Earth Day 2010, Mending Fences, Muskrats, Dogs and Daffodils....

I remember very well the very first Earth Day in 1970. We attended the events held at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh on a beautiful, sunny Spring day. We were newly married just six months previously and we had not yet given serious thought to the "Back To The Land Movement" that was to be the impetus for the search for, and ultimate purchase, of our farm. All of that was still off in the future for us. But, in retrospect, those first Earth Day events held 40 years ago, were really the catalyst for the shape our lives would ultimately take. I like to think that many others' lives were changed by the new awareness of Earth and our environment that was birthed that year.

There was much clean-up to do this spring on the farm. One of the first big chores was to remove the 30-year-old post and rail fence that the heavy snows this winter had literally turned to toothpicks. Art asked me how badly I wanted him to repair that old stretch of fence that had no purpose other than aesthetics. I caved in and told him that we didn't need to continue to maintain things that had outlived their purpose just for the sake of rustic charm. So, with the welcome help of our brother Hank and our trusty Stihl chainsaw, we removed about 100 feet of fencing. We saved the salvageable posts and rails for 'parts' and cut the rest into firewood, and the job was completed in short order. We realize we are not getting younger so we now think in terms that human energy spent on maintaining everything could be conserved and expended on maintaining the more necessary things. It required a lot of mowing and trimming around those fence posts. After every hay crop was removed that lovely-looking fenceline required weed-whacking, a tiring, dirty, sneezy job. You know, I thought I would miss the view of that silvery-grey fence that for over 30 years marked the edge of the hayfield above our barn. But the eye gets used to what is in 'the now' and the brain forgets how things used to be.......and this is progress!

Our newest tractor, the John Deere 4720, is a 4-wheel drive workhorse that enables us to maintain our farm, which is really a mini-municipality! We have our own water system, sewage system and road system of paved, gravel and dirt roads that lead to all the fields on the property. All of the roads require regular maintenance as they are subject to washing from heavy rains and snow melt. They all have ditches for water runoff that regularly get clogged with leaves, sticks and gravel debris. Our 4720's high-lift bucket is put into service to keep the ditches clear, and we use the wide blade that fits on the rear of the tractor to taper and level the roadways before spreading fresh stone and gravel. We also use the tractor to pull a heavy water-filled roller that presses down the rock and gravel, compacting and hardening the roadbeds. We had a good many downed tree limbs to clean up this spring and the high lift was perfect for carrying the tree sections up to the woodshed, where we cut them up and stacked them to age the firewood, which we will later use to heat our home.

Another big job this spring, which seems to be ongoing at this point, is Art's war on the Muskrats that have invaded our lake. We hate to kill anything and only resort to trapping when nothing else works. Even so, trapping Muskrats is tricky and cruel. Muskrats ruin dams and destroy valuable water empoundments. Our newest plan for Muskrat control is to fill the holes they dig into the sides of our lakeshore with large stones. This is a huge undertaking, as the lake is 1/4 mile in diameter; over 1500 feet of shoreline! Every day we find new holes. We gather large rocks and dump them over the holes. The Muskrats then dig more holes in new places. We then gather more rocks and repeat the process. I anticipate that by summers' end, we will have hauled enough rock to completely cover the shoreline of the lake. Eventually I know that Arthur will win this war because he always accomplishes what he sets out to do, one way or another. He is a Taurus. He has that kind of patience.





So far we've planted Vidalia onion plants and 3 types of garlic. Soil testing revealed that our organic garden needed a 40 pound dose of bone meal to raise the phosphorous level this spring. It is a messy, dusty job to apply the bone meal to the soil using a very scientific method of application........broadcasting it by the handful and then rototilling it in with the help of the BSA 720, a workhorse of another color!


