Stonyledge Farm

Leaving Studio Farm, Dot Wingate warns me that her daughter’s farm is a bit remote. After a twenty minute weaving back and forth over the Rhode-Island/Connecticut border, I arrive at Stonyledge Farm.  Belinda Learned greets me at the end of a dirt drive with a candid apology for all the weeds and detailed instructions on parking to avoid several large rocks.  

Stonyledge, 105 acres of field and woodland, spans the Connecticut/Rhode Island state line.  We begin our tour at a huge open field where chickens forage for seeds and insects.  At the edge of the meadow stand their laying boxes and night enclosures.  After admiring the poultry, we head toward a small heard of beef cattle.  The group also includes an older milk cow who acts as leader.  The animals merge at a large empty water trough.

“I came home from work this afternoon to find water spraying from a broken pipe. The supply line is shut while my husband, Ed, repairs the system.”  She shakes her head at this latest small farm inconvenience.

We wander back to an old farmhouse.  A new house sits farther up the hill.

“I hope it’s ready for winter,” Belinda says, ticking off what needs to be finished.  “Plumbing, electric, insulation.  This old place is leaky and impossible to heat.”

Belinda and I settle at a wooden picnic table.  Ed wipes his hands and declares the water problem solved.  Marcia, Belinda’s daughter, fills a tub with water for some visiting ducks.  We watch as they line up for a plunge.  A drake, impatient for a second dip, cuts in before his turn.  Quacks and pecks order him back to his place.

“Class projects and school vacation orphans end up here for the summer,” Belinda explains.

Everyone else at the table hears the commotion before I do.  Roosters in the poultry yard scream an alert.  Chickens happily scratching for bugs a second before, go rigid, marble statues frozen in mid-peck.

“Must be a fox in the field.”  Ed rises, gets a rifle from the house, and heads toward the chicken pasture.  He soon returns to report one dead bird but no predator in sight.  Being a free-range chicken has its hazards, it seems.

We all relax.  The chickens return to scuffing their early evening food.  We return to our conversation.  Belinda sighs.

“When was the last time I just sat here and enjoyed all this?”