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These columns were originally published in the Kings County Record between 1984 and 2016.
The illustrations are by Alice, most of the photographs are by Lee

"Mud, mud, glorious mud"

30/4/2020

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Spring on the farm was always welcome - as it is everywhere in this northern climate. But before you could really enjoy it you had to get through mud season.  This was originally published in April 1989.   
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Spring puddles by Alice Whitney, 2003. Pastel.
Do you remember the Hippopotamus Song?  It was first perpetrated in about 1956 by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann and has a very singable chorus, which begins like this...

          Mud, mud, glorious mud;       
          Nothing quite like it             
          For cooling the blood...


(There you go.  If you listened to the song on YouTube you'll now have it stuck in your head for hours!  You're welcome.)

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One of those weeks!

10/4/2020

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On this snowy Good Friday (April 10, 2020) in the midst of the social isolation brought on by Covid19, we thought this little glimpse into life on the farm in April 1989 would bring some chuckles.

Snow in April always feels unexpected and unnecessary, however, when this was originally published in the Kings County Record on April 18, 1989 it was snowing then too!  
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Farmhouse in the snow. Photo by R. Lee Whitney
​There is a school of thought that says that the universe is unfolding as it should.  Don't believe it for a minute. Whatever the universe is doing, it is not unfolding.  Cancel the unfolding idea. 

​What's going on is more like spilling a box full of those Styrofoam chips that are all the rage as packing material: no matter what you do you can't get all the chips out of the box, but the ones that do fall out of the box cannot all be rounded up because they immediately fly off to stick to the underneath of the couch, the dog's tail, the 

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Of Mice and Men

1/3/2020

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This time of year in old houses in the countryside, the few mice who moved in to keep warm in the fall have had time to raise their families.  As the population rises, the homeowner often has to take drastic measures!  And not all cats see it as their role to take action. This was originally published on  November 7, 1989.  
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It's not just mice and men whose plans "gang aft agley" (whatever that means), although the little trapline that I've been running for the last while beside the washing machine in the kitchen has caused the plans of an impressive number of mice to be put on indefinite hold. As far as I can tell, the mice who were living on the second floor for the winter have either moved so as to carry on the late-night parties in more congenial surroundings, or have permanently lost interest in everything.

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Winter thoughts, winds and tuning forks (and celestial meal delivery)

20/2/2020

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Originally published in January of 2000. We urge the reader to seek out Lady Celia Congreve's The Firewood Poem for a lovely lesson in what wood is best for winter heat – spoiler alert, "ash new or ash old is fit for queen with crown of gold." Enjoy.
Celestial Meal Delivery© Alice Whitney 2020
It was just thirteen years ago this week, and our small herd of sheep was residing in the converted garage (over between the barn and the granary). This same garage, which used to live down on the roadside – just opposite the bottom of the old driveway – was dragged up into the dooryard and left there when the highway crew was busy improving our road and needed more space than the old dirt track had demanded.
 
It’s had a busy life, that garage. It stayed where it had been dragged for a couple of years, threatening to rot into the ground, and then got moved (again), down beside the barn where it changed careers (again), this time into our chicken house. As a chicken house it has been a great success. Its previous residents, the sheep, were not enthusiastic.


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Megalomania Defined

18/1/2020

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We had a lot of excitement around here last month with the release of the book "Knowing By Heart" (now available from Chapel Street Editions, your local independent bookstore, or Amazon).  With all that going on, we have been neglecting the blog, but here's a new / old column for your enjoyment.  This was a very early one, from January 1987 featuring some craziness in the hen house!  
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Photo borrowed from Pinterest
Megalomania is defined, I believe ... [note to argufiers: only say "I believe" in this sort of situation if you have just looked the word up and know darn well what it means - never say "I believe" in any situation where you have the slightest doubt about your accuracy; properly used, "I believe" gives you marvellous credit for humility without the need to be humble, and, indeed, without the inconveniences true humility forces upon one, like losing the argument when you're sure you are right] … Anyway, as I was saying, megalomania indicates a disordered mental condition in which the patient has grandiose delusions. 

In case you are thinking that - as descendants of the pair that got thrown out of the park for a bit 

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"Hey-ho the wind and the rain"

28/11/2019

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​​This column was originally published on November 26, 2002 in the midst of some November storms.  We thought it was fitting for this snowy / blowy / rainy day in November 2019.  We hope you are all warm and dry and can enjoy a little read of this one ... 

"Hey-ho, the wind and the rain," the old song goes (or, in our case, the wind and the rain and the snow and the sleet and the fog and the ice and etc.).

Two storms already and we're not even to December yet! That last storm (assuming there isn't one between now and when this piece appears), Sunday a week or so ago, was the good old-fashioned sort. Lots of snow in the air, visibility reduced to the dooryard mostly, and no need to go anywhere. The phone didn't ring, there was plenty of wood in the woodshed, lots of food 

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Hopeless but not serious

24/10/2019

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​We sought out a column that would cover the Halloween season (or Hallowe'en as you'll soon see), and this one struck us as highly appropriate. By the time you read this, the election results will be known... but it's fitting nonetheless. This version has been lightly edited, but was originally published in October of 1985 (the first year Jacob Erdman graced the pages of the Kings County Record), please enjoy.
 
