On a farm, January 1st seems like an odd day to be thinking about endings and beginnings.

Looking forward, back and every direction at the start of the year after a muddy, wet and messy year.

November is breeding time – when it feels like the cycle of the farm is starting again. It always has a feel of new beginnings to me. All that hope of what might be in the spring. All that promise of new life.

This coming year, April is when lambs will arrive – the sure sign of new life and beginnings. So it too could be a beginning, though it never feels like an end.

Heavy snow, putting sheep in the barnyard and ending any grazing and herding dog training, usually descends in mid-December. This year it tried to come in November and we have sputtered along with days of ice and snow and rain and thaw and grazing and not grazing, training and not training. There has been no clear end. Poe and Breton are happy for the extra time to work sheep. The Maremmas are glad to be out cruising their pastures. But there is no rhythm to the weeks – each day is a decision about the conditions. No marker to say “we are done for the year.”

Another new beginning is the day that the pastures have grown enough to let the sheep out to graze again. It is never the same day but here in southwest New Hampshire it arrives sometime in mid-May. But not long after, when hay arrives mid and late summer it is a portent of that grazing’s end.

The winter solstice seems like a likely candidate for a farmer’s beginning again. More and more light each day. While it is true that pasture based livestock farming is really grass farming (and thus that light is critical to our mission), the subtle increase in light each day doesn’t excite me as much as it might a vegetable farmer. My animals never fully sleep, as their garden rows and greenhouses do. December 21st and March 21st look pretty much the same in terms of my daily tasks.

And today is like any other day of the last several. We decide if the sheep can go out on pasture. No. The overnight weather makes the pastures treacherously slippery. We feed the sheep, the dogs, the cats, the ducks. The Border Collies romp in soggy fields. But today there is too much ice to train. I look again at some of the hooves of sheep that were affected by our rainy year. I am feeding first cut hay which the sheep don’t like because many folks never got the second crop in. This affects many of my winter chores. It is clear the repercussions of last year’s wet have not completely disappeared. 2019 will be visited by the problems of 2018. Perhaps I will have them well contained and not problematic but still affected and requiring a new vigilance. And so there is no end. Nor is there a fresh slate from which to start again.

It doesn’t work that way on a farm.

It doesn’t feel like a “new year” to me today. We humans put such arbitrary labels on the universe. Fortunately and unfortunately, nature doesn’t yet comply to our demands for such order and structure. In the city perhaps you can believe that the clock starts over. But here, not so much.

I’ll be honest. I want a big snowstorm to come and force an end to 2018. Flash freeze it all and let me stop worrying – 2018 has been a year of worry like no other for me – just for a few days. A good snowstorm would give me time to breathe, even if I spend hours plowing on top the big orange beast that is the tractor. When the snow comes, blanketing us in silence, bringing an end to our endless wet, my New Year will begin.

I am actually hopeful that we can come together and make things better this year. But it won’t be like flipping a switch and ridding ourselves of 2018. It will be like my farm. 2019 will be visited by the problems of 2018. They will require a new vigilance. And there is no end. Nor is there a fresh slate from which to start again. But I can’t imagine just stopping for longer than a snowstorm to catch my breath. Carry on.

May all of you have a New Year graced with hope and new possibilities.