September 28, 2009

This weekend has been solemn around here. Nittany, one of our cats, passed away peacefully Saturday afternoon.

Nittany was one of two cats that we had throughout our kids growing up years. The other cat was Sara, who came first, and passed away two years ago from what we suspect was ingesting rat poison used by a neighbor in his tool shed, on one of her escapes from the house. Along the way, we took on a third cat, Odie, who was a stray and shared four years with us before disappearing.

Kath brought Sara home from the Acme grocery store– a young girl was giving away a weaned litter of orange tabbies outside the exit doors to any takers. Kath was a taker! I named Sara originally as short for Syracuse, a favorite college basketball team. After about six months, we thought it would be best if Sara had a playmate, and the whole family headed to the animal shelter in Cape May to pick out a buddy.

For some reason, that trip still is pretty vivid and detailed in my memory. We had no idea where the shelter was, and it took forever to find it. It was at the end of a crumbly asphalt lane that ended at the Cape May canal. The shelter building was old and in poor, but sufficient, repair. Cats and dogs were in all kinds of cages and outside sheds and makeshift shelters...I was having a bit of trouble taking it all in, and while the kids and Kath went to look at the kittens, I took a walk out to the canal and watched the boats until I was called in to see the cat they had picked out. There he was - a ball of grey fur that we came to call Nittany, after a certain college that I had graduated from.

(If you have come to think that I name all the animals, you are mistaken. Odie was really Ude, named by my wife after her college, University of Delaware. Kath also named Snoopie, and other animals we’ve had and have! And our daughter named our dog Nana, and also several chickens. Allen named his duck... )

Both Sara and Nittany were “inside cats”, or house cats. Both were very different in personality. Sara didn’t like to be petted – one or two strokes and then she’d bite! Nittany liked to be petted – for hours at a time. Sara liked wet food; Nittany liked dry. Sara bonded with Kath; Nittany bonded with Steph. Sara was over active; Nittany was content to sleep all day (and night). Sara would play with toys; Nittany could not be bothered most times. Sara would sit on the window sill watching birds; Nittany would sleep on the couch. Sara was skin and bones; Nittany was what you might call plunp. Sara didn’t like the in-laws, especially a certain aunt; Nittany couldn’t be bothered to have an opinion. Both extremes are what made them special.

Losing Nittany this weekend was as if an era had passed away with him – the kids growing up. Now both are off to college and beginning new lives in new places. It brings back the memory of when I went away from home; I left behind my childhood dog, Sarge, who also passed away along with my childhood, but who is still a part of me today in daily memory. Just as I had Sarge, Kath grew up with a big lab named Rufus, who never left her heart, no matter how many animals and pets came after.
Like Sarge and Rufus were to Kath and I, these cats were just as much or more a part of my kids childhoods as their friends, soccer, karate, and high school plays. They were that extra brother and sister that they could always count on to be there, waiting, and listening...and they will be missed very much. They shared a very important time in our kids lives.

Sara and Nittany … we love you, and always will.

September 20, 2009

My daughter asked me why I didn’t post anything on my blog last week, as she was coming to expect one every Sunday or Monday. I guess I have been going through writer’s block - or maybe writer’s confusion. I seem to think about too many things that I’d like to share so that I can’t really grasp any one of those ideas fully enough to make good. And then when I do come up with something it sounds great in my head, but not so great on paper. Lately, every post that I have tried to write I have set aside for one or both of these reasons.

Maybe my reasons are a symptom of the things that are going on. I am working to get the fall CSA up and running between rainstorms. And we’ve adopted Zippy which I wrote about previously. Zippy hasn’t been acting right so we have been working with the farrier and now the vet to find what’s wrong. The vet was able to diagnose that Zips tore a tendon that attaches the splint bone to the cannon bone – not a serious thing, but painful to the horse until it heals. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and spending extra time at the stable.

Then there are my kids – both away at college. No real problems there, but still, they are my kids and will always be on my mind.

