Thoreau Farm

It’s an expansive time of year – leaves, light, day’s limits, everything unfurls –  and, when I’m inside, I’m itchy to be elsewhere, as long as “elsewhere” is outside. So, in this season even my reading tends toward travel of a local or farflung nature. Thoreau’s Maine Woods, for all it geographic proximity, seems a right reading; it draws me in the spring. The other day, as Henry and friends pressed deeper into an older, deep-timbered Maine, I came across a character called Kennebec Man; Kennebec Man stuck in my mind, and around this burr of name a small poem formed (It also, despite April’s passing, seems the season of the poem).

What new characters or poems have taken up lodging in your mind?

Reading Lesson – The Maine Woods

“Kennebec Man,” when we meet
you’re in another’s watershed

a seam across the central open
mitt of Maine your river away to

the southeast of this Penobscot that
Henry ascends with friends on his way

to far Ktaadn. What makes you
the moment’s ur-man is the writer’s

habit of surnaming only those
who settle to trade along this route

to an original interior and
perhaps his sympathy for seeing

a fellow elevated by water.
You are gone in the flick

of a page – your life may have
seemed so short too – but all day

you have poled upriver against
the general flow …

by Deborah Bier

“If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Henry Thoreau

On a sunny Saturday in April, at Thoreau Farm, we advanced confidently toward the garden with a new fence in mind, and we were successful beyond our wildest expectations! We built our fence thoughtfully, using as many recycled materials as possible, leaving a small carbon footprint; we wanted our fence to be natural and aesthetically pleasing. And we did not want to use any toxic chemicals.

At Thoreau Farm, we have been fortunate to have very little animal predation other than some small rodents (chipmunks, mice, squirrels). So our fence was mostly to keep young human animals out of the garden where their curious feet might bring them when their parents looked away.

We live a little more than a mile from Thoreau Farm, and last summer my husband, Rich, had felled some trees in our yard – a white oak, a spruce, and some self-sowed crab apples. We also had a number of large sycamore branches downed in storms. So, we had a huge pile of brush, and, instead of an enormous spring burn (Rich’s preference), I realized we could find most of our fence materials in this lovely wood.

Happily, we were able …

By Corinne H. Smith

“Spring.” What an appropriate word! Over the past few weeks, all sorts of unexpected plants have begun to spring up in our yard. Unfortunately, some of them pose more questions than they answer.

When we moved to this property in December, the landscape was brown. All of the plants had been cleared out or trimmed close before our arrival. Now a few colorful hyacinths and daffodils dot our borders. Obviously somebody planted them on the west side of the house and along the back edge of the yard. But why are a few also blooming in the two-foot-by-two-foot plot between the two equipment sheds? Who will ever see them, besides the next-door neighbors and the skunk who trots through here every night? I may need to move them when the petals are gone.

All winter long, I stared out of the living room window at an empty dirt patch that lay under a tree in the front yard. I couldn’t wait for the chance to sprinkle grass seed there. But before I could get to the hardware store, fresh shoots of hostas began to emerge from the soil. I was both annoyed and overjoyed at the sight. Annoyed, because I had hoped to “make the earth say grass” at that spot, to paraphrase Mr. Thoreau. But since I had also planned to line the …