You can feel the season in the air. The foliage at the farm is turning, maroon and orange and bright yellow, and the deer are in the pastures, maybe getting a last bite of clover before the Men in Orange come for them in a couple weeks. East of the Blue Ridge, the bag limit for deer shall be two a day, six a license year. Of the six deer limit, no more than three may be antlered deer and at least three must be antlerless deer like this one. It is early archery season at the moment, so I was comfortable not wearing orange, but will alter my pattern of life when the muzzle-loading season starts next week, and for sure when the high-velocity rifles are permitted, 16-30 November.

I can feel the stress of the city leaking out. I got down in the early afternoon, a little ahead of the Sunday Rush on I-66, which rivals that of the normal working week. I walked the property on arrival to see if anything was amiss, or critters had penetrated any of the perimeters.

A brief spate of alarm spiked when I saw the office door was ajar on the side of the garage, and I walked over to see what might be inhabiting the boxes that came down from the Little Village By the Bay.

Nothing seemed out of order, but one never knows. The Turf Tiger was still hooked to the trickle-charger in the barn, and the JG’s Ford was still parked phlegmatically in front of it. I resolved to take it into town and top off the fuel tank in preparation for the cold weather to come, and maybe pick up another charger to keep all the batteries happy.

(Whitetail grace as she became aware of my presence).

I looked back up the slope from the outbuildings, and thought just how much I like this place far from the Beltway.

I wandered over to the Russians for a glass of White from the Old House winery at cocktail hour, and we talked about the horses where the Middle Russian and her daughter are taking riding lessons. The Corey the big handsome Andalusian former stallion was the mount for the adult rider, and a little Bay named Cooper was the ride for the Princess.

The Middle Russian showed me a picture of the Princess with one of the Croftburn Farms lambs, whose fate may be pre-ordained, but darn cute at the moment:

(The Russian Princess and lamb.)

I got up early, but not as crazy-early as I do back in adrenaline-land, and the second I logged on to the net my pals started to drag me back into the Decline and Fall of the West.

Don’t get me wrong. I think we are in the process of doing exactly that, for a variety of insane but perfectly understandable reasons. I wound up logging off after getting a little agitated and walking down to the barn to look for deer in the pastures.

My view here at the farm is that is that agitation is a function best left to the Dazbog extra roast coffee, and the emotion left to the matter of how on earth the door to the office came to be open.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303