Belonging, Below Zero
Stories from Jenn's old farmhouse
It’s 5:30 AM and still darker than dark outside. This time of year, we don’t see the sun until about 7. But the dogs don’t care. Their internal alarm clock tells them it’s time to go out and patrol, so that means it’s time to get up. It’s snowing. Again. And it’s beautiful, the birches popping silver in the light of the moon that hasn’t yet set. In summer, I would sit on the back steps while the dogs do their thing and watch the birds, but for now I just usher them out the back door and close it quickly before too much cold and snow sneak in.
This is midwinter in the Lakes Region. The lived-in version. The everyday version. It’s easy to love life on the lakes in August. But January. January you have to choose to love.
Before Sunrise
The floorboards creak as I pad over them to stir the embers in the wood cookstove that’s stood in this kitchen since the 1920s…when it must have seemed too shiny and new for the house that was already 150 years old. Once the coffee is going and breakfast has been slid into the oven ready for the kids to grab on their way out the door in an hour, its time to trek down to the chicken coop.
The ladies are offended by being woken when it’s still cold and dark, but aren’t we all. Water in the steel pail, perched precariously on a heater so it doesn’t freeze. Feed and kitchen scraps scattered, fresh hay on the snow so they can walk around. Grab the single egg that one over-achieving hen keeps producing even in this coldest of winters.
The dogs follow me back inside, their job done. Now it's time to wake grumpy teenagers. The plow barrels past and throws the snow we just shoveled last night back into the driveway. Sigh. But at least the roads are clear.
What Winter Makes You See
Winter forces you to pay attention. I listen for the hum of the furnace to make sure that it’s chugging along. There’s a pair of crows I’ve taken to feeding when I feed the chickens. Their sharp caw greets me whenever I head outside. I think about all the secret places they must know on this land I’m stewarding. Where the first greens will poke through, and what pile of brush is housing a fawn and it’s mother this winter.
And inside the house, without the go-go-go of summer I notice how it’s time to paint the dining room, and maybe go ahead and call the guy about what it would take to update that back bathroom. The original windows are covered in frost patterns, reminding me that I still haven’t decided if I should replace them with replicas or just live with the draftiness and call it ‘character.’
Yesterday, the sun didn’t set until almost 5. It felt like a small miracle.
The trees were creaking in the cold, complaining about the below-zero temperatures just like everyone else. And the setting sun was liquid fire between them. I had to stop and catch my breath and I’m not sure if it was the cold or the beauty that stole it.
Sorted by Winter
Winter sorts people.
There’s the neighbor who comes over and plows my driveway before I can rally the kids to shovel. I suspect he just really likes using the plow, and I appreciate it every time. The 92-year-old who’s lived here for 70 years and still meets his Monday breakfast crew at the diner. He invited me to join them for the first time last month. My newest friend, a first-generation farmer four doors down who’s become my go-to for chicken questions—and who’s now advising me on the dairy goat herd I’m adding in the spring.
Something they all have in common? Now that I’ve made it through a couple of winters without hightailing it back to Boston, they’ve decided I’ll stick. And slowly, they’re welcoming me into the rhythms of the community.
An invitation to the ladies tea in the next town. A referral for who to call about the tree that needs to come down this spring. A whisper about the best yoga class that actually makes you sweat instead of just leading you through gentle stretches. There’s a quiet welcome in being the sort who stays even when the snow towers above and Nor’easters seem to come like clockwork.
What This Season Teaches
So, what does Midwinter leave with you? I end most days the same way I start them, poking at the woodstove, which sometimes leads to a cup of tea and musings on how different life is now. Here’s what I’m learning, day by day.
Patience: Spring will come, but not when you think it should. It will be later, there will be at least one false start. And you better not plant anything before Easter…maybe May Day. I’m learning to wait.
Presence: There’s less to do, so I actually do the things that matter. Andrea and I linger over a breakfast meeting in town and get the systems set up for the season when we’ll be lucky to have time to sit down and eat together. I joined a knitting group, not because I care about what I’m making, but because sitting with a group of women from different generations telling stories is priceless.
Resilience: I’ve learned that you just do the next thing. You split wood, you shovel snow, you keep the pipes from freezing, you teach the kids how to start the generator—and you realize you, and they, are more capable than you thought.
Belonging: You don’t truly know a place until you’ve survived its hardest season. Until they guy in the hardware store knows your name. But now that I know it, really know it, it’s mine.
The wood stove ticks as the fire settles. Outside, the moonlight catches the birches again—same trees, same snow, but somehow it looks different now. Deeper. More mysterious. Mine to steward.
This is what I came here for
The reality is that first, I fell in love with the farmhouse. The history in every inch of it. Knowing that bare feet have worn down these stairs summer after summer. That coffee I brew on the cookstove used to be boiled in the massive hearth. That someone before me planted the herb bed and started the asparagus patch.
But two winters in, I realize, while I love this house, its the community here that I actually came for. Summer or winter, this place has rhythms and people that bring me peace and joy.
"Through it all, the farmhouse creaks. The dogs are asleep by the stove. And outside, the snow keeps falling—quiet and steady."
Here’s to winter life between the lakes and the mountains.
❄️ Keys to the Lakes
— Jenn & Andrea
