MOUNTAIN COW

I have been Time Travelling while sitting on the bench outside the Mountain Cow cafe. The owner comes out to check my health. I photograph him. What are his feelings toward Pine Plains? He prefers the mountains and given a free choice would live in his home State of Colorado. However his wife has deep roots in Pine Plains...

PINE PLAINS AND COLWALL

Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York, is much the same size as Colwall in Herefordhsire, though houses are more widely spread and on big lots. Trees shade the streets. Architecture is white clapboard with porches to rock on in summer twilight. A few small buildings rub shoulders on Main Street each side of the sole intersection regulated by traffic lights. The Stissing Bank occupies one corner, the pharmacy another and The Stissing House Tavern and Restaurant a third. The Stissing House is the biggest building in town; it has an upper floor though no rooms to let; the owner/chef is French. The Colwall Park has a French waiter and does have rooms. Both Colwall and Pine Plains are set in a gentle country of small valleys, wooded hills and grass paddocks. In my youth this was dairy country. No longer. Farms are too small to survive in today’s market place.

CHEFS AND PARAGLIDERS - OWLS AND BUZZARDS

My home is a three hundred year old cottage facing across two cricket fields to the orchards and hills of my beloved Herefordshire. The fields are home to Colwall Cricket Club. In summer I walk to the far boundary to sit on an oak-shaded bench and watch paragliders ride the up-draughts above the Malvern Hills. A pair of buzzards often circle amongst the paragliders and a white owl lives in one of the oaks. Colwall is much the same size as Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York, where the midday Autumn sun warms the bench outside the Mountain Cow Café on Main Street This is a good place to sit. Drivers pull into Peck’s Market car park round on my left. Clients visit the law office and the realtors across the street or drop by the book store - used books, or is that pre-read? A yellow school bus passes followed by a John Deere farm tractor pulling a trailer. A new restaurant opened this weekend, Agriturismo. The chef/owner, Mark Strausman, is a name in New York. The owner’s son (14) hurries by, red-haired and a slight limp.

POLO AT MASHOMACK, NY

9 OCTOBER
PINE PLAINS, NY
I intended writing a travel article on New York's horse country. I meet two Argentinians in the Mountain Cafe, Pine Plains. Polo players, they compete in tournaments at Mashomack Polo Club through the Summer season. The season is over. They have shipped the ponies south. The older of the two, Juan Olivera, will fly to Palm Beach on Sunday. He is a small, compact man with a firm handshake, sun and wind tanned and beginning to grey. His younger companion is tall and younger and strikes me as somewhat languid and less the professional horseman - perhaps because he is returning to Buenos Aires. Though that could be to visit his fiance or a sick parent. What do polo players do as they grow older? Is there a downward spiral, less important tournaments? Do they date older, wealthier women? How many professional polo players are there? Surely not that many. Though what do I know...?
And my son-in-law advises that the August sales and race meeting in Saratatoga are the heart of New York's horse year. I am a little late!

PIGEONS ON THE ROOF

8 OCTOBER
DUTCHESS COUNTY, NY
Friday and a crisp clear Autumn morning on the horse farm in Dutchess County, New York. I count seventeen pigeons sunning themselves on the barn roof. Why count? Why not?