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Skies are blue and the grass is high – it must be summertime. Jen inspected our nano-orchard, which appears poised to produce as many as four apples this season. Rather than rely on our domestic fruit production, she set out to pick wild black raspberries. The brambles provided, ensuring we will have jam this summer.

Sarah’s horse for the summer, Sully (formally known as Lanchello), a Dutch gelding, arrived at Southlands Friday morning after an overnight drive from Georgia. By Saturday, Sully had acclimated enough to be ridden. He seems like a fine fellow. In unrelated news, Jen’s secret garden has awakened for spring, with blooms including this fancy Blue […]

Not every husband would have the thoughtfulness, foresight, and — let’s face it — courage to get his wife a scythe for Christmas. Jen, lucky, tried out her scythe this afternoon. After watching a few instructional videos on YouTube, she cleared phragmites from our volunteer willow next to the pond. Daisy looked on in amazement.

The pond is looking very spiffy this clear Fall Friday, ahead of our trip to visit Sarah for Parents’ Weekend at Colgate. Daisy will be vacationing in Pine Plains.

Jen is her own harbinger of spring, braving a wet, 40 degree day to get the beans started. This weekend we saw Ring-necked Ducks (f/k/a Lesser Scaups) diving in the pond, Herman the bachelor muskrat giving himself a bath nearby, a coyote skulking around the backyard, and a raccoon in the Hoeners’ driveway.

Our decision to stay in New York this weekend appears to have been justified.

Jen corageously determined that the pond was frozen solid, which made sense given the single-digit temperatures we’ve had over the past few days. While it might be a good day for skating, it’s also a good day for a fire.

They are very hard to evict at this point.

Everything is bright green at the farm right now. If you can zoom in, you will see our corkscrew willows at either end of the picture, an unwanted Canada goose at left, our tiny flowering cherry behind the pond, and the shimmering bog beyond.

We are sad to return to New York today after three weeks at the farm. Springtime is all around, well represented by this young cherry tree blooming by the pond. Daffodils are blooming everywhere, and so is our star magnolia (which we refer to as the cameo magnolia because it is very small).