Over the years I have written a variety of annual series on different topics: the farm breviary, the farmer’s alphabet, and a farm toolbox spring most readily to mind. There have also been a few aborted series, possibly to be returned to later. And, in all honesty, most have been done simply to help me with the process of filling out the fifty-two posts each year. Although I do hope they give value.

Fall wines: perry and crabapple.

This coming year and next I’m starting a new series on country wines. There will be twelve posts this year on using ingredients from the farm or field to create a wine (parsnip sherry, anyone?) And then next year there will be a short post each month on tasting the previous year’s creation and answering important questions. Such as, just how did that parsley wine hold up? And what should one serve with their carrot wine?

Of course, there will be the usual weekly posts on whatever else strikes my fancy or has a burr under my saddle. But please, for now, contain your excitement. Because today is my somewhat annual top ten summary of posts from last year.

This little blog, in 2020, garnered a little over 10,000 views, with 341 of those posts written over the years being reread at least once. Which, as I sit at my desk with a rooster crowing outside the window, is encouraging in that annoying Sally Fields type of fashion.

About the South Roane Agrarian and the Farm Breviary remain the top two viewed posts. But since they are separate pages on the site, I’ll discard them from the top ten.

This year’s top ten list contains a few older posts (although, God only knows, why “beef cheek pastrami” keeps showing up). But the rest are from this year.

Top ten posts from 2020

1. Unsolicited Advice to a Nephew on Starting a Farm (2020)
2. Neither Past Nor Future (2020)
3. A Farm Toolbox: the pocketknife (2014)
4. Using the Odd-bits: beef cheek pastrami (2016)
5. A Great Divide (2017)
6. What the Sunrise Will Show (2020)
7. When It All Falls Away (2020)
8. Waiting On the Egg Man (2020)
9. Fatigue (2020)
10. Hurricane Laura, Eight Weeks Later (2020)

And, an honorable mention, just because I’m delighted this one still shows up on the list.

11. The Steen’s Syrup Republic (2017)

Next week? I try my hand at making a fig and muscadine raisin wine!

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Reading this weekend: Convivial Dickens: the drinks of Dickens and his times (Hewett and Axton). And, Durable Trades: family-centered economies that have stood the test of time (R. Groves). The latter was published by Front Porch Republic.

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