Chris Hardie

I was driving down a country road the other day when I spotted two structures at the edge of a field — structures that made me stop for a double-take. Two brick outhouses.

Chris Hardie’s first cutting of hay is complete but without some rain soon, prospects of second or third cuttings are not very promising.

I’ve always been a bit of a weather nerd, as longtime readers already know, but recently our wild weather ride ventured into the ridiculous category.

Summer hasn’t even started yet and I’ve already been to the doctor twice for imbedded ticks. The first was on my arm. I also removed several others crawling over my body. This past summer I had Lyme disease, a bacterial infection caused by a tick bite.

The Hardies have had robins build nests in many places through the years — including on the rear bumper of a pickup truck when it was parked for a while with the tailgate down.

A sure sign of spring is yellow in the green — the annual appearance of the ubiquitous dandelion. You may hate how it looks in your lawn, but the dandelion does have its benefits.

A spring rainstorm provided much-needed moisture to the Hardie farm and brought back memories of planting corn with his fathefor Chris Hardie

“Little Creek” is a spring-fed stream that runs through our valley, originating from the family farm. But it is more than just a stream. It’s part of our home.

One of the insults of aging is that I still think I can do all the activities exactly the same as I did when I was younger. But I can’t.

The Driftless Area region of Wisconsin is blessed with abundant rivers and streams that flow through valleys. Early European settlers in our region took advantage of those water resources to build mills powered by the flowing streams.