cake in the city and dinner in the country

cake in the city

dinner in the country

this was one of the times where we so generously grace a friend's wedding with just one of us. and it was my turn so i got a blistering night and day away from the farm, many miles logged on the car, and a brunch with mom and marie in somerville in the backyard. eating cake for breakfast and keeping our feet cool in the kiddie pool. 

the wedding was beautiful. on her father's farm. amongst a pine grove. the drink was a mint julep. i had many many virgin juleps, which amounts to little more than lemonade and mint, very quenching. the pulled pork was from one of her dad's pigs. and his toast to her was one of the more beautiful wedding moments i have witnessed. i had scrupulously washed my feet and was wearing a pretty silk dress that had never been used to garden or feed pigs.  i managed to find the only two farmers at the wedding and talk to them all night. and i had to leave before the cake was served. i was home by midnight. and the next day made up for my farm delinquency by putting up 173 bales of hay

i was told, by a farmer helping us throw that hay, as i was covered in sweat and dried grass, and as my hands were numb from blisters, and as i was counting Every Bale, that he and his dad used to put up over 10,000 bales a summer.   

KATE you Do Not Know what real work is my dear girl. is not what he said, but what i thought. 

i'm so happy to be home but so happy to have had a brief and needed overnight from the farm. it reminded me that i have a wedding to plan (oh). and it made me feel less awful to be able to give a partial yes instead of a resounding no to dear friends. 

today i am off to pick up three little ewe lambs. they are the beginning of my flock for fiber and meat. my beautiful sister, who turns 26 today, is in charge of naming the girls, so stay tuned for that, and for photos of them riding home in the back of my subaru. and for the adorableness that will rival the kittens. 

the business of saying no

nick and i are turning into bad friends. we keep saying no. no to weddings. or half-no to weddings. let's see, you can have kate, but she can just come for dinner. or nick will be at your special day, kate sends her love from the pig pen.  we just called our dear dear friends who are in connecticut from california, who are having a baby in a couple of months, that no, we would not, could not meet them half way between here and there to have dinner. no to a friend's dance performance in burlington. no to another's brooklyn launch party for his new business. no to a best friend's wedding in the south of france.

no. no. no. no. no.

i hate using the word. so instead, i string the friend along, saying maybe or would love to....but, it always finds its way back to no. and we never fail to follow up by but! you can come here!?! as though any of our friends are just dying to be covered in shit and sweat for a weekend.

i don't recall ever being so throughly busy and exhausted in my life. at past farms we have certainly worked like dogs but the whole weight of the farm as a potentially viable (someday) business makes it all the more vicious.  i don't know how we'll ever do this with more animals. with human babies. without burning all the bridges of friends who aren't farmers.  without asking the world of our parents, our sisters and brothers and neighbors.

i imagine this is how parents with young children can feel. with their birth the importances of life change. you find yourself making excuses to your friends that don't have babies. asking the world of others. not calling the Well Meaning back, not because you don't love them but because you are too tired or you just forgot. maybe not, maybe i just hope some of you can Relate. help to ease my guilt.

it is uncommonly selfish. this no business. we could drive to see modern dance in burlington. we could have blasted down to brooklyn to support our friend's new project. you could twist my arm to take a week of in september to be in the S of F.

but every afternoon or morning or weekend or week we take one or both of us away from this farm we are hampering the success of the farm.  we don't have a boss anymore. we just have ourselves. and our selfish selves have made the (un?)conscious decision that the Farm Comes First. we have found our passion. we want this to really work. we want this to be forever. so at every opportunity to save our tired bodies, our time and our gas-money we reluctantly say, no.

in photos:
1. nick
2. tractor
3. kate
4. the Wretched of the Earth

this land

this land will absolutely take your breath away.

friday night we climbed up into the neighboring farm's "day pasture" and then into the "night pasture" as the sun started her descent. we came home and ate dinner with our most immediate neighbor and watched the beginning of butch cassidy and the sundance kid before all admitting we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer.

these sunny days don't mess around. but it was nice to get a few hours of pure enjoyment out of walking the hills.

today i got my wish. a rainy day. so emails and letters, bills and washings and waxing cheese. that is the big Agenda today. if you are one of many that i owe an email to, expect one today, or late late tonight as i make my way through an embarrassing pile of Unanswered.

summer is rolling through

these days don't stop for breaks of lemon water. let alone a beer. they don't stop for leisurely lunches, or early dinners. they don't stop for sleep-ins. they barely stop for dishes or washings.  they certainly don't stop for emails and phone calls and blogs.

so you must excuse my peppered silence.

for we are in High June. the official mark of summer was just wednesday but by the looks of the garden and her accompanying weeds. by the sight of the fields half mowed. by the chest height of the meadow's grass. by the song of the bobolink. by the pile of sweat-through shirts and shorts in the corner of the bedroom. by the pond-scented towels drying on the line. by the empty lemonade bottles. by the presence of both Gin and Tonic in the kitchen. by the need to sleep on the porch for we haven't a fan. by the panting chickens. by the the vision of rose pig climbing into her water trough you would think there had never been a winter or spring. 