So, here at Jolico Farm, every day is Earth Day. That's what farmers do.....take care of the earth. Millions of Americans who didn’t know what “the environment” was in 1969 discovered in 1970 that they were environmentalists. Millions of people make choices about lifestyles, diet, housing, automobiles, and even the number of children they have because of thinking that began at an Earth Day program. The Earth Day philosophy must welcome those who are just beginning to recycle as well as those involved in the pursuit of ambitious environmental goals. I believe that it is up to every single human being living on Mother Earth to love her and tread softly upon her, keep her clean, and know that we each have an impact and we each leave a footprint. We can't all be involved in writing legislation involving the environment, but we can use our votes by electing officials who have a green conscience. When I see trash on the roadsides, illegal dumping, polluted streams, belching smokestacks, wastefulness, unnecessary packaging of products, people who don't recycle and reuse.....it makes me sad. I try every day to set an example for others, to spread the word, to educate, to spread enlightenment. Won't you help me? Together we could do so very much more.........Thanks!

Spring!……proof there is life after death.

I sit high on the hill above the farm, my dog at my feet, the windmill at my back pumping away in the warm breeze. I commune with my late father, whose ashes I scattered on this spot almost 25 years ago. I was his ‘oldest buddy’ and we adored each other. He was the smartest man I have ever known. He never once let me down. He didn't call me his ‘best’ buddy, as he had 5 other children and he loved us all. However, I was his oldest child and, therefore, his ‘oldest buddy’. We relied on each other. My mother died when I was an infant, leaving just the two of us. He took me to work with him, and by the age of four I knew the name and purpose of every tool in his workshop and would hand him what he asked with the precision of a surgical technician. He taught me to drive a car when I was nine, though we never told anybody about that…..it was our secret. We both loved dogs and it was to him I brought the strays I rescued over the years, knowing my (step)mother would never let me keep them...but he would overrule her.

So it was I, his oldest buddy, who tended to him in his last years when nobody else came around because of his short temper and cutting words...brought on by the constant pain he suffered. Even so, he was ever loving, appreciative and kind to me. He always commented on how good I smelled to him whenever I hugged him tightly. We would go out for lunch and I would drive; he would direct our procession as we stopped here and there to do his small errands. Toward the end of his days, he would sit in the car and leisurely watch the people while I would pick up his groceries or medications, or the beer he enjoyed icy cold.

I think about my father as I sit on the high hill, where I will have his essence for company, his wisdom to support me and his spirit to protect me for the rest of my days. It is in this way he returns to life for me, like the miracle of Spring, which always returns after the dead of Winter.

February, the dead of winter.........

Asleep, anesthetized, barren, buried, cold, cut off, deadened, dormant, frigid, inactive, inanimate, inert, inoperable, lifeless, lost, numbed, paralyzed, senseless, spent, spiritless, sterile, still, tired, unresponsive, unanimated, vanished, wasted, wearied, worn out, winter......

This has been an especially hard winter here in northeastern America. The burning, numbing, eye-watering cold has combined with virtually unremitting snowfall to suppress spirits, break machinery and kill the weak, the old and the ill. We have lost several cherished pets over the years during this heartless month, when graves cannot even be dug in the frozen earth.

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character....Would you slow down? Or speed up?" ~ Chuck Palahniuk.

Ask me this question in February and I am apt to choose the speedy costume change; but do not suppose that I am depressed. In so many ways I enjoy the solitude of being housebound. In early winter I anticipate the quietude of day after week of enforced rest. In Spring, Summer and Fall, I plan many diversionary wintertime projects to keep myself happily occupied. I like to cook and bake and make big cauldrons of nourishing soups for us, for friends, and for the freezer. I choose good-weather days to restock my pantry, darting from house, to car, to stores, and scurry back home again. I take my vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin!). I wait for spring. I nest. I hole up. I look out of the windows a lot. I dress warmly for my daily trek to the barn to feed the cats, and every few hours I go out to shovel away the snow from my doors. If I can keep some semblance of order in my life, the cold death of winter cannot come for me in February.

However, FOUR blizzards in one month are mentally and physically HARD to deal with. I cannot even find words to describe the last few weeks, as they have run together endlessly. So I will just share some of my favorite recent photos.....

Art doing some X-Country skiing. Winter always starts out fun!!

Mo enjoys an invigorating run. It's so beautiful outdoors and it's fun to play in the fresh snow!!

Whoa! Nor'easter dumps 31" of heavy, wet snow on 2/5 and 2/6/10. Gotta get down to the shed, fire up the big John Deere and blower and clear this mess up!

