A farm by season

My beloved dog, Defa, died six months ago today. I haven’t been in the field where I walked with her every day even once since she died. I watch the changing seasons, revelling in their beauty, and always with the thought of how Defa would have loved the farm fields as they changed.

Nature is right at our door. Our garden backs onto fields stretching as far as the eye can see. After the dank, miserable winter, springtime holds the promise of the beauty to come. Cool mornings, dewy crops: heaven for a dog (that’s her, that little brown and white speck in the distance – yeah, I can hardly see her either).

Then summer arrives and this is our playground.

I’m thinking we should go into the opium business.

The days pass and the fields turn gold. When they’re like this they embody everything I love about living here.

Last week the combines came, working night and day for nearly a week. It was a cheap week for entertaining the boys because the farmer took care of that for me.

Now we are left with the fields and fields of haystacks. And two daredevil boys that are determined to fall off the top of at least one.

And then the cycle of growth will start all over again.

There will be no dog running with me this year, revelling in the golden wheat and the rape fields full of deer and rabbits. I probably won’t even be here to see the spring crop start to grow, to watch the wheat turn slowly golden, or be here for the next harvest. It feels like nearly all my memories of her are encompassed in these fields. Leaving them will be hard.