RhinebeckFarm.com

Late-season haymaking continues, as you can see by the big tractor near the crest of the hill. The garden is still giving us tomatoes, melons, and peppers. Late September is the new mid-July.

We had a short weekend in the country, arriving Saturday evening after Sarah’s dance rehearsal. When we got out of the car, Sarah said, “It smells like hay!” It’s pretty late in the year for haymaking, so I didn’t believe her until I found our upper hayfield had been mowed by this large Ford tractor. Two more hayfields to go.

Today we watched Sarah win a boatload of ribbons at Southlands, including a coveted and elusive blue ribbon (clipped to Sarah’s boot) in jumping. Even Cisco is smiling in this picture!

Sarah had a horse-filled weekend, with a lesson Saturday morning, a jumping demonstration at the Southlands Foundation annual gala Saturday night, and a show Sunday at Meadow Creek Farm. Here is Sarah aboard Cisco, on their way to winning a second-place ribbon in equitation.

We spent a happy week in Paris, during which we dropped Sarah off at Charles de Gaulle airport for her flight to Montpelier, where she is spending July in a French immersion program. (I, meanwhile, immersed myself in cassoulet.)

After 13 hours of travel, we found ourselves back at the farm, reunited with Daisy. Between thunderstorms, Jen picked black raspberries for jam. Otherwise we enjoyed a quiet tail end of Independence Day weekend.

Attentive viewers of rhinebeckfarm.com may have noticed that the PondCam™ has not been working lately. Good news: you can find a new, improved PondCam on its eponymous page. It’s amazing how technology advances, and equally amazing that the only way I could capture the image above was by taking a screen shot of a video taken by the PondCam™.

This soggy faun ran past the house today to wish me a happy Father’s Day.

We enjoyed the Memorial Day Parade — that unchanging, Norman Rockwell exemplar of small-town what have you — from the commodious front porch of the Kaimal/Lawsons, who, sadly, were away tending to Maya’s ailing mother.

Here is the view from said porch, including what is possibly the nation’s largest ginkgo tree. For visitors Lew, Rinda, Erica and Geoff, this capped off a pleasant weekend of superb weather, numerous sandwiches, and highly competitive Boggle.

The parade is unchanging, except that each year a new Poppy Girl is coronated.

After the parade, the ladies (including Daisy) and I walked down to the swamp to look in on our thriving heron rookery.

We have many herons this year, including these proud parents.

Another weekend highlight was Sarah’s first competition with Cisco, whom Sarah gave the show name Talk of the Town. Cisco/TotT is still a bit green, but Sarah had him under control and they won some ribbons.

We celebrated a rainy Mother’s Day by giving Jen breakfast in bed. Saturday was a lovely day, and we saw many signs of spring. We managed to forage over a pound of morels, enabling us to reprise our homemade fettuccine, asparagus, and morel dinner.

Jen couldn’t wait to get into the woods to see if we could find some early morels.

We were rewarded! On Saturday, while Sarah had dinner and a movie (Avengers) with the Lawson twins, Jen and I made homemade fettuccine with sautéed morels, garden asparagus, Mike Heffernan’s garlic, and chopped parsley.

On Saturday Daisy went in the pond for the first time this season. It looked chilly to us, but she seemed happy to be there.