Photo Journal: January in ten photos
/January
If January is a seed containing the full articulation of the year, the forthcoming story has been frozen solid around here. Blanketed in a perma-snow since December, we’ve scant seen the earth all month. Temperatures colder than we’ve known in years have tempered our progress on planned forestry work and infrastructure projects, and so we’ve been banging about the interior quite a bit. In the farm office, in the barns, in the house, in the recesses of our subconscious; the idea of a year has been taking shape. All we can plan for, all we can imagine, in the shape of a frozen seed.
Yet, even as the month has unfolded like a liminal snow drift, life very much has happened, and is happening. A busy and celebratory Yule season tumbled into an excited burst of work activity on client projects, institutional partnerships, and a new agroforestry nursery collaboration. Mid-month we hopped a plane bound for the warm and dry reverse mirage of the Arizona desert to visit family. And we capped off the end of the month off with a spirited showing at the NOFA-NJ Winter Conference this past weekend, surrounded by friends and community.
A seed contains the quantum potential for the year. But, what will come to be fully, will be determined by the environment that surrounds it as it grows. Call it epigenetics, or perhaps less succinctly, the space at which desire meets circumstance to form what is. What is, is where I’m doing most of my planning this year. Locating that as often as possible, and enjoying it as it comes in bespoke waves, often bearing only marginal resemblance to what I imagined it would be.
Already the frozen ground is heaving away the layers of impervious coating, preparing the seed to sprout a leaf when the time is right. Imperceivable as it may be beneath layers of frozen ground, what will be has already begun in one long continuum of being.
It’s all happening now.
Hill Road farm Middle Field
Hill Road Farm Old Hay Field
The path from one field to another at the Hill Road Farm is a portal between worlds. Though the fields are adjacent to one another, they host entirely different conditions within them.
The upper field has a gentle slope and sits mostly on a ridge form, where you can get the best glimpses of the setting sun over the Pennsylvania mountains. It’s wide open with full sun exposure, and catches mean licks of wind from the Northwest.
The middle field has a pronounced north facing slope and is cloistered and dotted by medium tree cover. The trees themselves offer a sufficient narrated timeline of the field. Old homestead pears and crabapple trees are planted widely throughout, but the taller eastern red cedars that climb and crowd them mean the people who harvested the fruit left a long time ago. The tall oaks and ash trees were likely much sparser and smaller when the fruit trees were planted, but the then-immature canopy trees perhaps provided a reasonable shade for humans and livestock alike, and were left to grow to their heights.
These two fields are undergoing entirely different establishment processes at the new farm based on their context, history, and intended use, even though they are merely a stone’s throw away. Site specific design means that one question can have many answers.
HILL ROAD FARM UPPER FIELD
Another field sharing a contour with the middle field is heavily sloped with the tall remains of a former conifer plantation. I enjoy the presence of the tall pines and spruces all year, but particularly so during the dormant months when they are the only source of vibrant green around.
As relatively vibrant as the white pines appear against a frozen landscape, it’s not the ideal time of year to harvest their medicine - but it’s sufficient enough in a pinch to stave off scurvy, or clear a lingering chest cough.
In different times, the pines were a necessary and rare source of vitamin-C during the long winters of the northeast. From an herbal perspective, their energy and effect on the body tissues is both moistening and drying - a paradoxical but useful feature of certain astringent plants. Their strong coniferous smell implies a heavy presence of volatile oils, and these ascendant monoterpenes are excellent expectorants. The aforementioned features (along with some other virtues) brought my son Roan and I out to collect pine for tea in January. Not quite as vibrant as they will be come spring, but a welcome sight in an otherwise dormant landscape.
I leave a bit of the stem on the needles as a low energy way of incorporating the medicinal bark into the brew. I let it steep for a long while diffusing pigments and phytochemicals until the water turns a murky red, and a fine sheen of light resin crests on the cup.
A glimpse of the approaching Rocky Mountains on our westward flight to Arizona mid-month. Nothing like a view from thirty thousand feet to understand the topographic patterns of landforms! The expanded top down perspective on the viewshed readily reveals the recurring patterns that typify the shape of our shared earth. The brachial branching pattern of water as it moves through the landscape, the sweeping lift of contoured waves of landmass...these patterns are essential and form the foundation upon which all ecosystems emerge.
Adhering to these inherent patterns, and working with them, forms the basis for harmonious design. Good farm design, harmonious landscape design, and solid philosophical inspiration, indeed.
Lindsay, Johann, & Roan
The break from the cold back home was both restorative and disorienting. We are blessed with a truly fun cohort we call our family, and being together felt like a warm embrace. The weather in Phoenix, though unseasonably cool, was still a world away from the snow drenched landscape we left.
Back home the snow and frigid temps have delayed tree clearing work in the middle field. Dead ash trees that were cut down in the early fall still lay mostly where they were felled. All told, 30+ standing dead ash trees have been taken down thanks in part to a cost share program offered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS). Removing the standing dead ash will open the field to new plantings, and eliminate safety concerns over falling branches.
Over the last decade, we’ve watched as close to every single ash tree in our area succumbed to the effects of the Emerald Ash Borer. It’s been astounding to watch as one of our primary canopy trees in the northeast has been stripped from the landscape. As a result of this loss, the light dynamics (and existing ecology) in both our middle field, and our local New Jersey woodlands across the state, have been radically altered.
At the Northeast Farming Association of New Jersey’s Annual Winter Conference, I slipped into a full room where Johann was giving his agroforesty talk. The picture I took is blown out by a light filled window at the back of the hall. Invisible in this photo, but emanating this light, is the bright sanded beach, and deep blue ocean just on the other side. It felt a bit surreal to be back where I grew up, in a totally different context.
I often joke that I grew up on one coast of New Jersey, and now I live on the other. It’s true. The ride to Asbury Park from where we are is an almost straight shot from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean. In between is a unique tapestry of farms across sprawling rural settings, nestled in suburban plots, and tucked into dense urban centers. Our organic and regenerative agricultural landscape is diverse, creative, and robust. The winter conference, a place where many of us come together, was a joyful experience. Good people, good times.
By Lindsay Napolitano, 2025
