Usually I don’t let this much time pass between posts, but to be honest, two things are going on.
First is a bit of writers block if there is such a thing. I think there is. Its not that I run dry of things to write about, but it’s more like there is too much. Not everything can pass through my little brain and next thing there is a clog and nothing gets through…if you think about it for awhile it makes sense. I am sure you’ve been there…
Then this week I was diagnosed with pneumonia…walking pneumonia or whatever you want to call it. Either way, I was in bed or on the couch the last three days exhausted, heaving for breathes, and waiting for my head to blow up from the sinus pressure. Today all the meds are beginning to get up on the bacteria that took me over, and I am feeling a bit better. I was able to take a walk outside this morning to see all the animals, look across the rows of greens coming up, and check my bees. This day, the bees didn’t sting me – maybe they have called a truce until I feel better and I’m more fun for them to chase through the fence and across the yard! God bless them!
But anyhow, I will be back to writing soon. Things will unclog as they always do and the pneumonia will run its course. Maybe this is Mother Nature’s way of getting me to take a break. I’d rather she fly me to Acapulco…
Friday, April 30, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
April 19, 2010
Really nice out this morning…
I just finished planting greens – arugula, lettuce mixes, and mesclun. I also planted bunching scallions. Then I set up the sprinkler and began watering it all, including the rows of chard, onion, and pac choi that I had planted the week earlier.
Louie is doing so much better. It’s been three weeks now that we’ve been treating his eye. After the first week, the vet did not like how his cornea was healing, so she re-scraped it and we began anew on a different plan of medications. Two weeks now of this treatment and he’s getting better – his eye doesn’t look inflamed, and I can tell by the way he acts that the pain is not there, at least not to the degree that caused him to mope around. He’s beginning to trot around his paddock, show some energy, and is keeping his bad eye opened most the time. He’s beginning to be Louie again!
The chickens have been moved from the stable and into their shed. We took down the storm wrecked coop, and last week with the tractor we dragged and pushed the shed across the paddock to a new spot behind the stable. It took a few days to re-train the chickens to roost there – it was surprising to think that after years of the shed being their home, they lost the memory or instinct of roosting there in such a short time. But they did. We had to go around and gather them up at evening time and place them in the shed…now it’s a week later and they are going in on their own. I think that Zips is happy about that.
He’s so relaxed lately that just being around him peels my stress away…too bad I can’t take him along where ever I go.
Patrick is being my buddy too. He always come to the fence and “lips and licks” me to say hi and to say “don’t leave”.
Then there is Snoops – I won’t say much now, but watch the video of her and her favorite toy….goat behavior is fascinating to me. I don’t try to explain it – I just enjoy it.
I have one remaining hive of honey bees. Losing three, all for very different reasons – mites, pesticides, and starvation – has taught me how fragile a honey bee’s life is. Suddenly, every bloom, whether it be a dandelion flower or a cherry tree in bloom is important – each is a source of pollen and nectar, not a weed or a pretty tree.
I guess I’d better get back out side…in my last post I ended it with the thought that the lawn would need mowed this week, and that happens to be the case.
I just finished planting greens – arugula, lettuce mixes, and mesclun. I also planted bunching scallions. Then I set up the sprinkler and began watering it all, including the rows of chard, onion, and pac choi that I had planted the week earlier.
Louie is doing so much better. It’s been three weeks now that we’ve been treating his eye. After the first week, the vet did not like how his cornea was healing, so she re-scraped it and we began anew on a different plan of medications. Two weeks now of this treatment and he’s getting better – his eye doesn’t look inflamed, and I can tell by the way he acts that the pain is not there, at least not to the degree that caused him to mope around. He’s beginning to trot around his paddock, show some energy, and is keeping his bad eye opened most the time. He’s beginning to be Louie again!
The chickens have been moved from the stable and into their shed. We took down the storm wrecked coop, and last week with the tractor we dragged and pushed the shed across the paddock to a new spot behind the stable. It took a few days to re-train the chickens to roost there – it was surprising to think that after years of the shed being their home, they lost the memory or instinct of roosting there in such a short time. But they did. We had to go around and gather them up at evening time and place them in the shed…now it’s a week later and they are going in on their own. I think that Zips is happy about that.
He’s so relaxed lately that just being around him peels my stress away…too bad I can’t take him along where ever I go.
Patrick is being my buddy too. He always come to the fence and “lips and licks” me to say hi and to say “don’t leave”.
