farm-life

Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn__. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he__ turn around and kick and buck and moo and do just about anything to keep his calf near. But Eli wasn__ Fancy; he was a farmer.

They got a manure machine in there,_ Keller said. He went up to the barn and peeked through a hole between tow boards. __n wheels. It__ fun to ride sometimes, when you don__ care how you smell.

We need only to close our eyes and we are back on the Third Line, walking up the lane, through the yard and entering the bright, warm kitchen. We are home again.

The air was fresh and crisp and had a distinct smell which was a mixture of the dried leaves on the ground and the smoke from the chimneys and the sweet ripe apples that were still clinging onto the branches in the orchard behind the house.

On harsh, frigid January days, when the winds are relentless and the snow piles up around us, I often think of our small feathered friends back on the Third Line. I wonder if the old feeder is still standing in the orchard and if anyone thinks to put out a few crumbs and some bacon drippings for our beautiful, hungry, winter birds. In the stark, white landscape they provided a welcome splash of colour and their songs gave us hope through the long, silent winter.

I walked through the house to the back porch and found the screen door covered top to bottom, side to side, with cats meowing for food. . . . They were so thick on the door I could barely see the light between them.

The cost to reconnect animals to live in natural settings without human support is a debt that many animals in transition must honor with their lives.

Warm familiar scents drift softly from the oven,And imprint forever upon our heartsThat this is homeand that we are loved.

As I string, a swift rhythm is played out with my hands, a cadence known only to those who have strung tobacco. To many of the poor workers, the meter and rhythm of stringing tobacco is the only poetry they__e ever known.

Mark came home late one frozen Sunday carrying a bag of small, silver fish. They were smelts, locally known as icefish. He__ brought them at the store in the next town south, across from which a little village had sprung up on the ice of the lake, a collection of shacks with holes drilled in and around them. I__ seen the men going from the shore to the shacks on snowmobiles, six-packs of beer strapped on behind them like a half dozen miniature passengers. __it and rest,_ Mark said. ____ cooking._ He sautéed minced onion in our homemade butter, added a little handful of crushed, dried sage, and when the onion was translucent, he sprinkled n flour to make a roux, which he loosened with beer, in honor of the fishermen. He added cubed carrot, celery root, potato, and some stock, and then the fish, cut into pieces, and when they were all cooked through he poured in a whole morning milking__ worth of Delia__ yellow cream. Icefish chowder, rich and warm, eaten while sitting in Mark__ lap, my feet so close to the woodstove that steam came off my damp socks.

In the shop, breathing the scent of dusty grease and oil; in the old house, staring into the living room where Dad and Jake used to take naps together on the couch; in the sheep barn, remembering the joy implicit in so much baaing life; in every inch of the farm, I recalled my father__ presence.