I pull my mud-splattered sedan onto the side of Hill Road in Ashfield, parking it at the metal gate of the cow pen at Taylor Farm. My snow tires crunch on gravel, and a dozen cows turn their heads and stare at me. Their pen is connected to the back of an enormous red barn. On the far end of the barn sits a pretty old farmhouse, from which a small dog comes running and barking. In the field behind the cow pen, two horses glance up at the sound.
This scenic farm property, a series of rolling meadows on a hill just off Route 116, has intrigued me for years. I get out and walk to the gate, pointing my camera at these aloof-looking bovines. If the series of loud clicks from my camera bothers them, they don’t show it.
After a few minutes, three members of the Taylor family walk up the road from the house, heading toward the cow pen to serve the beasts an afternoon helping of hay. Lynn Taylor smiles and shakes my hand when I introduce myself. Then she crosses the road to pitch piles of hay into a tractor, which then delivers the goods into the enclosure for feeding time.
Her 11-year-old daughter Sidney offers to introduce me to the horses. She walks through the pen, heading toward the field beyond. Her Muck boots squelch through snow, half-frozen mud, and cooling mounds of manure. She ducks through the gap between two wires of an electric fence, and I follow, cautiously. The horses, Eddie and Tango, see us coming.
It’s Tuesday, and the temperature has hit 50 degrees for the first time this year. It’s still winter in Ashfield — no birds are singing, and only small streaks of dead grass show through the snow — but the sun is hotter than it’s been, and the late-afternoon light has a new, soft warmth to it.
The field smells of fresh, earthy snowmelt. Cold water runs off the barn roof and plunges into a bucket. Sidney and I march past the open door of the barn, and I feel the acrid heat of livestock escaping into the fresh air.
Tango regards me only briefly, then goes back to nosing the ground, but Eddie swings his huge head around and nuzzles me in the chest. Eddie and Sidney are the same age, and they have matching auburn hair. He turns away, and she strokes his nose. “Come on!” she says, steering his head back around. “You’ve gotten your picture taken before!”
Sidney and her two brothers make up the seventh generation to live at this 180-acre farm. Every day she does chores after school, which include the feeding and cleaning of Eddie and Tango. Now that spring is coming, they’ll spend much more time outside.
“I’m so happy it’s getting warmer,” I say.
“Me too,” says Sidney, patting Eddie’s mane. “So is he.”•
— Hunter Styles, hstyles@valleyadvocate.com
Hunter Styles Photo
