Sheltering on the Farm

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed everything and nothing. On the farm, we’re socially distanced like all respectful people — no farm family dinners, no hugging Granny, and no Cooking Club with Elsa. But then again, we’re still a friendly and caring community here in Sandwich, and spring has arrived as always.

Mysterious (well, sort of!) young kindness gnomes have sprinkled heart plaques here and there, spreading smiles (look at the bottom of the Booty Family Farm sign post) and the Community School farm stand has a freezer stocked with delicious home cooked organic meals available by donation or for free for those who need help.

Meanwhile, encouraging signs of spring are everywhere…

The farm ewes have been shorn while the lambs were left wooly, and piglets have appeared — first a pink pair that scurried around in tandem, then three little spotted piglets joined the merry band. Look at those happy, muddy faces!

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The chickens are enjoying the action at the compost pile (a couple are inside the household scraps barrel) — all that foraging makes for gorgeous eggs with bright orange yolks. Finding the eggs can be challenging, though. Last time Steve discovered a stash I believe getting to them involved a ladder and scrambling over the barn roof.

Turning the compost pile revealed a lost red-handled shovel, the shaft wrapped in a wooly casing of rich organic fertilizer. (I would never have been able to figure out that photo without a hint!)

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Spring also means firewood — splitting and stacking for next winter and beyond. Tree felling is a good hobby for country folk stuck at home. Todd has put up our firewood for the next two winters. Thankfully, he found a new hobby before our land was clear cut — serving as a selectman for the Town of Sandwich. (Recent topics of town business include wearing masks at the dump and how to reasonably safely open the town beach on Squam Lake for the summer. These are trying times!)

Diane’s woodshed is almost restocked. Do you see Smokey the cat in the photo? She’s well camouflaged, and clearly cats don’t need lessons in social distancing.

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Elsa, like all Sandwich kids, has been remote schooling for two months, which means that some lessons happen outdoors. There she is with Diane (AKA Bubby) starting seeds for the flower cutting garden. (Science and math I’d guess.) At the farm stand this summer there will be lovely bouquets of “Elsa’s Flowers” for sale. (Art and economics!)

The growing tunnels and greenhouses are filling with happy vegetable plants reaching for the sun.

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My mother ( AKA Granny) celebrated her 90th birthday on May 15, along with family, friends and neighbors who spread out on her lawn enjoying tea (they brought their own cups) and cupcakes (with rainbow sprinkles, of course) while Mom held court on her screened porch bedecked in a tiara and “90 and Fabulous” sash. No one succumbed to black flies, and the rain held off. Perfect!

And the best silver lining of all to this pandemic was finding Rosie. We had to cancel our beloved Casita trailer camping trip to North Carolina (one by one in a seeming string of doom the campgrounds cancelled our reservations — Assateague, Ocracoke, Asheville), but it gave us the time to search for a dog. We lost Beau in November, and six months turned out to be the absolute longest stretch that I could survive without a four-legged friend.

Happily for the dogs, shelters have been emptying out, but there are still dogs in peril, particularly in the South. A New Hampshire organization called the Darbster Foundation has a core of wonderful volunteers in South Florida who rescue dogs from high kill shelters and transport them to the Darbster Doggie facility in New Hampshire.

That’s here we found our sweet, skinny little mixed-breed two-year-old Rosie. She had been picked up as a stray in West Palm Beach, Florida, and we brought her home on National Rescue Dog Day. No kidding! (Can’t wait to see what she thinks of our snow come winter.) Rosie seems to think that tongue out is a good pose for photographs. Yep, she’s a keeper.

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And so in this strange, sometimes scary, often wondrous time, our little house in the big woods is filled with love. We wish the same to you 💕