September 1st is like a gunshot start to a two-month-long harvest festival. The roadside stands fill up with pumpkins and mums, and wreaths of fall leaves and stars cover red farmhouse doors.
My own farm celebrates in subtler ways. Baskets of freshly dug potatoes wait in the kitchen, ready to be stored for the winter ahead. The garden is spitting out the season’s last tomatoes and squash, and in the next few weeks the soil will be turned over and prepared to rest.
Exactly 1.8 miles from my front door, the Stannard Farm stand is like having a farm-fresh mini-mart a bike ride away. They sell the farm’s own meat, eggs, and vegetables along with local cheeses and milk, all priced to move for locals.
Today a 20-pound crate of slightly overripe/bruised tomatoes is $5. Jackpot.
Ella behind the counter says even when the fruit is slightly past its prime it’s perfectly fine for sauces and canning. I tell her to hell with canning on the fly, I’ll make a pot of sauce and freeze it tonight. That homemade sauce, defrosted and poured thickly over pasta, will taste just as amazing as canned when the first snow falls.
I bet if you ask around your local farm stands and growers, they’ll sell you their overripes for a song as well. Worth a phone call, anyway. Think ahead a little and savor that sauce in advance. That’s what I say.
When I leave the farm astride Merlin, the sun is starting to yawn and the world is bathed in yellow light. My black horse’s feathered feet trot along the winding road and I close my eyes and take in a deep breath. These are the last deep breaths of summer. Soon the smells of cut grass, sweat, bug spray, and grilling meats from neighbor’s barbecues will be replaced by crisp inhalations of wood smoke and dead leaves.
I turn Merlin up the dirt road that leads us on a four-mile round trip through forest, field, and streamside. Back home there’s a loaf of wheat bread on its first rise in a Pyrex bowl and a stainless steel saucepan of raw goat’s milk turning into chèvre. I am getting only a half-gallon every 36 hours now, but it is enough to keep me in milk for my cereal and cheese. I think Bonita will be bred this month and so will my new goat Francis, purchased to keep Bonita company and double my milk production!
I mull all of this as the trail gets steeper, leaning forward as my horse climbs. The road levels out and I lean back. These motions are now as normal and thoughtless as putting on pants.
Merlin doesn’t want to climb the steepest part of the dirt road and I know him, and myself, well enough now to handle his fit. He stops and turns around to trot home and I tsk-tsk and smile. In a split-second I loosen my right rein, gently pull my left, and spin him in three circles until he stops on his own. I turn him uphill, offer my heel, and loosen the reins. He doesn’t budge, just turns back around to go to the farm. I spin him again and this time when we’re facing uphill I loosen the reins and kick at the same moment. When he balks again I use the over/under rope on his horn — it has a piece of rawhide on the end. I send a light flick back to his rump and he canters up the steep dirt slope.
He has learned, finally, that I am more stubborn than he is.
I spend most of the day in the kitchen. Outside it’s overcast, building for storms, but inside the house is thumping with good smells and work. I am canning strawberry jam and dill pickles with Cathy Daughton and her three boys, who have driven up from their stead in White Creek to help out and stay for dinner.
I have made plenty of jam in my day, but this is my first time making dill pickles in the water bath canner. I thank the people at Ball for a premixed dill pickle packet I picked up at the IGA for two dollars. I pour it into a saucepan with 6 cups of water and 2½ cups of white vinegar and bring it to a boil. We pour it over fresh-cut cucumber spears, seal the jars with the metal rings, and let them boil for fifteen minutes.
That’s it. Mix, boil, cover, seal, and can. And then of course, on some December night, devour.
It is chilly this morning, and the green grass on the hillside is tipped with cold dew. It’s not a frost, not by 20 degrees, but the 50-degree morning is a wakeup call. It’s only September. October will bring many mornings that start with a warm stove and nights that end with it, but during the day those fires will go out. Before you know it, though, stoking those stoves will become my real full-time job. My life will revolve around words and fire. A primitive and happy combination. Just as I like it.
Today I’m off to spend the day at the Merck Forest Sheepdog Trials. I will watch, help keep score if asked, and catch up with some old friends. It’s something I have missed dearly, the lessons and the excitement of the trials. The outdoor chores are done and coffee is on the stove, so all I need to do is put on a kilt and some rubber boots and hit the road with Gibson. Time to attend a sheepdog trial! Away to me!