It took all day and proved too much for our old snowblower, but between shoveling, plowing, blowing and pushing, we finally got the driveway and lanes opened up to the barn.

We are cleaned up and ready for the next one!
Take a picture of us, Mom!!

New snowblower, an MK Martin Meteor made in Canada, delivered on 2/12/10. We're ready for the next blizzard...............
Bring it on, Mother Nature!!

Wow, we were just kidding around, Mother Nature!!! Can you make it stop now? It's 2/16/10 and our fences are now almost buried under 50" of snow that fell over the past 12 days.

By 2/19/10 our back roof is holding over 5' of heavy snow and another Nor'easter is predicted. We don't want to stress this roof any further, so the two of us climb out there and proceed to shovel the roof clear of approximately 22,000 pounds of snow.

The snow continues, unabated. Icicles obstruct our views. The wind howls and deep drifts form, making travel barely possible. This is our new paradigm. Nothing melts. The snow just grows deeper. We are becoming entombed. We haven't seen the sun in over 3 weeks. We discuss climate change and El Nino. We decide that, though we're much better equipped mechanically to handle severe storms than we were years ago, we are older now. And we lament that we are not as physically strong as we were when we were young. We are amazed at our resiliency. We pat ourselves on the back and keep on shoveling. We discover that by some perverse miracle, shoveling snow actually makes our aching backs feel better.

Another week of snowfall. Every day it seems we get another 4-6" of fresh powder. We have lost track of the measurements and are simply awed by the sheer dimensions of so much snow.

Meteorologists called it a Snowicane - is that even a word? On 2/25/10 we have high winds, blowing and drifting snow, and finally our roads are narrowed to one lane and are drifting shut. Winds gust over 60 miles per hour. Now we are truly isolated. We are officially 'snowed in'. The county's snowplowing protocol goes into blizzard mode. The plows only clear the main arteries and snow emergency routes now. The secondary and back roads are cast adrift until the storm abates. Nothing moves on the road except for an occasional snowmobile and it is very quiet when the wind finally stops howling.

We heat our home with wood, and we've made some big withdrawals this month from our wood stockpile. We have burned 6-7 cords so far, but there's plenty left to finish out the winter.

Mo continues to enjoy all the snow, proving it's great to live a dog's life at Jolico Farm! He doesn't miss an opportunity to accompany us outdoors and he has added a new word to his vocabulary. The command, "DIG IT, MO", sends him digging into a snowbank to loosen the packed snow so I can shovel it away.


So, when all is said and done, there is always the beauty of last summer's geraniums, blooming anew in the back mud room, getting a jump on Spring. They are proof positive that there is life after the dead of winter.......... if we can just survive the month of February.

The Winter of 2010.....

Scientists knew last summer that this was going to be an El Nino year. But it wasn't until winter set in that its effects really hit the United States. Turns out it's not just a run of bad luck. What's behind a lot of this winter's weather is El Nino, the tropical weather pattern that starts in the Pacific. Major snowstorms are set to bury the mid-Atlantic states this weekend after record snowfalls in December. Last month California was awash in rain. The Gulf states have seen heavy weather lately as well.

So, why didn't somebody tell me?? Why didn't I know about this?? I am a weather watcher (as well as an animal tracker and nature being). I read and listen to all things weather-related. Why didn't I hear about this until now?? I can only assume it was a well kept secret or a subject so low down on the news radar that it failed to make us sit up and take notice until the winter was well upon us. Of course, my higher self knew we were in for a beating this winter, based on the cool, damp, blight-ridden Summer-That-Wasn't of 2009 - but my analog human mind just didn't want to believe all the signs that were, in hindsight, so patently clear.

