Himanee Gupta-Carlson, a writer and professor with SUNY Empire State College, is writing a series of articles over a one-year period about moving the farm she and her husband Jim Gupta-Carlson own and operate from a small piece of land in Saratoga County to a much larger parcel in Washington County. The articles reflect on the journey as well as the couple’s commitments to cultivating food security on a regional level through regenerative agricultural practices and participating in food sovereignty movements worldwide. This article reflects on the quiet of winter after a fall of transition.

We are deep into winter now, a milder winter than normal for this part of the world but still a harsh time. More than three feet of snow fell in overnight on December 16, and I began the next morning without any power. I had to kick snow away from the front door to step outdoors and grab a shovel. From there, I shoveled to open a door from the screen porch to the front steps, down and across the driveway, and through a winding path to the barn. January arrived with more snow and a more infectious strain of the Coronavirus surfacing in downtown Saratoga Springs, New York, the town closest to where I live. And then there was the January 6, 2021, armed insurrection at the nation’s Capitol, which I watched with horror via my computer.

Despite all this, our farm move is coming along, and I am feeling fine. I do not like cold weather, but as the snow falls, I remind myself of my connection to it. My name is derived from Sanskrit words for snow. It connects me to the Himalaya mountains of India and to the Hindu deity Parvati who is said to reside there. That connection and my years of farming have taught me to regard winter not as a season to dread but one to welcome. It offers a time to rest and rekindle one’s energy for what lies ahead.

These days, I am still living at our old place in Saratoga County. Jim is sleeping at the new site in Washington County, in a rudimentary two-room apartment inside the barn. He drives 40 minutes to the old site at least once a day to see me, bring feed and hay to the animals that are still here, and to shower and eat dinner before driving back again.

Alone with this land for the first time since we moved here in 2011, I start my day writing, often while still in bed. Around 7:30 a.m., I pull on thick pants and muck boots, don a warm hat and thick gloves, and head outdoors. I first remove a board covering the hatch to the coop located on one side of the barn. Chickens start hopping out while I open the coop door. Chickens, ducks, and geese spill out in glee, crowing, quacking, and honking. As they greet the morning, I trudge between our house and the coop with clean waterers and buckets. I fill the waterers and gather up the ones that were left in the coop the night before. Then, after making sure the hatch is open so the birds can go in and out as they please, I close the door.

I head to the main door of the barn and slide it open. I stand back as ten highly energetic male goats rush out and surround me, nuzzling me and trying to nibble my jacket. I pet them for a couple of minutes, then extricate myself so I can fill buckets and carry out water for them.

The author with the goat Mary Helen. (Photo: Jim Gupta-Carlson)

Too Many Goats

I never did these routine animal chores in the past. My main task was to harvest and prep vegetables for farmers’ markets. Jim did the heavy lifting. But when we learned last June that the local USDA facility where we take our goats to be slaughtered wouldn’t be able to schedule us until February, I realized I would have to take on new roles.

Usually, we start taking goats born in the spring to the butcher in August, before the males go into rut and the girls into heat. But when the COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions in the nation’s food supply chain last spring, larger farms turned to the processing facilities that smaller farms like ours typically rely on. When we called to schedule appointments, we were told we would have to wait. This left us with 32 goats: 20 females (or does), 11 males (or bucks), and a slightly crippled two-year-old male whom we had neutered (a wether).

Jim decided that in order to breed carefully and avoid some of the unplanned pregnancies that had left us with too many goats in the past, we’d have to keep the does and the bucks apart. Our farm purchase still was in process, but he began planning how to move our does to the new site along with one buck who would serve as sire.

A Historic Site

The new site consists of 48.5 acres of historic farmland, a very large barn and a 2,800-square-foot house. It lies along the Hudson River and was hunting, fishing, and planting grounds for the Kanien'kehá:ka (or Mohawk) peoples until 1684, when the Mohawk chiefs ceded much of the area north of Albany to seven European settlers in a purchase codified in 1708 as the Warrant for Saratoga Patent.

British colonial authorities sold the land to William and Robert Bayard in 1772, who in 1774 sold it to Job Wright, a Quaker. Wright served as a captain in the Revolutionary War, and the land itself sits in the view shed of the Battle of Saratoga Battlefield, where a decisive American victory in 1777 helped turn the tide of the war against the British.

