with light

i am consumed with the light that comes through our two-room home. i haven't often lived on the literal sunny side of the street. not in san francisco. nor in new york. once in paris. but not in d.c. always in shadows. in north carolina we only got sun sets. in western mass we lived in an army green damp tent. and in boston we lived below ground. but here in vermont i find myself worshiping the sun as he comes through every window. first he rises to our east, right out of my bedroom window. directly above the donkeys. they start to bray. wanting their morning's hay with his rise.

after morning milking he pours all of his strength through the window behind our desk. making  computer-ing near impossible with glare. while we eat lunch he is bathing our deck in his warmth. in late afternoon he is tumbling over the kitchen sink window. and then, by the time we are sipping beers he has lit the living room and dining room, making it so warm we throw open doors and windows.  and there, through that bay window, he sinks slowly behind the ridge line. firing the sky with pink. and giving us a brief darkness til his next dawn.

light in photos:
1. our shared desk. and my grandfather's typewriter. some well traveled succulents. and of course a ball of pink twine.
2. my indoor grower's corner. i would still very much like that greenhouse on wheels.
3. the kombucha getting fizzy and ready for consumption.
4. nick making beer.
5. a tired pup.
6. 3 very good friends reveling in a warm day. post pond dip. post walk. enjoying beer and cake.

the achilles' heel

i haven't left the mountain since last monday. that is seven blissful uninterrupted car free days. but today. we are out of toothpaste. we just had six people visit in the past 3 days. all of which asked what they could bring. and not once did i think of the tube that i had been pressing and squeezing and coaxing along the weekend. damn. i imagine there is some chalky tasteless paste i could make on my own. but, i'll be straight with you, i like the sugar content in my toothpaste. and short of brushing my teeth with honey, i think i'll need to break my town-free streak for this ridiculousness.

the reluctant gardener

i will tell you willfully that i am not a gardner. sometimes i worry it sounds like i'm boasting. because i'll inevitably tell the listener how good i am with animals. as though to offer an excuse for poor gardening. but of course it is no excuse.  it is just the fact of my farming past that i have gravitated almost entirely to the animal husbandry Side of Things. i feel so very comfortable with nearly every animal. i take naps with pigs. i'll spend a solid 30 minutes scratching the cows on their necks. i raise sick chickens in my house. i needn't defend my attraction to animals with you lot. you've all seen and read it with a repetition that makes me wonder why any of you come back at all. and i am so glad you do.

but the problem with this is, that nick is just as much in the animal camp as i. we were raised by the same farmer on this matter. my dear cousin elizabeth. and she instilled in us such love and understanding for her many animals that the gardens were always the afterthought of our focus. but here we are in vermont. several farms later. and neither nick nor i have shown much interest in the gardens to date. and now we are faced with the year ahead and with not making much --or any-- money. we have fertile land. we have a literal sea of old cow manure. we have seeds. and we are in the middle of a swath of warm and dry weather. so we must take interest and notice. we must learn to feed ourselves with vegetables to substitute the appalling amount of animal protein we consume. i have become accustomed to tomatoes in july. and lettuce as early as may. and kale well into december. i also was accustomed to somebody taking the garden reigns on our previous farms and quite literally telling me where and when and what to plant.

and here we are on our own. i have tried to psych myself up by reading and reading and studying garden plans. but every day of the 16 days that we have been here i have walked past the garden trying not to make eye contact with her. ignoring the dried buckwheat cover asking to be tilled under. giving her an awkward half wave and scurrying by down to the barn like the coward i have become.

i was planning on boldly continuing this dance. but the heavens have determined this garden will live. our dear friend billy came up on saturday and drifted our strides to the garden. showing us how to prune back the raspberries. the next morning our friend sam called to offer himself and his tractor to rototill the garden. i wearily accepted --knowing full well what the garden will expect of me, once the tractor had passed. sam came and went adding cow manure and leaving a dark, flat streak of tilled earth for me to plant. nick and billy looked at me with expectant eyes that afternoon. what shall we plant? i immediately changed the conversation to ask what sort of beer they'd prefer.

