Brightwater Farm, on a visitor's phone.

Read the trail

Every stop, in both seasons.

The same stories visitors hear on the phone, written out. Each post has one for spring and summer and one for fall and winter.

1. 1Barn Meadow

   Spring & summerA field that holds water

   After heavy rain this meadow floods for a few days, and its soft ground soaks up water that would otherwise run downhill. It is mown once a year, late in summer, so birds nesting in the grass can raise their young first.

   Listen for bobolinks and red-winged blackbirds calling from the tall grass.

   Fall & winterThe meadow at rest

   Once the grass is cut, the meadow goes quiet for winter. Under the snow, voles keep warm in tunnels woven through the old grass. Red-tailed hawks rest in the bare trees along the hedgerow, and fresh snow shows who crossed the field in the night.

   Look for a line of small tracks crossing the snow.

2. 2Walled Garden

   Spring & summerHydrangeas in three shapes

   The farm's old kitchen garden is now a flower garden kept by volunteers. Its hydrangeas come in three shapes: mophead, panicle and lacecap. On the mopheads, the soil sets the color. Acid soil lets the roots take up aluminum, and the flowers turn blue.

   Find one flower of each shape.

   Fall & winterSeed heads left standing

   Volunteers leave the seed heads up through winter. Goldfinches and juncos pick at them, and insects shelter in the hollow stems until spring. The stone wall holds the day's warmth, so snow melts first along its sunny side.

   Check the foot of the south wall for the first bare ground.

3. 3Alder Brook

   Spring & summerFirst green of the year

   Alder Brook runs only part of the year, but the soil beside it stays wet and rich. Skunk cabbage is one of the first plants up, and it makes its own heat, enough to melt the snow around it. Later, look for trillium, where every part comes in threes.

   Count the parts of a trillium: leaves, petals, sepals.

   Fall & winterA corridor for animals

   Speckled alder lines the bank. In winter it carries catkins and small woody cones at the same time, which makes it easy to spot. The trees along the brook hold the bank together and give animals a sheltered route to water.

   After fresh snow, look for tracks along the water. Early morning is best.

4. 4Maple Swamp

   Spring & summerA swamp of red maples

   Red maples crowd this wet hollow. Spicebush flowers greenish-yellow here in early spring and feeds the spicebush swallowtail. In late summer, cardinal flowers bloom red, with trumpets too deep for most insects, so hummingbirds come to them.

   In late summer, wait by the red flowers for a hummingbird.

   Fall & winterRed berries in the cold

   In winter the swamp becomes a tangle of bare stems. Winterberry, a native holly, drops its leaves but keeps its red berries, and robins and bluebirds come to eat them. Greenbrier stays green all winter, thorny enough to shelter nesting birds.

   Find the red berries from the boardwalk.

5. 5The Ledge

   Spring & summerPlants the plow missed

   This ground was too rocky to plow or graze, so plants that like thin soil held on here. In spring, red columbine nods from cracks in the rock and early saxifrage flowers white. The small fern with dark, shiny stems is ebony spleenwort.

   Columbine flowers hang down. Look underneath for the long spurs.

   Fall & winterWhat the ice left behind

   The last ice sheet scraped this hill down to bedrock, then dropped the stony soil that New England farms were built on. Scratches on the rock that run in one direction show the way the ice moved.

   Find a scratch on the rock and follow its line with your eye.

6. 6Old Oaks

   Spring & summerTrees for centuries

   White oaks can live for hundreds of years. Their acorns are sweeter than red oak acorns, so jays, turkeys, deer and squirrels eat them first. In a good year one big tree can drop thousands.

   Compare the rounded white oak leaves with the bristle tips of red oak.

   Fall & winterReading trees in winter

   Without leaves you can still name a tree by its bark, buds and twigs. Bark cracks as a trunk grows wider. American beech is the exception and stays smooth for life. Young beeches also keep their pale, papery leaves all winter.

   Find one smooth trunk and one deeply cracked one.

7. 7Stone Wall Woods

   Spring & summerPines, birches and oaks

   On these drier soils, pines, birches and oaks grow together. White pine carries its needles in bundles of five. Sweet birch has dark bark that doesn't peel, and its broken twigs smell of wintergreen.

   Pick up a fallen bundle of pine needles and count them.

   Fall & winterWalls in the woods

   These woods were open pasture a little over a century ago. Each winter, frost pushed new stones up through the soil, and farmers stacked them along the field edges. A wall running through a forest tells you the trees came later.

   Follow the wall and look for a gap where a gate once stood.

8. 8Pollinator Garden

   Spring & summerFood from spring to frost

   The native plants here bloom one after another, so bees and butterflies find food all season. Milkweed is the only plant monarch caterpillars eat, and its bitter sap makes them taste bad to birds. The wooden block full of holes is a bee hotel.

   In late summer, count how many kinds of aster you can find.

   Fall & winterWho sleeps in the bee hotel

   Most bees here live alone and make no honey. Their young spend the winter sealed inside the bee hotel's holes with a store of pollen, then chew their way out in spring. The standing stems nearby shelter other insects until warm days return.

   Look for holes sealed with mud or leaf. Someone is asleep inside.