Sylvia's Farm by Sylvia Jorrin Read Free Book Online Page B

red leaves on a few maple trees; “it” was another reminder of winter’s impending arrival. “The first day of winter is the last day of the county fair” is acommon saying here. I’d deliberately avoided knowing the date of the fair. I bought some Christmas presents in Cooperstown. We always shop in advance, so that didn’t feel like the onset of winter. Justine stayed an extra day and we picked chokecherries on the Turnpike to make jam but that didn’t do it, either. I don’t look at calendars and haven’t turned the page from July to August yet and am not quite certain of the date. There is about the month of November’s worth of wood cut and stacked, and the winter’s worth felled but not cut for the hundred-year-old ceramic stove in my room. I’ve all of the fence posts I need and half of the wood needed to build the latest fence, with half of that assembled and up. Two thirds of the winter’s hay is in the barn. The water line is laid, needing amendment but possessing promise. Not much food is put by in the freezer. Three sweaters are knit to wear to the barn, and nearly sewn together.
    Sometimes there is unexpected virtue in not having been able to finish something. I haven’t had time to address the barn floor since spring. It needs mucking out. Sheep require a pack of straw and rotted manure to keep them warm in winter. I’ve not let them in the barn except for specific procedures since early spring. Wonder of wonders! The pack has packed. Much less volume and probably much more weight. The big however, is that it means fewer loads of muck to shovel. In some places it is only six inches deep! I had been shoveling some days quite intensely. But this is a bonus. The barn needs a serious uninterrupted day for it to become functional. It also needs the kind of carpentry I can handle myself. For a change. Some things are better here, almost, and only some are worse. The better is far better than ever, and the worse is far worse.
    Another set of summer twin lambs was born in the field yesterday, one big, one tiny. It is possible that they started out as triplets and one didn’t take early on. Their mother gave me twins in January, littleewe lambs perfect for breeding next summer. I lost a ram lamb, a twin, to hypothermia on the big rain day last week. His momma led us to him huddled next to a stone wall, her lively little ewe hovering beside her. He was alive but just barely. He sounded a heart-wrenching cry that didn’t promise much but a frantic effort to save it on my part and usually a hole to be dug. We put him in front of the fire and tried to dry him. I tube-fed him with the most potent mix I could put together, and he died.
    Noah Saltonstail’s horns are troubling him. I think he may have fly strike. Maxine Brown had success using Pine-Sol in a similar situation. I’ve seen him several mornings going to rub his head on the cool stones of the barn bridgeway. He must be caught today and treated each day for a while. I need him.
    A customer is scheduled to come today to buy a ram lamb, and I shall thereby have money to extend the fence. More to do. I haven’t mowed part of the lawn in what seems like forever, and there are the expected loaves of bread to bake to greet my friends and family when they arrive at noon. The floors need mopping and the potatoes need hilling and the garlic is ready to replant and the new gate that was just cut for the new green fence asks to be painted and hung. I haven’t even begun to work on the summer’s project, promised to myself all winter, to convert the old laundry room, the most beautiful room in the house, into a dining room.
    In other words, what shall be completed today, this wonderful one, with fourteen hours still left in it, and what shall spill over into an equally full tomorrow? And what hour, if any, shall be put aside to devote to heeding the message sent to me by that first red