EPISODE 549 “AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT”… SNOWSTORM ON FIFTH LINE, ERIN TWP., WELLINGTON COUNTY, MARCH 10, 2022
alan skeoch
March 10, 2022
I need a break! Just to escape from the imaginary binding chains imposed by my computer will be a great relief.
So I took a walk around the farm as Marjorie does with the dogs and my grandfather did even when so
lame he could hardly walk, and as my uncle Frank did when he thought he was dying of cancer (which he was not).
Why say this? Because a walk around the farm is therapeutic … good for the soul if we have a soul.
The walk occurs at all times of the year but this walk was deceptive. A late winter storm was piling up the snow. We thought
spring had come a few days earlier then, “Whomp!”… The snow returned with a vengeance. Quite beautiful really. Worth this
photo essay. Save it. You will need these pictures next summer when the summer sun is boiling your brain.
This barn once belonged to J.S. Woodsworth, founder of the CCF now the NDP. We were able to rescue it from demolition in Etobicoke
when the Shaver farm became a nest of condominiums. Cost $1,000 to move it and have fram erected. Today one of the barn
builders we hired dropped by, 40 or so years afterward…Malcolm MacMillan remembered. I must take time to get it repaired a bit
In this little depression between two of our four farm ponds there was once a large bank barn. When the animals no longer lived
in the barn the winter frosts split the foundation and down it came. I was too young And too poor to do anything but watch it slowly return
to the earth from which it was born.
Other Gothic farmhouses far more grand than ours are gone. But our remains in good shape. We gave her a new roof last year…like
a new hat on a Victorian lady. The house was built in the 1870’s from local soft red bricks and hand hewn timbers collected from some
building that was must have burned for the scorch marks were found on the frame when we renovated some years ago. A lot of wild
creatures were very disappointed because they were evicted…mice, raccoons, red squirrels, garter snakes, big fat toads living in the
dirt floored cellar.
PLANS FOR HOUSES like this could be found or bought from the Eaton catalogue which is why so many of them existed and some
still do exist. We added the back room on the left built by Tim Rock, our neighbour.. He suggested
the big verandah which was a great idea.
Now this is a recent treasure. We had Jim Sanderson and his son bring their excavator to deepen what was once a swamp.
Now a fine pond where a bunch of muskrats move about…and a wood duck had her young…and we even had a lonely beaver sho
up for a season.
This is our piece of the Fifth line. There was a time when Marjorie and the boys skated down the line in winter. That
was before salting became popular. Winter road graders and gravel spreading trucks kept the fifth line open on winter days such
as this. No longer closed with snowdrifts. No longer winter ice rinks. .
Marjorie kept her horse Spartacus in the Saunders Barn. Spartacus knew I was nervous with him so he kept an eye on
me. If he could speak he would have said “Boo!” just to see me run. On the few occasions I rode him…about two occasions…I
pulled so hard on the reins that I made his mouth sore. Little wonder he did not like me. Imagine being told what to do by
a strip of iron in your mouth.
THIS IS THE Gibralter Schoolhouse. A fine fieldstone building now restored. The community that once provided children
for the school, Gibralter, is long gone. A two storey rural school is very rare which suggests this may have been a ‘continuation school’
for students that wanted to extend their education…i.e. a rural high school.
This my favourite maple lined driveway for a farm just a mile or so south of Limehouse on the Fifth Line. I cannot stop taking
pictures of this lane…spring, summer, winter and fall…you may have noticed that in previous Episodes.
EverY time that I am alone in our farm house in winter time,
especially on a lonely winter night…every time I think of
Robert Frost’s poem, An Old Man’s Winter Night. When I was
young and alone on such nights the poem moved me deeply.
Now that I am old, the poem moves me moreso especially when
I clump clump clump in winter boots which on the wooden floor echoes
like the drumbeAt of a shaman. It is possible to scare myself
on such a night as this.
AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT
(by Robert Frost)
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; — and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; — and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.
