Jeff Kelley's blog

A Patch of Old Snow There's a patch of old snow in a corner,      That I should have guessed Was a blown-away paper the rain      Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if      Small print overspread it,

Finally, after a long winter (and it's not over yet) we had a decent weekend. Temps in the high 40's, bright and sunny, no storms on the horizon. A perfect chance to get out of the house (remember -- I work at home, so winters feel twice as long.)

Well, it's been a couple of days since the "big storm" and digging out is still happening around the Chesterville area. Around 28 inches of new snow fell here, and snow banks are dangerously high all around the roads.

It's been too cold this winter to really enjoy the great outdoors, here in Chesterville -- for me, anyway. Not that I'm a warm-blooded southerner, used to swaying palm trees and soft ocean breezes (by the way, doesn't that sound great right now?)

As many of you know who read this blog, from time to time I write about growing up on a dairy farm in the Adirondacks in the 1960s and '70s. As a kid you don't always know the struggles your parents go through when times are tough on a farm, but you know enough.

Morning in New England. Dark slowly fades to murky light. Birds stir and flutter, sending a flurry of snow sifting down. Dim red through the trees in the east. The perfect Maxfield Parrish time of day has come.

The catalogs are arriving in a flurry each day. The trek from the old farmhouse down to the corner mailbox is an adventure, bundled against the cold that bites cheeks and nose. Heavy boots, heavier coat, muffler, gloves and hat cover all against the biting cold and wind.

Well, it's been a while since I lived through this kind of a cold snap for so long of a period, certainly not since I moved to Boston with my wife in the mid-1990s. So far this winter, we've dealt with frozen pipes to the kitchen at least four times. Personally, I'd rather be battling snow.

Abby's gone. No other way to say it really. The constant companion for my wife and I for the last sixteen years is no longer with us. The cat who would be human, (not to insult her in any way), had to be euthanized. We will miss her every day.

I've written an earlier blog mainly about the four-footed visitors to the farmhouse. This time of year, the opportunities abound to observe the two-footed kind. The bitter cold this year seems to be driving more birds to the feeders.