The floorboards are barely cool as I step off the stairs in the house. Sixty-five degrees outside, I guess. It is my little game, played each day, to predict the morning temperature based on the feel of the wood floors under my bare feet. I’m close: at 5 a.m. it is 64. Much too warm for an April morning, I think, as I take a seat in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch with my morning coffee. The dogs lie scattered around me, coats wet with dew from tracking an early morning rabbit trail.

Fresh goat cheese

Following Jefferson’s injunction to a nephew not to think during his daily afternoon walk, I sit without purpose. As when I’m on the tractor for hours, not thinking is when I do my best thinking. A warm breeze blows across the farm. Even I can predict a change coming without the foreknowledge of checking with the weather station.

Back in the house around 6:30, I hear the all-too-familiar ruckus of the dogs tussling on the porch. “Quiet!” I yell out the front door, disturbing only the peace of the predawn. They ignore me but do carry their disagreement out into the yard. I close the door, and both man and dogs claim victory.

A little later and drinking a second cup of coffee, I am once again sitting in the rocking chair. It is now light enough for me to make notes on the upcoming day. After some minutes the door opens and Cindy joins me. We both sit quietly at first—I finish my list of tasks, and the caffeine works its magic on Cindy’s morning frame of mind—then we spend half an hour or so discussing the upcoming day.

For the rest of the morning the porch is a waystation, a place to pull on and off boots, but come noon we are back in our rockers, looking out over the front lawn and the “new” orchard (now fifteen years old) and eating our lunch. Mine is a small plate of leftover collards, field peas, and a piece of sausage; hers is homemade goat cheese with dried fruit and olives.

Afterwards we retire upstairs for our daily siesta. We read a bit before taking a nap, and since most friends and neighbors know that the hours of 1-3 are our quiet time, we are left in peace.

The porch is back in use at afternoon coffee. The first of a wave of storms begins to wash away the too-warm-for-April day, and we watch until the rain drives us inside. In the living room, dogs at our feet, we wait out the arrival of the cold front from our easy chairs.

Less than an hour later strong winds are clearing the skies over the farm and blowing cooler air into the valley. We both head back out to the barn to feed and do a few late afternoon chores. Friends show up to help remove a tire that is stuck on the axle of our tiller. We try a host of techniques, none successful, when someone asks, “Why do you want this perfectly good tire off the tiller anyway?” More than a little sheepishly, I admit that it was for no other reason than that it was stuck. With that answer we decide to leave the wheel in place and all head to the house for a beer. The six of us scattered across the porch, we settle in to watch the sunset across the ridge. We invite the friends to stay for red beans and rice, but they have their own meal planned, so we say goodnight. We eat dinner in the back yard, seated in our weathered Adirondacks.

As I lie fast asleep just before midnight, in a reversal of my early morning routine Cindy takes her place on the front porch, in a rocking chair, without purpose, before joining me in slumber.

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Reading this past week: Pride and Prejudice (J. Austen). It has been a decade or two since I last read this novel, and having finished it, I think that Mr. Collins has become my favorite character. Also read, Love for the Land (B. Lamb), a fine addition to the agrarian shelf. Mr. Lamb writes of the collapse of an agricultural landscape in Tennessee and in particular how it impacts small and mid-size farms. And finally, summer must be around the corner, because I’m reading the latest John Sandford novel, a Lucas and Letty Davenport mystery/thriller. Sandford typically releases one novel approaching summer each year.