Just say no

With the first snow (and sleet) accumulating this grey morning in late December we are enjoying a pause in work and just saying-firmly and with some confidence-no to any stress related activities here at Water Run Farm. In fact, on what turned out to the be last snow-free days of the season, we managed to cut up and split and haul and toss under the barn a huge beech trunk that fell near the trail along the creek

Of course rural life, like all life, is stitched with the threads of stress. And when your son is polishing off his college applications, and preparing for a winter in Uruguay, Bolivia and Peru, it is a happy day when technology from another world (in the case at hand, alien technology from the urban life of our friends Leslie and Douglas in Brooklyn) arrives in the mail.

Our amazing “Martian Popping Thing” has come in handy. With Nathaniel safe and sound in Montevideo, our troubles are melting away as we squeeze and then squeeze again.