At Home and Abroad

Last Sunday in the afternoon, after I'd finished the chores, I went for a walk. There was a cold front moving in and it was very windy, but the wind stirred the wanderlust in me. I walked up to the hill above Gold and along the old railroad grade. We used to hike that way, but it had been years since I last went up there. It was different. Paths that we once took were overgrown and new paths had been cut. The top of the hill that was once an untended and wild field is mowed now. There was still some color to be seen. The oaks and alders are the only trees with bright leaves now. The larches have only just started to turn golden. I startled a deer on the railroad grade. It huffed at me and ran up the hill. I walked the railroad grade westward and came out on highway 449 just below the Gold intersection. Then I came home again. It was invigorating to walk in the wind with leaves flying all around me. I loved the sound of the crisp leaves as I walked through them. And the smell of fallen leaves, sweet and musky, is a delicious autumn perfume. The rain arrived later that night and kept on through most of the week.

Last Sunday's walk: oaks on the hill above Gold.

Last Sunday's walk: the top of the hill above Gold.

Last Sunday's walk: on the old railroad grade.

Monday dawned dark and wet. I sat in the gloom of the morning and brooded over all the things I needed to do that the rain kept me from. To occupy my mind, I made a list of all the things we need to do before winter sets in. They are all big jobs.

1.    Winterize the barn. That entails washing and then closing all the windows, tilling and smoothing the dirt floor then spreading fresh straw, putting new liners in the nesting boxes, whitewashing the walls and perches.

2.    Put away the garden tools. During the summer I keep my rakes, shovels, pruners, etc. in the greenhouse out in the garden where it's convenient. Now I need to clean them, sharpen the ones that have blades, rub them down with linseed oil and store them away in the woodshed.

3.     Clean the woodshed. I have to rearrange things so the garden tools fit back in their places. Plus I have to make the boxes of Christmas decorations accessible.

4.     Put up outdoor Christmas lights. We like to get them up before the weather gets too cold. We won't turn them on until the day after Thanksgiving.

5.     Clean the back porch. We store firewood on the back porch during the winter and right now there are things in the way that need to be moved, most likely to the woodshed, see above.

6.     Wrap vulnerable plants in burlap or cover with straw. I have a rosebush, a little persimmon tree, and grapevines that all need to be protected from winter cold.

7.     Stockpile feed. I like to have a large supply of chicken feed stored in the barn during the winter. I like every feed bucket to be full plus ten 50 pound bags, just in case.

8.    Lay in a supply of firewood. We like to have at least three cords of wood on hand. We have a lot of wood that's too big to use and needs to be split. That's a very big job.

Late in the afternoon on Monday, the weather cleared for a while and we went out and picked apples. We had the whole gang out there – Kurt and Julie, Roman and Kale and their children, Stacey and me, Hannah and Miriam. We went from tree to tree, spreading a tarp, shaking the branches, gathering the apples that fell. Miriam climbed into the bigger trees to knock down apples. In the biggest tree, we set up the extension ladder to reach the highest parts. We worked for several hours and filled buckets and bins. I'm happy to say that the apple harvest is done and it was pretty good.

Kurt, Stacey, and Julie picking up apples that Miriam is shaking from the tree.

Our apple crop this year.

We went out on Monday night to see if we could see Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon. The sky was finally clear, but we'd waited too long and it had already set below the horizon. It seems that on the nights when we remember to go out and look, it's cloudy and on the nights when it's clear, we forget and wait until it's too late. We were beginning to think we'd miss seeing it.

Tuesday morning it was sunny but cold, a very brisk 28°. I decided I wouldn't go out to work until the temperature had risen above 40°. While I was waiting, I put on some Bach and tended to my houseplants. I need to have some sort of interaction with growing things, so now I've shifted from my outdoors garden to my indoors houseplants. Finally at 10:00, the thermometer hit 48° and I went out.

My indoor "garden".

My Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) is blooming now.

I had the rest of my morning all planned out. My main job that day was No. 1 on the above list, working in the barn. First I was going to till up the chicken coop floor. The litter on the coop floor is a thick mixture of straw, dirt, and chicken manure. The chickens scratch in it and keep the top of it somewhat loose, but I needed a deeper tilling because of rats. With the coming of cold weather, rats have moved in from the surrounding fields looking for a snug winter home. They tunnel in under the walls and have a system of tunnels deeper under the dirt floor. I needed to till it to destroy them. But I couldn't get the tiller to start. I'm not mechanically inclined at all. I tried everything I knew how to do, but to no avail. So that was the end of that project until Tosh or Kurt could come by and get it started.

