Fun, fizzy dispatches from the city and beyondCole splits her time between Manhattan and ten acres in Massachusetts, where she cultivates the land. A few years back, she discovered a book called “The Resilient Farm and Homestead,” by the naturalist Ben Falk, and became a convert to his “permaculture” philosophy. Cole dug rainwater swales, installed a woodstove, and planted vegetables. (She hasn’t eaten meat since she was fourteen.) This summer, she visited Falk’s farm in Vermont, where she worked alongside hippies half her age. “I came screeching in as this old city person,” she said. “I had to share a bathroom with nine men, which was really hard-core. Everyone was barefoot, just slipping in and out of their Crocs, and I was, like, ew. But I overcame that, and started putting my feet on the land. You feel your bones spread out. It’s fantastic.”Cole strolled along a path lined with daylilies and Japanese anemones. She smiled at a sculpture of a boy and a girl from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden.” “It has never been easy to be a woman in the public eye,” she said. Cole was instrumental in launching Lilith Fair, in 1997. “I’d opened for Sarah McLachlan,” she said. “Every night I’d go out and I would thank her for having a female opener, because it just didn’t happen. Promoters said women don’t sell tickets.”Turning back to the new record, she said, “I cringe when I listen to some of those old recordings. I’m out of tune, and it’s messy. But the whole idea of it was for the fans to hear the process of me arriving at myself as a producer and as a human.” On tour, she will sing “This Fire” in the original key. “I’m postmenopausal and my voice has changed,” she said. “But I refuse to lose an octave.” ?