After the war, Wright sold the land to his son Abraham, who, with his son, began growing crops and raising animals. By the early 1800s the Wright family was operating a grocery store and ferry along the river. They built the current house in 1805, and moved it 50 feet north in 1814 to make way for an addition.

Wright family gravestones. (Photo: Jim Gupta-Carlson)

The family’s descendants held the property until 2010, when it was sold through a land conservancy to a young couple who began growing vegetables. The property changed hands again and was briefly leased to another couple who grew vegetables and raised chickens. They subsequently closed their farm and left the state. When we first saw the site in March 2020, the house had been uninhabited for about a year and a half. Water was seeping into the basement, most of the appliances were defunct, and many windows were broken.

Jim had hoped to move into the house and start making repairs until inspections of its foundation, interior, wells, and septic and plumbing systems ruled the structure uninhabitable. We consulted with our friends and farming mentors Dave and Liza Porter, and with them determined that it would be fastest and the least expensive to convert a two-room storage space at one end of the barn into a living space while we figured out how to renovate the house.

Learning New Roles

We closed on the purchase in September. I continued to harvest and prep vegetables while Jim, Dave and Liza, and some other friends got to work clearing debris and constructing what I quickly dubbed the barndominium. As soon as it was ready, Jim and I spent three frantic days in the last week of October loading goats into my Subaru Forester and driving them out to the new farm. And then my new morning and evening duties set in.

At first, I dreaded the chores. I am not nearly as strong as Jim and nowhere as close to the animals as he. I did not know how I could handle carrying two buckets, each weighing about 25 pounds, over the uneven paths between our faucets and the barn. I also didn’t know what I would do if the goats got out of the barn or if the geese — graceful, large and, when they want to be, quite intimidating birds — failed to recognize me as the new one in charge.

Plus, I still had harvesting and a day job to do.

I reminded myself of the many women I knew who farmed and how they had told me that farming was less about being physically strong and more about being mentally smart. My friend Lindsay had described learning to adapt her way of doing farmwork to her body’s capabilities. I learned to do the same.

For instance, I quickly found out that carrying fully loaded chicken waterers — an easy thing for Jim — was cumbersome for me. Water sloshed out as I walked, making me wet and cold and leaving less for the animals to drink. Bringing out the empty waterers first and then filling them up made the task manageable. In a similar way, I found that I could create less strain on my wrists and low back by only filling water buckets halfway, carrying them out, consolidating the contents, and then going back for more. It meant more trips but less pain.

As the tasks became doable, I began to enjoy them. I liked being out in the fresh air, seeing the sun rise, and listening to the animals speak with their particular sounds. Throughout the day, in between college meetings, teaching, and student appointments, I would head out to replenish the water and collect eggs. I accepted — and perhaps in accepting even began to embrace — how the pandemic had helped make moving the farm easier. Being required to stay away from my college office let me merge being a professor and farmer into one.

Crossing Through Seasons

Jim spent November and December creating pastures for the animals and a living space for the chickens, ducks, and geese. He marked off the space where we would plant our 2021 crops, and around the full moon of late November, we planted garlic, a crop that requires overwintering, very belatedly and with the help of a friend. Mild weather persisted long enough for us to also put in a few row feet of shallots and a ring of flowering bulbs around the three sisters blessing site we had created after we closed in September.

Celebrating after planting garlic. (Photo: Jim Gupta-Carlson)

Three days later, the snows came.

Meanwhile, Jim continued to process five or six meat chickens and ducks each week for our farmers markets. As 2020 wound down, the morning sounds from the coop were much quieter.

On New Year’s Day, we moved more than 100 laying hens to the new farm. In the days after, we shifted over the ducks and the meat chickens that are to be processed in late spring. The geese will go next. And in February the goats will have their one bad day when they go to the butcher.

Moving day for the chickens. (Photo: Jim Gupta-Carlson)

I harvested hardy greens and Brussels sprouts through mid-December. Now, their stalks also are buried in snow. At the old site, I am washing eggs that were laid at the new site. I also am shelling dry beans and Abenaki corn from last season’s harvest, and starting to grind peppers air-dried from fall to a powder. I continue to write and teach from home, even as I pack up.

And I rest.

With winter’s end will come my final days with the land I lived on for ten years, and a farewell to the foot of topsoil Jim and I created through our regenerative farm methods. As my boots crunch over snow — the namesake I have come to embrace -- I welcome its invitation to savor the slowness while I can, before the snow melts and the garlic we planted at the new site starts to sprout.

There is no need to rush. Changes are coming in time.