Farm Journal-December

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses 
on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. 
I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.


A Child's Christmas in Wales
Dylan Thomas


The blueberry plants have lost their leaves and the branches are beginning to change from russet orange to crimson red as the quiet time of winter dormancy sets in. Plant dormancy is akin to animal hibernation, a self-protective survival strategy that will continue until March. This is a good time to protect roots from the vagaries of a New England winter with a covering of leaf mulch. It is not a good time to prune. Any irrigation lines should be blown free of debris and standing water.

As autumn passes and we are turned toward winter ourselves, we are saddened at the passing of our dear friend and colleague Dave Simser. 

We will miss his generous spirit and quick wit as he bounded through the fields with his dog Ishmael by his side gathering samples every spring. Without his expert advice- and early detection of microscopic Winter Moth larvae- there would have been no blueberries at all these past few years. He was an entomologist without peer.

We wish we had more time with him and what time we had we wished we had used more wisely... but autumn's gold will be April's flower.


Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower:
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,

So Dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


-Robert Frost

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