Forty wild turkeys, grazing their way across a hill just above the road! I had to stop and take their picture. (Couldn't get all of them in the shot but there really were forty, cross my heart!)
Wildlife has made a big comeback in our area as the old farms grow up and pastures and fields become tangles of multiflora rose, hateful stuff to us but a safe haven for many creatures.
Our summertime view -- masses of green trees with only an occasional clearing -- isn't what folks would have seen a hundred years ago. Back then, all but the very steepest slopes were laboriously cleared and put to pasture, hay, or crops.
Clifford, who farmed this land before us, told of cutting hay on a slope so steep that he had to tie a long rope to his mowing machine and station two of his big sons uphill from him, hanging on to the rope to keep the mowing machine from tipping over.
Now those were farmers!
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