“If you want to know what the world looked like after the deluge, visit a barton (barnyard) in the winter.” From the book, “We Make a Garden” by Margery Fish. At least that is the quote as I remember it, because some (former!) friend has purloined my copy (or I’ve possibly mislaid it).

A couple of nights ago, after securing the sheep, I stepped out the front door of the barn to survey our modest kingdom. A couple of cold weeks, with heavy rains, had left a slurry of frozen mud and muck at the entrance. The laying down of straw helped the situation in the short term but made it worse in the long term. The straw served as a deceptive floating island on the sea of mire.

This island, I was instantly aware, while beginning the survey of said kingdom, would not support my modest two-hundred pound frame. A frame launched, “slipping the surly bonds,” for brief moments before gravity pulled it back to earth in a long slide, only a hay bale intervening to slow its progress.

Funny how dignity attempts to reinstate itself in the most unlikely of situations. There I was with a solid streak of mud caked on one side of body from ear to calf and I bound up out of the muck as if nothing had happened, I’m sure, for the benefit of the watching sheep and pigs.

Well there is nothing dignified about a grown man stripping down to his birthday suit on the front porch, temperature thirty-four degrees, before being allowed entry. But thanks to a capacious hot-water tank, this farmer was able to reemerge minutes later with an acceptable standard of hygiene.

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Reading this weekend: Home Gardening in the South by H.C. Thompson, Farmers’ Bulletin 934, USDA, February, 1918.