A Black Hat and a Buggy - part 2 of a story of life on one North Country farm


Amish buggies in the village of Heuvelton, NY ~ Kathy Liebler photo

Elam Miller reached marrying age and the elders paired him up with Mary. She had “a funny eye” (she would cheerfully point out) that looked to her right and toward the heavens, and she was from a family of good gardeners (Elam would cheerfully point that out). The Amish accept whatever God gives them for looks, and in a culture that eats what it grows, the second quality was held in high esteem. Both Elam and Mary considered themselves fortunate.

Real estate goes pretty cheap in the North Country, but the price of a good farm is out of the reach of a young couple starting life together. A hundred and fifty years ago, an elder son might stand to inherit the family farm, but the younger sons would have hugged their mother, shaken their dad’s hand, and headed west. Today, west of anywhere is already bought and settled. Fledgling sons and daughters in the Amish community have to find new solutions to the problem of getting their own farm, and some have decided to hire out to established “English” farmers. The farmer provides a house of some sort and garden space; the Amish couple milks cows and does other farm chores for reasonable wages. So it was that Pierce met Elam and Mary... but not before being inspected.

The elders visited Pierce’s farm, hopeful that a working arrangement could be reached, yet holding firm to their principles: there are some things Amish people do not do, and many of those things have to do with modern machinery. The “stick-steered” motorized feeder in the barn drew close inspection. Shoulders were shrugged, stones were kicked around, and jokes and concerns were swapped as three men in black hats and one in a baseball cap grappled with the conflict between internal combustion and internal conviction. In the end, the elders approved of Elam being taken on provided he not drive anything with a steering wheel – thereby okaying the stick-steered device so necessary to the farm’s barn work. When it came to rules and limits in their sect, the elders confided, it wasn’t so much where the line was drawn but that there was a line. Pierce converted his garage into an apartment, and soon the hired help wore black and drove horses.

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Note: Because of their religions beliefs, the Amish do not want to be photographed. I have generally respected this, passing up many opportunities that would have produced wonderful pictures. The above photo was taken in a local hardware store parking lot.

Farmer Boy - part 1 of a group of stories of life on one North Country farm
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The life of a dairy farmer is not one most of us would choose. In the winter, the work day begins around 4 AM and continues until early evening; in summer the hours often extend until it is too dark to plant, hay, mend fences or chop corn. I’m talking about seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Typically the farm wife has a job off the farm, one that provides reliable income and benefits, and she may also milk cows.

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Farm babies

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Our best friends, Pierce and Sarah, are dairy farmers, a life they chose after leaving the service of the Peace Corps in South America back in the early 1970s, and one hot July 4th weekend - as they were approaching retirement - their son came home for a visit, introduced them to his Cuban-American girlfriend and decided to buy the farm across the road. These friends of ours suddenly veered off the path they had been traveling and embarked on an adventure bearing no resemblance to assisted living.

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It took some fast footwork to purchase the farm. It had already been “sold” to another farmer, a man already milking some 300 cows and building a dairy empire, but ink hadn’t been put on paper yet. Pierce had always been a very good neighbor to the seller, and that fact swung the deal.

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The view from one farm to the other on a January morning - Carmencita photo

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Six months later, a wedding was held in the old church that sits within view of the two farms, a wedding attended by family and friends, some 35 Cubans, and the young Amish family who were Pierce and Sarah’s hired hands. A team of Belgian workhorses who (if they thought about such things) were also about to trot in a new direction, went “dashing through the snow” pulling sleigh-fulls of laughing wedding guests from one farm to the other and back. Matt and Anna left corporate jobs in warmer climates and took up farming in the North Country.

Morning light in the barn - Carmencita photo
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This story to be continued...

My Favorite Gnome
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From Randy Newman:

Last night I had a dream
You were in it I was in it with you
Everyone that I knew
And everyone that you know was in my dream
I saw a vampire
I saw a ghost
Everybody scared me but you sacred me the most
In the dream I had last night
In the dream I had last night
In my dream




I can dream, can't I?

Light in the Forest

I went showshoeing yesterday, hoping to get a picture of some diamonds for my friend Shaman. They glittered everywhere, but as she later commented, "Proof Diamonds are hard to photograph." Husband took to the woods on his cross-country skis, our paths occasionally crossing and going along together.

I was hoping to see fisher and fox tracks, but deer and coyote were what I found. The beaver pond is frozen over and tempted me to trust it, but I did not, owing to the fact that the snowshoes had broken through and gotten wet and ice-coated at one place along its edge. I am not a fool.

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Everything was beautiful and pristine, brightly sun-lit and cold. The camera traveled inside my coat and at times my gloved fingers fumbled with its settings and shutter. Gradually, afternoon light began to give way to the golden glow of on-coming sunset, the temperature began its slide back to negative numbers, and we headed for home.

Near the end of our outing we passed through a dark spruce grove where I took the photo you see below. Titled The Light in the Forest; here is a haiku it inspired:

Woods quiet and dark

Winter sun peeks through branches

True enlightenment

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Woodstove Cookery

Women used to prepare all of their family's meals on and in "wood cookstoves". My grandmother used one, but - like every other woman of her generation - happily switched to the new-fangled coal, then gas and finally electric counterpart as they became available.

