Tag: farm

When Old and Lame

October 8, 2026 barnstormingblog4 Comments

All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine
clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;

and after noon’s heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun’s muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.

For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground – old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.
~Donald Hall “Name of Horses”

Today, we said goodbye to our last Haflinger mare after four decades of being a breeding farm. We have two geldings left on the farm, in their early 20’s.

I was dreading this day but knew it would eventually come.

Belinda, who I have written about here, flew from the Netherlands as a baby with her mother in 1998, bringing new bloodlines to North America from an East German Haflinger breeding program, at the time only recently accessible to breeders with the opening of the Berlin Wall.

She proved to be a great broodmare here on our farm and her foals all sold quickly to other breeders. However, her last twelve years of retirement were complicated by metabolic imbalance and a tendency toward laminitis. We finally had to make the hard choice to bring out the vet to gently help her pass with intravenous medication into eternal lush pastures she could tolerate. Then the local hauler picked her up for cremation. No bullets to the brain, no hole to be dug.

We have done our final parting with our horses in this way over our forty years of Haflinger ownership. It is certainly different from how it was done when I was a kid on a small cow and horse farm. Our family mare, Dolly, in 1965, was put down by a vet’s bullet to the head after an agonizing bout with colic. My dad sent me back to the house beforehand, not wanting me to watch. Still, I could not help but hear the gunshot as if it had gone right through me as well. It took Dad the rest of the day to dig a hole deep enough so she could be buried on our farm.

At first her grave was my place to cry where no one but the trees and wild flowers could see.

When my tears finally dried up, it was a place to sing loudly where no one but chipmunks and my dog could hear.

And before I left for college, it became the sanctuary where I retreated to talk to God when my church no longer was.

I suspect her bones lie there still, with tall trees now growing through her ribs. That dent in the ground will always betray the spot.

We’ll remember you fondly, Belinda. You traveled far to come here and gave us your best. We promised you would live here on this farm, in peace, until your last breath.

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The Lingering Sky

October 1, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn.

A view of the horizon,
the entire circle of it, if you turned,
the sun setting behind you,
the sky in front becoming pink and soft,
then slightly blue again,
as though it could not stop going on in its beauty,
then the land closest to the setting sun would get dark,
almost black against the orange line of the horizon,
but if you turn around,
the land is still available to the eye with such softness,
the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned,
and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark.

As though the soul can be quiet for those moments.
All life amazes me.
~Elizabeth Strout, from My Name is Lucy Barton

I have learned,
from those much wiser than I am,
to recognize moments meant for quieting.

The news of the world constantly rushes past;
there is suffering beyond imagining
in the lives of a few I know well
and for millions I don’t know at all.

What little can I do to make a difference?
So much need lies beyond my short reach.

Instead of feeling abandoned on the shores of overwhelm,
I seek out the familiar, the routine, and the ordinary,
lingering immersed in the recurring patterns of the day and night
as the world keeps on spinning on its axis.

I too turn around to witness that which surrounds me,
and in so doing, my soul is quieted.
And amazed.

One year ago, my teacher and mentor Jane Goodall passed into eternity, leaving behind this message for us all…

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If Only I Would Keep Aware…

September 22, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The songs of small birds fade away
into the bushes after sundown,
the air dry, sweet with goldenrod.
Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters
flare in the dusk. The aged voices
of a few crickets thread the silence.
It is a quiet I love, though my life
too often drives me through it deaf.
Busy with costs and losses, I waste
the time I have to be here—a time
blessed beyond my deserts, as I know,
if only I would keep aware. The leaves
rest in the air, perfectly still.
I would like them to rest in my mind
as still, as simply spaced. As I approach,
the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing,
poised there, light on the slope
as a young apple tree. A week ago
I took her away to sell, and failed
to get my price, and brought her home
again. Now in the quiet I stand
and look at her a long time, glad
to have recovered what is lost
in the exchange of something for money.
~Wendell Berry “The Sorrel Filly”

I am reminded at summer’s end —
when it is already dark and chores not done yet,
and horses waiting to be fed —
of the value of decades of moments spent
with long-lashed eyes, wind-swept manes, and velvet muzzles.

