Ginny Neil
In winter, unless there’s a blizzard roaring down the chimney and shaking the tin roof, the farm is mostly quiet. Some of the hush is the result of animals and humans hunkering down to stay out of the cold. When it snows, the snowflakes make it even quieter. The empty space between their crystals dampens up to 90% of ambient sound. When the snow melts, the sounds return.
Ginny Neil
But winter is also quiet on our farm because the farm chores are different. Summer days are punctuated by the sound of tractors rumbling, rakes clickity-clacking and hay balers kachunk-kachunking as they roll neatly raked windrows into tight cylinders of sun-cured hay. There’s a feverish pace to all this gathering.
Closer to home, the hiss and jangle of the pressure cooker sings about the growing season. The notes also include the rattle of jars being carried to and from the cellar, the squeals and giggles of grandkids running through the garden sprinkler, and the birdsong that marks our early rising and late retiring.
The first frost sings icy notes that herald the beginning of the quiet season. Cows lift their heads when they hear the feed truck trundling through the field. The bale unroller sings about supper with a percussion of swishes and musical clanks. The cows chime in with a chorus of moos.
On sunny days, we visit the woods, and the quiet is broken by the high whine of a chainsaw and the steady beat of the splitting hammer. Perfectly seasoned wood cleaves with a clear, single crack when My Own Farmer splits it.
Rivers grow sluggish and their song disappears under the ice.
Soon the barn is packed with expectant ewes. We cross the silent barnyard under a sky full of winter-brilliant stars. Inside the barn, sheep burp and chew their cuds. In the back, a single ewe grunts and pushes. We move her to a stall and watch her lamb slide feet first onto the fresh straw. My favorite winter song is a mama ewe’s soft nicker as she licks her lamb dry and the flip-flap of the lamb shaking its ears when it stands for the first time.
These seasonal songs are just one of the cyclical rhythms the Earth dances to.
We learn about some of them in school: the climactic cycles of warm and cold and the rise and fall of the tidal cycles. We note the phases of the moon as it spins its way around the earth. We see the sun sinking lower on the horizon and then rising again as the seasons change, but there are even deeper rhythms singing songs beneath these.
Ginny Neil
Earth hums. We can’t hear this music, but seismographs reveal that there is a steady, continuous low frequency pulse of energy. Like a heartbeat, it thrums eight times per minute. It seems to be a result of waves in the ocean interacting with each other and with the land. The hum occurs all over the Earth, even far from shorelines, and is seasonal in its intensity. There is some evidence that our breathing rates or blood pressures are affected by it.
In the atmosphere, there’s a different song. Lightning strikes create low frequency radio waves that race around the planet. Where they meet, they produce a resonance, called the Schumann resonance, that makes about eight trips around the planet per second. We can’t hear this song, either, but it circles the earth endlessly. It’s possible that migrating birds and butterflies use this song to navigate. Some scientists believe it may also affect us in ways we don’t yet understand.
Humans are wired for song. Music is often the last retrievable memory for dementia patients. Perhaps this is a result of the fact that the whole world sings tunes that mirror our own internal rhythms. Or maybe our internal rhythms are driven by the songs all around us.
Either way, I’m glad of the tune.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2026 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!