In the stove pictured here, the larger white door is the oven; the smaller one a second oven; the lower left-hand door is the firebox. There was a water reservoir (seen here on the right side of the stove). The compartment above the stove was for storage and for keeping things warm. Bread might have been placed up there to rise.

The cast iron top of the average kitchen stove had six "burners", varying in heat level by where they were located relative to the fire burning below them or the path by which smoke and heat exit to the chimney pipe. (You've all heard of putting it on the back burner - the cooler place where things simmer rather than boil). The chimney pipe doesn't show in this picture, but it would connect to the back of the stove just above the level of the burner top.

There is something romantic and wonderful about having a wood cookstove. Their heat is even, they warm the house as well as the food, and you feel connected to the generations of women before your time for whom this appliance was "modern". On the down-side, cookstoves take up a lot of space, eat a lot of finely split wood, and the dirt and bark bits falling off that wood constantly litter your kitchen. This appliance becomes damnable in the heat of summer.

I don't have a cookstove, but my house is heated by a woodstove (pictured in the previous post), and I can cook just about anything on top of it. The heat is even, and by placing a pan either directly on it's flat top or on one of three trivets of varying height, I can vary the cooking temperature. Like the old cookstove, the front of my stove is hotter than the rear. An oven is created by placing a large kettle upside-down over the pot and trivet, or by creating an aluminum foil tent of suitable size and shape to cover what you want to bake. I favor cast iron frying pans, and they are right at home on the woodstove top; the tea kettle boils quickly on a cold winter day.

One January several years ago we experienced The Great Ice Storm of '98 that left us without power for nearly two weeks. When power crews finally restored our electricity, we chose to leave it off. A friend had joined us, and we were just sitting down to our woodstove-cooked meal by candlelight: Mediterranean halibut, humus, tabouli and a salad. I had even baked brownies to enjoy with the ice cream from its frozen place on the front porch.

These last two photos are of that meal, a meal that was delicious and still the source of a warm memory.

Life at
-10

It's cold again this morning. The car groaned a very slow "don'-wanna-go, don'-wanna-go, don'-wanna-go" before firing, then made engine noises anticipatory of metal parts cracking and shattering. Leather seats will no doubt be stiff for the first couple of miles, but eventually the seat heaters will do their work, and by the time Husband reaches town, life in the car won't be too bad.

Barn work is easier in this weather: shit freezes and can be more easily scooped up with my horsie litter scoop. Winter barn chores are always dangerous, since a fall or injury outside means death by freezing before anyone would even miss me. Today will be more dangerous than usual - or maybe I should think of death having the potential to happen more quickly.

I consider the many Amish families living in the North Country. They lack the luxury of seat heaters, but their barns - unlike mine - will no doubt be warmed by the animals within. They are good-natured folk on a first-name basis with weather.

I will fill the woodstove often today. The colder it is outdoors, the hotter the stove burns. Colder air causes the chimney to draw, fanning the flames. Our house is oriented to the sun - which is just up - and soon it will be toasty inside these walls. Tonight's dinner will be made on this black appliance too, not because I have to use it, but because I like to.


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The birds at the feeders (bluejays, chickadees, juncos, woodpeckers, goldfinches mostly) have frost on their backs and heads. I have never noticed this before. Could they be sweating?? They're certainly puffing out their feathers to keep warm.


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It's a day for wool sox (probably for long underwear too, but I didn't put it on). My double wool mittens are my fingers' friends. I'll smile as I take the soapstone warmers off the stove shelf and place them inside my boots: a simple solution to a basic problem.

Do you sense how much I like this day? It is so quiet here. Can you appreciate the beauty of sun throwing long tree-shadows across the frozen pond? Tracks in the snow tell their stories; earlier daylight reminds me to savor this icy stillness because it will soon give way to mud season. Steaming coffee soothes rather than stimulates.

My life is blessed.

ADDENDUM (after going to the barn): HOLY HEAT EXCHANGER, BATMAN! It's fucking freezing out there! I'm gonna shoot a few bluejays and stuff their feathers in my underwear! Where's my travel agent's phone number? I wonder if furniture burns hotter than firewood... This coffee needs some whiskey in it! What kind of moron would choose to live in this climate?!?!

Winter Stream

Skating on Thin Ice

Do you remember how to ice skate? I had to yesterday. (Note: there will be no photographs with this post)!

Our one and only pathetic North Country mall does not have a cinema, but it does have a skating rink, and that's where "Bomma" and "Brappa" took Grandson yesterday. For a meager $5 you can have a pair of skates and use the rink for two hours on Sunday afternoon (between hockey games and figure skating lessons), and so we decided to see if the 4-year-old could handle it.

We had fun, but there probably won't be any future NHL bidding war for the boy. Here's a haiku he inspired:

Hockey skates glide proud
Young boy makes ice acquaintance
Bottom black and blue

And:

Grandparents on skates
Helping grandson survive ice
Can you spell achey ?

So Much Talent...

There are so many talented people in the world. Here's one I've "met" in Bloggerville: The Lone Beader. Check out what this woman does!

You can also link to her blog from my left sidebar list.