True, it appears to others to be time and money wasted.
But for a farmer like me, sometimes deaf and blind
to what is in front of me every day,
not all valuables are preserved
in a lock box or a bank account.

Golden treasure can have
four hooves, a tail, a rumbling greeting
asking if I’d somehow gotten lost
since I’m a little later than usual
and they were a bit concerned I’d forgotten them.

If only I would keep aware,
remember where my home is,
how easy it is to wander from the path
that somehow always leads me back here.

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Pale Applesauce Clouds

September 18, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples,
big yellow pie apples, light in the hand,
their skins freckled, the stems knobby
and thick with bark, as if the tree
could not bear to let the apple go.
Baskets of apples circle the back door,
fill the porch, cover the kitchen table.

My mother and my grandmother are
running the apple brigade. My mother,
always better with machines, is standing
at the apple peeler; my grandmother,
more at home with a paring knife,
faces her across the breadboard.
My mother takes an apple in her hand,

She pushes it neatly onto the sharp
prong and turns the handle that turns
the apple that swivels the blade pressed
tight against the apple’s side and peels
the skin away in long curling strips that
twist and fall to a bucket on the floor.
The apples, coming off the peeler,

Are winding staircases, little accordions,
slinky toys, jack-in-the-box fruit, until
my grandmother’s paring knife goes slicing
through the rings and they become apple
pies, apple cakes, apple crisp. Soon
they will be married to butter and live with
cinnamon and sugar, happily ever after.
~Joyce Sutphen, “Apple Season” from Coming Back to the Body.

I liked how the starry blue lid
of that saucepan lifted and puffed,
then settled back on a thin
hotpad of steam, and the way
her kitchen filled with the warm,
wet breath of apples, as if all
the apples were talking at once,
as if they’d come cold and sour
from chores in the orchard,
and were trying to shoulder in
close to the fire. She was too busy
to put in her two cents’ worth
talking to apples. Squeezing
her dentures with wrinkly lips,
she had to jingle and stack
the bright brass coins of the lids
and thoughtfully count out
the red rubber rings, then hold
each jar, to see if it was clean,
to a window that looked out
through her back yard into Iowa.
And with every third or fourth jar
she wiped steam from her glasses,
using the hem of her apron,
printed with tiny red sailboats
that dipped along with leaf-green
banners snapping, under puffs
of pale applesauce clouds
scented with cinnamon and cloves,
the only boats under sail
for at least two thousand miles.
~Ted Kooser “Applesauce” from Delights and Shadow

Through the night
the apples
outside my window
one by one let go
their branches and
drop to the lawn.
I can’t see, but hear
the stem-snap, the plummet
through leaves, then
the final thump against the ground.

Sometimes two
at once, or one
right after another.
During long moments of silence
I wait
and wonder about the bruised bodies,
the terror of diving through air, and
think I’ll go tomorrow
to find the newly fallen, but they
all look alike lying there
dewsoaked, disappearing before me.

I lie beneath my window listening
to the sound of apples dropping in

the yard, a syncopated code I long to know,
which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know

the meaning of what I hear, each dull
thud of unseen apple-

body, the earth
falling to earth

once and forever, over
and over.
~ Li-Young Lee “Falling: The Code” from Rose

I tell you, folks, all politics is like applesauce.
~Will Rogers

Once again, it’s applesauce season on our farm. The number of windfall apples lying on the ground is exponentially increasing, so I can put off the task no longer.

The old apple trees in our orchard are primarily antique varieties rarely grown any longer. I have the choice of a number of varieties: a Baldwin or two, some Pippins, a few Kings, and some Dutch Mignons, a russet apple undistinguished in appearance, not at all pretty, and easy to pass by for something more showy.

