Farmer Thoughts

Contributed by Farmer Becca, Bottomland Farm —

Every morning during the winter months, as I wait for the UTV engine to warm up, I stand outside the shed where it’s parked and watch our hillside. This time of year, the white snow on the ground makes it easy to see the deer as they wind their way up the hillside from our pine grove at the very bottom.

Farmer Bill’s grandfather planted the pines there a little more than 60 years ago, and they’ve grown into a living shelter that the deer seek out each winter. Even though our farm dog loves to chase deer, he usually sits patiently with me, also watching them— I think he knows where his domain ends and theirs begins.

Yesterday morning, at about quarter to six, I was woken up by coyotes yipping and yowling. It sounded pretty close, and so while Farmer Bill, Farm dog, and all the cats continued to sleep, I snuck out of bed.

They couldn’t have been far from our house or far from the pine grove where the deer bed down, which also means they weren’t far from our winter goat pasture. I opened our front door as quietly as I could and stuck my head out to listen more closely; the coyotes immediately fell silent.

It was the kind of quiet that’s muffled by a recent snowfall and can only happen on cold winter nights. A few seconds later, I could hear our livestock guardian dogs barking, telling the coyotes to stick to the hillside and away from their goats.

The other day, a friend and I were talking about what you can control, what you can influence, and what you have to let go because there’s no controlling it. For someone like me, who loves to have a plan and likes to feel in control, farming may seem a bit contrary. There is so much that you can’t control: rain, snow, sun, heat, cold.

But then there are things we can control, and there are also those things that will influence some of the stuff normally outside of our control. Like taking care of two livestock guardian dogs, so in turn, they can take care of our goats. Or, like planting a grove of pines that, in 60 years, will grow to provide the perfect shelter for dozens of deer.

Yesterday, once the sun came up, I went outside to the top of the pond just above the pine grove. Sure enough, there were coyote tracks zigzagging back and forth, interlaced with too many deer prints to count.

And this morning, as I was warming up the UTV, Farm dog and I counted eight stocky deer heading up the hillside.

(Bottomland Farm, located in Berkshire, N.Y., can be contacted via email to farmer@bottomlandfarm.com.)