Every Cubic Inch of Space
Why, who makes much of miracles? As to me, I know nothing else but miracles… To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the...
View ArticleA Kindly and Homely Month
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October. The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered...
View ArticleShine Through
Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. ~Jane Kenyon, “Let Evening Come“
View ArticleTorn By Twine
My hands are torn by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced by my ulcer, not a lance. ~Hayden Carruth from “Emergency Haying” Miles of twine encircle tons of hay in our barn, daily loosed...
View ArticleFarm Rhythms and Seasons
photo by Lea Gibson When I pull open the barn doors, every morning and each evening, as my grandfathers did one hundred years ago, seven rumbling voices rise in greeting. We exchange scents, nuzzle...
View ArticleImperishable Bliss
But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss. ~Wallace Stevens from “Sunday Morning” Earthly contentment~ whether a full stomach or adequate bank account or a covering of snow~...
View ArticleA Light in the Barn
The floor was mouse-grey, smooth, chilly concrete. There were no windows, just two narrow shafts Of gilded motes, crossing, from air-holes slit High in each gable. The one door meant no draughts...
View ArticleFade Into Glooms
I love at eventide to walk alone Down narrow lanes o’erhung with dewy thorn… Right glad to meet the evening’s dewy veil And see the light fade into glooms around. ~John Clare from “Summer Moods”
View ArticleAnd I Knew…
photo by Josh Scholten Blue poured into summer blue, A hawk broke from his cloudless tower, The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew That part of my life was over. Already the iron door of the north...
View ArticleSo Much Alike
It rained all weekend, but today the peaked roofs are as dusty and warm as the backs of old donkeys tied in the sun. So much alike are our houses, our lives. Under every eave— leaf, cobweb, and...
View ArticleEvery Every Minute
Happy Thanksgiving from our farm to yours…. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in...
View ArticleLonely Light
our first snowfall of the season just started Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the...
View ArticleCelebrating His Arrival: From Gloom to Hope
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt...
View ArticlePrepare for Joy: Blown Away
It has been a relatively warm wet week in the northwest, so it seemed reasonable after finishing up farm chores last night to leave the large rolling north-south doors wide open in the barn where the...
View ArticleA Case of the Dwindles
“Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.” Emily Dickinson I’m finally adjusted to our children being grown and away from home: I no longer instinctively grab too many plates and utensils when setting...
View ArticleA Message to the Future
And this is where we went, I thought, Now here, now there, upon the grass Some forty years ago. The days being short now, simply I had come To gaze and look and stare upon The thought of that once...
View ArticleA Fence Post
If you stand here you can see the barn. You can see it from every point on these two hundred acres, but this spot is the closest. Here’s a fence post–use your imagination– that used to be a corner...
View ArticleHappy Hills of Hay
Through all the pleasant meadow-side The grass grew shoulder-high, Till the shining scythes went far and wide And cut it down to dry. Those green and sweetly smelling crops They led the waggons...
View ArticleFarmers for an Evening
Every hay crew is the same though the names change; young men flexing their muscles, a seasoned farmer defying his age tossing four bales high, determined girls bucking up on the wagon, young children...
View ArticleTangled Threads
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors which it passes to a row of ancient trees. You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth....
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