Hundreds of apples fell off the apple trees in the back pasture this week, the first time that has happened in our time on the farm. Maria doesn’t want Chloe to eat too many apples, there is too much sugar in them for horses. She and Fate went out into the pasture and were picking apples up for hours and throwing them over the fence and into the woods. I asked her what she was doing – there were countless apples all over the field.

Maria said she couldn’t help it, she knew we had to open up the pasture and she couldn’t bear to leave all of the apples on the ground. It’s hopeless, I said, there must be a thousand apples on the ground. And I saw the look on her face, and I went back to the barn and got a big buck and some rakes and we raked up hundreds of apples.

I don’t know if there are many more, I didn’t want to look.