it's hard to remember the quietude of the off season. sometimes i'll try. i'll stop half way up the long hill from barn to house. i'll close by eyes and imagine the crisp air and the ground covered with snow and ice. oh! what i would give for a quiet dark day with only a gardening catalogue and the bare minimum of chores do rush out and do before slinking back in to the warmth of pajamas and hot cocoa.

i only allow myself a quick minute into the reverie for there is so much to do before we get there again. i open my eyes again. finish the hill and return to the garden.

for the garden is growing. despite my best efforts to ignore her.

the weeds are, of course, growing.

winnie is putting on weight.

we moved her down to once a day milking to do so.

we are, not so secretly, loving once a day milkings.

nick just brought home four new beautiful devons.

this is the true beginning of our beef herd.

i am shopping around for icelandic sheep.

for i intend to raise, sheer, and spin. perhaps foolishly.

we have two mama hens raising thirteen babies.

the mobile chicken coop was built.

so the chickens are on pasture up by our house.

which means we have the stray chicken in our home every morning.

now the boys are building a cow shed.

and then there is all that mowing to do.

and milk to sell.

and yogurt and cheese and butter to make.

and breakfast and lunch...and supper if we're feeling fancy.

and the fall garden to plan and plant.

and the pigs to move.

fences to be done and undone.

foxes and hawks to outsmart.

japanese bettles to squish.

this is june. she is a beast of a month. just the beginning of a slew of breathless hot months. this is what i live for. this is why i farm. this is why we can stand the slowness, the quietude of winter. 

because never in my life do the simple pleasures of eating, bathing, and sleeping feel so Extraordinarily Good and Well Deserved as they do on the farm in the summer. 

i hope Summer has found you all in your corners of the country.

will try to be better about writing and checking in next week.

a follow up on money

some days i spend more time setting up my writing space than i do in the literal act of writing. cleaning it. cleaning the room around it. and the house around that. determining the desk has all sorts of bad juju (read, clutter) and abandoning it for something more simple. more sunny. then i have to make myself the perfect writing snack. and eat it. and clean it's dishes. and then the kitchen. finally a perfect cuppa. and when i finally sit down i admit to myself i have nothing to write. 

i was all by myself this weekend on the farm. without human intervention. just me and the cows. the pigs. the donkeys. the horse. the chickens (minus six now, thanks to the Fox) an array of loudly barking,  non-working farm dogs and the same number of equally useless cats. it was a rare treat and so i decided to give myself the afternoon off, it being sunday and i being tired.  

i thought i would write with this free afternoon. in my underwear after a pond dip for those are the liberties you can take when you are alone on the mountain. the only thing i could think of writing about was the act of not writing. which, thankfully, lead me to an actual topic of worth; a follow up to a post i wrote this past april on money. there i had asked your opinions and concerns on blog sponsorship. i got such a surprising amount of feedback by comment and email and i feel very guilty having only responded to them here, now. BUT i hadn't been able to come to a real conclusion about it until now as i fought myself to write. 

all of you were resoundingly understanding and supportive of the notion of sponsorships and i thank you for your kind thoughtfulness but among this support were two conclusions that gave me pause. 

1. sponsors should be relevant to the content you post

2. getting sponsors will make the blog paid work which will inevitably change the way you look at it (JOB!) which could change the way you write for it.

the former makes total sense but something i honestly hadn't considered. of course the ads i have on my blog should be relevant to farming, eating, canning, gardening. most monetized blogs i have seen, and those you have sent me to look at do so well. if their blog focus is on Babies and Vintage and Handmade the ads should and do reflect that trifecta. likewise design blogs beget design ads. and so on. but there doesn't appear to be a glut of small-farm businesses that have extra cash for advertising. and i would feel slimy asking any of them for money when i know how tight farm money is. 

even if i could find a good solution to the former,  the latter is where i conclude this is not for me. i love my blog. i don't mean that in the sickly self aggrandizing way in which it sounds. i don't doubt my blog could stand for many changes to make it lovable by others. but i love what it does for Me. i love that it fosters an inexplicable regime of photography and writing and house cleaning and cooking. i love that it has magically given me a medium through which i've met other farmers, other gardeners, other writers. 

so your comments helped me see that i don't want anything to change about this space. i want to keep it as my own. perhaps there will be a day when we buy our own land and the barn collapses from a heavy winter and we need help rebuilding it. or the day when all of our milk guzzling customers drop us like the hot potatoes we are. or the day when i decide i really do want some form of income that doesn't rely directly on winnie or the chickens or the rain or the sun (which is certainly possible). 

but today i have (finally) come to the Lofty Conclusion that longest acres shouldn't have sponsors. this isn't an editorial on sponsorship in general. more power to the women (and men) in this blog world that make their living from their writing and photography. they are living the dream. but it's not for me. not for this space. 

so, thank you to all of you that wrote in with your thoughts on the manner. i am so very glad i had asked as i had clearly not thought the whole thing through.