Last year, we almost lost our farm, for some months we thought we would, and now that we are able to keep it, it seems sweeter than ever. This is the strangest winter in my 15 years in the country, I do not ever recall a February that felt like April. The ground is brown, the trees are bare, yet it doesn’t feel much like winter. Many curiosities. No ticks, which is surprising in this warmth, but the robins have arrived. The animals have been able to graze a bit all winter, which keeps them calm and engaged. Last winter, they could barely get out of the pole barn for three months and almost ate the barn.

We still have a good supply of firewood left, we might need some more hay. Our heating bills are the lowest they have ever been. Farm life is much easier in warmer weather, last winter was brutal. Still, there are things about the winter that I miss. Even if it comes now, it won’t be here for too long. Or so I think.

Standing on the hill in the back pasture, Fate and Red standing watch over the sheep, I realize how much I love this place, how much it means to me. Our notion of what a home is has changed, it is not so much the buildings and the land but the feeling around it. And that, we know, an go almost anywhere.

But looking out over the pasture, to our cluster by the road, the old farmhouse, Maria’s studio, the red barn, I felt so attached to this place, to the beauty and history of it, to the idea that this has been a farm since the early 1800’s. It has character, walking out into the back pasture, I felt I was in my Canopy Of Peace.