Browsed by
Tag: farm

‘Off with you, then!’

‘Off with you, then!’

This is the unofficial Year of the Groundhog. Poor Farmer Gary just had to re-plant the soybean field next to our house. Why? Not the usual reason of too much rain or not enough rain. Why, then? Our local groundhogs have apparently decided that Gary is their personal chef and the soybean field is their grand buffet. Deep down, though, surely they realize they’re in the wrong. After all, the rows closest to the woods are the first to be…

Read More Read More

Say cheese

Say cheese

“Oh, boy! Stinky cheese!” Dad sure knew how to clear a room. He was crazy about pungent cheese and all the drama his eating it entailed. Maybe it was the Frenchy-Frenchman side of him? We kids would run for cover while he all but inhaled chunks of Camembert, Munster, and Feta. Phew! As a child, I remember begging Mom to let me wait for her outside of a food shop in Pittsfield, a store that specialized (or so it seemed)…

Read More Read More

Rumspringa kitty

Rumspringa kitty

Have I mentioned Farmer Gary‘s deep fascination with the Amish? He admires their simple lifestyle and enjoys talking to both current and former Amish. Throughout this borderline obsession (lasting all of our 40-year marriage), Gary’s been sure to school me on what he’s learned, including a practice known as rumspringa. What exactly is rumspringa? It’s a rite of passage in some Amish communities, allowing teenagers more than their traditionally limited amount of freedom as it pertains to behavior. At the…

Read More Read More

Starch and Ella

Starch and Ella

Confession: Gary’s godmother, Stella, was married to a man named Arch. It shouldn’t be all that hard to keep those names – Arch and Stella – straight, but once I mistakenly called them Starch & Ella. And it stuck. Two more kind and decent people you’ll never meet. Stella was one of Gary‘s aunts who grew up here on the farm. The two of them were thick as thieves when they got together – sharing farm stories from long ago….

Read More Read More

The clock

The clock

Farmer Gary has been incredibly patient as this blog has explored mostly my ancestors, as we peer back over the decades. But now, it is (ahem!) time to explore the story of a special clock from long, long ago. Gary remembers that his mom really wanted to inherit that clock. She’d grown up with it, after all. Every Sunday evening, her father – Mike Mehling – would smoke his pipe. Then he would gently remove the clock from its shelf…

Read More Read More

Books about pigs and a Velveteen Rabbit

Books about pigs and a Velveteen Rabbit

As June comes to a close, it looks like this month’s books include at least two more “banned” books … both about pigs. Book 1: Animal Farm by George Orwell Here’s another classic that is typically read in high school (unless it’s banned). But I must have been too busy reading Shakespeare (Carmel High had just released a massive amount of themed six-week English classes to choose from) or Works of War back then, as this is a first-time Animal…

Read More Read More

The chainsaw

The chainsaw

Farmer Gary is a renaissance man. His decades of planting and harvesting crops have taken him into the realms of botany, nutrition, chemistry, geology, meteorology. There’s math, engineering, economics, accounting, Even a bit of stand-up comedy. “Back when they were doing some digging work over at Mom’s home place, I noticed one of the bulldozers was a Japanese brand, so I asked the mechanic how he liked working on the equipment. He told me ‘the hardest part was learning to…

Read More Read More

Bows and chapeaux

Bows and chapeaux

It’s National Hat Day, had you heard? Feels like a good excuse to pull together photos of family members and their fancy chapeaux from over the past 100 years. This first picture is of my great-grandfather Patrick Cassidy. He was a police officer, first in Belfast and then in New Haven, Connecticut. This photo is from around 1915. Here’s one of Patrick’s sons, Christy, looking snazzy: Another of Patrick’s four sons, Frank, was also a policeman. And my grandpa. Hopping…

Read More Read More

Trees for Lady Bird

Trees for Lady Bird

Are you old enough to remember the “Keep America Beautiful” slogan? It’s from back in the 1960s (and has nothing to do with current political swag). During President Johnson’s time in office, the First Lady took on a nation-wide project to clean up the look of the place. “We need urgently to restore the beauty of our land.” – Lady Bird Johnson According to the LBJ Library website, her Highway Beautification Act bill almost didn’t pass: Just before the 1965…

Read More Read More

The Swearing Jug

The Swearing Jug

There comes a time in every mother’s life when she simply has to put her foot down. Dad recalls the first time Mom did this. It was in the mid-1960s, we were living in Pittsfield, and there was too much cussin’ going on in our house. “Mom got on my case,” he remembers. I asked Dad, “So what was it, mostly ‘hell’ and ‘damn’?” ” … bastard, too.” The response came much sooner than I would have expected. For those…

Read More Read More