rural essays

A collection of 30 posts

ticks

Eat, or be Eaten

I am all about live and let live these days, with one—well, two—current exceptions: ticks, and mosquitos.

Spring

(Human) Nature

“Travel,” read the sign on a Seine River cruise boat, “is the ethic of caring for the world.”

rural essays

Tell Him Not to Feed the Bears

But there he was, busy pulling, twisting, adjusting, exchanging one tool for another from his leather belt in an easy motion.

maple syrup

800 Words on Maple Syrup and Wiper Fluid

You may be thinking, is he really postcarding about washer fluid behavior?

Other Musings

Lost in the Woods

For example, there is the possibility of getting lost in the woods . . .in freezing temperatures. I did this last week.

Other Musings

Walking on Ice

It is a superior feature of winter to be able to step onto a frozen pond or lake, and we have many of them. It is liberating.

February

February

We made it. February. Now the year can really begin.

Other Musings

Our Town

I kept thinking . . . all these people are paying what it costs to buy food for a week to hear what Mr. Wilder can share with them about life . . . . in our small corner of the world.

Other Musings

Wood Heat

Heating with wood is a complex business . . . one manufacturer described the process as more art than science.

Jarvis Coffin

Home Again

It is good to get out of the woods now and then. Even Huck would agree.

Michaelmas

Michaelmas

We celebrated Michaelmas—the feast of the Archangel St. Michael, as well as his compatriot Gabriel (I think also the other Archangels)—by pulling up our carrots.

Other Musings

Fall

Within a second of its release from a branch, an acorn falls to earth at the rate of approximately thirty-two feet per second, or about fifty-seven miles per hour. How do I know this? I looked it up on the internet. There was the answer—which has me thinking that

Other Musings

Quiet Time

I finally went to the trouble of getting a canoe onto on body of water known as Carpenter’s Marsh. Getting there requires four-wheel drive and something to port the canoe, a trailer for instance, or a rack, or, since this is New Hampshire, a pick-up with a bed that

Jarvis Coffin

Labor Day Weekend. Already.

The steps to our hillside garden are not repaired. The felled wood is not all cut up and stacked. The dock is still waiting to be treated with teak oil.

Other Musings

Chicken Barbeque

. . . nothing says community—or, Old Home Day—like a volunteer fire department and chicken barbeque.

Other Musings

Harvest Jitters

For us backyard gardeners, this is the time of year we fear most for our crop. It is not like we have a super abundance to go around.

August

August

These are the sultry days of deep summer.

Other Musings

Visualizing World Peace

Attendees at this year’s [MacDowell] Medal Day, were given white luggage tags and a pen and urged to write our wishes and hang them on fruit trees in the MacDowell Gardens.

Other Musings

Summer People

The July and August people have arrived, bringing with them their patronage of our stores and their vehicles, requiring me to look both ways before pulling out of the driveway.

Jarvis Coffin

Independent, Inching Forward

Soon you have the sense you are talking about the same things, which is when it hits you . . . you have only inched forward.

Other Musings

Good, Quality Thunder

The rain had stopped and we sat just to watch and listen as the storm’s slashing furry settled to not much more than a purr.

Other Musings

A Sensitive Time

Those are things you must get used to in New England, learning to be a tough tomato.

Jarvis Coffin

June

Huckles has developed a problem: he visits the neighbors.

Other Musings

Liver Free or Die

I object to the narrow use we make of the animals that pay the ultimate sacrifice on the way to our table.

Jarvis Coffin

Tractor Pull

I interview everyone with a tractor and they say the same thing: I love my tractor.