That failure started a cascade of frustrated plans. After tilling I was going to wash the coop windows. But it was silly to do that when tilling later would just stir up the dust and make them dirty again. So I scratched that project. The next step after the windows would have been to whitewash the walls and roosts in the coop. We've had an outbreak of scaly leg mites (Knemidocoptes mutans). These parasites burrow under the scales on the chickens' legs and feet cause irritation and impaired immunity. One of the ways to combat them is to whitewash the coop, especially their roosts. The whitewash forms a sanitizing layer that deters mites and lice and other pests. I bought a bag of hydrated lime a while back and some big brushes. But there was no point in doing that before tilling and washing the windows. And so my morning plans were wiped out. And then the weather turned. Clouds moved in. My sunny day vanished. The temperature started to drop again. As I sat and watched it all fall apart, I thought of Robert Burns and how "the best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men Gang aft agley."

And speaking of mice, in addition to rats seeking shelter in the barn, the "wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous, beasties" are attempting their annual autumn invasion of the house. The pretty little white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) are trying to set up winter quarters with us. We have traps set all over – in the kitchen, on the back porch, and in the woodshed. Stacey mans the traps. She takes great pride in dispatching the little critters. I think her count is at seven now. There will be many more. That's life in the country.

So Tuesday's morning was given over to idleness and frustration. The best part of the day came in the late afternoon when we took our apples to the cider mill. Going to the cider mill is always a fun outing. We loaded all our bins and buckets in the back of Kurt's truck and drove up to Lain's Cider Mill in Canisteo, New York. Lain's has been in business for over thirty years. They are famous locally for their fresh pressed cider. They also press other peoples' apples. We were the only customer with apples to press and didn't have to wait. We loaded our apples onto the conveyor belt where they were washed, ground, and then pressed into delicious cider. We got fifty-one gallons this time. Last year's bumper crop yielded sixty, our current record. But fifty is good and should last us a year.

The truck loaded and ready.

Loading apples onto the conveyer belt.

Ground apples falling onto the press.

Pressing the apple mash.

Stacey helping to bottle it.

Fifty-one gallons headed for home.

By the time we got home from the cider mill, it was dark. We unloaded the cider into the freezer in the woodshed. The sky was mostly clear, so we checked to see if we could see the comet. Using binoculars, there it was, to the left of Ursa Major in the constellation Boötes, a fuzzy green spot of light with a wispy tail behind it. We were glad we finally got to see it.

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon (not my photo).

Wednesday was my weekly acupuncture appointment. This week it was at 10:00, so my morning and early afternoon were both shot. I couldn't start anything before I had to leave and I didn't get home until 12:30. But it was a cold, blustery, rainy day so I wouldn't have been able to do much of anything anyway. And I do enjoy my acupuncture sessions.

On Wednesday night Stacey and I went down to the chicken coop to begin another phase of our leg mite eradication program. After the chickens had all gone to roost, we took them one at a time and administered topical ivermectin on the back of their necks, by their vents, and on their legs. It was not a fun job. They resent being disturbed after dark and we did some major disturbing. We'll have to do another application this week. Not fun. 

While we were down in the coop, I set some traps. For two nights in a row, Monday night and Tuesday night, something came into the coop and killed a hen. Whatever it was tried to drag their bodies under the coop door and the hens were too big, so it left them there lodged against the door and ate just their heads and necks. That usually means a skunk or a possum. On Wednesday morning there was a dead skunk just down the road that had been hit by a car. I didn't know if it was the culprit, so I set two traps and bated them with hot dogs.

In other farm news – we found out a while back that the butcher who is supposed to take our pigs next month has moved to South Carolina. He didn't tell us he was moving, we found out by accident when we saw a notice that his home and business were being sold at public auction. That left us in a quandary. Butchering dates are made well in advance because they coincide with deer season and that keeps the butchers busy. We didn't know if we'd be able to find another available butcher on such late notice. At this point they often don't have any openings until January or February and we didn't want to keep the pigs into the winter. We were lucky. We found one, and it's a good one, with an opening on November 8th. We used this place the first year we raised pigs and they gave us the best hams we've ever had. They are more expensive and further away, over near Westfield in Tioga County, but we were glad to get a date. These pigs are big and obnoxious. It's time to transform them from being the eaters to the eaten.

