Last Saturday, my dad and I pulled into the driveway by the garage just in time to see the largest fox either of us has ever seen come tearing across the back field right at the woodline. The creature was one of the most gorgeous animals I have ever seen—as large as a Labrador retriever and sporting the smartest black stockings. I knew right where he was headed, as I’d discovered his lair while poking about the forest edge, and I’d heard him out singing with his friends during the summer nights.

Just as Mr. Fox ducked home I saw a woman on a beautiful white horse hooting and hollering in the back field. Turns out we had pulled into the middle of a foxhunt. The area around my house is popular foxhunting ground. In fact, hounds are kenneled at the base of the mountains that run behind my house. Horses and riders and their dogs take great liberty with area personal property as they tally ho up and down the fields. I don’t mind seeing them ride, and it was rather thrilling to hear the hounds’ calls come closer and closer until I saw the dogs surge as a pack across my neighbor’s field and on down the road. Three riders came across my land that day, and I didn’t tell any of them that their quarry was tucked up safe and sound right in his burrow in my back yard.

Then Dad and I spent the rest of the day running 14-gauge speaker wire to five rooms in my house. Drywall was due to start the next week, and it was our last shot to get it in the walls before they were sealed up for good. It was actually pretty fun to drill holes in my house, and I got to learn all sorts of tricks such as how to clamp the two spools on a spindle to a sawhorse so that I could easily pull two strands of wire through the house.

All I can say now is the Bonafide Farmhouse is wired for a party…in the studio, in the library, in the kitchen, on the back porch, in the master bedroom, and yes, even in the master bath! Ye-haw!

And then all the way home, we schemed about how to build the mother of all fox-proof chicken coops.