It takes no time at all to fill several large boxes. Sadly, some apples are already beyond hope; they lay rotting, half consumed by hornets, slugs, deer, possum, raccoons and other critters — so I let them be.

The task of washing, peeling and coring organic apples is time consuming. They require a fair amount of preparation: the bruised spots must be cut out, as well as the worm holes and tracks. The apples are cut to the core and sliced into the simmering pot to be stirred and slowly cooked down to sauce. Before long, before my eyes, together they become a pale yellow mash, blending their varied flavors together.

However the smooth sweetness of this wonderful sauce is owed to the Dutch Mignon. It is a sublime sauce apple despite its humble unassuming appearance. Used alone, it would lack the “stand out” flavors of the other apple varieties, but as it cooks down, it becomes a foundation allowing the other apples to blend their unique qualities.

If I’m feeling really homespun, I marry the sublime with cinnamon and sugar, to create something happily ever after.

So it should be with the fellowship of diverse people and so should it be during a painful political season.

We are bruised, wormy, but salvageable. We are far better together than we are separate. And through the process, with perhaps a sprinkle of cinnamon and sweetness, we are transformed into something far better than how we began.

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This Failing Light

September 10, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Day after day, day after still day,
The summer has begun to pass away.
Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call,
And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall.
The meadow and the orchard grass are mown,
And the meadowlark’s house is cut down.

The little lantern bugs have doused their fires,
The swallows sit in rows along the wires.
Berry and grape appear among the flowers
Tangled against the wall in secret bowers,
And cricket now begins to hum the hours
Remaining to the passion’s slow procession
Down from the high place and the golden session
Wherein the sun was sacrificed for us.

A failing light, no longer numinous,
Now frames the long and solemn afternoons
Where butterflies regret their closed cocoons.
We reach the place unripe, and made to know
As with a sudden knowledge that we go
Away forever, all hope of return
Cut off, hearing the crackle of the burn-
ing blade behind us, and the terminal sound
Of apples dropping on the dry ground.
~Howard Nemerov “Summer’s Elegy” from Collected Poems

As far as I can see this autumn haze
That spreading in the evening air both ways,
Makes the new moon look anything but new,
And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue,
Is all the smoke from one poor house alone
With but one chimney it can call its own;
So close it will not light an early light,
Keeping its life so close and out of sight
No one for hours has set a foot outdoors
So much as to take care of evening chores.
The inmates may be lonely women-folk.
I want to tell them that with all this smoke
They prudently are spinning their cocoon
And anchoring it to an earth and moon
From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,—
Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it.
~Robert Frost “The Cocoon”

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth’s green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.
~Wendell Berry “The Summer Ends” from A Timbered Choir.

I too regret the closed cocoon,
so seemingly safe at the time —
once launched before being ready,
there is no returning.

In this fading, failing light, I feel undone,
weepy at harvest, gathering urgently,
not wanting anything to go to waste,
trying to memorialize it all as it changes.

I part again from you, Summer –
your gifts seemed endless
until you yourself ended –
a reminder that someday,
so must I.

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Just What I’ve Gone and Done

September 5, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.
~Wendell Berry “Sabbath Poem X, 1979″

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
~Billy Collins from “Morning”

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
—The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds—
“I’m sixty-eight” he said,
“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that’s just what
I’ve gone and done.”
~Gary Snyder – “Hay for the Horses” from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

Sure enough, I’ve gone and done it — spent over 50 years of my life taking care of horses. I hope for at least a few more years of horsekeeping as long as I am able while our three retired, aging Haflingers stick around.

No one said I had to do this and plenty of people saw it as expensive folly, including a few cherished folks who continue to aid and abet my horse ownership.

When I was young and agile and full of energy, I didn’t really project ahead fifty years to see that picking up hay bales, moving manure piles and being bumped or stepped on by a 1000 pound animal is a bigger deal now than it once was.

