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Spirit Hill is located by the intersection of three streets. Where the three streets connect, a pair of black sneakers dangle from the telephone wires. The sneakers have been there, seemingly, forever. They move in the breeze. They bug me. I have tried to think of how to get them down. Get a gun and […]
A couple of weeks ago I learned that if a tree falls in the middle of the night at Spirit Hill, no one hears it. Well, the chickens must have, since it fell on top of their house, but they’re still not talking about it. Who knows, maybe they are heavy sleepers and they slept […]
As farmer-in-training at Spirit Hill, I have learned that whatever I plant is as much the birds’ and the animals’—deer, turkeys, chickens, moles, gophers, birds, insects, for example—as it is mine. Growing things at Spirit Hill is a good exercise in non-attachment. Hello, three sunflower plants I bought at Harmony and love so much. Hello, […]
I had a friend who had her face resurfaced. If this doesn’t make you wince, imagine someone sandblasting your face and then saying what looks like a crime scene will translate into youth and beauty in…weeks? Months? Let’s be truthful (but I hope she isn’t reading this): Never? I’ll leave it with the fact that […]
The roses are here! It seems like it happened over night. One day I went to feed the chickens and things were winter bare, and the next day an explosion of color had happened. And I hadn’t heard a peep in the night. Roses must rose very quietly. The thing I love most about the […]
We’re getting the pool resurfaced in April. Carolyn and Julie picked out the tile for the edge, and the color made me cry. It’s so this place—it’s the kind of blue you feel you’ve seen before in your childhood or later as an adult during times when you were very happy or in love or […]
When I wrote “small kindness” as a title I thought, Hmmm, that’s not exactly it. Small is so…small. Can something be small and massive at the same time? The acorn comes to mind. And so does the package we, at Spirit Hill, got in the mail. It was…small. And in it was a small card […]
Once upon a time there was a family that came to Spirit Hill Farm. There was a mother and a father and a daughter and a son and a grandmother and a grandfather. This family loved food and hot tubs and beauty and each other. This family radiated kindness and intelligence and curiosity. The younger […]
One time my sister-in-law told me about how she snuck some fancy chickens into their spring order. My brother and his family live on a farm in Maine, and my sister-in-law makes sure they have all sorts of animals to tend to including a bearded dragon lizard and three goats that think they live in […]