When city dwellers come for a visit to my modest tree farm in Middleton, they are usually effusive. “Oh what a beautiful place,” they say. “You must love living here. It’s so peaceful! Oh how I wish I would live like you do.”
And it is often peaceful. At least when I’m not cussing at a broken tractor or dropping a sledgehammer on my foot.
But come November, it is anything but quiet. Come frosty nights and a whiff of deep snow in the near future, all things warmblooded look to stake out their territory for the long winter. The battle lines are drawn and it’s every critter for itself—bipeds included. A warm house or a cozy barn are prime habitat, and from the woods and fields has come an army—like Walmart shoppers at 5 a.m. on Black Friday—of critters looking to take up residence.
For many years the territorial boundaries of the farm were managed by a faithful border collie, Dot. Her daily routine included making concentric circles—one tight around the house and barnyard, then a wider arc just beyond the gardens and fence lines, and one wider still along the edges of the fields and the roads that access the woods and sugar house.
Until Dot was called to the great sheep farm in the sky a while back, I never appreciated how effective she was. The word is apparently out—first come, first served at Skydog Farm. The front yard is a moonscape thanks to skunks digging it up in search of grubs. This summer a groundhog tunneled under the electric fence around the garden and emerged, like a modern Colonel Hogan, from a hole in the middle of the beans. Deer jump the fence to graze with the horses. Fox trot without a care up and down the driveway within a few feet of the house.
Not content to take back the land, the woodland creatures have invaded the barns. A young porcupine is living somewhere among a stack of old boards in one corner. A week ago a possum was seen eating from the cat food bin—right alongside the barn cats! Etch and Sketch, whose sole job is to keep untamed critters out of the grain room, apparently have grown lazy and liberal, favoring détente over bellicosity.
The Carriage House, ostensibly a workshop and storage area, is now the main headquarters of the latest late-night entertainment sensation, “Squirrels Gone Wild.” Brazen and showing no shame, the cheeky varmints shake their tails and chatter complaints when I dare disturb their realm.
I fear their attitude is catching on. A few weeks ago I was working at the computer in the living room, heard a sound, and looked up to see a mouse sitting on the beam above my head. Now this is hardly unusual, as anyone who lives in an old farmhouse knows. But when I told the little guy to scram, he just back on his haunches, stayed put and locked eyes with me. It was a battle of wills. I suspect he thinks he won.
The garage has been targeted by the chipmunks, who scurry in and out like Massachusetts legislators to a New Hampshire liquor store. I figured that letting my Labrador retriever spend a little quality time out there might discourage the chippys. Not so—they taught the dog to play cards and won all his biscuits. He won’t go back out there.
Something’s living in the attic. I have not had the courage to investigate, but whatever it is, there’s more than one and they apparently like to play basketball all night.
So, no, November is not peaceful on the farm. There are battles to be fought on many fronts. It’s all part of the ongoing stewardship of a New Hampshire farmstead. And in this particular case, the key to winning this battle may be focusing on the “stew” in stewardship.
Jack Savage is the editor of Forest Notes: New Hamphire’s Conservation Magazine published by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. He lives in cozy proximity to various wildlife in Middleton.
After the Leaves Have Fallen…
- Dave Anderson
I love November. It’s almost become my new favorite season despite the dark specter of approaching winter.
On our small farm in Sutton, November is the finish line. Once the cordwood is stacked and covered, the hay is in the barn, equipment winterized in the garage, leaves raked or simply blown away and the perennial gardens cut-back and veggie garden tilled under, it’s time to kick back, eat and sleep like a woodchuck.
Winter is novel before snow arrives. Tasks are simple: keep the woodstove full, the tractor and snow-blower running, feed the sheep and chickens, and keep the porch roof shoveled.
I imagine snowy evenings to come: sitting by the woodstove, soft music playing, sipping something tasty. That fabled “long winter’s nap” can start at eight o’clock when the sun sets at four. On the opposite side of the calendar, we continue projects until nine although we rarely do.
Drowsy November offers us a break before the December holiday frenzy distracts us from the longest nights of the year. Sunlight and the relative length of day were the original coin of the realm before rural electrification. I harbor vestigial memory, an innate instinct to eat and sleep more as the days grow short.
Outside my windows, the farm is hushed. The last coppery oak leaves have fallen and accumulated like slippery shingles on the forest floor. The land is withheld, awaiting the first snow. The portrait of November is Yankee gothic: a gooey, toothless Jack-O-Lantern melts in the compost bin, a bare light bulb glows inside the unpainted chicken coop, the pasture and woodlot are open and barren, tidy as the windblown Scottish highlands. The whole place just seems smaller.
In contrast, the “green hell” of humid summer is a veritable jungle of vegetation swarming with mosquitoes. No more sweating amid poison ivy vines. No pruning, tilling, mowing, weeding. No lugging water or endlessly moving portable, electric sheep fence. Now the unfinished carpentry and painting projects will remain so. Like Red Sox fans, I mutter “maybe next year…”
November is custom-made for cutting wood. I stride into low-angle slanting sunlight, tugging braided winch cable off its spool. Logging chains rattle as the cable jerks taught and a hitch of firewood logs arrives at the edge of a skid road to await a snowy downhill ride to the landing later this winter.
I look through the trees to where water glints far out in the marsh. The sudden ability to see deep into surrounding woods and across the entire Lane River valley perpetuates illusions of propriety, an absurd notion that I will improve far-flung hidden recesses of my tree farm. I visit places rarely seen when the leaves are on and imagine doing something more productive with them. The landscape is transformed by morning frost into something small enough I might claim to manage.
After the leaves have fallen, old aspirations return.
Naturalist Dave Anderson is Director of Education and Volunteer Services for The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. His column appears every other week in the New Hampshire Sunday News. E-mail him at danderson@forestsociety.org or through the Forest Society's Web site: forestsociety.org.