Any Good Books
October 2016
Cold Antler Farm: A Memoir of Growing
Food and Celebrating Life on a Scrappy Six-Acre Homestead
Jenna Woginrich (Roost Books, 2014)
"I didn't need something for a
magazine shoot or a remodeled kitchen with steel appliances. I needed
land, water, grass, and possibility. The little house was a blessing,
a perfect fit. I didn't care about my furniture sitting level, but I
did care about the pasture, barns, forest, pond, stream, and
outbuilding crying for a caretaker. It became home the moment I
pulled into the driveway."
Jenna Woginrich is a writer who farms
six and a half acres in the hills north of Albany, New York; or
should I say, she's a farmer who blogs and writes books. Cold Antler
Farm is structured around a year on the farm, from spring around to
winter. That is, from seed catalogs to planting, to weeding and
cultivating, to harvesting the garden. At all times there is firewood
to split and stack, as heating a house in upstate New York is no
small task.
Woginrich likes a fresh vegetable, but
her first love is clearly animals. Mail-order chicks start out in the
warm kitchen, but grow up to enjoy free-range lives all over the
place, providing eggs and the occasional chicken dinner. A couple of
pigs eat their way through the summer, eating their way from "the
size of a cocker spaniel to a high school wrestler, 190 to 225
pounds." (Woginrich sells their meat on shares so she can afford
their feed.) The sheep are smarter than their reputation would have
it, with a weather eye out for a weak spot in the fence. After
they've had their riot, in the lettuce bed or the neighbor's flower
bed - oops, sorry! - they can be bribed with grain back into their
proper quarters.
It's an isolated life, in a way, and a
lot of responsibility. There are no farm-sitters, able to take
on all fifty head of assorted livestock to give Woginrich a break for
a weekend in the city. On the other hand, she has people she buys hay
from, a guy who droves over from Vermont to shear her flock, and
local butchers for her hogs and chickens. Her neighbors are generous
with help and advice, and she's more and more able to reciprocate
with help and hospitality of her own.
Cold Antler Farm carries a
whiff of the excited amateur, in over her head; but on balance, you
have to believe in Woginrich's dream, because she's putting in the
work every day. And, with company or alone, she makes her own fun.
She noodles on the fiddle, practices archery, and slips into a clear,
cool pond on the hot summer days. She keeps a couple of horses, who
earn their keep helping haul firewood out of the woods. Who knows
what she'll try next?
Emailed 10/1/16
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