Then there is Snoops – I won’t say much now, but watch the video of her and her favorite toy….goat behavior is fascinating to me. I don’t try to explain it – I just enjoy it.
I have one remaining hive of honey bees. Losing three, all for very different reasons – mites, pesticides, and starvation – has taught me how fragile a honey bee’s life is. Suddenly, every bloom, whether it be a dandelion flower or a cherry tree in bloom is important – each is a source of pollen and nectar, not a weed or a pretty tree.
I guess I’d better get back out side…in my last post I ended it with the thought that the lawn would need mowed this week, and that happens to be the case.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
April 11, 2010
today
while walking around the farm doing the things i do, i began noticing the blooms…dandelion,
apple beach plum strawberry
henbit
oak
forsythia
maple is pretty much done wild violet which is one of my favorite flowers in a light steaked purple on white, and some have that pre washed jean blue look
our single and lonely red azalea
the columbine is almost ready to speak up purple and yellow and rose
there were leaves on the japanese red maple which unrolled from yesterdays buds and on canes there are the new raspberry leaves
and i saw one leafed grasses coming up in the paddock dirt
rye crabgrass then the two leaved seedlings of smartweed
and some sedges
and birds i saw birds i had not seen for quite some time like an osprey which floated over the fields in a lifting spiral before turning east and towards the marsh, as if it suddenly decided that that was where it was wanting to go all along.
there were sounds. mostly the traffic on route 49. the neighbor who mows his lawn each day sitting on his sears tractor. we call him mr. mower man. but he doesn’t know that. sometimes he mows at night in the blackness. perhaps he is escaping from his own darknesses. anyway its odd. ten oclock is too late to mow a lawn.
i saw louie standing four legged asleep snoring in the wind that pulled the cold spring air down from the north. before that he had made his way to the garden and rolled in the tilled soil. first he knelt down and fell to his left side and rubbed his side three times. then he got up and got down on his front knees and fell over to his right side and rubbed his right side three times. its always three times on each side. its always three. always. he never does it different. three. then he’s done
there were not many clouds today. maybe some i didn’t notice. i’m sure some skipped by me
the broccoli raab sprouted double heart shape leaves in the raised bed i made last week
the elm i planted two years ago in the main pasture is leafing out. it has survived its second winter here. one day it will shade horses on a hot day. its why i planted it. last year a swarm of honey bees rested on one of its lower branches before going off to wherever they decided to go. wherever you go that’s where you are. buddist bees.
mud is still in some places
next week the grass will need to be mowed
(note: while trying to write in this style, my computer fought me all the way by automatically capitalizing “i”, adding other capitals, punctuating, laying down squiggly green lines under phrases to tell me my grammar is wrong, and squiggly red lines to say im a bad speller… the computer doesn’t recognize creative expression and to make it do so everything has to be backspaced and retyped each time…sorta a scary thought, isn’t it.)
while walking around the farm doing the things i do, i began noticing the blooms…dandelion,
apple beach plum strawberry
henbit
oak
forsythia
maple is pretty much done wild violet which is one of my favorite flowers in a light steaked purple on white, and some have that pre washed jean blue look
our single and lonely red azalea
the columbine is almost ready to speak up purple and yellow and rose
there were leaves on the japanese red maple which unrolled from yesterdays buds and on canes there are the new raspberry leaves
and i saw one leafed grasses coming up in the paddock dirt
rye crabgrass then the two leaved seedlings of smartweed
and some sedges
and birds i saw birds i had not seen for quite some time like an osprey which floated over the fields in a lifting spiral before turning east and towards the marsh, as if it suddenly decided that that was where it was wanting to go all along.
there were sounds. mostly the traffic on route 49. the neighbor who mows his lawn each day sitting on his sears tractor. we call him mr. mower man. but he doesn’t know that. sometimes he mows at night in the blackness. perhaps he is escaping from his own darknesses. anyway its odd. ten oclock is too late to mow a lawn.
i saw louie standing four legged asleep snoring in the wind that pulled the cold spring air down from the north. before that he had made his way to the garden and rolled in the tilled soil. first he knelt down and fell to his left side and rubbed his side three times. then he got up and got down on his front knees and fell over to his right side and rubbed his right side three times. its always three times on each side. its always three. always. he never does it different. three. then he’s done
there were not many clouds today. maybe some i didn’t notice. i’m sure some skipped by me
the broccoli raab sprouted double heart shape leaves in the raised bed i made last week
the elm i planted two years ago in the main pasture is leafing out. it has survived its second winter here. one day it will shade horses on a hot day. its why i planted it. last year a swarm of honey bees rested on one of its lower branches before going off to wherever they decided to go. wherever you go that’s where you are. buddist bees.
mud is still in some places
next week the grass will need to be mowed
(note: while trying to write in this style, my computer fought me all the way by automatically capitalizing “i”, adding other capitals, punctuating, laying down squiggly green lines under phrases to tell me my grammar is wrong, and squiggly red lines to say im a bad speller… the computer doesn’t recognize creative expression and to make it do so everything has to be backspaced and retyped each time…sorta a scary thought, isn’t it.)
