As wonderfully mild as this winter has been, there have been fewer opportunities to take lovely winter photos. It may have felt like spring for many days in the past month or so, but the landscape looked brown, dry, and definitely dormant. This past weekend’s winter storm gave us many inches of heavy, wet snow. It is still clinging to branches, making boughs droop with the sheer weight. Fortunately, we have had very little tree damage on the property. Perhaps it’s because we have been in a mode of continual storm clean-up for the past year and a half – so much has fallen already!

Just before the storm, Jason was able to spend a warm day or two clearing a generous path into our south woods. Our objective was to make a path so that we could get into the original white barn that was surrounded by over-grown woods. The building could be made useful, but we would need to contend with lots and lots of discarded rubbish, probably long forgotten by inhabitants from decades past.

Racing to beat the storm, we gave the job all we could muster and then some. I once had a boss would call desperate operations like this a “blitz,” and that seems like just about the right term for it. Among other things, I did happen to discover a small dead mouse just inside the threshold of one of the barn doors. Jason took five years to finally see it, but I have a special sense when it comes to mice. I have to admit that a good deal of energy left me at that point. I know, I know – it’s a farm. Just the same, I cannot stand mice! Still, I tried to press on.

The funniest thing that we found was an empty old wooden box marked as being explosives for land clearing. It seemed like a very fitting thing to find. Well, there were two funny things, really. The other was watching Jason back our farm truck up to the dumpster with its bed filled to the hilt with junk: 50 gallon barrels, rusty fencing, miscellaneous doors and broken windows, a dilapidated metal cabinet, and a wheelbarrow with a broken-off wheel. It was so Beverly Hillbillies – I had to savor the moment, dirty and disheveled as we were, and laugh out loud. It’s important to keep your sense of humor, even as you strap down 20 cubic yards of refuse from bygone years.

The snow came and the old white barn looks prettier that usual. It’s empty now, save wildlife that I am sure creep in and out from gaps around the building edges. The woods have never looked prettier and the new path to the barn provided an excellent place to take it all in. Thanks for taking time to read our blog. For automatic updates from The Farm at Long Lane, please sign-up for the RSS Feed.