in Durham yesterday for an appointment and stopped by Duke Gardens to enjoy the afternoon. The gardens were a favorite spot when I worked at Duke and studied there, it's where my husband and I got married, and it became a favorite family destination for years when we lived in Durham. We try to visit several times a year. It's a gorgeous place.

Yesterday we bought some lunch and ate it by the duck pond. The ducks, swans, and turtles were all clustered nearby and I ended up with a duck friend who came within inches and then settled down in arms' reach for a nap. The two swans came on the shore a few feet from me to groom. It was lovely. I took photos of all of them but this is one of my favorites:

There were two duck families on the pond but these were the younger ducklings. They were quite independent and giving their mama a hard time. They all hopped up on this rock and stayed there, even when she swam a little away and called to them to join her. She had to come back and just hang out with them. Then one of the ducklings took off on his/her own and mama had to keep an eye on the brood while going after the wanderer. Minutes later they all hopped off into the water in different directions. I can't imagine! It was so much fun to watch them.

Later we wandered to the formal gardens and I literally shrieked with delight. The foxgloves and allium are all at peak bloom and were simply gorgeous. 

This photo doesn't do justice to how lush and beautiful it is there right now. Sometimes I wish I had time to create a formal or cottage garden and keep it manicured to look like this. As it is, I have beautiful things growing and blooming but there are grape vines threading through the roses, weeds in the beds, and nothing looks as lovely as it could if I were out there keeping it up. Sigh. 

But thankfully I can visit Duke Gardens and enjoy the fruits of others' labor!

My husband and I got married in the pergola some 21 years ago. At that time it was totally covered in wisteria and remained that way until last year when they removed the wisteria vines. I wish I'd taken a shot yesterday of the long walk up the middle aisle through all these terraced beds that my dad and I took during the wedding march. It was a glorious place to have a wedding and I love that we can visit whenever we want.

It's odd to see the pergola so bare but I see they have something (maybe the same wisteria?) climbing up already. It won't take long to cover the structure again.

This morning I looked out at the red roses and the tiny white primroses and several goldfinches flew into the garden to add their color. There are purple irises and even with the weeds it was pretty spectacular. A few hours of weeding, a load of mulch, and maybe I can get the November Hill gardens in shape.