FAYETTE TOWNSHIP— Saturday was, for many, the perfect day to get outside and enjoy sunshine and fresh air.

For Joe Baker and Roger Jones, it was just the day to work on a new fence around the Baker family’s Branch Lick Creek Road farm.

“We’re fixing an area for the horses. We started a week ago. My mother died here not long ago and my dad passed away in 1988,” Baker said.

“He left this farm. It’s grown up so we’re starting to redo some things, get a place for the horses and maybe later put in some cattle.”

Horses, dogs, family and a countryside that is rapidly turning green with each passing spring day. There are a lot of reasons why Baker likes living in this neck of the woods.

“It’s wonderful out here. It’s quiet, clean,” he said. “And the one thing about country life, you know who your neighbors are. You live in the city and you might not know who your next- door neighbor is. Out in the country, you know who the people are living within a half-mile of you. That’s what I like about living here.”

His son, William, and daughter-in-law, Kristin, stopped by with their dogs for a visit. They live in Kentucky right now but they said they plan to someday make them a place on the family farm, close to the horses, and with enough room to let their dogs run.

If home is where the heart is, Baker’s heart is firmly in Fayette Township, among its tall trees and creeks and country roads that wind between the farms that dot the landscape.

“At night the frogs croak and it’s almost deafening,” he said. “It’s wonderful to be out in the country.”

The Dart is a weekly feature in which a reporter throws a dart at a map of Lawrence County and finds a story where it hits.