The Old Farmer's Almanac Farmers Calendar

Far from Wall Street, our rural stock exchange thrives with unlisted commodities and functions at all hours. On Saturday, I might swap my extra laying hens for my neighbor’s spare vacuum cleaner, and then on Sunday trade a box of frozen beef for pork. But every so often, a transaction occurs that at first seems an outright loss, such as on the morning when I awoke at dawn to a strange noise outside. On the single occasion that I’d neglected to electrify the turkeys’ fence, a fox had feasted; telltale white feathers were strewn about like leaves. Still on the premises, the fox, seeing me, attempted to flee. Having already devoured a 10-pound fowl, the intruder toted another as it approached the electric mesh encircling the birds’ yard. It botched its leap, dropped its prey, and became entangled in the fence. Instead of fury, I felt awe for its audacity and, now, for its predicament. As the fox thrashed and panted, whining slightly in its panic, I stared at its lavish tail, elegant paws, and auburn coat—I’d never seen a fox this close. Was this a swindle? I wondered, as the animal twisted and, at last, leapt free. Or a barter: two of my flock for hearing the fox’s getaway huff.

Sometimes I get lonesome for a moose to lumber through the back field, if only to prove that they really do exist, that these aren’t mythic beasts. Maine drivers are believers and, sadly, all too familiar with humongous ungulates who come strolling out of the woods and onto the highway. Vermonters often have to hunt for an encounter, as a few of us did one spring when the leaves were still as tender as the muzzle of an Alces alces. We rose before dawn and piled into a car, friends on a mission to glimpse the gangly cousins of lovely deer. We drove to their favored habitat, a patch of swampy woods. As the Sun’s rays broke over the hills, we pulled off by a “Moose Crossing” sign and waited like fools for our improbable quarry. When I think back now, I wonder: What were the odds of us spotting the apocryphal animal? But as luck would have it, within minutes, a shaggy specimen came stilting across the asphalt. Cell-phone cameras were still years away, so we have no photograph of the hulking bull who nonchalantly swiveled to consider our vehicle and then plodded on, leaving hoofprints the size of our amazed faces.

Winter’s true finish is anyone’s guess—precisely the point of the annual contest on Joe’s Pond in West Danville, Vermont. This year, I’m betting it’s April 2 at 11:27 a.m. This guess cost me a buck. So if I’m correct and if the “ice-out” contraption—a pallet, a cinder block, and a flag tethered by 250 feet of nylon rope to a power source for the clock on land—if that wacky raft hunkered on the frozen pond should slump during the thaw of a warm March and begin to sink beneath the pond’s waters around breakfast on April 2, and its descent strains the rope such that it finally breaks the electrical connection, stopping the clock at precisely 11:27 a.m., as the raft submerges into the newly liquefied pond, then I stand to collect half the betting cash. What’s more, come July, no matter who won, everybody in the vicinity of Joe’s Pond gets a prize: On the evening of Independence Day, the sky will fill with sparkles and crackles and scintillating falling stars. This fireworks display is funded with the remaining money from those hunches, those best guesses when our winter went out not with a bang, but with a gurgle.

When the bird with black-and-white–flecked feathers and a poinsettia-red head swooped into our yard, I didn’t need binoculars to observe it. North America’s largest woodpecker, the pileated is notorious for clinging to trees and hammering with its beak, sending blonde splinters sprinkling onto the snow. Viewed up close, this avian air hammer strikes me as faintly spooky. So when this one latched on to my favorite silver maple and began its carpentry, I felt uneasy. We’d lost an ancient oak to lightning the year before, and I was averse to uninvited things alighting in our remaining trees. Pileateds can be beneficial, extracting insects and larvae lurking under the bark, even when the cavities they bore are wide and deep. Still, I wanted to preclude its excavation. Therefore, when the bird commenced to drill and a pile of bark chips began to accrue, I tried to shoo it off, hooting and waving my arms. But this only deterred it momentarily. So I opened my laptop to play a recording of its species at maximum volume. Did the digital voice express a curse or hex? Whatever it proclaimed halted the yard bird in midpeck. Then it trilled a reply, flapped off, and hasn’t been back.

While snow levels fluctuate or mostly rise, our winter stores subside. The woodshed looks like a mouth of broken teeth, and the chest freezer has new cavities, too. The same goes for our livestock supplies. Our cows wait out the days gazing at snow that they can’t eat covering fields that they used to graze—thank heavens for hay. Last summer we stuffed the mow with a winter’s worth (one bale per cow, per day, plus extra, just in case). As I deliver flakes to the Jersey and her yearling calf, I second-guess what’s left, wondering if it’ll last until they’re back on pasture; so much depends on winter’s strength and length. Years ago, when I worked on a bigger farm, each morning I climbed into the loft, where the bales were stacked to the rafters. Summiting the steep pile, I’d pry down a dozen, clenching them by their twine. As winter days ticked by and the mountain of dried grass dwindled, the barn’s walls re-emerged. One day in mid-February, by luck or barn maker’s design, I saw a sign I took to mean that we’d reached the season’s halfway mark: Sunlight streamed through a hole bored near the roof’s peak, a vent in the shape of a valentine.