During the week I was able to finish No. 2 on my list. I cleaned, sharpened, and oiled my garden tools and then hung them in the woodshed where they will hang until spring. With the greenhouse empty of tools, I took the garden bench from the lily pond garden and put it in there. That will be my winter sunshine therapy place. On a bright day, even in the dead of winter, the greenhouse can warm to 80°. I'll be going there to bask as often as I can during the long cold days ahead.

My winter basking place.

Thursday was another disappointing day. I woke up to the sound of rain. It was cold and dark. I got ready for the day and then sat and looked over the list of things that wouldn't get done. After our morning scripture reading and prayer, I went down to the chicken coop to see if anything was in my trap. There was nothing. It was still too dark for the chickens to be out. Their door opens and closes automatically depending on the intensity of the light. I stood and watched them as they gathered around the door, anticipating it opening, complaining that it was taking too long. Chickens are great complainers. When it finally opened, they hurried out, realized that it was raining, came back in, and resumed complaining. I threw them some scratch inside as a compensatory treat for their disappointment. Then I came back to the house to resume my disappointed complaining, and no treat for me.

I spent part of the day Thursday preparing for our weekend adventure. With chickens and pigs to take care of, I can't just go away for a long weekend. I asked Sarah and Tosh to take over my responsibilities, but I still had to get some things ready. I made up four slop buckets for the pigs, a disgusting mix of pasta, beans, old candy bars from summer s'mores that never got made, stale potato chips and crackers, apples, and hog mash. I added hot water and mixed it all together and set the buckets on the back porch where they would keep cool until needed. Out in the pigpen, I made sure their feed bin was full of pellets and their waterer filled to the top so the Fosters wouldn't have to take care of too many things. Down in the barn, I filled all the feeders and waterers to the top so the Fosters would just have to keep an eye on them and add feed or water as needed, and collect the eggs. With all of that taken care of, I felt ready to depart on Friday.

On Friday morning we embarked on our weekend adventure. But first, a bit of background. In August 1968, when I was ten years old, my family moved from New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, to Tallmadge, Ohio. My father had sold his chiropractic practice and taken a position doing radiology research at the Associates Diagnostic and Research Center in Tallmadge. We now lived in a newer house in a development called White Gate, a big change from our old house on Bridge Street. There were lots of changes to adjust to, new schools, new friends, new places to explore. One of the nicest changes was church. In Pennsylvania we were members of the West Shore Branch, a small branch that covered a large area of Cumberland and Perry counties on the west side of the Susquehanna River across from Harrisburg. Our branch met for a time in the chapel on Front Street in Harrisburg, but then later we rented other church buildings in Mechanicsburg and Carlisle. Now in Ohio, we were members of the Kent-Ravenna Ward, an actual ward, a larger congregation that had its own chapel in Rootstown. We loved our new ward. It had a large Primary full of children (ages 3 to 11). It had a large MIA (Mutual Improvement Association) group (ages 12 to 18). And now those organizations weren't made up mostly of Howe children and their kin. Our new ward also had a ward choir, which we immediately joined. Important things happened to me while we lived in that ward. I turned twelve and graduated from Primary. I became a Boy Scout. I was ordained a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood at twelve and a teacher at fourteen.

In 1971, we moved from Tallmadge to a house on Campbellsport Road in Ravenna. It was out in the country on an acre of land surrounded by farmland and forest. We still attended the same ward. We only lived there for a year before my father took a position at National College of Chiropractic in Illinois and we moved to Naperville. I relate this history because recently I've felt the need to go back and visit the places in Ohio where we lived and went to church. And so we planned this adventure.

Stacey and I had a leadership meeting we had to attend in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, in the chapel next to the Pittsburgh Temple. That was on Saturday morning. We decided to make it a long weekend, so on Friday morning we drove down to the Thayn's house and spent the night there.

A game with the Thayns on Friday night.

Our meeting on Saturday was presided over by Elder Neil L. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was a great meeting. While Stacey and I were in the meeting, Hannah went to the temple. Miriam had stayed at the Thayn's house to spend the day with them. After our meetings Stacey, Hannah, and I drove into Ohio to visit church history sites and a couple of family history sites. We first drove to Tallmadge to our old house on High Point Circle. It looks nothing like it did when we lived there. That neighborhood was new then and now it's all grown up with big trees and nice old houses.