Fourteen years ago, I wrote the following on this website:

From September through April, I scramble to the top of the hay pile in the barn to push down two bales to feed to our horses, now that the pastures are resting and “left to grace” for the winter. My husband has been busy spreading our composted manure out on the fields to give them an extra fertilizer boost for next spring’s growth.

As farmers, we have to always be thinking one or two seasons ahead: the hay brought into the barn in June or July does not leave the barn until late-autumn. The manure piled up in winter gets spread on pastures the following fall. The tilled cornfields surrounding us are seeded in May and not harvested until October after several months of rain and sun and rain again.

More than practicing forethought, as farmers we know our meager efforts, as tangible as they are, are dependent solely on grace: that there will be enough rain, that there will not be too much rain, that there will be enough days of sunlight, that the seed will sprout, that the machinery will work when needed, that there will be no blight or pests, and that the hay crew will materialize when needed for harvest. So much of this is not due to the labor of our hands, no matter how much we sweat and ache, but due to the great work of the Creator in His Creation.

Every hay bale I open spills forth His mercy, a reminder of how grateful I am for seed and sun and rain and a barn full of promises.

Despite the hard physical work, fifty years hasn’t changed how I love the smell of a soft muzzle, or seeing my reflection in their eyes.

When I lived in a city apartment so many years ago, I knew I would love to wake up every morning to take care of horses the rest of my life.

And you know what?

That’s just what I’ve gone and done.

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The Mundane Becomes Miraculous

August 31, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Last night
we were laying in bed
when my husband
rolled over and said,
“Do you hear birds?”
I said I heard
the laundry
dragging itself along
the inside of the dryer
as it turned.

My grandparents’ neighbor,
Doris, once said she heard
birds in the chimney.
Her in-home helper confessed
they weren’t birds—
she’d had a baby in the night
without knowing
she was pregnant.

Poems are like that,
insisting on being born,
heard, making themselves
known
as soon as we’re quiet
and still. We hear
birdsong in the ordinary,
and it sings us awake
in the dark
until the mundane becomes
miraculous.
~Elizabeth Wickland “Do You Hear Birds?”

Like people or dogs, each day is unique
and has its own personality quirks
which can easily be seen if you look closely.
But there are so few days as compared to people,
not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising
if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people.

But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed,
unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle.

For some reason we like to see days pass,
even though most of us claim
we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time.

We examine each day before us with barely a glance
and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for,
and wait in a bored sort of way for the next,
when we are convinced,
our lives will start for real.

Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted,
as some days are,
with the right amounts of sunlight and shade,
and a light breeze scented with a perfume made
from the mixture of fallen apples,
corn stubble, dry oak leaves,
and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.
~Tom Hennen “The Life of a Day”

Age concentrates the mind.
The moment you realize you will no longer do something
you’ve done all your life.
The moment you realize that you will now need to do something you’ve never had to do before.
The moment you realize that what used to be will never be the same.

Some of this could lend itself to melancholy.
But there is also a bigness to such moments that allows for wonder.
A sense that you can’t quite comprehend it all.

Like any life, mine has had its pain,
yet from the outset it seems to have been graced
by unbelievable people and events.

An anthology of miracles.
~Roger Rosenblatt from “The World is a Room with a Piano Waiting to be Played”

I am ashamed to admit I squander time shamelessly,
blind and deaf to what is happening around me,
waiting for that particularly special day
I always dreamed of,
tossing off mundane yet irreplaceable moments
as somehow not measuring up nor exciting enough.

The shock is:
there have been nearly 40 years
of such ordinary days on this farm,
one passing by after another,
emerging fresh each morning
from the mundane duff and stuff of life,
and wouldn’t you know…
every single one has ended up being exactly what I’m looking for.

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Waking with the Light

August 4, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Light wakes us – there’s the sun
climbing the mountains’ rim, spilling across the valley,
finding our faces.
It is July,
between the hay and harvest,
a time at arm’s length from all other time,
the roads ragged with meadowsweet and mallow,
with splays of seedheads, slubbed and coarse, rough linen.
The fields above the house, clotted with sheep all spring,
are empty now and froth with flowering grasses,
still in the morning light. Birds move around
the leafy fields, the leafy garden.

