Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I am sending you a picture of my 88th birthday. I just love the Gazette and I am usually one and a half hour late eating my dinner when I get it. I like John Alley’s West Tisbury news as he always has something in it during the 1940s. People I know like the bird news by Susan Whiting. I had a lot of small hummingbirds. My husband put out wren and bluebird houses everywhere. Had thousands of bottle flies in my mock orange tree. Like the Vineyard Gardener, we had a bad drought — no hay or corn or soybeans or garden. One hundred and eleven degrees one day. Watering didn’t help.

We raise Black Angus cows at two farms. My son helps me with cows and puts out big bales of hale and gives them corn. Have a tank heater. Cost me $4,000 for or hay, now I have to buy corn. We wanted to keep cows. My son has to walk electric fences every day because the deer knock it down. It has been cold, snow and ice here.

I miss the Vineyard and the ocean. I live along the Des Moines River here. We did good on the cancer drive, raised $35,000.

I can’t wait until the Gazette comes to read all the news. Have a nice winter. God bless.

Natalie Mitchell Kinkeade, St. Francisville, Mo.