THE ARRIVAL of the New Year is a time for a bit of slate cleaning — a time to mind-scrub our deficiencies — a time to reach out and capture the energy needed to squeeze life a bit harder. Time is a precious gift. How we use it becomes our bequest.
As the years push me forward, I am amazed, not at what I know, but at what I don’t know. The search for knowledge has and continues to be a constant, a perpetual crusade, if you will. I’m really speaking about the reward of personal satisfaction, gaining new ideas, learning new ways, in short, acquiring personal development. But before I get completely carried away into the ethereal as a look forward to the New Year, let’s turn to readers’ letters.
Several complimentary letters have been received commenting on our “Thanksgiving” column (November 26) that recalled past memories. Such a letter was from a Londonderry reader who remarked that the column brought back recollections of his past Thanksgivings.
The letter read in part: “My brother and I grew up on Brook Hill Farm on March Road, located part in Tilton, and part in Sanbornton. It was operated as a partnership of our father and his brother-in-law. A mostly dairy operation — about 50 Ayshires, along with maple syrup, cordwood, etc. The partnership was dissolved after about 21 years and our family purchased another farm in Sanbornton Square, a few miles away.
“However both men were Ayshire men at heart with my Uncle becoming very involved with the N.H. Ayshire Club. During our time at Brook Hill, Dr. Robert O.
Blood became Governor — two terms, I believe — and when he stopped by to talk ‘cows’ (he had a well-known Registered Ayshire herd at Crystal Spring Farm at East Concord) my brother and I got a real thrill in visiting with his driver, a state policeman who stayed outside with the car! The Governor became a close friend with my Uncle and my dad during those years.”
Surprisingly, our Londonderry reader’s letter brought back several “longago” recollections of my own. When I was eight years old I became a four-year student at Tilton Lower School (no longer a part of today’s Tilton School) where I attended grades five through eight.
Occasionally, we boys used to walk the road from Tilton past the Sanbornton town line, then returned. I always looked forward on those walks to passing by a rather large dairy farm. Perhaps it was our reader’s old home.
The letter also carried me back to the early years of our marriage when Mildred, the daughter of an Ayshire herd owner, began developing a Registered Jersey herd. Being a “city-kid,” before attending what is now known at the Thompson School of Applied Science at UNH in Durham, I knew nothing about farming.
It was Mildred’s father who taught me, then a poultry farmer, how to milk a cow.
The letter awakened one more memory. In the 1950s, while serving a president of the N.H. Farm Bureau Federation, our state headquarters was housed in a building owned by then Gov. Robert O. Blood on South State Street in Concord.
Another Londonderry reader wrote on Nov. 29, in part: “I have many woodpeckers visiting my suet feeder daily, and although I think they are cute and fun to watch, I have not had anything unusual until today.
Pigging away on the beef suet was a very large woodpecker (I’d estimate about 7-8 inches in length) with a brilliant red head which started at the beak and covered the head all the way down the neck. The back had an unusual display of markings. I grabbed my bird book and it matches the description of a ladderback red-headed woodpecker which is found in SOUTH-WESTERN UNITED STATES!!!!!
“I wonder if there is a partner some place, since this is obviously the male, and if so why is this bird so far from home? Will he survive the winter, or will he start to go south very quickly before the weather turns cold?”
I believe the bird our reader saw was probably a late, juvenile red-headed woodpecker.
Juveniles are brown-headed, but as they change from immature to adult plumage (occasionally referred to as eclipse plumage) in completing their molt their heads and backs show dark streaks.
The adult plumage exhibits a bright red head and neck, solid black back and tail, a white breast and white wing patches.
There is the rare possibility that a storm originating to our west could have brought with it a rare red-breasted sapsucker that quite easily could meet our reader’s description. If that were the case, I’m sure by this time the bird has skedaddled back to its western clime.
Happy New Year to all!
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