But life goes on despite the season, or maybe even because of the season. The 2010 Swearing-In ceremony of the Sipesville Volunteer Fire Dept was held on schedule on January 9th. Art was honored, as always, to administer the oath of office to the company's officers. These are all-volunteer responders to structure and vehicle fires, forest and brush fires, Haz-Mat calls, vehicle accidents, storm damage calls. They provide traffic control during emergencies, staging for medical helicopter evacuations, they pump out basements during flooding......you name the disaster and these men and women are the very first responders on the scene with their presence and equipment, training, knowledge and bravery. I have been writing grants for this department for the last 6-7 years under the US Assistance to Firefighters program and have been lucky to have been able to obtain new firefighting and crash and rescue equipment for them, including in 2008, a new 4 wheel drive brush/attack truck which they put into service in early 2009. They are currently awaiting word on the 2009/2010 grant request for a new tanker truck to replace their 1978 tanker which must be retired this year, as it is no longer safe to use on calls. A second grant was also submitted for a CAF foam system for use on two of their vehicles. Both of these grants were written last May and there has been no word yet on whether they will be awarded, so we remain hopeful. I was thrilled when they honored me at last year's banquet by naming me an honorary member of the department!

On January 23rd we attended a wonderful dinner with Art's co-workers at Helen's Restaurant at 7-Springs Resort. This is their traditional holiday dinner that is always held about a month after the holidays! Actually, it is a much better time to get together as everybody is always too busy during the holidays to go to another holiday party! The food was wonderfully decadent and Helen's, situated in a balconied ski lodge provided an elegant ambiance for a festive and fun dinner party for ten of us.

Cat grass salad that Kitty, Mo and Mimi like to eat this time of year!

Kitty Cook - around 10 years old now.

When it's so cold, even Mo doesn't want to go out!

Snow sure is getting deep!
Here we go again....what number blizzard is this?

I love this Will Barnet print! It so depicts our menagerie and was a gift from Mimi's mom, Muff, many years ago. Muff just had rotator cuff surgery yesterday after a bad fall on the ice a couple of weeks ago. She's hurting and she's nauseous from the pain medicine right now. Mimi is staying here with us and she and Moses are having a blast together! Right now both dogs are stretched out and sleeping on separate couches in the living room, no doubt due to having expended lots of energy playing all day long, and maybe due in some part to this huge low pressure system that is burying us in snow again. Art is on call this weekend and I pray it stays quiet for his sake. I also pray the internet remains functional as it enables him to do video arraignments from home rather than having to drive to his office as had once been the norm.

A quick update on Groucho the Cat! We found her a wonderful home with Loni, a first-time cat owner, who promptly changed Groucho's name to Peppermint Patty! Good luck and lots of love to Loni and "Patty" in their new, long and loving life together.

Healing prayers go out to Muff, Floy McClintock, Don Brougher, and of course, all the people of Haiti who are daily in our thoughts and prayers, as well as to all people and creatures who are sick, hurting and downtrodden.

A touching poem to share...

At the Vet's
by Maura Stanton

The German shepherd can't lift his hindquarters
off the tiled floor. His middle-aged owner
heaves his dog over his shoulder, and soon
two sad voices drift from the exam room
discussing heart failure, kidneys, and old age
while a rushing woman pants into the office
grasping a terrier with trembling legs
she found abandoned in a drainage ditch.
It's been abused, she says, and sits down,
The terrier curled in her lap, quaking
as the memory of something bad returns and returns.
She strokes its ears, whispering endearments
while my two cats, here for routine checkups,
peer through the mesh of their old green carrier,
the smell of fear so strong on their damp fur
I taste it as I breathe. Soon the woman,
Like the receptionist with her pen in mid-air,
Is listening, too, hushed by the duet
swelling in volume now, the vet's soprano
counterpointed by the owner's baritone
as he pleads with her to give him hope, the vet
trying to be kind, rephrasing the truth
over and over until it becomes a lie
they both pretend to accept. The act's over.
His dog's to stay behind for ultrasound
and kidney tests, and the man, his face
whipped by grief as if he were caught in a wind,
hurries past us and out the front door,
leaving the audience—cats, terrier, people—
sunk in their places, too stunned to applaud.

"At the Vet's" by Maura Stanton, from Immortal Sofa. © University of Illinois Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission by The Writer's Almanac, January 16, 2010.

Snow......a New Year, a New Decade, a Winter Wedding.....and more snow.

Well, it's winter so I guess we should expect some snow. However, it has been snowing here nonstop since New Year's Eve, 7 days straight now with no end in sight. Another 8" is predicted for tonight with blizzard-like conditions to follow bringing gale-force winds and downright dangerously cold temperatures.

