It was Sunday morning and we just finished the last quart of strawberries that I had purchased earlier in the week at one of the Old Order Mennonite farms that dot the area around Gorham, NY. I decided that I had better buy another quart of their strawberries before the season ends as these berries…read more

I had a pretty good week last week as I finished planting all of my daffodils. I even felt so good that I ordered a couple of yards of mulch to cover the areas where I planted the bulbs. But no sooner had I finished spreading about half of the mulch when I looked across…read more

The song “In the Good Old Summertime” was written by Ren Shields and set to music by George Evans in 1902 (click here). It was later made into a musical film in 1949 starring Judy Garland, Van Johnson, and S.Z. Sakall          (click here). Summertime in the Finger Lakes this year has been up and down.…read more

The skies have cleared here in the Finger Lakes and the work of preparing the fields for planting corn has just gotten underway. Back in the fifties when I was growing up, corn was used mainly as an animal feed for the hogs and the dairy cows that we raised. But today, corn goes into…read more

Just a few days ago my neighbor and I took a walk up the hill onto some property that belongs to the developer of our sub-division. It was one of those grey drizzly days which we have been having here in the Finger Lakes. People have told me about the waterfall up the hill but…read more

Besides all of the old formal porches on Gibson Street in Canandaigua, I love to look at the porches of the old order Mennonites who live in the Gorham and Penn Yan areas. The women who live in these houses love flowers and make a very bold statement of their joy and faith in the…read more