{"id":20196,"date":"2022-03-12T23:44:06","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T04:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=20196"},"modified":"2022-03-12T23:48:27","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T04:48:27","slug":"episode-549-an-old-mans-winter-night-snowstorm-on-fifth-line-erin-twp-wellington-county-march-10-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=20196","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 549 “AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT”…SNOWSTORM ON FIFTH LINE, ERIN TWP., WELLINGTON COUNTY, MARCH 10, 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EPISODE 549        “AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT”… SNOWSTORM ON FIFTH  LINE, ERIN TWP., WELLINGTON COUNTY,  MARCH 10, 2022<\/div>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
March 10, 2022<\/div>\n

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I need a break!   Just to escape from the imaginary binding chains imposed by my computer will be a great relief.<\/div>\n
So I took a walk around the farm as Marjorie does with the dogs and  my grandfather did even when so<\/div>\n
lame he could hardly walk, and as my uncle Frank did when he thought he was dying of cancer (which he was not).<\/div>\n
Why say this?   Because a walk around the farm is therapeutic \u2026 good for the soul if we have a soul.<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n
spring had  come a few days earlier then,  “Whomp!\u201d… The snow returned with a vengeance.  Quite beautiful really.  Worth this <\/div>\n
photo essay.  Save it.  You will need these pictures next summer when the summer sun is boiling your brain.<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n
when the Shaver farm became a nest of condominiums.  Cost $1,000 to move it and have fram erected.  Today one of the barn<\/div>\n
builders we hired dropped by, 40 or so years afterward\u2026Malcolm MacMillan remembered.  I must take time to get it repaired a bit<\/div>\n

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In this little depression between two of our four farm ponds there was once a large bank barn.   When the animals no longer lived<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n
to the earth from which it was born.<\/div>\n

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Other Gothic farmhouses far more grand than ours are gone.  But our remains in good shape.  We gave her a new roof last year\u2026like<\/div>\n
a new hat on a Victorian lady.  The house was built in the 1870\u2019s from local soft red bricks and hand hewn timbers collected from some<\/div>\n
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 <\/div>\n
creatures were very disappointed because they were evicted\u2026mice, raccoons, red squirrels, garter snakes, big fat toads living in the<\/div>\n
dirt floored cellar.   <\/div>\n

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PLANS FOR HOUSES like this could be found or bought from the Eaton catalogue which is why so many of them existed and some <\/div>\n
still do exist.    We added the back room on  the left built by Tim Rock, our neighbour..  He suggested<\/div>\n
 the big verandah which was a great idea.<\/div>\n

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Now this is a recent treasure.  We had Jim Sanderson and his son bring their excavator to deepen what was once a swamp.<\/div>\n
Now a fine pond where a bunch of muskrats move about\u2026and a wood duck had her young\u2026and we even had a lonely beaver sho<\/div>\n
up for a season.<\/div>\n

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This is our piece of the Fifth line.  There was a time when Marjorie and the boys skated down the line in winter.  That<\/div>\n
was before salting became popular.  Winter road graders and gravel spreading trucks kept the fifth line open on winter days such<\/div>\n
as this.  No longer closed with snowdrifts.  No longer winter ice rinks. .<\/div>\n

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Marjorie kept her horse Spartacus in the Saunders Barn.   Spartacus knew I was nervous with him so he kept an eye on<\/div>\n
me.   If he could speak he would have said \u201cBoo!\u201d just to see me run. On the few occasions I rode him\u2026about two occasions\u2026I <\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n
a strip of iron in your mouth.<\/div>\n

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THIS IS THE Gibralter Schoolhouse.   A fine fieldstone building now restored.   The community that once provided children <\/div>\n
for the school, Gibralter, is long gone.   A two storey rural school is very rare which suggests this may have been a \u2018continuation school\u2019<\/div>\n
for students that wanted to extend their education\u2026i.e. a rural high school.<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n
pictures of this lane\u2026spring, summer, winter and fall\u2026you may have noticed that in previous Episodes.<\/div>\n

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EverY time that I am alone in our farm house in winter time, <\/div>\n
especially on a lonely winter night\u2026every time I think of<\/div>\n
Robert Frost\u2019s poem, An Old Man\u2019s Winter Night.  When I was<\/div>\n
young and alone on such nights the poem moved me deeply.<\/div>\n
Now that I am old, the poem moves me moreso especially when <\/div>\n
I clump clump clump in winter boots which on the wooden floor echoes<\/div>\n
like the drumbeAt of a shaman.  It is possible to scare myself<\/div>\n
on such a night as this.<\/div>\n

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AN OLD MAN\u2019S WINTER NIGHT<\/div>\n
(by Robert Frost)<\/div>\n
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. <\/div>\n

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Robert Frost<\/a><\/div>\n
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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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}