Thursday, April 1, 2010
April 1, 2010
The other day we came home to find that Louie had injured his blind eye. The eye was swollen, and tears drained from the bottom corner. When we peeled back his eyelid to see what was going on, his whole eye was a bright, wet, red. We could tell he was in pain, and upset from this pain that he could not understand or stop.
We called and the vet came out and examined him. He’s going to be ok. He must have hit his open eye with something, as he scraped up a very large portion of his cornea. Being blind in that eye, his eyelid does not, so did not, reflexively close to protect it. The vet gave us some medicine to help it heal.
Every day, three times a day, we give him eye drops – steroids and antibiotics. And he also takes his horse aspirin, nicknamed “bute”, twice a day.
Life gets no more interesting than trying to hold a 1,100 pound horse whose eye is 7 foot up in the air, while peeling back an eye lid and laying exactly one drop of this and one drop of that in his eye. The first treatment at 5:30 in the morning is a thriller! It’s definitely a two person job…
But Lou tries. He senses that we are helping, and at times he just leans his head into my arm and tilts his head sideways while Kath puts in the drops. Sometimes though, he wants little to do with this new ritual and lifts his head as high as he can to escape it. After some coaxing, he usually compromises and leans down just enough to get it over with.
After four days now, his eye is opened and the swelling is almost gone. He still has tears, but not as bad as it was. He should be back to his “normal” in a few more days.
The vet said that if he does it again, we will need to buy him a pirate patch to protect his eye! He was serious! Poor ‘ol Louie the Swashbuckler! “ Arrrrrrgg matey!” I really don’t know what to think of that! I don’t think Louie would make a very good pirate.
We called and the vet came out and examined him. He’s going to be ok. He must have hit his open eye with something, as he scraped up a very large portion of his cornea. Being blind in that eye, his eyelid does not, so did not, reflexively close to protect it. The vet gave us some medicine to help it heal.
Every day, three times a day, we give him eye drops – steroids and antibiotics. And he also takes his horse aspirin, nicknamed “bute”, twice a day.
Life gets no more interesting than trying to hold a 1,100 pound horse whose eye is 7 foot up in the air, while peeling back an eye lid and laying exactly one drop of this and one drop of that in his eye. The first treatment at 5:30 in the morning is a thriller! It’s definitely a two person job…
But Lou tries. He senses that we are helping, and at times he just leans his head into my arm and tilts his head sideways while Kath puts in the drops. Sometimes though, he wants little to do with this new ritual and lifts his head as high as he can to escape it. After some coaxing, he usually compromises and leans down just enough to get it over with.
After four days now, his eye is opened and the swelling is almost gone. He still has tears, but not as bad as it was. He should be back to his “normal” in a few more days.
The vet said that if he does it again, we will need to buy him a pirate patch to protect his eye! He was serious! Poor ‘ol Louie the Swashbuckler! “ Arrrrrrgg matey!” I really don’t know what to think of that! I don’t think Louie would make a very good pirate.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
March 30, 2010
Ramblings…
It’s raining again. How could I tell…?
One day, a few days ago, out in the stable, three chickens were facing one chicken – or one chicken was facing three. I could not tell if it was three against one or one against three. I could not tell if three were picking on one, or if one was picking on three. Sometimes we can never tell which side is really fighting. Sometimes we cannot tell why.
These nine years are way too long.
At Quaker meeting a few weeks ago, Karen suggested we concentrate our lives for the week upon a word, and then asked each of us to tell others our word. I don’t remember everyone’s words, yet I remember that Mrs. Harris’s word was “endurance”, and since I did not have one for myself, she picked “health” for me as I was not feeling too well that day. But Jill picked “perfect”, which I did not understand, so I asked her. She said something that went like this: “Perfect! ‘Cause I am perfect just the way I am, and you are perfect just the way you are. No one has to be anything more that what they already are to be perfect…everyone is perfect the way they are.” I spent the week thinking about that. I still am. I like it.