Add my day job to that, the rest of the farm and all the animals, crops, and bees, my blog, sometimes volunteering, and my duties as a Quaker co-clerk

So I am pretty busy which makes it very hard sometimes to relax enough to settle down and let things come to me…This hit home the other night while I was taking Snoops for a walk along the outer fence lines. Every so often I take her out there to eat the weeds, sumac, and mulberry sprouts that I can’t get with the mower. As we slowly moved along the fence row, stopping more than walking, I could hear all the cars and trucks going by on the highway that parallels the fence no less than forty feet away. Suddenly, it sounded like my life – rush after rush, faster and faster. And of late, fast and faster has not been fast enough.

The realization stopped me in my tracks. And I just watched Snoopy, just taking her evening one leaf at a time. A few yards away Louie was content, swaying that huge head of his left and right, rhythmically pulling on leaves of grass, without any apparent sign of anxiety. Beyond Louie, the chickens were gathering near their shed readying to roost for the night…and everything fell quiet, despite the traffic going by. The moment was almost like Quaker Meeting. There, in the small clapboard meeting house with its open door and windows, it is always silent, no matter how much noise the world is making.

I need more moments like those. Moments to just know that I breathe. Moments that will bring me back to ground and teach me that more than anything else I am a living being, and not an economic gear in the world engine.

I need to enjoy the quiet more often…and spend more time away from “time”.

September 7, 2009

Ever since I got my goat Snoopie, I have had to answer the question “does she really eat everything?” I used to think that she didn’t, but after I began writing things down, I am slowly changing my mind. Here is a list of some of the “things” she eats and does not eat – of course this list could grow or change at any time…

The “things” Snoopie has eaten:

- poison ivy
- my good hammock
- my wife’s new pool brush
- brooms – plastic and natural
- car bumpers (any car make or model)
- plastic shopping bags- her favorite is from Acme
- jalapeño peppers
- house plants (but only when she is in the house)
- poison sumac
- lawn furniture
- bumper stickers – Bush or Obama, it doesn’t matter, but she butts the Palin stickers for whatever reason
- roofing shingles from her “dog house”
- gas cans – preferably when filled with gas
- the cowling on my wife’s riding lawn mower
- tee shirts, especially while I am wearing them
- cobwebs (not spiders, just the cobwebs)

Things Snoopie hasn’t eaten:

- any very expensive “show grade” goat feed that’s supposed to be good for her
- ducks…at least not yet!

I have to admit that this farm was a very different place before Snoops joined us here. Days were very routine. All the other animals pretty much lead predictable lives, which in itself is a good thing. It’s a good thing that a 1200 lb horse is predictable most of the time! But having at least one goat –or any other type of animal- that lives outside the box, giving every shared moment a newness, is exciting. It just doesn’t get any better than that!

August 30, 2009

Seems that every week there is a lot of things going on here…

We were introduced to a woman who loves horses, and she took us up on our offer to exercise Zippy and give him attention. Lilli has come over twice now this week and patiently, Zippy and Lilli are getting to know one another. It is a great situation for both of them and Zippy is already responding really well to the extra attention. He looks happy! And it’s good for Kath and I as it gives us time for our horses too, so that all the animals are receiving the time and attention they need.

Karen stopped by to help weed the strawberry bed, and spent the evening tugging at ragweed, crabgrass, etc. Karen helped me feed the bees for her first time. She mixed the water and sugar, and brought it out to the hive. As I was getting stung and she wasn’t, she poured it into the feeder jars I was holding. Oh well….

The other day I was wearing loose shorts when I was feeding…that was dumb. I never thought about the places a bee could go – such as up my shorts. And I guess the first one up called out to a few friends to come join her! I think I will end the story now and let your imagination finish it, cause that’s exactly what happened.

Well anyhow, Karen didn’t get stung, but she says that she got a case of chiggers from pulling weeds, so it all evens out.

Monday I tilled part of my field preparing to plant for fall crops. I am planning to grow spinach, mesclun, lettuces, radishes, cabbage, and some mixed greens for the fall portion of my CSA. As of weeks end I was able to seed spinach and cabbage. Yesterday we received 3” of rain which made things pretty sloppy out there and I was unable to get any more seed in the ground. Next week a few members of the CSA are coming out to help with the planting, so I hope to get the seeding done then.

