Fade to brown
“Nothing on this earth is standing still. It is either growing or it is dying. No matter if it’s a tree or human being.” —Lou Holtz
While New Hampshire had a spectacular fall this year, much of Vermont’s was ho-hum (despite a huge crop of leaf peepers traveling here to see the foliage). Between the frost in late May that killed the leaves of young maples to the wet, wet summer, the trees didn’t take as much time turning into glorious shades before dropping. “Trees don’t like wet feet,” said Isaac the arborist. Ah well. Maybe next year.
Yesterday morning I woke up to a loud, thrumming sound at 6:30 a.m. It sounded like my washing machine was at full tilt, only I hadn’t loaded any laundry. I looked outside to see if some sort of truck was coming up the road. It was, but very (very) slowly. Finally the vehicle came into view. It was a large yellow tractor with a flailing black tube attached to it, reminding me of Nunu the vacuum cleaner from Teletubbies. Turns out it was a massive leaf blower.
An even more unusual experience brings to mind a famous I Love Lucy episode: David and I had returned to the vineyard where we’d helped tend grapevines last June), but most of the grapes had already been picked by the time we arrived.
We harvested what was left of the grapes in one area, then followed Doug (the vitner) to the deck of the custom-built tasting room. On it were two jacuzzi-sized lidded tubs, one filled with white grapes, the other with red, along with a hand-cranked machine that separated the fruit from the stems.
While David and a visiting Dartmouth professor named Max (who’d just arrived from France the previous week) walked around smushing white grapes with their sanitized feet, Doug and I loaded grapes into the machine, then cranked the heck out of it as stems flew out willy-nilly and into the basin below.
“You wanna try stomping on grapes?” asked Doug. “It’s fun!”
And so I did. Unless I slipped and fell (see Lucy above), which I was careful not to do, my job was simple: walk around (and around and around) the basin. Most of the grapes were already liquified, but there were still a host of bits and bobs needing vigorous heel-toe action. The sensation was surprising—chilly but not freezing, viscous, earthy. But the most surprising part was the color: it was largely opaque and ruby red, not so much like blood, more like beets.
Meanwhile, David and Max had decided to spice up their stomping action by locking arms and doing a do-si-do:
From grape harvesting to tree harvesting:
David and I were formally called to attend a Select Board meeting so the town council folks could alert us about using a smidge of our land (that meets the next road over) to expand due to flood damage. “It’s essentially worthless,” said Brenda. “But they have to go through the motions.”
The board agreed to give us the lumber from whatever trees needed to be cut down in order to shift the road away from the area of flood damage. We are now the proud owners of a new pile of logs. Now all David needs to do is cut and quarter them. (I can help stack, but chainsaws still scare the bejeebers out of me.)
Check out the way Silloway Maple (which goes through tons of wood during sugaring season) stacks its wood, allowing it to effectively aerate. Bette, one of Silloway’s owners, said the method was invented in Germany. I’ve since learned it’s called a holz hauzen meaning “wood house”:
David made a fire on one of our last warm nights and invited Brenda for a beer. She started telling us about some of the pranks she and her fellow firefighters (all men except her) would play, especially to one particular fellow, who was as gullible as he was prone to oversharing. He’d been complaining about his hemorrhoids, inspiring one of the crew to begin chatting about Hellman’s mayonnaise as “the best natural cure.” The prank went on for weeks, months even, until the firefighter finally saw a doctor about his rectal woes.
“What have you tried so far?” asked the doctor, expecting him to say Preparation H or the like.
“Well, I’ve tried, uh, Hellman’s,” he said.
“You’ve tried WHAT?” said the doctor.
“Hellman’s, you know, mayo,” said the fireman, who quickly realized from his doctor’s expression that it was NOT a cure for hemorrhoids.
The very next day an ad popped up on my computer for Hellman’s REAL Mayonaise. I hadn’t even brought my phone outside that night. (One for Kraft appeared the day after that.)
As we watched the fire crackle, I told Brenda that Jeopardy the cow, who is about twice as large and much taller than the others on our property (she’s also very pregnant), that she was body slamming the heifers when I brought out grain to feed them. I was concerned that she’d hurt the smallest gal, so I texted Amber (one of the dairy owners) about it.
“Did she laugh at you?” Brenda asked.
Probably.
Jeopardy has gotten progressively slow as she widens with a hefty calf inside her, so she’s no longer able to run ahead and chow down before the others arrive. She’s “returning to work” on the farm this coming weekend, due November 6. The rest of the cows go back at the end of this month. They usually return sooner, but because of all the rain, the grass has kept on growing.
There’s something extraordinary about a herd of 1000-lb. creatures galloping from the far end of the pasture upon hearing our call, gently taking food from our hands, walking alongside us. Sure, I know it’s all about food and conditioning, but it feels magical all the same.
