Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm

Anytime I’m near a honeybee hive, I linger. I can’t seem to help it. Even though my “to do” list is as long as any honeybee’s, I just stand there and gawk. Perhaps it’s the 40 years I’ve spent managing construction sites that has me so enamored. There is no one in charge of the hive, but everything gets done. There are no bees leaning on shovels, drinking coffee, or chatting on their cell phones....

I was thinking, that if I was ever told I only had one hour to live, but I could spend it doing anything I wanted, I’d choose stacking 400 bales of hay in our hay loft, on a 97-degree day – because that hour would last an eternity. Normally we wait until the weather turns cooler to get the hay in, but we were worried that the price is going to skyrocket again this year, so we went ahead and ordere...

When our sheep first started grazing at Hill-Stead, the pasture consisted of multiflora rose, a few saplings and poison ivy. The brambles were so dense the sheep’s wool would frequently get hopelessly tangled up in the thorns and they’d be completely unable to extricate themselves. I’d rescue them by cutting one thorny branch at a time until they were finally able to yank themselves free – inevita...

Early one morning, I found a Green Darner Dragonfly in our pasture. She had beads of dew still visible on her enormous gray eyes. I was completely mesmerized. We stared at each other, and I imagined that each of her 28,000 individual lenses were focused on me. I wondered what she was thinking. Was she as smitten with me as I was with her? Was she contemplating if I was a threat, or just considerin...

It’s probably best, this time of year, to refrain from complaining about how busy you are to any livestock farmer you might meet – unless of course, you yourself are a livestock farmer – or a bird trying to raise a brood here in New England. I too, try not to whine, at least not out loud, as I rush about my day, trying to get everything done that needs to get done to keep our brand new chicks, lam...

Yesterday, I found a woodcock roosting in the brushy edge of our sheep pasture. It’s been years since I’ve seen one there. We used to hear them every spring as kids, but they lost their favorite field several years ago, and they’ve been slow to return. They are quite particular about where they choose to spend the summer, so I am very pleased we made the grade. They need brushy pastures for roosti...

We have been weaning our bottle-fed lambs, which is a long, loud, and annoying process. We have them in the pasture closest to our house so we can keep an eye on them and make sure they are making the transition okay. The lambs happily go about their independent lives until they hear our voices, or see us walking by, then the bellowing and the hoof stamping begins. They clearly have no intention o...

The poem begins “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”- but really, it’s springtime where hope truly dwells. · A pregnant ewe heading to the barn, looking for a quiet place to lamb. · A handful of seeds scattered in the wind - searching for fertile ground. · A honeybee coming out of our empty hive, perhaps scouting it out before a swarm. · A broody hen sitting on her nest, threatening me whene...

Despite my very best efforts to get out of it, last week I found myself talking to a large group of third graders about “Sustainable Farming.” I was pleasantly surprised by how well it went, but then again, my expectations had been rock bottom. When I asked the kids what sustainable meant to them, one boy said, “It’s having a nice place to live.” I agreed and said “Yes, in a way it is. I think tha...

Everything I know about fashion I learned from my mom. She wasn’t a stickler for rules, and she was really good at letting us find our own way, but I can still hear her voice gently guiding me, “the seams go on the inside, and the tags belong in the back.” To this day I do my best to heed her advice, but I’m a farmer, I wake up before dawn and when I get dressed in the dark, I figure I have a 50/5...

This past week has felt like a reunion of long-lost friends. Our bluebirds moved back into the nesting box outside our dining room window, and yesterday, I watched as they defended their nest from a starling. My first impulse was to go help them, but as much as they may look like helpless eye-candy, they both very aggressively and successfully defended their nest. I cheered as the starling left, a...

Our local honeybee population is gearing up for the summer, and we are ready for them! We cleaned out our swarm boxes - evicting all the ants, spiders and mice that had moved in over the winter, and we rubbed the inside of each box with various attractants in hopes of catching a swarm. A healthy honeybee colony, with a summertime population of 50,000 bees, will winter over with only 15,000 workers...

