6” of new snow has fallen on the farm. Angus and I went for his first ski, through fields of winter rye, deep into the woods and down to the roaring brook. 17° F.
As a Border Collie, his life is to be the advance guide, always circling around me, and bring up the rear. Day One of skiing was to teach Angus to stop pouncing on the tips of my skis and bite them as they moved through the snow. He herds me.
This fall after the fields were planted to rye and cover crops, we opened up this 100 year old road in the forest. Years ago my brother-in-law Joe, a forester, corrected the farmer - these are “forest roads, not farm roads”. Young trees were growing growing in the middle of the trail, and elder trees had fallen across the the path. Now the neighbors and I can ski here. I knew that Angus was coming, and he would help explore the lower part of farm, 3/4 of the acres are forest below the fields of grain.
Our project this winter is to explore, map out and cut a path through the mystery 1/4 mile in the forest to get from the brook we skied to today to our lower grain fields and cross into Jasper Hill Farm and ski to Barr Hill and to Craftsbury. Last winter Mateo and I mapped out the openings between both farms.
In this video, we are in a 6 acre parcel of the forest that we have approval to clear and transform into a field of grain. Our forester mapped out the soils, and we walked with the land trust, the NEK wetlands chief (we agreed that there are no wetlands here) and our USDA agent (no jurisdiction, but he is the best, and always an honor to have him on the farm to help us with agronomy - soils, cover crops, plants for pollinators, organic weed protocol).
Suzanne Simard’s book, “Finding the Mother Tree” changed the way that I look at the forest. Now I see the mother trees in the woods and observe how she is connected to and nurtures all of the younger trees around her by the mycorrhizae in the earth.
Continued in comments. ...