Scott Fotheringham

It is perfect that Scott sent this sweet picture of himself and Ruth after I just posted about her last week. I love having my Windhorse community close to me in the city and being able to share memories about our time on the farm. Here is a gem from Scott.

“On a cold February night, at the end of the last century, I was staying at the Farm and cooking for an ecoforestry course Jim was teaching. Margaret was in retreat in the Honey House. The NS Sea School was also running a program there. The teenagers were at the farm to see where wood for building boats came from.Each night I’d prep for the next day’s meals, baking bread, making granola and applesauce, and cleaning up. After Jim had said good night to the ecoforestry students this night, he came into the farmhouse kitchen and sat and talked to me while I worked. He made us elderberry and grape juice from frozen fruit from the previous summer.

I asked Jim if he wanted to skate on the pond with me. He’d had a long day and balked at going out again. However, it didn’t take much convincing. I told him that he would forget this particular night if he went to bed, but that he’d remember it forever if he came skating. The two of us bundled up and skated onto the clear and smooth ice under the light of the full moon. As we skated around the small island, I told him about an article I’d read. The hemlocks had been almost completely killed off by a disease a few thousand years ago but had recovered. “That’s hopeful,” Jim said. “That means there’ll be another vibrant hemlock forest here in 500 years.”

Meanwhile, the Sea Schoolers had decided to have a sauna. They cut a hole in the ice of the pond and were running from the sauna and dropping their shrieking bodies into the frigid water as we skated by in our parkas, hats, and mitts    .

I don’t know if Jim remembers that night but what I told him is true for me: I will never forget the warmth of skating with a friend, under a full moon, with the two of us and the joyous youth doing something we all had never done before and may never do again.”

Crane Stookey

Crane is a long time friend of WHF. I remember him coming to the farm to choose trees for boat building with the Nova Scotia Sea School. How exciting to feel the connectedness of the forest to the ocean in a handmade wooden boat. Crane shared one of his WHF experiences like this-

“I love the grandmother trees. One of the first things Jim told me about the
woodlot was that you never cut the tallest trees. Caroll Wentzel had taught
him that, and when he asked why, he says Caroll didn’t say anything and
looked at him as if he were the stupidest person in the world. He said
Caroll did that a lot that first year. There’s all the scientific stuff
about the higher the top of the canopy the more diverse and healthy the
forest, and the taller tress have stronger seed you want to preserve and all
that. But the tall tress are also the protectors. The grandmother trees who
hold the forest lineage and at whose feet the new trees can learn
forestness, so they can grow and thrive. What a gentle, loving way to run a
woodlot.”