A Steep Driveway

Our drive was long and steep, and though paved, it provided lots of its own excitement. Sledding down the driveway was terrific, and if you were lucky you could make the left turn onto a snowy Mexico Lane and triple your ride down that steep road. If you were really up for record-setting you could […]

Farm Animals

Aside from the fairly short lived experiment with chickens, we had an assortment of other animals over the first few years: a cow named Susie that we bred for calves, two sets of pigs, a pair of goats, occasional horses. (Plus a parade of cats and dog, which is a whole other topic.) But the […]

Chicken Farmers

The first thing that comes to me when I think about my parents – in this case I mean mostly my father – they were wonderfully naive to think that the farm could succeed. My father had read some idyllic books about back-the-land efforts long before the hippie movement tried it again.  And on top […]

Moving to the Farm

My memory of our first visit to the farm was one of joy; it was hugely exciting for all of us. I think we probably visited as a family before we actually moved there, but those early visit memories are a bit mashed up together. I remember there was a warning sign on steep Mexico […]

Nordica Drive

We lived on a quiet street in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, until 1953 when we moved to Mahopac to follow my father’s dream of having a farm. While I loved growing up on that farm, it is also true that we left behind a very sweet neighborhood. Nordica Drive was a dead-end road, so it was […]

First Memory

I got a bow and arrow for my birthday, my fourth birthday in 1953. My older brother Dan and I were both captured by the cowboy-indian craze that was so pervasive in those days. Makes me wonder how we got hooked on it since it was many years before we got a TV and I […]