January 2, 2015. Alli and Will at the farm.

I’m getting darn good at the new protocol of placing my phone on the dock when arriving home, so my phone is always charged. Good. Now if I could learn to put it back in my purse when departing . . .

So I didn’t have a camera to record the kids at the farm yesterday, but as you see, it was a blue-sky day. Cold enough that the ice lately flooded from the creek remained as wondrous sheets of glass waiting to be stomped and slid upon. Picked up entire and shattered. “Like in Greece,” Will said. “Where they throw their plates.” Huh? Kids these days!

There was still enough ice melt to provide plenty of bog in which I could break in my new boots. Called, appropriately enough, Bog Boots. It’s kind of fun to splash about the lower field, even though it’s not technically wet-land. Technically. Couldn’t be more “wet” and still considered “land.” We’re beginning to understand just what it is that we’ve acquired.

We were to meet Mark Wahl there at 2:00 to discuss the placement of his electric wire fencing. He arrived in the company of his little Cecily and Jefferson, the sheep dog. He and Larry marched around the property, establishing the boundaries for the new arrivals. At first there will be only 20 cows, but the numbers will rise when the animals move off the fields of rye grass in the spring.

We’re to have a combination of some Angus, some Charolais. Of course I Googled Charolais and found that they’re white (good — more picturesque) but are also being bred red and brown. So we’ll see. I asked Mark if he would Skype their arrival and he laughed — if he know how to Skype, he said. Nope, I’ll just have to wait until another shipment to photograph the animals’ arrival. Wonder how I’ll manage my mixed feelings about contributing to a practice I don’t really support intellectually, but do cuisine-wise. Hold two thoughts simultaneously?

The land eases my mind just now. Winter wood, leaves on the ground, two huge flights of geese honking their way to some neighboring wet-land. Silence except for the sound of the kids over by the fallen tree, laughing. Now I won’t be back until late in January, after Band Camp. But I go to sleep with the image of green hills, ancient oaks with clumps of mistletoe newly visible, hawks soaring. Lucky.