Nature Blog BST

My great-grandparents were lovers; they had five children, four girls and one boy (my grandfather). Of those children, all had at least two children. My grandfather himself had four children and two step-children we count as in the family as well, each of which had at least one child of their own. Suffice it to say that, every nine years, when the Dwight Kenrick Taylor family get together at Butterhill, we have to rent tents and hotels in town, because the Big House isn’t that big.             With all these kids, my great-grandparents didn’t want their dear home to turn into the object of hereditary jealousy or infighting between their children, so they did something unique. They took the entirety of their property, and turned it into an easement with the New Hampshire government, meaning they had the state agree that, from this day forth, no new structures (excepting a maple honey sugar barn, horse stable, or workshop) could be...

Out my front door in England, I could walk about one hundred yards down to the backyard of a close friend, and, through a convenient back gate, enter into the moors behind the house. The moors were a massive expanse of beet fields that separated our village, Fordham, from the next closest, Isleham, to the south. About three miles of flat expanse filled the space between, full of beets and barley. In late October, combines would cross the beet fields like green caterpillars, devouring the crops before them and spitting them out into giant piles, growing out of the landscape like the boroughs in the surrounding area rumored to be the graves of old celtic kings. Each year when this happened, the neighborhood kids would get together in bands of eight to twelve, and play King of the Beet Hill, whether it be free-for-all or equal teams.             This contest was no mere child’s game though; the beet piles, enormous as they were, wer...