One less-than-magical experience I had recently occurred at a distillery called Whistle Pig. We had friends from Berkeley in town and had already gone to see the glassblowers at Simon Pearce in the adjacent building, so we plunked ourselves down in the tasting room so our guests could sample their spirits.
There was only one person was tending to the patrons, and she seemed rather frazzled. So we waited. And waited. Until finally, she looked my way and asked, “Do you have a sister?”
“Yes, I have two, but they don’t live here,” I said.
She proceeded to tell me that she thought I was someone who frequented the tasting room who was “a LOT. I mean, she’s a bitch. A badass bitch, but she’s a bitch…and I was thinking, I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with you when I saw you walk in. But you smiled—she never smiles—and the only thing you asked for was water, so I realized she wasn’t you.”
I left with a free bottle of maple syrup from Whistle Pig. I think she felt a bit sheepish about the badass bitch thing.
Most people are scared of spiders, but there are so many here, we’ve gotten used to them (David’s named the one that lives in our bathroom Edward). Daddy long legs are especially helpful and rarely move, except to get sustenance. I saw one in ninja warrior mode the other morning while brushing my teeth. It quickly captured a mosquito, wrapped it up with its multitude of thread-thin legs and ate it. Seconds later, it was once again completely still. Not quite Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, but it was fascinating all the same.
When we heard there would be a “Ghost Tour” at a local cemetery, I imagined someone sharing stories of ghost sightings. Instead, the tour involved locals dressed in period costumes (some with muskets and Revolutionary War uniforms, others with petticoats and bustles) and shared stories of the people buried there. Each “ghost” told the story of their life, interjecting whatever tidbits the local historian could glean, from births, deaths, and marriages, to their participation in various wars, and the legacy they left, both in town and beyond. The town holds one of these tours every year, and since there are 20 cemeteries in Tunbridge (dating back to the mid-1700s), they have a surprising number of choices and endless tales to tell.
En route to dinner last week, we noticed a hitchhiker walking along the highway. “Should we pick him up?” asked David. I said “fine,” so we stopped the car and let him in. The man smelled like cigarettes and unwashed laundry and sweat. He looked to be in his late 20s.
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “I’ve been walking for four and a half hours. I went to see my girlfriend, I mean, my fiancée, but she was in bed with another guy, so I turned around and walked out.”
He dug into his pocket and showed me a diamond ring. “She still has the other one,” he said.
The man told us his name was Elijah and said he had no money for a ride home or water and yet had that diamond ring. I wondered why he was carrying it in his pocket and if it was real, and if the story he was telling us was real.
I asked David to pull into the general store so I could get him some water.
“Would you mind getting me a Coke instead?” Elijah asked.
I bought him a Coke and a water, along with a packet of peanut M&Ms. I figured he could use something sweet.
“Everything you’re buying is $1.49. You should play the lottery!” said the woman behind the counter.
After taking a deep swig from his Coke and stuffing everything else in his backpack, Elijah shared that his mother died of cancer at age 54, that he never sees his brother who’s an alcoholic, nor his grandmother, who hates him because he looks like his dad (whom she hated), nor sees his friends anymore “because they’re all junkies.” He seemed very much alone in the world.
Before dropping off Elijah we passed a church with a sign reading, “Do Not Despair.” I didn’t point it out, but the message seemed like it was meant for him.
“We’re really lucky,” said David after saying goodbye.
“We really are,” I said.
While this fellow had a very challenging path in life, we are frequently impressed by the talents, skills, and education of many locals when you take the time to learn about them:
The check-out woman at the local food co-op has a MFA in painting and shows her work at various galleries. A part-time clerk at the Tunbridge General Store has a son in Palo Alto who teaches at Stanford. The owner is a third-generation graduate of Ohio State University, passed his California bar recently, and was a filmmaker in Los Angeles before relocating to Tunbridge. Just yesterday I learned that the arborist who cut down a maple that was leaning on our barn studied landscape architecture and also sculpts and paints. People are VERY understated here. A constant reminder to never assume.
Lastly, I want to highlight my canine companion, Izzie. She turned 13 on October 6, a momentous day. I prayed she would live long enough to exceed the lifespans of our first two dogs combined, and she did, for which I’m incredibly grateful.
Our first dog, Zoe, a Bernese Mt. Dog, died of bone cancer at seven. Ivy, also a Berner, had to be put down due to spinal stenosis at six. So the fact that we could celebrate Izzie’s lucky 13 felt like a miracle.
Vermont is a doggie paradise, with plenty of things to smell, places to roam, space to wander. I surmise this change has extended Izzie’s life, or at least improved the quality of it. Despite being deaf and a little wobbly, she’s doing pretty well. Still smiling. Always smiling.
Happy birthday, Izz.
Thank you, as always, for reading,
Elisse