6 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



often appreciated by the vacation visitors to our valley, 

 who almost invariably exclaim: "It must be dreadfully 

 cold there in Winter ! " The road to this farm winds up 

 the mountain for two miles through a wood of tall 

 chestnut trees, noble old fellows hung with bitter-sweet 

 and shading wild garden borders of fern and brake. It 

 is a road the motors never essay, and last year's leaves 

 lie in the wheel ruts in the Spring, while in the Autumn 

 the squirrels scold at your intrusion. Presently you 

 hear a brook falling down a ravine to the left, and the 

 road grows steeper, the thank-you-marms more fre- 

 quent. Light breaks ahead, and you stand suddenly 

 in the Sky Farm plum orchard. If it is blossom time, 

 you stand suddenly in Japan, after two miles of climbing 

 through a New England forest. But beyond the plum 

 orchard is the unmistakable gray barn and the unmis- 

 takable small, bare house of the New England hill farm. 

 A few steps bring you to the dooryard. The road ends 

 at the barn runway the road ends and the view opens. 

 You look back over the forest, mile on mile to the hori- 

 zon hills, and, through the barn itself and the smaller 

 rear door, at the vacant sky, for on that side the hill 

 drops sheer away. Behind the house the clearing ex- 

 tends a quarter of a mile up a steep slope to meet the 

 woods coming down from the summit of the moun- 

 tain. Here browse the cattle which give the farm 

 excuse for being. Their steep pasturage is sown with 

 granite bowlders, amid which they move, or lie quietly 



