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Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm

I"m a farmer, thinker, and writer. I can"t seem to help myself. It"s what I do, who I am, and what I love. clatterridgefarm.substack.com

science nature

All Episodes

3:26

The Morally Superior Maple

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/02/26

We tapped our sugar maples this week, and that to me is the beginning of spring. The sap will run as long as the temperatures are below freezing at night and well above freezing during the day. The “sugaring” season usually lasts about 6 weeks, or until the trees start to bud.Maple Syrup was a dietary staple for the Native Americans that lived in New England. When little else was available in early spring, they relied heavily on maple syrup for sustenance. It takes at least 40 gallons of sap boiled

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1:22

Patience!

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/02/20

Luckily for me, the joy of spring is wrapped up in its anticipation. If I woke up one morning to a garden in full bloom, I’d be thrilled and in awe, but I’d acclimate, and the novelty would quickly fade.Spring for me is like a wonderfully drawn out, well-crafted love story. And like any great courtship, there is allure and longing - and impatience bordering on despair.The daytime temperatures this week were warm enough for collecting sap in short sleeved shirts. It felt so decadent and then came the

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3:28

Sowing Seeds

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/02/12

As Christianity spread half a world away, a new way of life was also taking hold here in New England. About two thousand years ago, the cultivation of corn – though curiously slow to catch on, was transforming how the woodland tribes lived and related to their environment – and to each other.For several thousand years, the tribes that called New England home had lived as hunter gatherers. Survival was challenging, but their world was relatively peaceful. Traveling in small bands of 5-30 members,

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3:19

Keep On Keeping On

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/02/06

Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder why I keep farming.A couple years ago, we bought hay from a farmer whose family has been farming the same land for a hundred and fifty years or so. He said jokingly “I have come to the realization that I’m not a farmer anymore, technically, I’m now a pet food manufacturer. You are the only one buying my hay for livestock - everyone else is either feeding pet goats or rescue ponies.”I knew he was making light of it, and I laughed, but even so it tapped into a

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4:04

Old Friends

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/01/30

After my dad passed away, two of his friends clearly felt an obligation to keep an eye on me and my various endeavors.“Uncle” John had been an engineer with my father at Hamilton Standard, and a lifelong friend. He made a point of stopping by to monitor Anne’s and my home building progress - which admittedly took forever. We only worked on our house nights, weekends, and in between other building projects, so progress was indeed pretty slow. Not infrequently we’d find notes stuck to the front door –

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5:10

The Improbability of Kindness

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/01/22

The 6.1 magnitude earthquake that hit Los Angeles early one morning in October 1987 literally rocked my world and my whole sense of security within it. It was the first time I had experienced nature as something to be afraid of – before then it had always been a good friend. A friend I thought I knew.The noise of the earthquake was in itself terrifying, as it roared like a freight train passing underneath. Every fiber of my being wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. Standing up was hard

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3:06

Getting Back to Normal

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/01/15

Seeing the holidays in the rear-view mirror is not unlike getting over a virulent stomach bug. The relief of simply getting back to normal is so satisfying as to be positively transformative in nature. The gratitude, the deep contentment, the blissful solitude – it’s possible that I have just gained a whole new lease on life.Our dogs have come out of hiding and are sound asleep - sprawled across the living room floor. Happiness for them is found in the simple things as well. Like being able to nap

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2:49

Marcescence (and a blanket of snow)

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/01/08

There are few things on this planet as peaceful as walking in a New England forest after a snowstorm. The sound deadening blanket covering the earth creates a blissful silence and is the perfect tonic for an overly noisy world. The welcomed hush is broken only by the gentle rustle of leaves stubbornly clinging to a few outlying trees.Most deciduous trees drop their leaves as soon as the color fades in Autumn. But a few, like white oak and beech trees, are “marcescent” and hold on to their dead

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2:39

Counting Peas

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2026/01/01

Our friends with culinary ties to the South made their annual pilgrimage to buy smoked pork jowl from our farm last week. The jowl is traditionally cooked with collard greens, black-eyed-peas and served with cornbread. All of which are believed to bring good luck and prosperity in the New Year. The meal served either at midnight, or on New Year’s Day, has many iterations across the South and very specific ingredients and traditions surrounding each variation. I can’t keep track of them all but the

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3:12

In Praise of the Christmas Orange

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/12/26

I always thought my mom’s tradition of putting an orange in the bottom of everyone’s stocking was a waste of perfectly usable stocking space, and I told her so every Christmas. She explained that growing up oranges were a special treat, and as a child, one of the magical joys of Christmas. As a kid I found that hard to believe, but it makes sense to me now. In an era before refrigeration and mass transportation, everyone ate locally. You knew your farmer, and you ate what was in season, and I can