The High Point Circle house in 1968.

The same house now.

From there we drove to Hiram to the Johnson Farm where Joseph and Emma Smith lived for a time. It's a place where significant and sacred events in church history took place. Back in the time when I lived in that area, the Johnson Farm was our stake welfare farm. We went there to pick apples, strawberries, and corn. Our scout troop used to camp in the woods behind the farm. When I was twelve, while working at a youth service project there, I was helping clean the stalls in the barn. I picked up a gaff hook and, being a silly boy, threw it like a spear at a bale of straw. As it went past my arm, the hook end snagged in the underside of my right arm and tore a deep gash. Sister Maxfield, the senior missionary who lived on the farm, had to bandage me up. I still have a scar.

The Johnson Farm in Hiram.

The barn behind me was where I hurt myself.

At the Johnson Farm.

From Hiram, we drove to Kirtland. We've toured the church history sites there many times, but this was the first time since the Church bought the Kirtland Temple. Stacey and Hannah had never been inside the Kirtland Temple before. We got there just before closing time and were only able to tour the first floor. It's a beautiful building, the place of so many important events in the restoration of the gospel. I could feel the sacredness of it. We sat in the pew and sang a verse of the hymn "The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning" that was sung at the temple dedication in 1863 and I felt the power of the Spirit there.

The Kirtland Temple.

Inside the Kirtland Temple.

At the Kirtland Temple.

Then we drove over to Streetsboro and spent the night at a motel. This morning we went to church in the Kent-Ravenna Ward, now called the Rootstown Ward. On our way there we drove past the house on Campbellsport Road. It was a foggy morning and visibility was poor, but I could see that the neighborhood and house were very different.

The house on Campbellsport Road 1971.

Same house now.

The chapel in Rootstown was renovated a while back and it didn't look like the chapel we knew when we lived there. It looked like just another chapel. I didn't expect to find anyone in the congregation there who remembered our family. It's been over fifty years since we lived there. There was one lady who talked to us whose daughter is married to the youngest son of a family we knew well. The son was away on business, but we talked with his wife and she filled us in on what was going on in that family. I was expecting to feel very nostalgic seeing those places and to be in that chapel again after all these years. As we walked through the building and sat in that chapel, I brought up memories that didn't fit the place anymore. The pew where my family once sat and the pew where as a young deacon I sat to pass the sacrament are gone, replaced by newer pews. The old multipurpose room with the baptismal font concealed under the floor where my sister Nancy was baptized was gone. It was in that same room, I went to an MIA dance and learned how to square dance. I was twelve and shy and didn't want to dance until one of the adult leaders, Martha Jean Brunner, took me by the hand and we danced to "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!" I still remember scattered parts of the call – "All join hands and circle the ring. Everyone stop give your honey a swing. Swing that little girl behind you. Allemande left and then do-si-do your partner … all promenade and sing Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!" That's a happy memory. I stood in the yard behind the chapel and remembered the activities that took place there, the ward picnics, the scouting meetings. It was all different. All gone. It felt like I was closing a chapter in my life, seeing with my eyes that those places only exist in my memory now. It made me feel a little sad.

The Rootstown Chapel now.

We left Rootstown and drove back to the Thayn's house to have lunch and pick up Miriam. Then we drove home. We arrived here at 7:00. It was a long weekend, many hours in the car, about 790 miles round trip. It's nice to be home. It always is. The Fosters did a great job of running things here while we were away. The week ahead is going to be busy. The weather looks chilly, but I have work to do no matter how cold it is.

I'm sitting here looking through the photos we took of our little trip and pondering on it all. I had such a longing to make that trip and see those places again and now I've seen that they are still there, but not the same. I've also had an increased longing to go back to visit another place from my past. Next year is my 50 year high school reunion. I graduated from Naperville Central High School in 1976. I've never gone to any of my high school reunions. My graduating class was huge and I didn't know most of my peers. I was, however, very close with the ones who were members of the church. A while back a thread went out on social media suggesting that we have our own reunion next year. I hope that happens. I left Naperville in 1978 when I left on my mission and have never been back. I haven't seen most of my friends from that time in fifty years and I'd like to see them again. They are part of one of the most important times in my growing up years. So next year in Naperville!