Altona keeps a short, generous summer, and Shepard Property Maintenance spends every hour of it outdoors. Out past the Flat Rock, where jack pine grips bare sandstone and the Chazy River runs cold down from the western hills, grass comes on late and then comes on all at once. Mowing here means reading a lawn that put on four inches in a week of rain, then handing it back level and evenly napped. Fence lines get trimmed, gravel edges get cut straight, and the spring and fall cleanups carry off whatever the north wind piled against the porch. When the maples along the town roads finally turn, the yards go into winter square and tidy — waiting on the long white months, and on the fast green that follows.