Cold Antler Farm

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