A few chickens hopped the fence and got into my tomato patch last evening. They helped themselves to a few tomatoes…I can’t get too mad at my chickens. After all they do for me and the farm– eat bugs and weed seeds, lay eggs, and provide fertilizer – losing a few tomatoes is really a small price. I just let them stay there and took some comfort watching them enjoying themselves. Chickens are pretty cool.

So all in all, it has been a good week on the farm!

August 22, 2009

We have taken on a third horse! Zippy has been boarded here for the last two and a half years, and a few weeks ago his owner offered him to us. We were happy to take him over, as we’ve always considered him a part of our family, and we would have been crushed to see him sold off. Zip now will stay here with our other two horses, Louie and Patrick. We are really glad that its worked out this way!

August 15, 2009

I am not too sure what to think about this, but I will share this story with you and let you think about it for yourself…

We called it the “pot plane”. There was a small single engine plane that flew very low over our farm almost every week. Not just a fly by, but it circled three, four, and sometimes five times. It then repeated the same circling maneuvers over other properties in the area. It continued its circling patterns right down the highway.

We suspected that big brother was looking to see if any of us were growing marijuana on our farms, in our backyards, or in the wooded areas around here, hence we began calling it the “pot plane”. I doubt they were counting our horses, or appreciating the colorful view of our free ranging chickens from up there…Every so often, some one does get busted in the area.

This year I left the white plastic on my hoop house, where I store perennials over the winter and begin vegetables for spring. Normally I remove the plastic once the weather warms up, but this year it stayed cooler than usual, so I decided to just leave it on.

I came to accept the circling plane each week, wondering what they were really doing up there. When it came over, I am sure they saw me go in and out of my hoop house with a watering can to water my daylilies, spinach, and garlic sets, although they could not have seen inside the hoop house to know that that was what I was watering in there. I often wondered if that made me suspect. That is, if they really were pot cops.

After a few weeks of this, I came home from work on a Saturday afternoon and found that the white plastic had been torn from the hoop house, exposing the perennials and vegetable plants inside. No one had been home that day to see what had happened. There was not a storm or wind that day. But there was the plastic – ripped all apart, though still attached to the batter boards. There was nothing left to do but take it all off.

Since that day, the plane stopped circling my farm…. I haven’t seen it since. I can’t help but to wonder if it all was a coincidence, or if someone needed a better view?

It does give me something to think about…

August 6, 2009

In the garden, or with my animals, I am always reminded that we are braided together in this life. There is an interdependence and interaction that deep down, is spiritual – I think of it as a continuous equal trade between us, and a trade with all things else in the immediate and distant environment. This trade supports a steady balance in this interconnected life of give and take.

For everything here on earth, there is a reason and purpose. There is a reason and a purpose that we did not design, and at times we do not fully understand. But God does….

There are almost too many connections to list here, and then so many more that are yet to be realized. Some are easy for me to see and follow, like the relationship and connectedness of bees and flowers. And then there are those that are less pronounced and I did not expect. Two recent experiences follow:

It took me a while to figure out why there were green frogs in the beans and chard, as my experience could only allow me to associate frogs with water and lily pads. But finally it dawned on me that they were feasting on the insects in the garden, keeping these predator populations in check, while staying sheltered and moist beneath the leafy canopy of these same plants. I never had seen or heard of this before, but here it was…frogs and plants helping each other to survive another day.

Every bird nest here on the farm – bluebird, wren, martin, barn swallow, etc – to some degree is weaved and lined with the long horsehair shed from the manes and tails of our horses Louie, Patrick, and Zips. These same birds spend the day swooping over the pastures eating up the mosquitoes, greenheads, and horse flies that can make grazing impossible for the horses. It has always been easy to see how the birds helped out the horses, yet I had never given thought that the horses traded back. Now I know better!

I could go on with other examples that have given me some surprise, but the point of these two examples is that we are all connected somehow. We live with, and from, the help of each other, whether we are a frog, bee, bird, horse, human, plant, etc. Each day we trade, whether we know it or not. Each day we need to remind ourselves that our trades need to be fair, otherwise our relationships will fall out of balance, and then life will lose its sustainability.