Today is Merlin’s debut, his first time driving in public. We (Washington County Draft Animal Association) all meet at the Arlington Grange at 9:30 AM for a pancake breakfast before the ride. For six dollars we receive a heaping plate of blueberry pancakes, sausage, potatoes, and biscuits and gravy. We drink strong coffee and pour Vermont maple syrup over our flapjacks.
Patty and Steele and Merlin and me. Patty ties a sunflower and ribbons in Steele’s white tail and then smiles at me. “Now I have something to look at on the road.”
All around us horses are being groomed and fawned over, harness hames raised over heads and set on strong backs. I feel so proud to be a member of the club, so grateful for the blue skies and happy faces.
Steele looks magical and grand, his 1,800 pounds of muscle and energy, tipped with the sunflower, ready for an oil painting. Merlin has a single gray goose feather tied in his black mane. Before I know it, we are there among the big horses and wagons, awaiting our turn to join the parade.
“This is it, M,” I say, quietly so no one else can hear. “Do your best, be safe, know how much I love you, you big lug.” I ask him to walk, and he does as I ask, as I know he will. He is as smooth and calm as can be, just rolling along the river road. I feel like Gandalf in his pony cart. How did I get here? How the hell am I lucky enough to be out with a beautiful Celtic pony on a sunny autumn day in a smart-looking cart? I’m not a heavy load for a Fell pony, but I can’t imagine how he can haul that much gratitude for eight miles. It must weigh 20 stone, at least.
We ride along River Road for four miles, just Merlin and I. Then we fall in line a few carts behind Patty and Steele. Merlin’s crinkled tail swishes and his ears flick back and forth listening to the bells and trotting hooves all around us. I look across the river to Route 313, the road I took to work every weekday not long ago. It is busy, cars rushing at a clip our horses could never match. To watch that from a pony cart on a dirt road is pretty darn neat, and sobering — like reading an obituary of a life I once led.
When we take a break in a small field near the town of Arlington, I spot familiar faces — Phil Monahan and his daughter Claire. I invite Claire to ride back with Merlin and me and she literally jumps up and down. I have my first passenger, a second-grader.
We join the faster group for the ride back and make the four-mile trip home in about thirty minutes! Merlin is sweating now, but just. He is in the best shape of his life this summer, and it shows. Claire is great company and mighty brave. She helps me with Merlin’s tack afterward and gets water for his bucket.
With the teams back, the sun warm, and appetites awake, we head into the Grange to do what we members of the WCDAA do best: eat. We fill plates once again, this time with chowders and buttered bread, mac-n-cheese and meatballs, and all sorts of cakes and desserts. Everyone, passenger to teamster, seems thrilled with the event. Nothing went wrong, the weather is perfect, and the food as plentiful as heaven’s own rain.
No one who raises livestock can avoid predators. My mountain teems with foxes, hawks, opossums, raccoons, weasels, fishers, and coyotes. Of all these, it’s the fox I disdain the most. The others have the decency to come in the dark of night or at least act guilty. But the foxes are bold as brush strokes. They walk right up to a young free-range pullet in broad daylight while I’m hoeing in the garden nearby, and they’re leaping into the brush with it before I can move a muscle.
Which is why I love coyotes. The song dogs are my favorite of all the local carnivores. I love their yips and howls at midnight. I love their wit and proud stance in a field at sunset. Coyotes are large, thick-boned, and heavily coated around here, beautiful in a way only a predator in its prime can be. They are masters of adaptation and still wary of dogs and humans. No coyote has ever taken so much as a chick off this farm, probably because my animals live close to my house and the perimeter of my land is rank with the smell of domestic dog pee.
But what I love most is that when coyotes take over a territory, they make sure every fox is on the run, by chasing, killing, or threatening it out. So as I fall asleep to the song dogs’ chorus, I just smile. The sheep and the birds are safe, because the neighborhood watch is on duty.
This morning I am feeding the sheep near their shed and spreading straw inside for clean bedding (rain all day today so I want them comfortable inside) when I back into a paper wasps’ nest sneakily built in the interior walls.
The bad part: I am riddled with stings.
The good part: There is no good part. They are wasps.