Somebody was doing a program on the radio the other day, playing autumn songs. You know what I mean ... September Song, Autumn Leaves, Autumn in New York, that sort of thing. Of course, it wasn't even fall yet but why should that bother anybody when the decorations for what seems to be one of the major Christian festivals – Hallowe'en – have been on sale in all the shops for weeks?
I hope you noticed the apostrophe there in the word Hallowe'en folks. It is there because e'en is short for evening just as e'er and ne'er are old-fashioned short forms of ever and never. The "Hallow" part is short for All-hallows, and that is a very old way of saying All-holies, or All-saints. So, the first of November is the day on which we should remember all the holy people, known and unknown, down through the ages, and Hallowe'en is the evening before that. Q.E.D.

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Jesse Ramsden, procrastination, and the Arrow of Time

17/10/2019

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This was originally published exactly thirty years ago today on the 17th of October 1989. Enjoy!  Given the topic, you won't want to put it aside for later.  Read it now!  ​
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Image Credit: Kristin Chisolm
Have you heard of the honorable Jesse Ramsden, a scientific-instrument maker living in London in the nineteenth century? Apparently, he was somewhat unpunctual. He delivered an instrument he had been commissioned to make to Dunsink Observatory in Dublin twenty-three years late. Furthermore, he once appeared at Buckingham Palace for a party on the correct day and hour, but exactly one year too late.
​

​Jesse Ramsden, Esq., was a very good instrument maker; the Dublin observatory was apparently delighted with the instrument when they finally got it. There is no word on the reaction of the Royal family at the appearance of the party-goer 365 days after they had seen the last guest out the door.

​But the thing is, no one gives him credit for being a really inspired procrastinator.

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Former-garage-soon-to-be-chicken-house a.k.a "the desirable location"

19/9/2019

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PictureSephie circa the eighties
Last night we felt a reminder of things to come (winter). Originally published more than 30 years ago in November of '88, this column is reminiscent of that same.

Part of November already gone and the list of things that must be done before freeze-up lengthens out like Plastic Man making his way through a keyhole.
 
Some progress shows on the former-garage-soon-to-be-chicken-house. One afternoon I came home from wherever I had been to discover that my nearest and dearest had taken saw and hammer in hand and closed the whole back of the thing in. Frankly, this is one of the most hopeful signs I have seen in twenty-eight (almost twenty-nine) years of marriage.
 
Not only that, a few days later she had tar-papered the whole structure and suddenly it gave every indication of being a possible cackle-cabin. Possible, that is, if the dogs can be persuaded to give it up. It is the biggest doghouse they have ever seen, and since we have yet to hang a door in the opening we cut, they can go in and come out at will.


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Summer’s high season brings its wonders

12/9/2019

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This column seems the very antithesis of the system that passed through the Maritimes earlier this week. Originally published in August of 2007, we have edited slightly for content, and hope you enjoy as always.

As we proceed through another year, dropping metaphorical pebbles along the way to mark where we have been – even though we will never be there again – we’ve come to that centre-point in the summer when the birds that serenaded us a while back have fallen silent. The hay in the fields, thanks to our neighbour, is cut and baled and this year’s bounty of peas from the garden is over – unless, for the first time ever, the late-planted Wandos might surprise us with the late bounty they are apparently famous for. The cicadas, in one of their lesser years, sing in the heat of the day to remind us that Labour Day, the beginning of the school year, and the approach of fall are just over the horizon.
 
In the evening now, when I go out to close up the chickens and give the dog his last walk before bedtime, the sky is no longer a luminous blue to the west, and Venus, so splendid for the last few months against that velvety blue, has followed the sun down behind the hill. Saturn too has gone after the sun, having appeared for a brief evening or two in July quite close to Venus, a mysterious conjunction with, for once, a vertiginous sense of three dimensions in the sky. Venus – earth-sized and closer – was brilliant; the immense mass of distant Saturn a barely-noticeable pin-prick of dim light in the distance.

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    Words & Images

    We moved to our farm in Sussex, New Brunswick from Toronto in 1977, only moving away in 2014. 

    For over 30 years of our life there, I wrote a weekly column for the Kings County Record in Sussex chronicling the little events that are the heart of ‘daily life’ in a small place in the country.  These blog posts are drawn from those columns.

    The weekly column became, over the years, a series of bench-marks or surveyor’s stakes to record the contours of the place we lived, its dreaming hills and fertile valleys, icy chasms and swift-flowing streams. 

    While I no longer live on the farm, we continue to share the columns from time to time on this blog.  And very soon you will be able to read my book!  To be published in December 2019.  

    ----
    Images on the blog are drawn from my own photography,  and my wife Alice's artwork.  We occasionally resort to other people's images when nothing we have on hand suits the content of the post.  

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