This poor young redtail hawk has been hunting small songbirds at our feeders from a perch in the locust tree in our front yard. The wind and cold are so severe and the snow so deep that there is no small game to be seen, and the hawk is hungry. It's easy to see why people and animals become distressed and depressed in winter.Our back fences are almost buried under 3' drifts! The poor birds puff up for warmth awaiting their turn at the bird feeders, which we keep constantly filled for them.

We always look forward to winter as a time to pursue pleasurable, mostly indoor activities like reading seed catalogs, novels, that stack of magazines piling up since last summer, watching movies and cooking great meals. Outdoor activities include shoveling snow, blowing snow, hauling in firewood, hauling out the furnace ashes, sweeping the snow off the solar panels, walks in the snow, bundling up just to go out to the mailbox, and occasionally, if the snow is just right and the wind isn't blowing too hard, some cross country skiing just to get the blood moving! Simple trips to the grocery store are combined with quick errands and always dinner at a restaurant, because one never knows when the next weather window of opportunity to escape the confines of the farm will present itself - smile!
The lake lies encased in thick ice and the gazebo slumbers under a blanket of white. I took this picture before New Year's when we could still walk down the hill to the lake. Now the snow is too deep for walking.Art clears snow from the driveway - a daily chore. Mimi and Mo have a blast as they romp in snow that is over their heads! However, this does not affect their exuberance as they blow off steam and enjoy each others' company!

Art was honored to preside over the marriage of our friends Jon Kates and Peggie Page on the first Saturday of the New Year and New Decade of 2010. The ceremony was held in Pittsburgh at the William Penn Hotel on January 2nd.

Peggie's daughter Sarah attended her mother as matron of honor and Jon's son Sam performed admirably as best man! It was such a joyous occasion, a celebration in toasts, song and well-wishes to the love and married life of a beautiful couple.

Well, another foot of snow has fallen since the night of the Kates wedding. We loaded another half-cord of wood into the basement yesterday and made a grocery run last evening......even grabbed a bite at the Italian Oven before scurrying back to the warmth and safety of home. I thought I'd do some blog posting today just to let the world know we're still here and thinking about you all. Here's a visual gift to enjoy.......what could better signify the promise and beauty of Spring?

Groucho The Cat

Groucho The Cat showed up at the cat feeder at Jolico Farm in the cold early winter of 2009. She was a fearless young, 'in-your-face' feline who promptly became pregnant, probably during her first heat in early February. She gave birth to a litter of kittens around April 1st. Unfortunately, only one of those kittens survived to become weaned. She became pregnant again when that kitten was about 2 months old and she delivered her second litter of 6 kittens on August 1, 2009. All of these kittens survived due to human intervention – twice-daily food and water carried up to the barn for them.

I took a real liking to this gutsy cat and I named her because of her resemblance to Groucho Marx. However, her name fit her 'grouchy' personality as well, as she is a vocal scolder to her kittens and even growls at me when I pick her up if she does not want to be held. She has never tried to bite or scratch me. She puts up with my handling, brushing, kissing and stroking, but rarely asks for affection. However, she will follow me around like a dog, and she tends to gravitate to the room in which I am working or sitting, making herself comfortable on the floor or on a nearby couch so as not to miss any of the household action.

I figure that Groucho was born in the spring of 2008. I also figure she was a drop-off, or she had been born at one of the nearby farms as a wild, or feral, cat. The fact that she has such moxie and has such a brave and fearless nature has endeared her to me. I resisted allowing her plight to affect my better judgment but, because she was such a demanding cat, crying at me through the windows when she wanted food for herself and for her kittens, I became like putty in her paws………and, I fell in love with her…………

When she weaned her last litter in mid-October 2009, I took her to the vet and had her spayed, vaccinated and de-wormed. I brought her home from her surgery and kept her in the house for 3 days to recover and then I let her back out to the barn. Two weeks later I returned her to the vet to have her sutures removed. She tolerated these procedures and intimate handling with vocal outrage but without any attempt to harm anyone.