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1:17

The Scruffiest Tree

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/12/19

When we were kids, we were fortunate enough to be able to cut our own Christmas trees, and of all our holiday traditions, getting the tree was definitely my favorite.We’d head out the back door and climb up the quarter mile path through the ravine to a grove of spruce trees that my grandmother had tasked my uncles with planting years before.Our Christmas tree lot was deeply magical. The trees, by then, were magnificently tall, perfectly formed, and densely packed. We’d wander about and look at each

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1:17

A Fox, a Crow, and Me

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/12/13

Just as the sun came up, the snow stopped, and the wind moved on. It was so bitterly cold, though, the only hope of staying warm was to just keep moving. I wanted to check the fence line for any trees that might have come down in the storm, and I was indeed making great time. When I crossed the stream, though, a series of tracks caught my eye. Pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one out doing chores in the freezing cold, I paused for a while to look at the storyboard recorded in the snow.A mouse,

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2:25

The Prettiest Pigs in Town

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/12/04

On this cold December morning, the witch hazel in our wooded pig pasture seems quite pleased with itself. Long after all our autumn leaves have fallen and every other plant has completely faded, Connecticut’s native witch hazel comes into bloom. The timing seems self-defeating as there are very few cold tolerant insects this time of year that are available to pollinate it. It is, however, the only blossoming game in town, so despite how few pollinators there are, there is no competition for their

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2:37

And a Whole Lot of Time

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/11/28

15,000 years ago, our farm (and the rest of New England) was covered with a sheet of ice a mile thick. As the glacier receded, it left behind barren rock, glacial till and valleys filled with lakes. The surface of New England had been scrubbed clean of whatever topsoil, earthworms, and megafauna that had lived here before. We had to completely start over from scratch.Lichen recolonized the rock – while shrubs and moss grew along the shores of the glacial lakes that were left behind. Grasses filled

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2:42

The Luckiest Squirrel

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/11/21

Halfway up the path through our ravine is a shagbark hickory tree that never seems to grow. It appears happy enough, but it’s been the same size since I was a kid. I’m sure that the limited nutrients from the rocky talus slope and the struggle of living in the shade of larger oaks has stunted its growth. But it’s not just the tree itself which never seems to age but the hole in its trunk never seems to change either. It’s neither healed, nor deteriorated, in all the years that I’ve known it. Waist

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2:58

Even Further from the Sun

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/11/14

When planet Earth was young, it collided with something large enough to knock it off its polar axis. That collision, and the ensuing tilt, are why we have seasons. It’s also widely believed that the debris from that collision eventually became our moon.Earth spins on its axis, one revolution every 24 hours, and that gives us night and day. At the same time, it’s also orbiting the sun. And that yearlong, off kilter, rotation around the sun, changes the amount of daylight we get each day over the

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3:04

For the Birds

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/11/06

Just before my dad passed away, I asked him what kind of tree he wanted his ashes scattered beneath. He didn’t hesitate – he wanted us to plant an oak tree. Specifically, he wanted a “northern red oak” planted in our ravine. It seemed an odd request - to plant an oak tree in a forest filled with oaks, but he was very definitive, so I was happy to oblige. Technically, I could have swiped an acorn from an unsuspecting squirrel, dug a hole in the ground and called it a day. But finding the perfect tree

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4:16

Circadian Chickens

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/10/31

As autumn approaches, our chickens start slowing down for the winter. The pineal gland behind their eyes registers the change in daylight length, and they lay fewer and fewer eggs as their circadian rhythm tries to keep them from raising baby chicks in the winter. By March, when the hens’ glands register that there is enough daylight, they begin to lay again. Putting a light on in their coop which mimics 14-16 hours of daylight, helps fool their natural rhythm and encourages them to keep producing

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2:47

Shepherd's Delight!

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/10/23

This time of year, we catch the sunrise while doing morning chores and the sunset during afternoon chores. It’s a bit like having a pair of bucolic bookends at either end of our day.The adage “red sky at night sailor’s delight, red sky in the morning sailors take warning,” often comes to mind. The original version of that saying refers to shepherds not sailors. “Red sky at night shepherd’s delight, red sky in the morning shepherds take warning”During the day, the sun’s rays, which include all the

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2:01

A Flock of Rebels

Story Time at Clatter Ridge Farm ·

2025/10/17

In an attempt to protect their monopoly on the wool industry, England tried hard to discourage one from ever taking hold in its American colonies. To that end, the exporting of sheep to America was expressly forbidden, but by 1655, a few smuggled sheep had multiplied to 10,000. Oops! I’m not sure what I find more amusing; that colonial sheep smuggling was actually a thing or that breeding sheep became such a subversive (and successful) act of independence.Clearly unable to completely stop America’s

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