When my mom was a child, there were cows and pigs on our property and chicken coops, and barns to explore. But by the time she and my dad built their house “in the cow pasture between the brook and the cedars” - and filled it with five kids, the cows were long gone. I think with all of us in tow, my dad figured that he had more than enough livestock to care for, and there was no need to add to the...

Life to me is like a dinner party that I don’t ever want to end. Everyone I have ever cared about is seated at the table next to me. I am surrounded with friendship and immersed in love. The food is phenomenal (all grown locally and sustainably of course.) The beeswax candle on the table flickers, and smells divine, but it never melts. A gentle fire crackles in the fireplace nearby. A nostalgic pl...

We had several lambs born this week. Most of them are very healthy and full of beans, but as always, we have a couple whose commitment to staying alive is dubious at best. I had a vet tell me once, “sheep are born looking for a way to die.” At the time I thought he was terribly cynical, but sometimes I think he might be right. As wonderful as newborn lambs are – there is an inordinate amount of st...

The most wonderful sound in the whole wide world is, without a doubt, the evening song of the Wood Thrush. The mesmerizing flute-like notes carry and echo across the ridge and weave their way in and out of the forest’s edge. The sound is soulful, somewhat haunting and deeply magical. When I hear it, I know I’m home and that no matter what else is going on beyond my forested retreat- at this moment...

In an attempt to protect their monopoly on the wool industry, England tried hard to discourage one from ever taking hold in its American colonies. To that end, the exporting of sheep to America was expressly forbidden, but by 1655, a few smuggled sheep had multiplied to 10,000. Oops! I’m not sure what I find more amusing; that colonial sheep smuggling was actually a thing or that breeding sheep be...

When I was in my twenties a scuba diving accident landed me in the hospital for ten days. I was living in California, and though I didn’t have any family nearby I had a lot of friends. They all rallied around and visited me often and while most of them made a concerted effort to cheer me up, what I remember best was my friend Jules. She was taking an art class at a local community college and woul...

When we open up the sugar house in the morning, there’s often just the sound of the frozen ground crunching beneath our feet, the singing of a few early morning birds, and perhaps an intermittent drip of sap dropping into an empty sap bucket. As the day progresses, though, the trees warm up and the sap really begins to flow. The warmer it gets the faster it flows, and by mid-day the trees surround...

We tapped our sugar maples this week, and that to me is the beginning of spring. The sap will run as long as the temperatures are below freezing at night and well above freezing during the day. The “sugaring” season usually lasts about 6 weeks, or until the trees start to bud. Maple Syrup was a dietary staple for the Native Americans that lived in New England. When little else was available in ear...

Luckily for me, the joy of spring is wrapped up in its anticipation. If I woke up one morning to a garden in full bloom, I’d be thrilled and in awe, but I’d acclimate, and the novelty would quickly fade. Spring for me is like a wonderfully drawn out, well-crafted love story. And like any great courtship, there is allure and longing - and impatience bordering on despair. The daytime temperatures th...

As Christianity spread half a world away, a new way of life was also taking hold here in New England. About two thousand years ago, the cultivation of corn – though curiously slow to catch on, was transforming how the woodland tribes lived and related to their environment – and to each other. For several thousand years, the tribes that called New England home had lived as hunter gatherers. Surviva...

Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder why I keep farming. A couple years ago, we bought hay from a farmer whose family has been farming the same land for a hundred and fifty years or so. He said jokingly “I have come to the realization that I’m not a farmer anymore, technically, I’m now a pet food manufacturer. You are the only one buying my hay for livestock - everyone else is either feeding pet...

After my dad passed away, two of his friends clearly felt an obligation to keep an eye on me and my various endeavors. “Uncle” John had been an engineer with my father at Hamilton Standard, and a lifelong friend. He made a point of stopping by to monitor Anne’s and my home building progress - which admittedly took forever. We only worked on our house nights, weekends, and in between other building...

The 6.1 magnitude earthquake that hit Los Angeles early one morning in October 1987 literally rocked my world and my whole sense of security within it. It was the first time I had experienced nature as something to be afraid of – before then it had always been a good friend. A friend I thought I knew. The noise of the earthquake was in itself terrifying, as it roared like a freight train passing u...