Acair Fearann

One of the more peaceful aspects of this place is that one can consider time.  In fact, it sort of requires one to consider time.

As the year goes by, one can watch the sunset as it moves from north to south, and then back again, and one is reminded that it has been doing that and will keep doing that, regardless of what one is worrying about today.  Yesterday the sun set almost as far south as it ever does (give it another two weeks!).  Six months from now, it will be at the other end of the hedgerow, as it was six months ago.  As it was 70 years ago, and will be 70 years from now.

For me, at least, there is great peace and security in knowing that.

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Gingkos are fascinating trees.  One of the older species around.  Very hardy (the one in the picture is well over 100 years old) and interesting shape.  They don’t drop branches (much).  Females, I’ll grant you, have a blossom which isn’t very pleasant, but one can avoid that.

However… they have one slightly annoying characteristic.  At a certain point in the fall, like other deciduous trees, they drop their leaves.  Unlike other deciduous trees, they will drop them all in one day…

And one is well advised to rake them up rather quickly, as they make an almost impenetrable mat for the grass to die under.

So.  That was the morning’s entertainment today.

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on the farm,,,

He’s bigger than he looks.  17 hands 2, and about 2000 pounds.  Welcome!

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This place we care for has 19 outside doors (granted, 3 of them only access balconies, but that’s still outside.  And still wretched excess) and they all need storm panels installed for the winter winds which blow across the meadow.  That was this morning’s entertainment.

There is a curious thing about them, though, which we’ve noticed before — they change the feel of the house, even just sitting inside somewhere.  It’s not that one can feel the change in the draught (unless it’s very windy) nor can one see them, of course.  It’s the sound.  The house becomes very quiet inside; outside noises — the odd car, a lawn mower somewhere, whatever — are muted to the point of non-being, and one can hear the house.  One can almost imagine that the house is like a big cat, curling up in its bed for the winter and, perhaps, purring quietly to itself as it goes to sleep.

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Sometime towards the end of October when, somehow, one realizes that the year has ended.  Oh I know — New Year’s Day is the first of January.  Really?  It either should be the end of summer and fall, or the beginning of spring.  Samhain or Beltane.  I suppose that is the difference between a temperate climate and a Mediterranean one, though.

Today seems to be that day.  The last of the hay is in

The last apples are picked…

And it’s time to sit for a bit — it’s warm out, after all — and just take stock of this year.

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curiously satisfying about mowing a paddock (we are hoping to get a new horse in the near future — and an unmowed paddock is a seriously bad idea).  Can’t really say what, but it is.  Very peaceful  It reminds me that now — some time on! — I realise how truly at peace with himself and his world one of my early … mentors, to use a modern word he wouldn’t have recognised, was.

Besides, it is a beautiful fall day — so here are a few pictures to enjoy!

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We are the land…

We are the farmers and the woodsmen

The fishermen and the ranchers

We are the gals in old pickups

Coming to town for feed for their animals

The men on the town truck

Mending the road

The Wichita Lineman that someone wrote a song about

We are the farmer with his tractor coming home at the end of a day

The rancher, checking his stock before a coming storm

The fisherman, looking for the harbor lights in the evening

Woodsmoke on an autumn wind

A light in the window

The land is not ours –

Oh the deed down at the courthouse may say so

But the land is not ours

We keep faith with our forefathers

And we care for the land for our children

And our children’s children

We are the land.

Jamie

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It hasn’t quite gotten to this colour around here yet — another few weeks, though.

But it is cool enough so that we finally gave up and turned Cedric on last night.  Who is Cedric?  The boiler for the heating system.  I do hope that we are not the only ones who give odd names to at least some of our supposedly inanimate objects.  Supposedly.  Not everything gets a name.  But some things do.  Cedric, for instance.  Then there is Fergie, who is an elderly but still quite functional Ferguson tractor.  Or Girl, who is the lawn tractor and mower and in the wintertime sometime snowblower — who got the name Girl after the poem (“there was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.  And when she was good she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid.”  Remember that one?).

Whimsy never hurts…

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No, not the liquid sort… but, it we haven’t really managed to finish the peaches yet (getting, there, getting there!) but now…

Wolf River.  I think.  The tree is having a wonderful time this year (it’s one of those every other year trees).  Looks like we can’t relax just yet.

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There probably is a very good reason.  I am sure that there is a very good explanation… but

Do they all have to come ripe at once?

The cooks in the family have been industriously sterilizing jars and making up a sugar syrup and taking the skin off and so on and on.  That’s only a very small part!  There are more on the opposite counter, and yet more in the cellar.  They’ll be very welcome this winter, but why do they all seem to come at once?

And we’re not done yet!

Where’s the ladder?

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