With anticipation and dread I walked into the field this morning.  Six cows greeted me.  Lily, the seventh, was not among them.  

Upon cresting the hill, I saw Lily coming toward me.  A decided spring in her step was the first indication of her postpartum state.  She also looked quite a bit less beamy.  These were really good signs.

Okay, so it’s been a while... a few things have happened around here in the past year and a half, most of which have led to a downsize/rethink/put-your-head-down-and-keep -going approach to life. I’m still on the farm, still have the full complement of animals, still have bigger gardens than I should have, and still have way too many projects on the books. But I have come to accept that this is the way life is and I am still struck with the occasional swell of feeling that this is what I am meant to do. There are more changes to come, but I’m optimistic that good things are afoot.

Twenty or so ancient, gnarly and unkempt apple and pear trees bear testimony to a long past orchard on our land.  Being non-resistant varieties, most of them are battling a variety of blights and scabs that erupted when we cleared some of the adjacent woods and discovered several apple trees that had been overgrown.  By releasing the trees we released the diseases and the productive trees have paid the price since.

On a gray, dreary morning I'm dawdling about heading down to milk the cows.  So I get on the NYT website and find an article about Bhutan. 

I'm really tickled by the idea of the IMF jand the World Bank wanting to quantify happiness. 

The new fields’ stone crop

Here's a link to a video featuring Eliot Coleman.  Coleman grows organic vegetables in Maine in the dead of winter.  Actually he doesn't really grow them then, too little available light, but he does harvest them and keep them from being killed by the cold.  He does this without additional heat sources.  He's a guy who makes lots of interesting connections between disparate activities and disciplines. 

I’m fairly certain that I didn’t come up with this on my own, but it doesn’t seem that popular culture has grabbed this like it should.  So I’m laying claim to it.  I think it has been at least 15 years that I have been using it and have for at least fifteen years been receiving polite, blank stares.  Perhaps it’s not funny or maybe too obvious or too obtuse.   Hubris Oblige plays on Noblesse Oblige http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige,  and seems too perfect not to catch on.  I define hubris oblige as the almost inevitable  tendency for excessive pride and arrogance to result in poor judgment and a fall from grace. 

April

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Peter Drucker.

This public service announcement is brought to you by the McClary Hill Farm Dept. of Agricultural Awareness.