While she was in the house she got a taste of the “good life” of a housecat, and she quickly adjusted to the litter pan and the rhythms of the household. When the weather turned bitterly cold this winter, she began to cry at the windows to be let into the warmth. When we ignored her insistent crying, she persisted and would cry all night long to be let in. We finally caved and allowed her indoors to become our pet.

She has no desire to go outdoors. She adjusted immediately to life in our home. She is quiet, clean and independent, but alert to our movements. She interacts with us and with our big dog Moses, who used to be her arch-enemy when she lived outside.

Our only problem lies with our older housecat “Kitty” who has never gotten along with Groucho. This dislike has escalated since Groucho moved indoors into Kitty’s domain. There has been fighting between the two cats, prompting us to banish Groucho back to the barn. However, this is breaking our hearts and we have decided we need to find Groucho a proper, loving home, even if it means losing our bond with her.

I hope and pray that whomever takes responsibility for her will love her as we do; and if they do not or cannot love and care for her, that they will return her to us. I hope and pray that we will find a very lucky person who needs the love of a very fine cat.

Parties, Family and Some Loving Thoughts........

It's been a while since my last post but we've not been idle! A wonderfully joyous occasion we attended was the wedding celebration dinner of Samantha Ginsburg and Steven Streibig on 11/14/09 in Pittsburgh. I swiped this picture taken at their wedding ceremony in Maui on 10/3/09 from their friend MJ's album because it shows their happiness and their beauty on their wedding day.

Dinner at the Fischer's is always an epicurian delight! Bruce cooks and Elaine bakes and we all eat too much. We moved from a table laden with appetizers, to the dining room where we consumed mass quantities of salmon and leg of lamb this year and to top it all off, Elaine's famous chocolate cheesecake and a homemade pumpkin pie! With Heidi and Joe growing older now, they have built an addition off the farmhouse kitchen with eventual retirement in mind, or a cozy apartment for an elderly family member. It includes many handicap accessibility features and even a ramp! I guess we could all use a ramp entrance, no matter how old or young we are......a ramp entrance and a grocery cart would do me just fine, I'm thinking!

The week around the Thanksgiving holiday was savored in a haze of company and food and lots of laughter and love. Mike, Connie and their dog Maggie came up from Pittsburgh on the afternoon of the 22nd for a pizza party. Brother Hank and his dog Maximus came up on Wednesday the 25th and stayed through Thanksgiving until Friday the 27th when he departed with bags of leftovers for his freezer. We decided we had much to be thankful for in our lives this year, not the least of which are our close family ties.

On Sunday the 28th our table was graced for brunch by our sister and brother-in-law Arlene and Robert Alfred and dog Charlie, and nephew Bruce and his wife Rachel, and their boys Joe and Michael Sheinbart who were visiting Pittsburgh from Florida for the long holiday weekend. We had a loving and heartfelt time introducing the youngest generation to "the farm" where Bruce spent much time during his 'growing-up' years. We laughed as we reminiscently told the old stories about the time when Kim fell through the barn floor into the cattle pen, and the time when somebody splattered a drop of red barn paint into Princess the Poodle's eye! The solution to that problem was Aunt Max running for the Visine......it gets the red out!!








Last evening Harold, Hank, Ros and Steve, Art and I met for dinner in Pittsburgh at Hokkaido Seafood Buffet and ate like there was no tomorrow! This was Hank's recommendation for dining as it is an all-you-can-consume Japanese seafood restaurant and we were not disappointed. I know they lost money on us as I watched the males of my family make repeated trips for heaping platters of Alaskan King Crab legs, shrimp, sushi, frog legs, oysters.....you name it! We ate for two solid hours; ate and laughed and enjoyed just being together. Steve left to drive their car back to Florida very early this morning, and Ros is due to depart next week. Their trip to Pittsburgh kept them occupied with a whirlwind of events shared with family and friends. We were glad the weather cooperated so we could sneak in to see them too!

All this togetherness lately has given my fertile mind some food for thought. I have been pondering my priorities and trying to pinpoint what is truly important in life. Imagine, as I have, that time is growing shorter. What could potentially give us cause for regret? Would it be trips not taken, or money not made, jewelry not acquired, fine wines and food not consumed, recognition not awarded? Or, would it be the friendships we didn't nurture, the time we spent in anger and not communicating with loved ones; the opportunities we passed up to say, "I love you", causing us not to hear those most precious words repeated back to us?

