AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY YANKEES ARE CRUSTY?:

My steep hill. I own a lot of land--if you measure vertically. Even as a beginning gentleman farmer I realized that this would make planting difficult. Although, in theory, harvesting would be just a matter of standing at the bottom holding a bushel basket. Not that I've ever managed to grow anything. Raccoons eat the corn, squash and tomatoes. Sleet, snow, frost or freezing rain take care of everything else. One season of agriculture in New England explains manifest destiny. America's westward expansion was mainly an excuse to kill raccoons and wear them as hats.

I am, nonetheless, a farmer. My property is a "Certified Tree Farm." And a demanding life it is. Sleet, snow, frost or freezing rain, the crop must be brought in--every 40 years, no matter what. And I can tap my trees for maple syrup except that I seem to have found the only place in New England between Bridgeport and Bangor without a single sugar maple. It turns out there's very little market for "fir syrup."

The difference between being a Certified Tree Farm and being lost in the woods is a bureaucratic mystery fully understood only by the Department of Agriculture. I think it means that I can deduct what I spend on growing trees (nothing) from what I earn selling timber (nothing). I never pictured myself in knickers and a Norfolk jacket striding over stumps.

Being certifiably a farmer did excuse the purchase of a tractor with a mower attachment for cutting hay. At least I think it's hay. I went to considerable expense to clear brush, yank rocks and plow and fertilize 20 acres. I don't believe that I then asked for the 20 acres to be seeded with dandelions and crabgrass. However, that was when I first moved up from the city, and I may have given the wrong orders.

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