The cottages around the lake are locked, their pipes drained, shades pulled. Where just months ago kayakers floated on silky waters, now a pickup truck zooms onto the frozen lake, towing something that looks like a deluxe privy. A handful of shanties are sprinkled across the ice—a spontaneous colony of mostly quiet anglers. I find one of them crouched over his fishing hole, withdrawing his line. The monofilament is so slender, it’s hard to see; it’s as if he’s pantomiming the act with his hands. Finally, he crooks a finger in the emerging fish’s gill as he pulls out a lake trout. Its scales are emerald, mottled with iridescent, leopard-like spots. The man has just executed a magic trick, pulling this shimmering creature from the lake’s bottom—a gambler’s payoff in the coldest, least hospitable casino. He measures the fish against his tackle box ruler: just barely legal. He studies his treasure once more, then lets it slip back through the hole. In a swish, it is gone. The only sounds are the shushing wind, the buzzing of a gas-powered auger, and then, in odd moments, the booming ice. It’s a low bass sound, lubb-dub—the beat of a lake-size heart.

Those of us who lived through the Great New England Ice Storm of December 11–12, 2008, still have posttraumatic stress disorder. The storm lasted 2 days, but the power was out for more than a week at our house. Now, when ice is predicted, we check our water supplies, our batteries, our candles. We sleep with a flashlight; we unplug the computers. We lie awake listening for the chatter of sleet on the windows or, God forbid, the rifle shots of branches breaking or the chandelier-fall crash of a treetop.

But in many ways this was the most joyous holiday season ever. People checked on their neighbors. The General Store contributed 200 turkey dinners to a supper at the elementary school so that people could enjoy a hot meal and some company. One couple went ahead with a church wedding, lit by candles. Bundled up like fur trappers, they left little puffs of fog when they said their vows.

We’re just not quite ready to go through it all again. The worst part was going a week without a shower. Come to think of it: No, it was hauling water up from the creek in buckets. Actually: No, it was using up half a winter’s firewood in a fortnight!

This ice storm followed the last big one by 12 years. We’re about due for another.

In late autumn, after most of the leaves have fallen, the forest suddenly becomes transparent. The contours  of the land leap out in 3-D, exposing all kinds of subtleties. Many of them are small, bashful, the kind of sights that require us to look down instead of up.

For example, just before Thanksgiving, I noticed for the first time some spectacular maple leaves in colors—rose, bright yellow, hunter’s orange—that had long since left the canopy above me. They were big leaves, 6 inches or more across, but they were growing on stems less than 18 inches tall.

Why do these tiny trees put forth such disproportionately large and brilliant leaves? Perhaps it’s because now the sunlight streams down to the forest floor unhindered, where these previously shaded maples can suck up energy with their outsized solar collectors.

Once I noticed the first, the second, the third, I saw them everywhere. They fluttered, but there was no breeze. They looked like cops doing that palm-down hand-waggle that means, “You’re not going fast enough for me to stop you, but you’re going too fast.”

The semaphore of the leaves has a similar message: “Slow down. You’re going too fast to see me.”

Colored leaves and acorns are not the only objects that fall in autumn. Five of the 12 principal meteor showers occur in October and November. Nobody knows why.

These showers—the Draconids, the Orionids, the Taurids, the Leonids, and the Andromedids—are not the most spectacular meteor showers. Only one, the Orionids, usually offers 15 meteors per hour.

So when I saw a shooting star in the predawn darkness on October 24, I didn’t make much of it. But 5 minutes later, when another flashed across the sky, I realized that this was the Orionids.

I’ve stayed up late to see the Perseids, the most prolific meteor shower of all. They frightened my 9-year-old granddaughter so much that I had to take her inside. Perhaps it had occurred to her, as it has to me, that although we look up to see them, it makes just as much sense to say that we are looking down at them, clinging desperately to the grass in the backyard lest we, too, fall into a dark and infinite well, from which even Lassie can not save us.

This chance encounter with the Orionids was better. There was no plan, no lawn chair or blankets to spread out in the backyard, no tedium, no terror.

It was a surprise, an unexpected gift

Looks like it’s going to be a big acorn season: The clatter sometimes sounds like a hailstorm. Walking under an oak tree is like walking on marbles; you risk a sprained ankle every time. If only we could eat acorns!

We can. There are two main ways to turn acorns into meal for cooking. One involves shelling and boiling them and discarding the dark brown, tannin-bearing water until it runs clear.

This is a pain in the neck. You must keep two pots boiling at once so that you can dump the hot acorns straight into fresh boiling water. If put into cold water, the bitter-tasting tannins will bind with the meat. It takes several hours, and that’s the quick way.

The slow way requires soaking the shelled acorns in cold water until the water turns dark, tossing it out and adding fresh water, and repeating until the water stays clear. Depending on the kind of acorns, this can take anywhere from several days to more than a week. Then you have to dry the acorn meal. Grind it into a fine powder and refrigerate or freeze it.

If you’re determined to live like our ancestors, that’s okay. But I’ll bet that our ancestors did it only because they couldn’t go down to the store and buy flour.

See how to properly prepare and cook acorns.