Do you find there is something your heart and soul craves, something that is missing from your life, leaving you feeling incomplete and empty inside? Could it be love? Could it be a reconnection to family ties? Could it be that you've lost your pathway to The Divine?

Do we appreciate or curse each new day? Do we speak or maintain silence? Can we live in peace and love, or must there be dissention? Can we find forgiveness in our hearts, then take the next step and express it?

Attachments, rigid boundaries, inflexibility, anger and frustration prevent transformation.

Change is an aspect of love moving from the present vibration to a higher vibration in an upward spiraling pattern.

Love is energy; it sustains all form and formlessness; it is our true identity. Love lives in the heart. It is the Glue of the Universe. It is a soul quality. We need more of it in our lives. Love is all there is.

Migrating geese, long walks through fallen leaves and comforting soup.........

Since I was a small child, I have delighted in playing in the freshly fallen leaves, kicking them out in front of me, burying my feet in their weightless, fragrant depths and drifts. When I was younger, before the advent of the tractor and leaf-bagger attachment, I would rake leaves in the late fall just for the pure joy of rolling in the giant piles I would create. Now I content myself with swishing through them on my daily walks down to the lake, where they cover the farm roads and woods trails as they morph from canopy to coverlet on their purposeful transformation from photosynthesis back into soil.

We have been putting the farm to bed, as we do each year at this time. We slowly gather up all the trappings of summer, clean them and put them away. Gone now are the patio tables and chairs, the hose reels, the flower pots, the porch furniture, the screens, the hanging baskets. We've brought in the geraniums for wintering in the dog room where they like the cool temperatures and the sunshine that warms them in the east window alcove there.

Now we fill the bird feeders, sweep up the leaves that blow in eddies around the storm doors, wash the windows for perhaps the last time before spring, add a bit of caulking here and there, bring in the rain gauges, close down the barn doors, take off the mowers, grease up the tractors and put on the snow blower and blade.

The fields are now harvested and bare. The crop yields were bountiful this year. We had plenty of rain and a longer growing season than usual here in the mountains, as spring was early and fall lingered warm and long. This past week our 25 acres of soybeans were harvested by the giant red combine and a 4th crop of alfalfa came off the hayfields. I can't remember the last time we got a 4th crop of hay and I am amazed. Is this a result of global warming? It is quite unusual.

Thousands of geese have passed through on their way to the south to warmer states where they will winter over. I've learned that more than 90 percent of all birds are monogamous, meaning they maintain an essentially exclusive relationship, or pair bond, with just one member of the opposite sex. Geese are especially fastidious when it comes to their loyalty. They're well known for the long-term pair bonds they form. I marvel at them each year. I like to image that the same pairs return to Jolico Farm to raise their young year after year because we provide such a pure and hospitable environment, but that is probably just my over-dramatizing imagination.
However, we enjoy watching for their arrival in the late winter and early spring, for geese, along with the robins, are some of the first signs of life to arrive as the grip of winter loosens and the days lengthen and the warmth returns in the spring. But for now the dogs love to race along the lake shore and shoo the geese back into the water from their resting and sunning spots on the lake banks. A few turns around the lake and Mo and Mimi are ready to race through the woods to see what other wildlife they can scare up.

The last of the garden produce has been harvested. This year we had a huge carrot crop and, even though we've been eating carrots throughout the summer as I routinely thinned the crop, I was astonished at how many I was able to dig out of the ground at the tail end of fall. What to do with such a bounty? Carrots store well in the root cellar, but they are the sweetest and most nutritious when they are freshly pulled from the earth. I like to make Carrot-Ginger Soup and I've made about 4 gallons in the last couple of weeks to freeze in small pint- or quart-sized containers so I have it on hand for a quick hot lunch, for Thanksgiving dinner or to give away to a sick friend. This I have done recently as we have a friend who is taking chemotherapy and suffers from the resulting nausea and loss of appetite. Ginger is very good for calming the stomach, so I sent him several containers of my frozen organic carrot-ginger immunotherapy, laced with lots of love and prayers for a return to good health in each and every spoonful...