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Kate Spring

~ growing a deep-rooted life

Kate Spring

Tag Archives: dogs

Dog Days

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Kate Spring in Seasons

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Tags

dogs, summer

Ducks swimming away
Hawkweed
Nobee and Sam fetch a stick
Nobee and Sam fetch a stick
Sam Pup
Sam Pup and Pebble
Pebble
Nobee
Snouts out the Window

At the end of these hot summer days, it’s just as important for the dogs to have some fun as it is for the farmers to cool down.  The dogs (or doggers as we like to say–dogger just might be Waylon’s first word) laze around in the sun, sometimes out in the high afternoon light, other times finding refuge in the shade of the wood line or on the cool concrete floor in the farm store.  They raise their eyebrows as we walk past, noting our pace, our direction, the tones of our voices as we greet them.  They know when it’s worth getting excited.

When the words “load up!” are said, the dogs jump and wag and get into the car, ready for wherever it is we may take them.  The good car rides end at the pond, with a stick to fetch.  When we arrive, the ducks swim away, the dogs splash in, and we all relax into the coolness of water at the end of the day.

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Saturday Morning, Sugaring Season

09 Saturday Apr 2011

Posted by Kate Spring in Nature/Environment, Writing

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Tags

change, dogs, environment, food, land, life, love, maple syrup, nature, place, poetry, relationships, seasons, spring, time, Vermont, wild, writing

Chocolate Cake and

Chai at dawn

Your lips, the whiskers of

Your mustache in my mouth and

The whiskers of your beard

On my skin.

 

It’s early spring and

Already you taste of sweat and dirt

All those long days

In the sugarbush.

Lately you’ve been coming home

With gallons and

I taste the sweet maple on your tongue.

I brush flecks of bark from your face and

Feel your gritty hands along my belly,

Giving the memory of smoothness to your skin and

Texture to mine.

 

In the morning, even the dog

Is tired–

12, 13, 14 mile days following you in the forest–

And we must rouse her three times before

She joins us in the kitchen and

We feed her

As we feed ourselves

In the morning light.

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Traveling in the Backyard

31 Friday Dec 2010

Posted by Kate Spring in Nature/Environment, Travel

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Tags

dogs, exploration, home, life, moving, nature, place, spirituality, thoughts, travel, traveling, wild, wildness, winter, writing

After so many winters of travel, I am settling in for this one.  I’ve always thought of winter as a quiet, reflective time, but I hadn’t noticed my travel rhythm until now: last year I went to New Zealand and Tasmania; in college I’d use winter breaks to travel to Utah where my cousins live; my junior year I spent break getting ready to travel abroad in Northern Ireland from the end of January through mid-April.  Now, having returned from Alaska in November, I am moved into a post-and-beam house in Cambridge, Vermont, with a lease that runs until the end of April.  Edge and  Nobee (our dog) are with me, and we are sharing the house with my brother Jeff and a friend, Erik.  All summer I spoke to Edge of Vermont and looked forward to being back here, but now I feel the travel bug jumping inside me again and I’m searching for a way to calm it.  What did I learn from my travels last winter, though?  Be still, be here, sink in.

I am taking lessons from the dog, learning the excitement to be had each time we go outside.  Nobee loves the large field behind our house, where our neighbor’s draft horses sometimes plod, and she sprints through the snow, diving up and down like a dolphin in water all the way into the trees at the edge.  From there we walk through a small opening in the fence that leads to another field, and we traipse along the boundary of the open space before ducking under a barbed wire fence back into the woods.  Nobee leads, always a sprint in front of me, and I follow behind her, breathing in the snow-crisp air.  Maple and beech trees stand together and give way to intermittent groupings of fir trees near streams that cut small valleys through the forest.  Two weeks ago I heard a gun shot before we went out, and Nobee led me to the kill: blood-stained snow and the innards of a deer the hunters didn’t want.  We visited the spot every day for a week, interrupting crows so Nobee could snack, until all that was left was a small part of the stomach, which had become a frozen disk.

We continue on through the forest until we reach the third field, which looks out over a large red barn, horses outside in a paddock, and a farmhouse on Lower Pleasant Valley road.  Across the road the land rises up to a rounded peak called Cady Hill.  Nobee does a lap around the field, and from here we turn around and head home, arriving back after an hour.

I discover more each time we go out: a bright orange fungus on a maple branch, a simple wooden bridge with inch-wide gaps across a stream, a large rock balanced on a bent tree to mark a trail; and each time it snows it is as if I am entering a new place, creating tracks that were not there before, and ducking under heavier snow-covered branches.  I have struggled with my desires to travel, and to stay in one place and know it deeply, but perhaps here I am doing both.  What is travel but movement across the land, and an opening up to a place one didn’t know before?  Each walk is an exploration.  Each interaction builds a deeper relationship.  So I will keep learning and watching Nobee as she scoops up snow with her snout in the middle of a sprint, effortlessly happy to be here.

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February Snow

24 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by Kate Spring in Nature/Environment, Seasons

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Tags

change, dogs, environment, exploration, land, nature, place, snow, thoughts, United States, USA, weather, winter, writing

The snow is falling in big white clumps, soft and heavy and unrelenting. For most of February, the ground looked as if it had been stripped naked, and it laid with sparse white patches unable to cover the brown grass. But today the raw land, shocked like a sleeping child whose blanket has been ripped off, is finally being covered again.

I laugh in the sticky snow, which coats my hat, wets my hair and my jacket, and I wonder how an element that brings sleep to the land can inspire so much liveliness in myself. The flakes started falling yesterday evening and continue now, steady as a river in spring, and I find joy in the extra effort that walking demands; I slow down, I see snowflakes thick on branches and on my eyelashes. It has been a long time since I’ve experienced a day like today, surely the first one of this season.  Monty, the twelve-year-old beagle I am taking care of this week, marches along the back porch, carving a small labyrinth with walls as tall as him. When I take him for a walk he spins in circles at the door, impatient until it is opened and then excited as he jumps over the snow bank, sniffing through the fast forming layers and marking his territory every few yards.

I heard from my friend Quinn, who lives in Washington, D.C., how the city shut down in the blizzards that struck, and how she found herself enveloped in a quiet that only snow can bring to an unprepared place. Montpelier, Vermont, on the other hand is lively today. Cars continue like any other day down the road, and I pass by people layered in sweaters and jackets, hat and scarves, smiling with their eyes, their mouths drawn up high like wool socks over long underwear, warm and protective. It is the snow we have been waiting for; we’re finally feeling redemption after the endless reports of storms hitting the Mid-Atlantic States and stopping before they could reach the mountains and hills of New England.

I am happy. As I sit here, now back inside with my coat drying out and me changed from slushy jeans into warm sweatpants, I can see the snow still falling straight and heavy to the ground. It will be a quiet night, the land once again insulated from the cold winter air. When I walk downtown to yoga class, I’ll smile at the soft compression beneath my boots, the safety that comes with snow banks between sidewalk and road, and the magic of new space that fresh snow always brings.

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Welcome!

Kate Spring

Kate Spring

Welcome to The Good Heart Life: an organic gardening and lifestyle blog where we grow beauty, joy, and nourishment for the body, soul, and earth. I'm Kate Spring: organic farmer, mother, and chief inspiration officer at Good Heart Farmstead and The Good Heart Life. Grow along with us, and together we'll cultivate a more lively, joyful world one {organic} seed at a time.

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