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Savoring fall migrations, canoe trips and community
In a few weeks, the snow is going to fall and that will be the end of it. We will have done what we could do this season.
With that in mind, we try to keep moving and trying to prioritize. What’s the most important thing for us to do today? Sometimes, though, the answer to that question is to take the canoe out for a paddle with friends because gorgeous fall days like this won’t last much longer.
We are finding ourselves quite at home on our farm. This morning, we went for a walk along the perimeter of it and found that we can do a one-mile walk and never leave our property.
As we walked, we found a few milkweed pods and grabbed a few of the ones that were open and held them out so that the wind would catch them and carry them out across our fields. Hopefully, a year from now, we’ll see more milkweed spread across our fields as habitat and food for the monarch butterflies.
The fall migration of birds has been picking up on the farm. We’ve seen flocks of bluejays and goldfinch coming through, along with countless types of sparrows, including one of our favorites, the white-throated sparrow.
The trees across our property are all starting to turn. At the back northwest corner of the farm is one of our largest trees, a massive red maple. It looks healthy and strong; just the leaves at the top, outer edges are starting to turn color, but it won’t be long until our region is at peak color. We can see the brilliant oranges and reds of trees in every direction from our home, which sits on a small rise, giving us nice views in most directions.
The landscape of our farm will change drastically this week after a building the Johnson family called the quonset hut comes down. The hut is actually the top of the old barn that stood on the property. Ed Johnson told us that when the building started to get unstable, his father decided to repurpose it. He attached the top of the barn to a tractor, pulled it off and over to where it sits now. It was used for years in that capacity as another outbuilding for the farm.
Unfortunately, the old hut is just not that stable anymore, so we’ve decided that we’ll need to take it down. In its place, we will erect a new greenhouse that will be used for geminating seeds and starting plants this spring.
Even so, we will keep the poured cement pad at the back of where the building now sits that has the handprints of some of the Johnson children from when they pressed their hands into the wet cement back in 1968.
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The garlic we harvested this summer is curing in our barn, and in about a month’s time, we will plant most of it in our field, covering it with a thick layer of straw to keep it insulated over the winter months.
Our neighbor, Dan, came over this weekend with his tractor and tiller and broke up the soil even more, but we’ve got a long ways to go before the soil will have the structure we’ve been looking for. Right now, it is a mixture of dirt, clay and broken up pieces of sod from the pasture that has been tilled up.
We have been pouring over books on soil and field management trying to make decisions about how best to prepare our soil for next season. As we’ve been told, it’s a slow process that takes years of care and management.
One of the unexpected benefits of our new farm is the community we’ve become a part of.
The other day, we were having breakfast at the Rustic Diner in downtown Barnum (population 615), when the cook came out of the kitchen to ask who we were and if we’d eaten at the restaurant a few weeks ago.
We talked more and learned that the cook was also the owner. He and his wife bought the restaurant after moving to this region a few years ago.
The owners are just two of the many great people we’ve met since moving to Barnum. Some, like us, are newcomers to the community. Others are people whose families have lived in this region for generations and have reached out to welcome us.
Each day, we wake up and marvel at all that’s happened in such a short time. The global pandemic upended our lives last spring, but we are so grateful to be where we are in this special place.
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