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I’ve never had fruit trees before.

Last fall, when we were looking to buy the property that became StarField Farm, the sellers pointed out the three peach trees that were planted along the driveway. When we took ownership in January, all the trees were dormant, the plants buried beneath the snow.

We had no idea what would emerge in the spring and summer.

Now we know.

The peach trees were amazingly prolific this year, after last years terrible weather resulted in an absence of all stone fruit north of New Jersey. There were no local peaches last year. Not one.

I was ridiculously upset earlier in the spring when I culled about a third of the very small, “proto-peaches” off the trees. It pained me to throw away what I knew would be good fruit. But the health of the tree and the ultimate quality of the peaches depended on it.

Honestly? I could have culled up to half the peaches and still had too many to handle. I suspect I’ll easily have 4 boxes full. Maybe 60 lbs or more.

I’m glad I removed the fruit that I did. As it is, the branches are heavily laden and nearly touching the ground.

Perhaps it is what isn’t there that ends up being the most important.

Edited fiction is often more powerful for what is removed, distilled, and concentrated.

Negative space is vital for artwork.

Ceramic pieces are balanced and shaped through the trimming process.

There’s probably a metaphor in there for life, but I’m too tired to find it right now. Something about the silence and stillness between thoughts – that pause which makes room for gratitude and grace.

I am grateful for this place. For its peace and for its bounty. I am grateful for the home it will become and the place of creativity we will create here.

The construction is also something new to us, along with the peach trees, the apple trees, the concord grapes, and the asparagus.

I am in awe of the building process. A few weeks ago, this was a hole in the earth. Now, it is a recognizable structure. It is both going faster and slower than I had anticipated. I keep imagining what it will be like when the addition is complete and they break through the dining room to join the old house with the new.

I know we will marvel at the house as much as we marvel at the fruit trees. And we will measure this harvest in years of joy and laughter.

 

 

We have a big hole in the ground. While it looks like a mess of earth and rocks, this is what will be our barn/addition to the house at Star Field Farm. It took some doing, given the weeks of rainy weather, but the preparation work is done and they will begin the next stage of pouring the foundation starting on Thursday.

 

This is what will be the mudroom and new entrance to the house; a connector to the garage and the new master suite above it.

I’m a woman of fairly simple wants. I don’t care about jewelry. Don’t like roses, long stemmed or otherwise. But sweet talk me with a description of a mud room? :swoon:

We had a great meeting with Rich from Geobarns, who will be coordinating the build. Even with my difficulty ‘seeing’ things in my mind’s eye, I could absolutely envision how beautiful this will be, how much it will reflect our aesthetic, how wonderful it will be to have friends and family come to visit.

Our neighbors were upgrading their living room and gave us their old sofa. One U-haul trip later, and they are now in the middle of our dining room. Eventually, we will get a table and the sofa will be moved to what will be my office/spare room upstairs.

We’re in this interesting transition phase: we weren’t ready to move and can only realistically use the place a few weekends a month, depending on Neil’s call schedule. The sellers were not quite ready to move up to their new place in VT. So we have an arrangement where we’ve rented the place back to them for a low rent in return for access two weekends a month. While they are transitioning out, we are slowly moving things in.

The dogs are already at home.

I took them on a long tromp in the woods, despite the threat of ticks. The dogs have their sorresto collars, I have a set of dog walking/hiking clothes I treated with permethrin. And a friend made us a spray bottle with essential oils to try.

After a good 40 minute walk, I was tick free, Mya had one I squashed. Dustin, because he’s lower to the ground and has longer hair, had a half dozen. Most clinging to his tail fur. Interestingly enough, I had sprayed his paws and belly with the essential oils, but not his tail.

What a difference 2 weeks makes. When I was here last, the ferns had just poked up from the ground. I could have harvested a ton of fiddleheads! This weekend, everywhere I walked I saw miniature fairy forests of ferns. (Ohh, good alliteration!)

 

 

 

There is also a profusion of both raspberries and blackberries growing wild all along the woodland paths. It’s going to be a race between Lisa and all the critters to see who gets the ripe berries first!

And speaking of bumper crops! This is one of several peach trees on the property. If you look closely, you will see little baby proto-peaches!  Having never had fruit trees before, I think I’ll need to do a bit of research. I already know I’ll need to cull many of the peaches if I want to have a decent crop, otherwise they will overwhelm the tree’s ability to sustain that many.

 

I will leave you with the glowing eye of Mt. Doom. . . . Or the first bonfire of the season. We sat out on the back porch watching the fire dance and listening to the crackle of wood.

 

 

Everywhere you dig in New England, you find rocks.

 

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks. We knew this at the outset and much of these will be used to grade the slope around the driveway.

 

Ever wonder why there are so many picturesque stone walls in New England? A matter of frugality. When you have an abundance of rocks to clear from a field, you mark your boundaries with those rocks. You build a wall.

There are walls like these running everywhere in the woods of Central Mass.

That’s because just about all the forest in New England is at least second growth. Much of this land was used for grazing animals, some for growing crops.

This is the build site for our addition/barn. And after  bringing in the special hammer drill to get out a particularly large boulder, the excavator found ‘ledge’. That would be a layer of rock under the ground. Which is not good news for our building schedule.

At some point, I think all this lovely gravel will be laid down to smooth the build site ahead of the foundation pour.

 

Despite the frustration of a several week delay, it is still a joy to be here. I had to be at the property today to meet with an electrician and got to enjoy the lilacs. I also discovered that there is asparagus growing. And the apple trees are laden with blossoms.

In January of 2017, Lisa and Neil “bought the farm”.

Fortunately, not in the metaphorical sense, as we are both quite alive and well!

While not quite a farm (yet!) our new piece of heaven is a lovely cape-style home on 54 acres of land in Hardwick, MA.

Neil aspires to be a gentleman farmer in retirement (sometime in the unspecified future) and Lisa is planning to write, daydream, and hold writing retreats there.

We just broke ground on what will be an addition, including a 6-bay garage, a mud room connector to the existing house, and a new master suite.

This is what started on Saturday:

We will be documenting the build here, and posting photos as we discover what blooms on our new land.