The cat on the lawn lives here. They grow corn. And hay. Plus some veggies. It’s a lovely place.
There used to be many more working farms around here, but the farming families have grown old. Their children don’t want to work that hard. Who can blame them? Farming anywhere is a difficult life, but in New England?
I love this region and this valley, but it’s hard to figure why anyone would choose to farm here. We have terrible soil, if you can call it soil. It’s all roots and rocks.
The “New England Stone Fence” … those scenic stacked rock walls you can find just about everywhere were not built for some special mystical reason. It was just something to do with all the rocks farmers had to take out of the fields so they could actually plow the ground.
A stone fence along a country road.
What thrives here? Apples. Dairy cattle. Horses. Short growing season crops like tomatoes and cucumbers and a particular kind of corn, called locally “butter and sugar” because it’s yellow and white, and sweet as sugar. This is the time of year when you can find it in the local grocery stores. It will be gone in another week or two.
Most of our local farms are organic … sometimes too organic for my taste. I like my milk homogenized and my eggs unfertilized. It may not be politically correct, but I can’t help it. I’m me, un-PC and all.
The farm is lovely and the farmer is a friendly guy, but he’s getting old. When he’s gone, the fields will become sub-divisions, if property values rise even a little bit. Otherwise, as is happening all over the valley, the fields will go back to woods and stream.
Cat on the lawn.
This is one of the few places in the country where wild life is returning. Animals that have been gone from this region for as long as a century are coming back. Fishers (also known as fisher cats, though they are weasels and closely related to mink, not cats of any kind), coyotes, bobcats and now, bears too. Deer are everywhere and moose can’t be far behind. Racoon and skunk, out-of-control chipmunks … we’ve got it all.
Stone fences are great homes for snakes and rodents, but when they meet, the snake usually wins.
The eagles are back, too. We have a nesting pair of American Eagles in our woods.
We had rabbits and squirrels, but the bobcats ate them. Almost all of them. That’s okay. They will be back, but then, so will the bobcats. The circle of life is in our yard.
That house would be a treasure load of photographic opportunity for me. THe windows and that back door could make very unique frames for composites with other scenic photos. Free custom frames!
It’s wonderful to have the farms in our valley and the folks who work the soil (such as it is) along with their animals who are usually unassuming and friendly. I agree that time is running out on these neighbors and we should enjoy them and their offerings while we can.
I’ll trade you, any time, a bucket of Texas Hill Country soil (hard-packed, limestoney, and peppered with fire ants, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, and BIG rocks) for a bucket of New England soil (rich, dark, and old). Unfortunately the early Texans lacked the foresight to build stone walls to the extent New Englanders did. We have stone houses, yes. But setting septic tanks into the yards surrounding those stone houses is a task way beyond its equivalent back east. Much of the earth here has NEVER been turned.
Hardscrabble is hardscrabble. Many parts of North Carolina are like that too. I actually had trouble putting down teepee pegs. There are hardly any places on our acreage that isn’t full of rocks. But then again, we live on ledge.
These are wonderful! I am so glad to be following you. . .I did not see the cat on the lawn in the first picture:>(
It’s a beautiful farm, and the cat still lives there. I miss having cats. Not enough to get another one, though. Four dogs are enough wildlife.