A Snowy Day at the Farm
Hard not to love a picturesque snow-covered landscape, especially at my Bedford, New York farm.
Yesterday, we got a fresh coating of beautiful, white snow that was just heavy enough to stick to the tree branches and shrubs, stone posts, walls, and steps, and the tops of all the burlap-encased urns and boxwood. The entire farm was a gorgeous winter wonderland. I always love to tour the property during snow storms. When not busy plowing the four miles of carriage road, I take photos.
Enjoy these images and please go to my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48 to see a fun time-lapsed video.
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- Tucked away between the Equipment Barn and a grove of weeping willows is my pinetum where I keep a wonderful collection of evergreens I started planting about 15-years ago. This area includes pines, spruces, firs, and others. It’s filled out so nicely over the years.
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- This snow accumulated on every branch of this evergreen pine, but thankfully did not weigh any down too much.
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- I add more specimens to this collection every year – some are very rare and slow growing, but I love the variety of plantings I’ve amassed.
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- Walking behind my main greenhouse, one sees the purple-red canes of the raspberries. They stand out next to the crisp white of the snow. I grow patches of red raspberries, golden raspberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries, and currants.
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- Further back is my formal rose garden. I redesigned this rose bed last year. The 68-foot by 30-foot space now includes three types of roses – floribunda, hybrid tea, and shrub roses – all with gorgeous color, form, and fragrance. And all bordered by lush green young boxwood.
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- And not far are my blueberry bushes – newly pruned and groomed.
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- Here are my weeping hornbeams. We prune these regularly to keep the beautiful shape. These weeping specimens are rare and hard to find, but I was lucky to get six.
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- Underneath this snow-covered burlap are the boxwood shrubs along my winding pergola. They were grown from small saplings and nurtured right here at the farm. There are more than 300 boxwood shrubs planted here, now well protected from the winter elements.
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- This is the little house where I store my basket collection. It is located across from my long pergola and nestled under the tall stately bald cypress trees.
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- This is my allée of lindens that stretches from the carriage road in front of my carport all the way down to my chicken coops. On the right, one can see a bit of the old corn crib, which is original to the property. The unique “keystone” shape, flaring from bottom to top, was designed to shed water.
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- This storm system only dropped a few inches of snow in the area, but it stuck to every horizontal surface including my 100-year old white spruce fencing from Canada.
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- This one of my weeping copper beech trees, Fagus sylvatica ‘Purpurea Pendular’, an irregular spreading tree with long, weeping branches that reach the ground.
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- As trees are cut down, pruned, or groomed, neat piles of branches are placed to the side of the gardens and near the carriage road. These piles will be picked up and ultimately chipped and re-distributed as wood chips.
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- This is a view looking south at the center section of my pergola. The uprights for this pergola are antique granite posts from China – originally used as grape supports. They’re perfect as posts because they don’t rot over time like the wood overhead. Big boxwood shrubs flank the footpath underneath – also well covered for the season.
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- Can you identify what this view is? This is my pool with the interesting staddle stones at the north end. Staddle stones were originally used in the 17th and 18th centuries as support bases for granaries, hayricks, and game larders. They typically looked like giant stone mushrooms, but mine are square – a more rare and unique version.
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- Adjacent to the pool is this view looking through my fruit orchard. These peach trees were also recently pruned. There are more than 200 fruit trees in this orchard. Among them – apple trees, plum trees, cherry trees, peach, pear, medlar, and quince trees.
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- Even when bare, these great pin oaks look majestic. One can see their interesting branch habit – the pendulous lower branches, horizontal middle branches, and upright upper branches.
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- The Boxwood Allée looks so different in winter all covered under burlap shrouds to keep everything protected from the snow. This is why I spend so much time doing this project – to keep any heavy snow from weighing down on the shrubs and splaying their branches.
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- This is my original Allée of Lindens. The linden tree, Tilia, is also referred to as basswood or lime, though it is not related at all to the lime fruit. They are straight stemmed trees with smooth bark. I like to pollard these trees regularly. Pollarding is a type of pruning, a very severe method that involves cutting the branches back either to the trunk, or even all the way down to the top of the trunk to promote the growth of club-headed stems and dense new foliage and branches.
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- These trees are part of my “Christmas Tree” garden. I planted hundreds of evergreens here 15-years ago and they have all grown so beautifully – White Pine, Frasier Fir, Canaan Fir, Norway Spruce, and Blue Spruce.
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- This photo was taken late afternoon, with the sun still trying to poke through the heavy cloud cover. It was very quiet, and very calm. Today’s forecast calls for bitter cold temperatures in the low 20s Fahrenheit. And then next week, possible temperatures in the 50s.
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