Coping with the farm

This week, I sprayed a witches’ brew of toxic chemicals all over our fruit trees: eight peach, eight apples, three plums, two cherries, two persimmon. I’ll be doing this every ten to fourteen [...]

(If you need to read the preamble to the follow-up, or the reason why a follow-up is necessary, go ahead.) After struggling with the History of the Entire World for the last ten years, I’ve [...]

In my post about best-laid plans, I said I was contemplating some new directions for my next writing project…and planning some other things as well. Before I tell you about those [...]

So after a much warmer winter than last year’s, we got to February 20 without anything really sticking. Even last weekend’s unexpected snowshower fell, and went, in the same hours. [...]

It’s a gorgeous morning. Clear blue sky, breeze. And a whole lot of branches on the ground. Here at the farm, we’re in pretty good shape. Thanks to the heroic efforts of our farm [...]

It’s 7:30 as I type this and too dark for any more pictures, but the wind is far worse than it has been; it has that freight-train sound which is even more alarming in the dark. Supposed to [...]

Just starting to get a little wilder here….click on the link. Irene, 1-30 PM

We’re restocking our flock of layers this year, and the baby chicks arrived in the mail this morning. They were hatched on Friday in Iowa, packed into a cardboard box on Saturday morning, [...]

Rain is coming tonight and the leaves will fall. But here’s how the farm looks this morning…. the back of the farmhouse, looking towards the old barn, the sugar maples west of the [...]

In the middle of preparing lectures and spelling out writing lessons and elucidating grammar lessons and working on the History of the Renaissance World…the rest of life revolves on. [...]