Sheep shearing and counting the lambs on an isolated Maine island honors both legendary matriarch Jenny Cirone and a tradition of caring for the land and its four-legged inhabitants. “One ewe!” shouts Alfie Wakeman over the din of shrieking gulls and the baa-ing of nearly 200 sheep, as he cradles a lamb in his arms. […]
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Shad | Poor Man’s Salmon
Nobody loves shad more than the citizens of Windsor, Connecticut, who hold the Shad Derby to celebrate its return the third Saturday in May with dances, parades, and an immoderate amount of eating. Yankee Classic: “In Praise of Poor Man’s Salmon,” Yankee Magazine, May 1991 The shad? They’re always here. By the time it ‘s […]
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Yankee Magazine Cover | June 1982
“Sanderling,” oil on linen by Kib Bramhall.
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Yankee Magazine Cover: May 1994
“Nesting Lon II” (detail) by Joan M. Nixon © 1992.
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The Pleasures of May
Maybe this month is called “May” because of all the new things that are possible. “A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road…” so goes the catchy bossa nova song, “The Waters of March,” which lists an inventory of some lovely (and brutal) things unearthed in the torrents of spring. Following March and […]
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Yankee Magazine Cover | May 1978
“Ruby’s Hollyhocks,” a painting by Katherine Newell Grimes of Hamden, Connecticut.
“We were new in Vermont,” Don Avery writes in the forward to his 2014 nursery catalogue, “In the spring of 1980 Cady’s Falls Nursery started out with three cold frames and a glassed in porch. We had the simplistic idea of making a living growing plants. In the decade that followed, a miracle unfolded and […]
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Yankee Magazine Cover | May 1981
May 1981 | “Pawlet [Vermont},” an oil painting by Charles Curtis Allen.
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Seaquankeyquash | Lexicon
Find out the definition and origin of the word Seaquankeyquash!
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As Simple As That | Mary’s Farm
In a lifetime of change, a cast-iron cookstove and a porch with a view remain constants. Many years ago, my husband Michael and I moved up here from the city. We built a little house, paying cash as we went and doing all the work ourselves, including building the four-flue center chimney. This was in […]
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Yankee Magazine Cover | April 1992
“Poppies, Isles of Shoals,” (1891), by Childe Hassam.
Real books. New books, the kind with covers that feel slightly grainy and have freshly cut pages. In an era when thriving independent bookstores seem just slightly more plausible than a cow jumping over the moon, The Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, VT is celebrating its 25th year. A quarter century ago, Linda Ramsdell opened […]