Healthcare passed last week. Obama is called a socialist. Palin is stumping her way along the tea party circuit. People are threatening congress persons. States are going to sue the government. Obama is supposed to be a non citizen. Glenn Beck is making millions.
Our Quaker meeting has been helping area homeless families who have jobs. One woman, who has a ten year old, has two jobs. She wakes seven days a week at 3:00 am and delivers news papers with her child asleep in the back seat, as there is no child care at that time in the morning. After the newspapers are delivered, she drops her child off at school and works her second job – as a home health care aid, caring for others. She and her child both arrive back at the church shelter at 7:00pm. They do this routine seven days a week. Think about it. Two jobs, 70 or more hours spent working each week, and she cannot afford a one bed room apartment. Two jobs, 70 or more hours spent working a week and she is homeless. Forget health benefits.
In our area, there is no affordable housing. Every proposal has been petitioned and voted against. No one wants affordable housing in their backyard. Affordable housing will reduce property values they say. The residents of our area write letters to the editor against affordable housing. The council meetings are covered by reporters. “Not in my backyard!” they say. The next day, they read about their successful efforts to turn back affordable housing in the newspaper. The newspaper is delivered to their front door every day, seven days a week, while they and their kids are soundly asleep in beds. Later in the day, a woman comes to the door to care for Gramma.
Just outside my door, the fields are being sown with rain.
It’s raining again. How could I tell…?
One day, a few days ago, out in the stable, three chickens were facing one chicken – or one chicken was facing three. I could not tell if it was three against one or one against three. I could not tell if three were picking on one, or if one was picking on three. Sometimes we can never tell which side is really fighting. Sometimes we cannot tell why.
These nine years are way too long.
At Quaker meeting a few weeks ago, Karen suggested we concentrate our lives for the week upon a word, and then asked each of us to tell others our word. I don’t remember everyone’s words, yet I remember that Mrs. Harris’s word was “endurance”, and since I did not have one for myself, she picked “health” for me as I was not feeling too well that day. But Jill picked “perfect”, which I did not understand, so I asked her. She said something that went like this: “Perfect! ‘Cause I am perfect just the way I am, and you are perfect just the way you are. No one has to be anything more that what they already are to be perfect…everyone is perfect the way they are.” I spent the week thinking about that. I still am. I like it.
Healthcare passed last week. Obama is called a socialist. Palin is stumping her way along the tea party circuit. People are threatening congress persons. States are going to sue the government. Obama is supposed to be a non citizen. Glenn Beck is making millions.
Our Quaker meeting has been helping area homeless families who have jobs. One woman, who has a ten year old, has two jobs. She wakes seven days a week at 3:00 am and delivers news papers with her child asleep in the back seat, as there is no child care at that time in the morning. After the newspapers are delivered, she drops her child off at school and works her second job – as a home health care aid, caring for others. She and her child both arrive back at the church shelter at 7:00pm. They do this routine seven days a week. Think about it. Two jobs, 70 or more hours spent working each week, and she cannot afford a one bed room apartment. Two jobs, 70 or more hours spent working a week and she is homeless. Forget health benefits.
In our area, there is no affordable housing. Every proposal has been petitioned and voted against. No one wants affordable housing in their backyard. Affordable housing will reduce property values they say. The residents of our area write letters to the editor against affordable housing. The council meetings are covered by reporters. “Not in my backyard!” they say. The next day, they read about their successful efforts to turn back affordable housing in the newspaper. The newspaper is delivered to their front door every day, seven days a week, while they and their kids are soundly asleep in beds. Later in the day, a woman comes to the door to care for Gramma.
Just outside my door, the fields are being sown with rain.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
March 20, 2010
Today is the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring. Today…
The spring peepers are singing in a woodland chorus out back
The bees are foraging and bringing pollen back to the hive
Kids are out playing, laughing, having fun
The horses are browsing in the greening, awakening grass
A bluebird skips from fence rail to fence rail
The strawberries are uncurling new growth from beneath dried brown leaves
The maples are shaded red with opened buds
Chickens scratch and joust for worms in the tilled field
Crocuses are showing cups of white, violet, and yellow
Three deer, last years fawns now grown into does, graze behind the house
There is an indescribable newness in the breezy air
Outside, in Quaker silence, I said a thankful prayer….