It is the time
to set aside all vigil, good or ill,
to loosen the fixed gaze of our attention
as dandelions let seedlings to the wind.
Wake with the light.
Get up and go about the day and watch
its surfaces that brighten with the sun.

And later, when the light is drowsed and heavy
go find the burdened fruit trees where the shade
lies splashed and opened-out across the ground.
Spread over it a quilt worn soft by other bodies,
then curl and fall down into sleep at light.

Awaken to a world of long, loose grass-stems,
and leaves above,
and birds, breaking out of the leaves.
~Kerry Hardie from “Sleep in Summer”

Saying good-bye to July last week
meant admitting summer is already half-baked
and so are we–

we who are still doughy,
not nearly done enough.

The rush to autumn is breathless.
We want to hold on tight
to our longish days,
fall asleep in the grasses,
endure sweaty nights
for just a little while longer…

Please, oh please
grant us unending light
and steady us for the task
of getting ready for letting go.

A new series of summer photo notecards from our farm is now available as a thank you gift to you for your financial support of Barnstorming — details here

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Making Me Better Than What I Am

July 26, 2026 barnstormingblog10 Comments

At dusk, everything blurs and softens.
From here out over the long valley,
the fields and hills pull up
the first slight sheets of evening,
as, over the next hour,
heavier, darker ones will follow.

Quieted roads, predictable deer
browsing in a neighbor’s field, another’s
herd of heifers, the kitchen lights
starting in many windows. On horseback
I take it in, neither visitor
nor intruder, but kin passing, closer
and closer to night, its cold streams
rising in the sugarbush and hollow.

Half-aloud, I say to the horse,
or myself, or whoever: let fire not come
to this house, nor that barn,
nor lightning strike the cattle.
Let dogs not gain the gravid doe, let the lights
of the rooms convey what they seem to.

And who is to say it is useless
or foolish to ride out in the falling light
alone, wishing, or praying,
for particular good to particular beings,
on one small road in a huge world?

The horse bears me along, like grace,
making me better than what I am,
and what I think or say or see
is whole in these moments, is neither
small nor broken. For up, out of
the inscrutable earth, have come my body
and the separate body of the mare:
flawed and aching and wronged. Who then
is better made to say be well, be glad,

or who to long that we, as one,
might course over the entire valley,
over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace
of flight, who presses against her breast,
in grief and tenderness,
the whole weeping body of the world?
~ Linda McCarriston, “Riding Out at Evening” from Talking Soft Dutch

On this, my 72nd birthday,
I pray for this troubled world, reminding myself:
be well, be glad…

I’m still here
by the grace of God who carries
not just me on His back through each day,
but all earthly burdens.

I pray like a bird embracing the air which lifts its wings,
tenderly holding to its breast a soaring freedom
to transcend the weeping world.

I have seen so much goodness over 72 years,
sometimes through tears of sorrow.
I know there will be more joy
and sadness before I’m done.

I am grateful, so very grateful
to have lived all these years
seeing tears shed, then dried,
learning how love heals,
knowing the only thing to last forever
is God’s covenant promise
to always carry us home.

video by Peter Tamminga

Whilst the world is weeping, let us do our bit.
We have the time to sympathise, to listen and to sit.
No needless thoughts, of the things we cannot do.
But appreciate all the good bits and look at them anew.

The warmth and comfort of our homes, the food we have to eat.
The family and friends we have, although we cannot meet.
The village that we live in, and the community we share.
So precious to us right now, so sit and think and care.

Whilst the world is full of sadness, anxiety and pain,
It’s hard to imagine our lives ever carefree again.
But nothing lasts forever, the clouds will always clear.
Let’s heal the world with love, so the sunshine can appear.
~Sandra Rickman

Lyrics:
Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace.
Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat;
to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.
In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.

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