A beautiful warm enchanting summer has drifted into soft golden autumn. The geese have arrived once more flying in perfect squadrons overhead before landing clumsily on the creek just beyond the gate. House martins line up on the telephone wires preparing to leave; my shadow lengthens as I walk across the top fields checking the sheep.
Soon the ewes will meet Fred, our new handsome Whiteface fellow and the cycle will begin again. The pigs are turning into hippos now, big and pink and fat; roast pork, bacon, sausages on the horizon! There is lamb in the freezer too and the new chickens have started to lay: a bountiful harvest indeed.
The hedgerows are bursting with blackberries and wild plums and the orchard overflows with apples, far more than four fat Middlewhites can eat.
“How do you make those apple tarts, Sal” friends ask me over and over again.
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