Just a reminder

To those of you who so faithfully followed this blog, this is just a reminder that I am still writing, just at this new address:  The Singing Farmwife  I miss you and hope you miss me enough to join me there.

New Home

MY BLOG has moved.  I will no longer post new entries here.  Please follow this link: The Singing FarmWife to read the blog.  Also, if you are a follower and you want to continue following you'll want to link to the above address.

MY HOPE CLOSET

     I have been a messy person almost all of my life.  My first college roommate can attest to that.  I still believe we parted ways because my clutter finally overcame her forgiving nature.  Then I married my husband. While he's not a neat freak, he is far better than I am at keeping things clean.  He started doing the laundry early in our marriage because he got tired of waiting for clean underwear.  He keeps his tools organized, his barn feedways neat and tidy, and his truck free from trash.
     Sometimes, he wakes up before I do and I can hear him puttering around downstairs.  First I hear the clink and scoop of coffee being made, then I hear the rattle of the dishwasher being loaded or unloaded. When I finally make it downstairs, the kitchen often looks better than I left it.
     In my defense, I have improved over time.  While it's always been important to me that the public areas of our house be presentable,  I have, in the last year, started making my bed every morning and, strangely, I now can't go downstairs until it's done.  I've learned to fold clothes as they come out of the dryer so they won't get wrinkled, and I'm much better at cleaning the kitchen before I go to bed.  But, there's one area of my life that I can't unclutter.
     It's my Hope Closet.  I believe every home should have a hope closet, a hope drawer, a hope bin or a hope chest.  In the old days, a hope chest was a place for a woman to collect things she planned to use in her married life.  That's not the kind of hope chest or closet I'm talking about.
    My Hope Closet is really a junk closet, but I call it a Hope Closet because if I need something, I can always hope it's in there.  Often it is.  My Hope Closet is full of many of the usual things you'd expect to find: batteries, light bulbs, tools, paint, screening supplies, jars of screws, nails and fasteners.  But, because it's the place I throw things when I'm not sure where to store them, it's a place full of surprises as well.  I often forget what I've put in there.
     When I have need of an item to finish a project, I go to my Hope Closet and dig, and sometimes I pray as I dig.  I don't know what's in there, and because I don't know, I pray that I'll find what I need.  Now, don't laugh, but I feel like God usually answers these silly prayers. Faith is about things unseen, and there are plenty of those in my Hope Closet.
      Here's a picture of it.

If you come to visit, I will not show it to you.  I'm not proud of the disarray, and if I were a complete convert to neatness, everything would be in neatly labeled boxes.   Neatly labeled boxes that completely took away my ability to hope and pray for something unseen.  In my life, hoping for things unseen is something I don't want to miss.

SNOW MORE

     When I was 12, going on 13, I ended my nightly prayers with a request for snow on my birthday. I am a close-to Christmas baby and I planned to carol around the neighborhood with friends to celebrate becoming a teenager. I also secretly planned to get myself a boyfriend.  I had a big crush on Stewart and I was pretty sure he would offer to hold my hand if we were walking in swirls of snow beneath glowing streetlamps to the sound of happy carolers.
     I got my wish. There were swirls of snow beneath glowing streetlamps, and carolers singing, but Stewart held hands with my older sister.
     Snow just can't be trusted.
     I don't pray for snow anymore.  I know it is poor man's fertilizer, bringing nitrogen from the air down into the soil.  I know it refills our aquifers so that the spring behind my house will continue to provide clear water.  I know that to every thing there is a season and snow deserves its season.  I even know that we don't have as much snow as we did 40 years ago and that should be cause for alarm.  My husband still talks about snows that fell in November and melted in April.
     I am not alarmed.  I am relieved.  When your driveway is over a quarter mile long and the last part is a steep hill, snow means that getting to the road is an adventure.  For the first time since we've lived at the foot of this steep hill, I have a four wheel drive vehicle.  I can get out when it snows, but not if the snow has drifted into swales and swells that are two or three feet deep.
     So, I like snow as long as it is only two or three inches deep.  I like watching it fall, twirling to the ground in soft curtains of white, as long as it ends in a couple of hours.  I like my driveway, when it looks like this.

     How about you?  Do you still feel romantic when the snow starts swirling, or do you growl?

The weatherman is calling for 6-8 inches of snow tonight.  It might swirl romantically in the glow of the porch light outside my house, but I won't be watching.  I'll be curled up inside on the sofa with my true love.  It turns out it doesn't take snow to make romance after all.

Snow Day on the Farm

Any snow over four inches deep means that the work on the farm is doubled. Today we have at least 14 inches and it's still snowing.

 First Joe opens the driveway so we can get out to feed the cows.

Halfway through, he must stop to repair the four-wheeler.

While he's working on that I carry corn out to the horses. They get extra rations in the winter weather to help them stay warm.  The ice all over them  is proof that their long winter coats are protecting them from heat loss. 

Then, Luke and I go down to the creek to knock open a water hole for thirsty
livestock (and dogs).

Joe has finished the driveway, so we hop in the truck and drive down to the barn where we must shovel open the gate.  This is where Gate Girl gets her exercise.

Then the barn doors are shoveled open so Joe can get the tractor out and give the calves and cows their hay.

While he's doing that, his wife entertains herself in the truck taking selfies...

Finally, we head back to the house.  I carry water to the chickens, gather eggs and carry in firewood, while Joe plows out the driveway again.

It's still snowing outside and our county has been declared a local disaster area, but we are tucked safe and warm in our house.  We'll worry about that tomorrow.

MONDAYS CAN ONLY GET VERSE

 

FICKLE

February flirts,

sashays 

looks back coyly

blows warm kisses

melts hearts and streams

then....

turns a cold shoulder to her promises

and chooses winter

as her partner

once

again.

Rooster Love

     The chickens are always so much fun to watch, but I especially enjoy watching the roosters.   They know their job is to protect the girls, so they crow alarm when a hawk flies overhead and crow about supper when I take slop out to share with the hens.  But, they also love to crow for attention.  They crow in the morning, long before the sun comes up.  They crow in the hen house. They crow outside.  They crow just because they can.  They are cock-a-doodle Carusos, standing tiptoe, reaching deep into their diaphragms for air, and belting out melodic morning arias.

      But, they don't crow when they are trying to seduce the ladies.  Besides living to protect the hens, roosters also exist just so they can get them some chicken love.  When a rooster wants love, he is strangely silent.  He morphs from a sassy soloist to a shy salsa dancer.

ROOSTER LOVE

The rooster struts

and scratches

and crows

He jumps to the left

and bounces on his toes.

He waggles his wattle

and he cocks his eye,

quicksteps to the right

when the hen passes by.

The hen scratches seeds

with her eyes on the ground

She never looks up, 'cause

she's always looking down.

The rooster on her right

isn't nearly as thrilling

as the bug in the ground

for which she is drilling.

Polished With Prayer

     February is a muddy month.  It's great weather for the maple sugar producers.  Cold nights and warmer days make the trees and the producers run.  But, it's not so great for those of us who gather eggs from free ranging chickens.  My hens are not confined to nests or even to the hen-house.  They run around outside all day parading through puddles, digging in dirt, and stomping out designs on the muddy paths.  After all that fun, the hens hurry back inside.  They do not stop to wipe their feet.  Instead, they hop on the nest, deposit an egg and wipe their feet on that.  February is egg cleaning month.
     Customers who buy eggs in grocery stores are buying eggs laid by hens in cages.  The eggs never have a chance to get dirty because the hens don't.  Customers who buy my eggs are also buying the time my hens spend outside and the time I spend hand polishing their eggs. My hens are laying about 45 eggs a day. That's a lot of mud and a lot of time with a rag, and I forgot to polish eggs yesterday.
     When I picked up my rag today and stared glumly at the 90 eggs waiting for a cleaning,  it occurred to me that, after they are polished, the eggs glow just like rosary beads.  That gave me an idea.  Today, instead of moaning about the job in front of me, I decided to treat each egg as an opportunity to pray for the people I love.
     Now, looking at the cartons full of glowing eggs, I am looking at cartons full of prayer. I suspect the praying polished me a little as well.

Gate Girl

 
This was published in my local paper, but never made it to the blog.  Thought those of you who hadn't seen it might relate.

     Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.  With love is in the air, it’s no wonder that, when Joe asks me to go along with him to feed, I am lulled into believing he wants to spend a few romantic moments holding hands in the truck.  That notion only lasts until we reach the end of the driveway.  That’s when I realize that he wants me to go along because he needs the services of Gate Girl. 

     Being Gate Girl is one of my biggest responsibilities.  Tonight is a nine-gate evening.  Each gate is different and demands a different skill set.  
     Gate number one is brand new, but fell off of its hinges a week after we hung it. First I pry it open.  Then I move to the back side and drag it over the bumpy ground.  This is complicated by the sheep who are anxious for their evening grain.  I have to abandon my dragging to shoo them back into the field.  
     Gate number two has both hinges, but the latch has been replaced by a strand of barbed wire.  I prick my fingers as I untwist it. 
     Gate number three is made of wood.  Some nails are loose and the boards shift and creak as I push it around.  
      Gate number four is new.  I like gate number four.  
     Gate number five is lightweight, but must be lifted over a mound of dirt as I open it.  
     Gate number six has a sliding wooden latch that pinches my fingers.  
     Gate number seven must be propped open with an old fence post or it will swing shut on the truck as we pull through.  
     Gate number eight has one baler twine hinge and no latch.  It leans drunkenly against the posts and has to be bullied around.  I hate gate eight. 
     Gate number nine opens on the left instead of the right.  I always forget and try to open the wrong side.  Tonight is no exception.

     When we were first married I loved any excuse to ride along with Joe and help out on the farm. Being Gate Girl was something a city girl could do with no training. Now that I am older and more experienced, I can drive tractors, feed hay from the back of a moving pick-up truck, bottle feed calves and lambs, give shots and rake a pretty tidy windrow.  But, being Gate Girl is still my favorite farm chore.       

     Gate Girl will never make it to the super hero hall of fame.  I can’t leap buildings in a single bound or put out fires with my bare hands.  What I can do is open any gate on the farm and make my husband’s life just a little easier.  And when all the gates have been opened and closed, perhaps we’ll pull up to the top of a hill and watch the lambs play in the fields below.  

     Then, Joe will turn to me and whisper softly in my ear, “Can you help me again tomorrow?”

Raking Snow

     I have a new farm chore.  When it snows, my chickens refuse to step out of the hen house.  That's sixty chickens dropping their business on a floor that it's my job to keep clean. I want them outside, but when I open the door and they see this they don't think, "Oh what a spectacularly beautiful snowfall."  

They think, "Nope. Not. Going. Outside. Today."
     Sixty chickens hanging out all day in a hen house leads quickly to an excess of fertilizer  Luke thinks of the chickens as Pez dispensers.  He's delighted with every deposit they make.  More food for him. I'm not so happy.  Poo builds up quickly and sticks to my shoes when I gather eggs.  I must either clean the chicken house pronto, or throw another layer of hay on top.
     I am currently throwing another layer of hay on top, delaying the torture of cleaning until warmer weather or Scott comes home.  We are almost 8 inches deep in hay and compost now and I'm hoping it will start to heat as it decomposes. Then at least the chickens will stay warmer.

     But for now, I want the girls to go outside. That's where my rake comes in. I have discovered that if they can see just the tiniest bit of a path then they will step out.

     So I grab my rake and start making paths.  One path leads down to the creek so they'll go there for water.  That's a five gallon bucket less for me to tote.  Another path leads to the back side of the shed, which will often heat up enough to melt off a little bare spot.  I call it the Rooster Riviera.

The chickens like to sunbathe there, and the rooster struts about picking up chicks. Lacking a tiny bathing suit he substitutes a deft display of neck feathers.

The rest of the hens head over to the bare spot under the truck.  They can scratch a little, make dust baths and stay out of the view of the hawk who patrols the sky.

Satisfied that I've avoided adding another deposit of hay to the coop, I head back to my house. The hens hang outside for another fifteen minutes and then make their way back to the hen house.  It's warmer in there.Their deposits are decomposing.  Time to go make some more.

In spite of my efforts to avoid it, I guess I'll be making a fresh deposit of my own tomorrow. 

A Trip to the Woodshed

     My husband had a conversation with a newcomer to the mountains the other day.  The newcomer was commenting on the beauty of the place and how his wife loved her view.  Since they were looking at chainsaws, the talk soon turned to cutting wood for the winter.  The newcomer shared the enormous amount of wood he'd already cut and then said, "but my wife gave me specific directions about where the pile could be.  She didn't want it to block her view, so I've put it behind an outbuilding."  Joe then said to him, "Yes, my wife felt the same way when she first moved here.  Two winters of hauling wood cured her of that notion."  He's right.  Here's my woodshed.

It's pretty far from my house, but in good weather I don't mind rolling the wheelbarrow out there to bring in a load.  It's good exercise and the driveway makes it an easy trip.   But in snow, the wheelbarrow doesn't roll as well.  That's when I'm grateful for this stack.

As you can see, it's right beside the house; an easy distance to tote. 

I'm fairly certain the newcomer's wife will one day appreciate a stack by the door, too.  

Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Misery....

     Farmers are superheros.  Illness doesn’t stop them.  There are no sick days when the cattle are standing out in the weather and the only thing that keeps them warm is a constant meal of hay.  There is no one to call when a farmer feels just like the piles of crap dotting the fields where he must, with a fever of a hundred and one, go out and throw hay off the truck in the cold rain.

     This is a short post because I just wanted to give a shout out to my husband and sons, who do what needs to be done even when the doing is pure misery.  I am proud to be a farmer’s wife and the mother of two more.  My men have the kind of grit it took to settle the wilds of America.  They have the kind of determination and stubbornness that gets the job done, personal discomfort be damned. 

I hope the animals appreciate them as much as I do. 

The Grass is Just as Brown...

      I wish that someone would tell those rascally calves.  I know that they are young, so they don’t have much experience to go on, but it’s winter.  The grass on the other side of the fence is just as brown as the grass on their side.  It doesn’t matter.  They keep busting out anyway. 

     My husband and I have chased these two calves down the edges of the road, to an open gate, at least ten times in the last four days.  In the pasture, where the rest of their friends seem content to hang out, they have access to fresh hay and to calf pellets, delivered daily.  There is a fine source of fresh water, so they are not thirsty.  But, still these two roam and we can’t figure out their escape route or their reasons for escape.

     It happened again this morning.  The phone rang just as the sun came up.  “Your two calves are in the road again,” a neighbor said.  We pulled on clothes, coats and boots and fired up the truck.  A mile away the calves trotted into a neighbor’s front yard and put down their heads to graze on dead grass.  It must taste better than the dead grass on their side of the fence.  It must.  Otherwise, why would they insist on escape?

     The calves have gotten used to our herding them back down the road.  They aren’t scared of us anymore.  They sashay, stopping to grab another bite of dead grass.  They halt and consider the clouds racing across the sky. They pause to ponder, they stop to stare.  Finally, they trot back through the gate and Joe and I walk the fence-line once again, looking for gaps.  He hammers in a few loose staples and we study the grass looking for signs of escape.  We should see footprints or bent grass, but we don’t so we go back to the house.

     I have just placed a couple of pieces of bacon in the pan and turned up the heat when the phone rings.  “Your calves are out in the road again,” the caller reports.

     I have come to the conclusion that these calves are going through puberty. They are seeking to assert their independence.  I’ve read that in Rio de Janeiro adolescent boys, and some girls, get their kicks by hopping on to the tops of speeding trains as they roll down the track.  These thrill seekers stand, with arms outstretched- surfing, as the trains rumble down the mountain.  Despite the fact that over 600 kids a year are killed or severely injured riding the rails this way, the young Brazilians continue to flirt with danger.

     When I chase the calves down the road, back to the safety of their paddock, they exhibit this same “devil-may-care” attitude.  They are not afraid of failure.  My only consolation as I once again corral my boisterous beeves is the fact that my four-legged adolescents aren’t surfing the tops of trains for thrills.  Maybe I can train them to hop on top of cattle trucks as they lumber by.  

     

     Then they could get their adrenaline fix and I wouldn’t have to pay to get them to market.

The Hawk

That

Damn

Hawk

sits in bare branches

considering which

of my

hens to eat next

while I sit at

the window

considering how long it will be

before I get arrested,

if I shoot him.

Then

 the wind shifts

and the hawk

extends

elegant wings

to rise in silent circles

sunward

and I decide to let him live

just because

he is so

Beautiful.

Free Range Fricassee

    

 If someone had told me thirty years ago that I would one day kill a chicken and giggle while doing it, I would have scoffed.  Yesterday, Joe and I beheaded four of our roosters-who-should-have-been-hens.  I didn't think I could ever find any humor in death, but my husband looked so silly with specks of blood and feathers on his face that I did it.  I giggled.

     Joe was kind enough to do the beheading while I boiled water over on the other side of the fence, so I guess I can’t claim to be a total farm girl, yet.  My father says his grandmother used to chase the chickens down, grab them up by their necks, give each neck a quick twirl, and bring the old girls in for the stewing.  Our process was a bit more complicated.

     First, I read a book about how to butcher chickens.  Joe humored me in this, but thirty pages later I decided it might be easier to just listen to him.  He had, after all, done this before with his mother and had the chopping block and ax to prove it.  So, he gathered up four of our overdose of roosters and guided me through the process.

    After head removal, the roosters were tossed into a bucket to bleed out.  They shuddered and shook as rigor-mortise set in, but my book assured me that this was the dance of the dead.  Then we dipped the carcasses in 160 degree water.  The feathers came off pretty easily and in forty minutes, we had four headless, featherless birds ready for phase two.

     Phase two was to singe the long hairs off of the body.  Joe’s mom had always done this with a rolled up newspaper which she lit and passed over the bodies, but after almost setting the kitchen, the porch and the yard on fire, we decided to use a blow torch instead.    When the roosters were as slick-skinned as body-builders, they were dropped into the sink for phase three.

     Phase three made me appreciate my underdeveloped sense of smell.  We made a slit in the skin around the crop and removed it, cut off the feet and then worked to carefully remove the intestines without any spillage into the body cavity.  We were mostly successful at this, but since Joe’s mom had always done the innard removal, we had to experiment a little and consult the book (which frustratingly had no pictures).  By the fourth bird, we had mostly figured it out.

    The four boys, which at this point actually looked like store bought chickens only skinnier, were placed in water for a cold soak to remove the rest of the body heat.  Then they were placed in the fridge for storage and aging.

  The final step was the easiest.  We watched a video on You-tube of Joel Salatin butchering.  He had lots of fancy equipment and completed four hens in ten minutes.  He recommended using a knife as little as possible, tearing the skin open instead, to save meat.  He said every ounce of meat was worth fifteen cents, which made his chickens worth $2.40 a pound.

   Tonight we are having $4.80 worth of chicken fricassee.  But what we are really having is a farm-raised, free-range, antibiotic free, cleanly slaughtered supper.  That's worth more than any fat, overfed, cage-raised hen that money can buy.

    

    

Manna and Tomatoes

     Having a garden is a marvel.  I step out the door, walk twenty steps and palm a ripe red tomato or I wander the rows eating tender green beans like candy as I admire the beauty of all those growing things.  In July, the seeds I planted in May are showing a promise of abundance.  I run to the house, first tomato in hand to share with Joe, and we slice it reverently to eat with just a little salt and pepper.  Or we strip the silk from those early ears of corn and drop them into the pot that’s already boiling and stand over it drooling in anticipation.  

     But in September, my humble garden has morphed into an an overachiever.  It used to offer tomatoes shyly, nestled below green leaves.  Now it dangles them brazenly in the sun.  It hammers me with abundance.   “Come gather beans now!” it screams whenever I step into the yard.  And the flighty corn, so vibrant in its youth, is now pale and whining about the load of ears it carries.   

     We eat tomatoes for breakfast, tomatoes for lunch and tomatoes for supper.  I’m even tempted to hide them in dessert.  I have made and canned tomato juice, whole tomatoes, tomato ketchup, tomato soup, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce and salsa.  I have gathered, de-silked , shucked and cut five buckets of corn.  I have pulled and dried a bushel of onions.  I have picked, snapped and canned twenty quarts of beans and still the garden throws vegetables at me in reckless abandon.

     I always feel overwhelmed at the end of the growing season.  Longing for the garden to cease and desist.  But then, I notice that there are no more green tomatoes on the vines.  There are no more bean blossoms.  There are no more baby cucumbers.  The corn rustles dryly in the wind. The garden is shutting down.  And, I after longing for such a moment am sad.

     When the Israelites wandered in the dessert, they cried out for food and God gave them manna.  They ate it three times a day for forty years.  I ate tomatoes three times a day for a month and whined about it.  Children in Africa would eat them gladly for as long as they could get them.  I have much to learn about gratitude and abundance.

Spring Cleaning

     With fall fast approaching I find that I am feeling rushed to complete my spring cleaning.  “What?” you ask.  “You haven’t finished your spring cleaning?  Spring is long past.”  You’re right spring is long past and I haven’t even started my spring cleaning.  There, I’ve said it out loud.  I am a spring cleaning drop out. 

     Over the years, I’ve tried to get excited about moving all the furniture out of a room, cleaning it side to side and top to bottom, and then putting it all back.  After all, Livvie Walton and the girls certainly seem to have a lot of fun when they do it on TV Land.  My problem is that when I start something, it usually brings to mind something else that I need to do. 

     For example:   To start my spring cleaning, I  prepare to move the  blanket chest in the living room out to the porch, but realize it’s really heavy,  so I open it to see if there’s anything I should remove.  As I am sorting through the contents, I find a blanket that would look really nice on my couch, so I pull it out and drape it over the back.  But now a quilt, that’s folded in a basket, doesn’t match so I carry it upstairs to put on the shelf with the other quilts, which are stacked beneath a coat that needs some buttons.  Hmm… It won’t take me but a minute to sew those on.

     So, I get the coat and the buttons, but the blue thread is not in my sewing box.  I walk downstairs to look next to my chair and notice a great magazine article about spring cleaning, so I sit down to read that.  Maybe I can get some tips that will make me more efficient.  When I finish the article, I find the thread and head back upstairs.  Once the buttons are attached, I take the coat in to my child’s room, which is really dusty.  I can’t leave it like that.

     Back down the steps I head to get a dust rag and some dusting spray.  Might as well dust the whole downstairs while I’m at it.  Downstairs dusted, I climb back up and dust the upstairs.  Then I notice that the screen to Scott’s window has fallen out onto the porch roof, so I squeeze through the window to retrieve it and, while I’m there, I see that the chickens are in my garden.

     I run down the steps, out the door and through the yard, waving my arms and hollering at the renegade hens until they fly over the fence and hot foot it back to the hen house.  On my trip back to the house, I notice that the lawn really needs to be mowed, so I get the lawnmower, gas it up and trim up the yard. 

     When I finish that chore, I’m thirsty so I head to the kitchen for a glass of water.  The clean glasses are all in the dishwasher which I unload.  As I’m unloading, I notice how messy the cabinet where I keep my plastic-ware has become.  I sit on the floor and sort through all the different size bowls, trying to match them up with lids and discovering that I have 40 lids that no longer have mates.  I toss those, which fills the trash can, so I take it out and dump it.

     I stand for a moment admiring the beautiful spring flowers and that’s when I remember.  I am supposed to be spring cleaning my house.  But, now it’s supper time.  I’ll finish tomorrow. 

     After supper, I sit down in my chair.  Why am I so tired?   I didn’t get a bit of spring cleaning done.  The trunk in the living room is still standing open and, as I reach over to close it, I notice a stack of pictures that need to be sorted and placed in albums.  I’ll do that as soon as I finish my spring cleaning.  Which I might finish this fall…if I don’t open that trunk again.

Waiting

     One of the things I’ve learned on the farm is patience.  I am thinking this as I sit on the steps of the chicken house waiting for the last hen to decide it’s time for bed.  She is still outside, pecking around, hopeful that she’ll find one last beetle or seed before flapping up to the roost.  I know that if I go into the chicken yard and try to shoo her toward the building, she will run the other way.  That’s the way chickens are.  So I wait.

     The waiting is not so bad.  It’s the cusp of evening and a cool breeze tickles my face as I stare across the dimming pastures.  Birds are singing their evening songs and, across the road, the lambs are bleating for their mamas.  I can see them in the pewter light, running down the hill to catch up with the ewes who are waiting-like me. 

    To my left, the cows begin to mosey through the gate and I know that will lead to another kind of waiting because, after I capture this last chicken, I will fill the grain bucket and carry it out to pasture for the three calves I’m still tending.  The cows will stand around me in a circle, staring at that grain and hoping I’ll leave so they can butt the calves out of the way and steal their meal.  But, I am seasoned in patience.  I deliver the food and then upend the bucket.  I’ll sit there until the calves finish, jumping up and waving my arms or pitching pebbles whenever a cow ventures too close.

     Perched on my bucket, I glance over at my garden.  I’m waiting for the first cucumbers, tomatoes and beans.  Seeds planted in late May have finally begun to look like they will bear.  Every day there is a new unfurling, a new flower, a new leaf, a new pod, a new bug.  Gardening is all about the waiting and then the dealing with what comes along, knowing that whatever it is will be different from yesterday.

     So, I wait for things, but when I really study the farm, I realize that I don’t know anything about true waiting.  When this farm was first settled, I’m guessing the meadows and pastures were all covered in trees and rocks.  There’s a small graveyard in our front meadow and a gravestone that tells me that Samuel Wilson died here in 1862 after living only 47 years.  Did he get to see the fruits of all his labor after toiling each year to clear another few acres?  Did his wife wait anxiously for the garden to produce its first green bean or ear of corn because they hadn’t had any fresh fruits or vegetables for nine months? 

     With a round baler, a weather window of three dry days means we can harvest a significant amount of hay in a short time.  I like to think of Sam Wilson scanning the skies all summer long, hoping for fair weather clouds so he could proclaim to his bonneted wife, “This is it!  I think we can get some hay up this week.”  He would have hand-scythed, raked, shocked and then stacked enough hay to get him through the winter.  What we harvest in one day, Sam would have patiently accomplished over the length of a summer, watching his hay stacks grow slowly, anticipating fat cattle in the snow.

    Sometimes I fear that modern life has stolen our ability to go slowly.  I see this especially in the young who carry so much at their finger tips.  I watched a group of my son’s friends in conversation not long ago.  They were all holding cell phones and i-pads and, as the conversation flowed, they referenced things.   They argued about movie stars, history and their friends relationships, casually scrolling through the world with their fingers to exclaim, “Look, see, I was right.”        

     I wonder.  Would Sam Wilson, long dead in my pasture, have looked at how fast the world is moving and told us we were missing out on the joy of things gained slowly, or would he have said, “Hot diggity, where can I get a round-baler?” Generations move forward.  What’s lost is replaced with something new.  Is life better or worse as a result? I might know the answer before I die.  I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Dressed for Success

 Yesterday, I wore my white tennis shoes for the first time since I bought them three months ago.  The purchase seemed like a good idea at the time, but that’s because I forgot to factor in where I live.  To get to my car, I have to walk out of my gate and stroll across five yards of a forty acre pasture.  When the cows and sheep met to discuss personal hygiene, I think they unanimously elected to use that five yards for all offensive bodily deposits.

     My white tennis shoes are now polka-dotted with brown.  I try to be careful, but my mother will tell you that I was born to be dirty.  On my first date with my husband I impressed him by stepping in a mud puddle, twice.  Living on a farm presents more hazards than puddles.  Now that I am retired, my fashion choices are dictated by those hazards.

     In the morning, I get up and pull on yesterday’s dirty jeans and tee, slide into my mud boots and stroll across the pasture to switch out the dogs.  The one who has been loose for the night bounds up to meet me.  He knows there’s some cat food waiting for him and, excited by the thought of fish-flavored nuggets, he jumps up planting both dirty paws on my thighs. 

      After I switch the dogs, I mosey over to the hen house to release the feathered inmates.  Spell bound by the dew-pearled cobwebs strung like party lights along the fence, I don’t notice the cow pies until I slip in one. Manure is slicker than grease and I can’t stop my downward slide. I rise up, my backside and hands stained greenish brown, and move on to the chicken house where I fill the chicken fountain, splashing enough water in the process to soak my left pants leg. 

     The three bottle calves, who have graduated from milk to grain, trot up.  The oldest one, Ralphie, has never given up the idea that I am his mother.  He bumps up against me, sucking my elbow and rubbing his dusty sides against my shirt as I lug his feed to the grain pans.  Chores done, I dust off my pants, and consider changing into clean clothes.  But, the garden needs to be weeded and the shed cleaned out.  If I change, I won’t be clean for long.   I’m not expecting company, so I elect to stay dirty.  I just have to remember not to sit down.

       After lunch, I discover that I need to go to town for several small purchases from the general store, and, again, I consider changing into clean clothes.  But, the morning chores have to be repeated in the evening, so I go as is and hope I don’t run into anyone who would care about how I look.  As I pull up to the store, I spot two female friends.  Like me they are in their oldest clothes and clonking around in muck boots.  We laugh about our appearance and compare notes about our chores, pointing to various stains and snags as proof of our endeavors.

     My friends and I love beautiful clothes, pristine shoes and matching pocketbooks.  But, those things are mostly reserved for Sunday mornings or special outings.  Whenever I visit my parents in the city, I spend several days in good clothes.  I don’t have to watch where I step and I’m not expected to do anything that would lead to un-removable stains.  I bought those white tennis shoes on one of those trips.  Now they’re not white anymore, but they are still too good to wear in the garden.  I set them on a shelf in my closet.  I’ll wear them to the fair this fall.  They’ll be perfect for looking good in the barn.  Unless it rains.  Then I’ll wear my muck boots and I, and all of my sisters-in-fashion, will splash happily through whatever nature dishes out.  After all, we know how to dress for success.

The Coyote Tree

     A friend of mine recently posted a picture on Facebook of a tree out in the middle of a pasture.  There were two coyotes hanging from its branches and a sign referring to it as the hanging tree.  I have seen this tree, but when I saw it there were about ten coyotes hanging there.

     The posted picture created a very small storm of disapproval.  People were appalled at such a vulgar, angry display.  I found myself, strangely, on the other side of the argument.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not condoning the actions of the farmer involved (whom I know), but I am not condemning them either.  After living on the farm for twenty seven years and participating in the daily struggle to produce a good, marketable crop of lambs or calves I find that my old city attitudes have shifted.

     Like most of my city counterparts, I imagined that all farms consisted of sunny meadows full of frolicking sheep and happy cows.  I loved to eat a good steak or fry up some bacon, but somehow my mind didn’t connect happy farm animals to my plate full of juicy protein.  Happy farm animals lived so that people could enjoy their cuteness and occasionally feed them and pet them. People certainly were not going to eat them.

      It’s not that I didn’t know the source of my burger, it’s just that I chose not to consider it.  Living on a farm changed all of that.  On the farm, I began to face up to the fact that the cute little animals trotting along behind their mamas would one day be sold for food.  I lived on the farm for several years before I would let myself consider this truth too closely.

     Then my boys raised 4-H animals and I watched them grow attached to their four-legged  friends.  And, I watched them mourn when those same friends, after winning some money and ribbons, were loaded onto a stock trailer which pulled off into the sunset, heading towards a feed yard and eventually a butcher’s shop somewhere.

     It was during our third season of raising and selling fair animals that my attitudes began to shift.  In the first years, I cried, too.  But, then it occurred to me that humans have to eat, and we simply cannot do it without something else dying.  Even if we are vegetarians, eating only organically raised produce, a bug will die somewhere as the crop is harvested.  Why are we mourning only the cute furry things?

     In fact, everything must kill something else in order to keep on living.  It is a truth that has been lost as generations of eaters pluck their dinners from the sterile well-lit aisles of a grocery store.  Here on the farm, we don’t have the luxury of ignoring the source of our sustenance and the death that is an inevitable by-product of our eating.

     What does that have to do with coyotes hanging in a tree?  It turns out, everything.  Everything dies.  That’s the truth that we learn living on the farm.  Coyotes are top level predators.  They don’t die very often, unless the one predator above them, man, does the killing.  Coyotes kill indiscriminately and it’s not always because they are hungry.  Any farmer who’s seen a field full of neck-slashed lambs can tell you that coyotes are hit and run killers.  Thus, one farmer who has witnessed too much of this senseless killing and the effect it’s had on his income, chooses to hang the coyotes--symbolically saying, “enough is enough.”

     This farmer is not deranged.  He is angry, and rightfully so.  The coyote tree is simply an expression of that anger and frustration.  Since I’ve lived here, I’ve seen at least ten farmers give up raising sheep because of overwhelming coyote losses.  They’ve tried donkeys, guard dogs and llamas and if they were able to keep their sheep in a small acreage and had a small flock, then they could enjoy some level of protection.  But, most farmers in this county turn their sheep out to pasture in the summer.  Pasture on the sides of mountains, out of sight of the house.  Usually the flock splits up.  A guard animal would have to choose one group, leaving the other group vulnerable.

     If National Geographic came to our mountains and photographed the coyote tree, it would appear in the magazine with a caption that appropriately captured the frustrations of a group of people who are watching their way of life disappear one coyote-killed sheep at a time.  Lambs dying so that we all can eat are one kind of death that we accept on the farm.  Lambs dying in our fields because a coyote went on a killing spree are not.  Sometimes it seems that modern society has forgotten how to distinguish between the two.