The spring peepers are singing in a woodland chorus out back
The bees are foraging and bringing pollen back to the hive
Kids are out playing, laughing, having fun
The horses are browsing in the greening, awakening grass
A bluebird skips from fence rail to fence rail
The strawberries are uncurling new growth from beneath dried brown leaves
The maples are shaded red with opened buds
Chickens scratch and joust for worms in the tilled field
Crocuses are showing cups of white, violet, and yellow
Three deer, last years fawns now grown into does, graze behind the house
There is an indescribable newness in the breezy air
Outside, in Quaker silence, I said a thankful prayer….
Sunday, March 14, 2010
March 14, 2010
There are many things that make living on a farm “hard”. Some of these things are mucking out stalls, stacking hay, weeding rows, getting stung by bees and being butted by a goat, bit by a duck, bit by a horse, bit by the duck again, and getting kicked in the head by a spooked horse and needing 23 stitches…but these don’t compare to the challenge that I have now come face to face with.
I call it “despair with a twang”. My wife calls it country music.
Its not that I am against country music, because I’m not. It’s ok…but how I feel about country music is how I feel about monkeys – real cute, but I don’t want one sitting on my shoulder.
It’s the lyrics mostly that scratch my blackboard. Pulitzer lines like “working hard all week puts the beer on the table” does not take me to the deep end which is where I like to be. I like lyrics and music that I can interpret different ways and that make me work my mind back and forth to figure out meanings… “puttin’ beer on the table” doesn’t do it for me. I can figure it out way to easily. No metaphors there to ponder - its not anywhere close to the cryptic and sometimes whimsical wanderings of Devendra Banhart. Still, it’s not a bad song. Monkeys aren’t too bad either.
To be fair, my wife doesn’t like what I listen to anymore than I like her country. Playing Tom Waites curdles her skin. Once, on a trip back from Connecticut, she couldn’t take his gravel voice any longer and, well, let’s just say that for my own safety, I put in a different cd. Damn if I wasn’t looking at what I was putting in next and put in some John Coltrane…that’s when the roof blew off.(She hates jazz even more) Next thing ya know, for my own safety, I turned on the radio and found a song that went something like this, “I found the tractor of my dreams when you walked out that door after my last beer and my dog died before my truck got stuck in the mud while I was a four wheeling on my way to the bar after working hard for a bad boss before my spit cup fell out of my camper truck”. Peace at last! I know what’s best for me.
But seriously, there is a song we both like and can listen to and that makes us happy- it stirs up my imagination and allows me some meaningful interpretation. My wife likes it because it has a happy-go-lucky country theme and can be hummed to. It makes us both smile. It goes something like this: “rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey, and whiskey makes my girlfriend feel a little frisky”.
It’s the best song there ever was! Trust me!
I call it “despair with a twang”. My wife calls it country music.
Its not that I am against country music, because I’m not. It’s ok…but how I feel about country music is how I feel about monkeys – real cute, but I don’t want one sitting on my shoulder.
It’s the lyrics mostly that scratch my blackboard. Pulitzer lines like “working hard all week puts the beer on the table” does not take me to the deep end which is where I like to be. I like lyrics and music that I can interpret different ways and that make me work my mind back and forth to figure out meanings… “puttin’ beer on the table” doesn’t do it for me. I can figure it out way to easily. No metaphors there to ponder - its not anywhere close to the cryptic and sometimes whimsical wanderings of Devendra Banhart. Still, it’s not a bad song. Monkeys aren’t too bad either.
To be fair, my wife doesn’t like what I listen to anymore than I like her country. Playing Tom Waites curdles her skin. Once, on a trip back from Connecticut, she couldn’t take his gravel voice any longer and, well, let’s just say that for my own safety, I put in a different cd. Damn if I wasn’t looking at what I was putting in next and put in some John Coltrane…that’s when the roof blew off.(She hates jazz even more) Next thing ya know, for my own safety, I turned on the radio and found a song that went something like this, “I found the tractor of my dreams when you walked out that door after my last beer and my dog died before my truck got stuck in the mud while I was a four wheeling on my way to the bar after working hard for a bad boss before my spit cup fell out of my camper truck”. Peace at last! I know what’s best for me.
But seriously, there is a song we both like and can listen to and that makes us happy- it stirs up my imagination and allows me some meaningful interpretation. My wife likes it because it has a happy-go-lucky country theme and can be hummed to. It makes us both smile. It goes something like this: “rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey, and whiskey makes my girlfriend feel a little frisky”.
It’s the best song there ever was! Trust me!
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