Border Crossing
“I am not young enough to know everything.” – Oscar Wilde A television production focusing on local interest stories visited Nye Hill recently. The piece was not to be about the farm per se, but about the role beekeeping plays on the farm. As conversations here always do, though, it wandered. We talked about our […]
So Many Years
Birthdays here are celebrated with dinners, in the kitchen where we take all our meals, but birthdays are a bit more. The cooking is more involved, the table is set more formally and it’s set for more people. More time is spent, more laughs are had, more thoughts are shared. The most recent of these […]
The Endurance
THE ENDURANCE**apologies to Caroline Alexander, whose account of Earnest Shackleton’s antarctic expedition, of the same title, is unparalleled; all coincidences intended I began to be followed by a voice saying:“It can’t last. It can’t last.Harden yourself. Harden yourself.Be ready. Be ready.” The first verse of Wendell Berry’s “Song in a Year of Catastrophe”. Hard not […]
Holding Fast
Earth moves through space at what we estimate to be sixty-six thousand miles an hour. Sixty- six thousand miles. Per hour. Merwin wrote “we are all here together without knowing it flying at a speed beyond thinking.” Flying at a speed beyond thinking, we hold fast to this farm, with every bit of every kind […]
Unchopping a Tree
W.S. Merwin began his Tale… “After many winters the mossfinds the sawdust crushed bark chipsand says old friendold friend” What is believed to be the original wild apple forest rests in the Dzungarian Alps, in Central Asia. From that forest, nestled in the mountains between Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and China, sprung the thousands of apple varietals […]
Misinformation
An article recently appeared in a local advertising publication, entitled “Inconvenient Facts”. It begins with a quotation. “Organic practices can reduce climate pollution produced directly from farming – which would be fantastic if they didn’t also require more land to produce the same amount of food.” The article’s author states “This is the headline that […]
Happy
Our crew is fairly diverse. Some are peculiar, some curmudgeons and a few are downright cantankerous. Then there’s one in every crowd, happy. One of the crew is a discerning beer drinker but eschews beer flights. “Why? What’s not to like about a beer flight?” “Nothing, really, I just like a pint, simple as that. […]
Existentialism
Following a disappointing loss in a playoff game some years back, then Boston Bruin’scoach Claude Julien was pressed to explain his team’s lackluster performance. “Wehad three kinds of guys out there on the ice tonight,” he said with disdain. “Guys outthere trying to make something happen, guys out there waiting for something to happen,and guys […]
Lunch
To reduce the possibility of legal action for libel from any person who believes that they have been defamed by their portrayal in this story, whether portrayed under their real name (Gwen) or a different name (Gwen), Nye Hill Farm disclaims as follows. All names, characters, incidents and locales portrayed in this story are fictitious. […]
Reverence
Nye Hill Farm was established in 1790, the year President George Washington delivered the nation’s first State of the Union Address. The farmstead’s original stone foundation still exists, intact. By the time Washington delivered his Farewell Address six years later, the Nyes had built the house in which we now live. The house’s hearth still […]