Our chores begin at sun up

This morning’s dawn featured stratus clouds blanketing the ripened crops, bands of red, orange and purple layering each other just above the horizon, a waning crescent moon roughly thirty-five degrees high in the eastern sky, and one bright star just below the moon, off to the right. A punctuation mark! At least that’s the way it looks for the first few seconds. As the sun inches closer and closer to its entrance stage east, all the components shift. The constantly changing light at dawn is one of its most appealing qualities – a fitting reward for climbing out of a warm bed and stepping outside into crisp, damp air.

In the city, I never see the sun rising from its slumber. One reason, I suppose, is that cities lack discernable horizon; they also lack serenity, which is fundamental to enjoying daybreak. In the city, there’s always someone who’s up and out on the road ahead of you – ahead of the sun. Daybreak loses its meaning when people all around are well into their routines even before the sun. We were meant to wait for the sun, not render irrelevant it’s place in the daily cycle of life.

Here, though, I’m constantly climbing out of bed long before I would have to. It seems as if I can’t help myself. The day is breaking, after all, and I want to be a part of it from the very first moment. I want to see the purple sky transform into a red one. I want to watch the stars fade, knowing in fourteen hours or so, they’ll reappear over my head like a vision. I want to see the groves across the fields come into view as the clouds thin with the rising light.

Of course, rising to standing witness to the dawn instead of sleeping an extra hour or two, makes a country day longer than a city day. And the farm doesn’t close up shop on the weekend. There is plenty to do around here just to stay even. No, my day won’t offer many opportunities to rest. Still, I abandon my bed to greet the day. Soon, I’ll be toiling at something.

In the city, morning means routine that chips away at that 40-hour work week with the promise of leisure come week's end. In the country, dawn means each day arrives like a gift. The days are short. Get busy. Out here, I work harder. Out here, I think I come out ahead.

A bouquet especially for you

I was struck by the way the sun filtered through the kitchen window to illuminate a quickly arranged collection of cosmos and zinnias. Enjoy the image on this beautiful first Friday of September.

Hot enough for you?

Shocking isn’t it?

We’ve reached the ninth day of above average temperatures here in the Upper Midwest and our latest string of 90 degree days, in September, have left many longing for the cool, crisp, low-light days of autumn.

Admit it. Did you carp about the heat yesterday? I did.

Consider this: From September to December, the average temperature in Minnesota falls by approximately 43 degrees. What’s more, it has snowed in Minnesota during every month except July.

I needed 15 seconds of blizzard yesterday. I was at work, assembling a video history of a man who had ventured out into a blizzard with horses and a sleigh. He made six trips in that blizzard in one night; the first to fetch a doctor, the last to deliver his brother’s dead body to a hearse waiting on the nearest passable road. According to the sister who tells the story, the weather meant nothing to her brother. “He just put on his mittens and his Mackinaw coat and out he went.” A bit of falling snow outside would have been great for effect. Alas, the sun was still wearing its summer attire.

Today, it’s expected to be unseasonably hot again. It may be the last 90 degree day in 2007. Take a few minutes to stand in the heat and absorb as much as you can. Winter will be here before you know it. It will be a long one. It always is.

Four Square

The farmhouse is old. Really old. The papers filed with county tax assessors indicate the house was built in 1890, but the abstract for the property stretches all the way back to 1866, when the United States government deeded the property to George Sallmennsberger. President Andrew Johnson signed the deed. There’s no indication as to what the land cost at that time. The property changed hands a few times in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. In 1890, when the house was supposedly built, Albert Dittbarner owned the place.

When we first found this property for sale on the internet, we drove around the area for awhile then stopped at the local gas station to ask for help. “That’s the old Phillips place,” one old-timer said. “Two miles down, about the fifth place after the S curve.”
It was 1907 when the first Phillips purchased the farm and the property stayed in the Phillips family for eighty years. Our neighbor just to the north is a Phillips and all the cropland to the east is held in a Phillips trust.

The house isn’t at all architecturally significant. Its design is called Four Square or Prairie Box. Its design is simple – four rooms on each floor, all about the same size. That’s the way it was described in catalogs of the time. Houses like this dot the countryside and can even be found in the city. Most have front porches and many have dormer windows that protrude from the third level. Ours has neither of these features.

At some point, perhaps this winter, I hope to visit the local historical society to learn more about the area around here. Maybe I’ll even stumble on a picture of our house, or George Sallmennsberger, Albert Dittbarner or Nicholas Phillips. That would really bring the history of the old house to life.