The snow is consistently a bit less than a foot deep all over the farm and has settled with a kind of certainty over the ground. Winter conquers all for the present. I burned some of our garbage yesterday...a job I actually relish for the brisk hike to the field, the pleasure of turning trash into ashes and the warmth it makes.
I made the trip to the burn barrel with Mama loaded with boxes and paper up a kind of “cow path” up the middle of the garden path. We like the way the snow looks from our windows when it lays in an uninterrupted carpet, so the boys have maintained this narrow track to the field. It becomes a kind of gorge with jagged banks that grows deeper as more snow falls. Only the cats have the gall to put paw dents on the blanketed lawn. Up and down we trudge to the measured, sticky crunch of our boots and the regular puffing clouds of our breath.
A few of the bolder hens were pecking about gingerly on the pad of trampled snow before the hoop-house door. The rest of the flock was content to peer inquisitively at them from inside and periodically question them in hoarse voices...probably about the condition of their feet.
Hens are particular about their feet at any time. The cold snow only exaggerates their natural diffidence as they tip-toe about stiffly on the frozen ground with that stilted gait that throws their head forward in rocking-horse fashion.
But everything is stiff. Frail weeds sway rigidly in a breath of the wind and even your breath and the clothes on your back, feel as if they will break before they could bend.
Tangy and bitter-sweet the scent of snow crackles in our glowing noses and bright flashes the sun on a million flakes. I am rich to look across the frozen desert of our field, an expanse of silver under the splinter-blue sky, or peer into the secret places of the woods, adrift with cool light and cerulean shadow pierced with golden rays, crusted with diamonds of ice and dusted with the shattering glass of frost from stark limbs.
The new year finds us all richer in reading material, so, since we can’t delve in the soil, we dig into literature in earnest.
A Happy New Year to you all and keep warm!
Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows
