Monthly Archives: December 2015

Christmas on the farm

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It is 67 degrees as another storm breaks over the farm this Christmas morning. Surely the inflatable plastic snowmen in a neighbor’s yard are mired in mud. Nothing like wind and rain to make holiday decorations look more sad and foolish.

We went to bed before midnight, so I don’t know if the animals in the barnyard spoke. But I do know that the ewes are uncomfortably pregnant. And one in particular may have lambed last night. That would be a nice addition for this day.

So I’ll pull on my festive Carharrt overalls and do the rounds. I’ll let the chickens out and check for eggs. When the barn door is opened for the sheep they will cluster around the opening and peer out. Rain again? And they will turn back to their soft bedding and lay back down. Caesar will splash through the muck and out into the open field. But he will turn back and look for the sheep. He likes the company.

The pigs will be burrowed down in the woods and the cattle in need of fresh hay. Plenty to do before I see my plate of blueberry pancakes. So I better get to it.

Have a Merry Christmas!

A Convivial Life

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In what was a convivial happenstance, the weather turned cold last night for our annual Christmas/Solstice gathering, and we spent several very pleasant hours with good friends from town and country here on the farm. This morning damage was confined to a few bags of trash and a full slop bucket for the pigs. So different from the parties of our younger days, but maturity comes in time to us all.

Wandering through the house during the evening, I heard snippets of conversation: a fellow farmer on a sow’s first-time farrowing, a librarian on the decline of library patronage, a native of Chicago on where Emma Goldman is buried (Waldheim cemetery), Cindy with an explanation of our hoop-house to be built in the spring.

As the energy ebbed into the night, I walked with a few friends in the bright moonlight past the orchard to admire a new barn, a fresh stack of lumber, and a massive oak log — the standards of entertainment being quite high here in the rural hinterlands. Our guests extended appropriate gestures of appreciation, then we made our way back to the warmth of the farmhouse for more wassail.

With the last guests leaving by 11, we turned in after a little cleanup before midnight. We slumbered deeply until Teddy began barking savagely around 2 a.m. After a few ignored shouts from me to shut up and no move from Cindy to deal with the problem, I got up. Funny that, the domestic politics of pretending to be so deep in sleep that your partner is forced out into the cold house and even colder night.

The mercury hovering in the mid-20s, I stomped around in boxers and T-shirt on the frosty ground, as Teddy continued to respond as if slaughter awaited in the darkness. I played the flashlight among the trees, but saw nothing but a cold and beautiful star-filled night. Teddy’s coat still bristled when I finally put him on the back porch.

Imminent death by serial murderers be damned, I then headed back upstairs. Sliding back under the quilts, Cindy still feigning deep sleep, I drifted off again until the morning’s light.

 

 

Slow Farming and Climate Change Talks

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As our betters jet back from Paris, with bellies full of artisanal French food and exciting business contacts that allow them to both profit and “save” the world, our thoughts on the farm have been on Delores. She of the wandering tribe of swine that seldom saw a fence without seeing an opportunity. She who after a gallant effort to artificially inseminate and an arranged marriage of four weeks to a neighbor’s boar is still not pregnant.

We are now faced with a classic small farm dilemma: do we keep her for another try at motherhood or convert her to sausage? Back in August, during her matrimonial date with Old Red, Delores was what is euphemistically described as “pleasingly plump.” She has now been on an owner-imposed diet and slimmed down to what we hope is a good breeding weight. (Yes, hogs, as well as other livestock, can be too fat to conceive.)

There are so many small farm models to follow in this world. And we do not offer ours up to any but ourselves: a three-way contest between profits, sufficiency, and fulfillment. Last week’s post on taking time out from the first two to sit in the woods and do nothing but meditate and smoke a cigar spurred one online reader to call me a slacker.

The conclusion I drew was that, in his mind, the monetary profits of the farm stood superior to sufficiency and fulfillment. An imbalance, if applied mindlessly, that has contributed greatly to this world of rapidly diminishing resources and a climate rollercoaster. Which reminded me of a another recent commenter who seemed to take issue with the notion that achieving sufficiency was anything other than a weigh-station toward profitability or a path down the road to abject poverty.

So, as we watched the old classic set in the Scottish Hebrides, “I Know Where I’m Going,” last night, I chuckled when one of the characters took umbrage at being told that the villagers were poor because they had no money. What poverty of imagination, she said, that would imagine us as poor because we lack money.

Hers was an outlook actively at odds with the modern mindset, the one that devalues the wealth derived from family, community, and being a part of the earth, the one that feeds on the acquisitive and that can, if not moderated, create a life out of balance.

It is this mindset, I think, that led to conditions that energized our betters — a convening of corporations, governments, and nonprofit agencies — to spend a week dining in Paris. Now, with their bellies bloated and their backs sore from congratulatory pats, I have the sneaking suspicion that all of their grubbing around for money will result in a climate plan for more of the same.

We, meanwhile, spent our weekend on the farm. We dined on produce from our gardens and meat we raised. We worked hard, relaxed, and gave a favored sow another chance.

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Reading this weekend: Animate Earth by Stephan Harding

My Woodland Path

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To reach the pastures of the back forty, I must first travel a winding footpath through the woods. Most often, my passage signals the start or the completion of a day of work. Less frequently, the woods are themselves my destination.

Our small wood of twenty acres is crossed by a steep ravine. Three offshoots, broad church aisles of ridge land, converge on a private sanctuary in the heart of the forest, a natural presbytery for the unchurched. The time of day, the wind, the season, all influence where I stop and sit. I’ll light a cigar and lean back against a tree and drift. The light slants down, filtered, dropping in through high lancet windows of nature’s cathedral. It falls onto and illuminates my pew, where the smoke lifts up through the leaves in an offering to the peace found in quiet observance.A South Wood Walk 018

The dogs, after a bit of chasing around, like kids at a Sunday service, pick up on the mood and settle near me. This is not a formal ceremony where members of the elite sit in designated and privileged seats. It is a come as you are, find a convenient rock, fallen tree or flat ledge of land, where the ritual begins when you are ready.

An hour of simply sitting brings to me a satisfying mental quiet in which thoughts eddy and drift with the smoke along unexpected paths — a reverie softly interrupted by the distinctive devotional of a woodpecker, heard in its search for a communion grub, or the alarmed bucksnort, a cough by the old man of the woods as he catches a whiff of the dogs, his whitetailed flag flown, signaling if not surrender, then at least a quiet retreat up the central nave and out the back door.

When my cigar is near its end, I stub it out on a nearby rock. The dogs are off chasing squirrels and the scattering scent of the vanished buck. A cloud obscures the light from the upper windows, and I, the remaining congregant, arise and start the journey home along a familiar and welcome path.