I've been writing my farming column for nine years, and for the first time I have three columns due in one month, as I'm a substitute columnist for this week. Perhaps you are so fond of my regular column that you will be delighted to read the first bit of my yet-to-be-published middle grade novel (about a farm girl)!
Thistle was standing at the top of the world. It was the first day of summer and she was ten years old, and from the top of Apple Hill where she was whistling cheerfully she could see everything all at once: sky, farm, road.
In the sky swallows wheeled and darted and plummeted, catching their supper. In the farm lane, her brothers pushed the cows along to the barn for evening milking. On the road, just coming around the bend, someone was slowly riding a goldy-brown pony.
Thistle started and leaned forward, frowning now, watching. The someone was a stranger, but the pony was not. Thistle saw the pony give a funny half skip before it trotted, just like her pony did. She put her hands on her hips. The pony shook its forelock; there was a white star underneath. Why, it was her pony! Her pony Tug! and some strange boy riding him!
Thistle turned and pelted down the hill.
She was halfway to the road when she remembered that her mother had told her to be gone not one minute longer than it took the boys to bring the cows in; Thistle was supposed to help milk. The path she was following would take her right by the house and her mother, who would surely see her.
Thistle stopped and scrambled backwards and took the long way around instead, hoping her pony would buck the boy off and then stand innocently and happily nearby eating the grass on the side of the dirt road. That would serve the boy right for taking her pony. Besides, she'd never catch up to them otherwise.
Thistle jumped the creek and crashed through the alders to the cow lane, landing just in front of one of the cows. It was Red, with her nervous ears, her quick hooves, skittish and worried. Now she threw up her head violently, and twisted back around in the narrow lane.
Thistle twisted too, out of Red's way and then by her, by and through the eight cows, who were all in a panic now. Some kept moving forward, some stopped, some turned around with Red, back the way they’d just come, while Thistle’s twin brothers waved and hollered, at the cows, at Thistle.
Thistle was still running, yelling, “Somebody’s got my pony!” back to her brothers, and her brothers yelled too. “He’s not yours! He’s not your pony! Thistle! Thistle! Get back here!”
Thistle rounded the corner, blocking out everything behind her, the sounds of the cows, her older brothers. Her heart was like a drum in her, enormous and loud, her ears bursting with it. Tug! Tug! Tug! Her pony!
Thistle ran through the pasture, her calloused dirty feet dodging the pats of cow manure, or almost dodging them. The manure was wet and new, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter –
There was the one fence to cross, tight, shiny, new barbed wire, and Thistle flung herself on the ground and rolled underneath and then she was almost there, the road, the road – and then she burst out into the middle of it.
The road was empty. It was absolutely quiet. There was no one there, in either direction. No round brown pony streaking away with somebody strange riding him, no round brown pony chewing on the roadside grass, waiting for the somebody to get up warily from the ground and try to catch him again.
Thistle was too late.
She stamped her foot. She blew her hair up off her forehead. Not even a bird squawked. There was no sound except for Thistle’s heart drumming. Thistle stood there in the road, furious, getting her breath back. Then she wheeled around and ran all the way back home. The cows had been in such a tangle in the lane she might beat them all back again, and not be late at all for milking. Her feet beat a rhythm as her heart cried out. Tug! Tug! Tug!
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 22 - 28, 2025