and then, the heavens intervened once more. sending nick's childhood friend alex to the farm. alex works on an organic csa outside of boston. and came bearing house gifts only a neglectful gardener would appreciate. 600 onion sets. and a dozen cabbage and chard starts. i asked alex if he'd like to see the property, go explore the top of the mountain. see the sheep pen. go to the ridge line. nick looked at me in horror. was i truly trying to sabotage the garden? i wasn't. i am just scared of it. i'm scared it will be a 20' x 100' plot of failure. i don't want the responsibility of the garden. the animals are enough.

but nick and alex persisted. and so we visited the garden in her freshly tilled glory. we stepped out the beds. i got my bare toes in her warm soil. we planned. we put the onions, chard, and cabbage in the ground. we watered them in. to make it final. we even got a second wind and planted a couple rows of sugar snap peas. i tried to soak in as much know-how from alex as i was able. where and when and what to plant. he leaves today. and i have in panic tried to nail down his return.

i am so grateful for the push by our friends towards a garden this weekend.  and i am so filled with anxiety for what lies ahead in her rows.  she is like a new big exotic animal. one i have only read about. one whose language i can't yet understand. i dreamt most of the night of cabbage loving woodchucks. and japanese beetles. we need this garden. we will raise her and protect her and love her just like all of our other animals. even if it means learning a whole new farming language. so a gardening i must go.

weekend photos:
1. the demanding garden
2. rudy and a drying cheesecloth. neither of them particularly stressed about the impending doom of garden
3. the woods south of the cow pasture are literally filled with old glass soda bottles and rusty cars. i rescued a handful of the prettiest bottles.
4. this crew lives in the paddock and stables directly below us. they are our closest neighbors. and one of the donkeys bit me last thursday because i wasn't giving her enough attention. they are demanding neighbors.
5. spring is about to hit this mountain. hard.
6. a stack of birch outside the cabin in the sheep pen.

the story of ted. and friday.

ted is the name of our calf. it is also the name of the calf on our two farms ago farm, in western mass. nick and i decided to name all bull calves going forward, ted. to allow for anonymity but also to provide a name other than bull calf. a couple of you astutely asked what about the calf? when i flippantly mentioned yesterday we had taken him from the mother. (brian, he and his mother are both pure jersey, btw) what about the calf? he's a bullcalf firstly. and as my landlord says, life sucks for a bullcalf. she's very right. because, who wants a bull? we don't and certainly not a jersey bull. so you take his balls. which means he is destined to either be a very large pet with high demands in hay and grass. OR he will be reared to fatten. becoming next year's food. i know this sounds awful. and you must know that this turns my insides around. i hate it so much. not only does his ending sound certain. BUT his current life is pretty crappy too. because we have separated him from his mum. well, more accurately, the farmers before us separated them when she calved this past February. and even if we wanted to, it would wreak emotional havoc to put them back together now.

the main reason for separating calf from mother is to control how much milk you get from the mother. if she is nursing her calf then she can (and, likely, will) hold back milk from you at milkings. she is also capable --because cows are incredible creatures-- of withholding her butterfat and saving that for the calf. meaning we would get a watery, cream-less, milk, and little of it.

predominately these are selfish reasons for keeping calf from mother. we have the calf in a nice clean, sunny, warm, hay-bedded stall. we bottle feed him his mother's milk. we give him hay and a little bit of grain. but he is lonely and bored. and so we are trying, very desperately, to figure out where else he could go. be it on our farm or another's. any ideas?

so that is the story of ted.

and this friday morning in photos:

1. ted. that bastard.
2. finally started some tomatoes, peppers and herbs. fortunately, the vermont spring has procrastinated as much as i.
3. tiniest little thyme seeds. how??! is this going to make something edible?
4. preparing itself for yogurt straining
5. going to strain extra long today. for super thick. greek-style yogurt.
6. the morning's haul. i always get .15 gallons less than nick. this makes me feel inferior and silly.
7. breakfast of granola, honey, and yogurt. and a cheese book. in lieu of previous three days' breakfast of toffee and tea.
8. donkey of a dog in the sunshine.
9. homemade dog treats from his aunt rachael.

this is winnie

"the dairy cow doesn't ask for much but she asks every day." -keeping a family cow

there has become something unavoidably final about our recent acquisition of a milking cow. winnie. she is so sweet. a little skinny. so beautiful. so patient with my fumbling cold hands. so giving. she is there. morning and night. every day. she lets out a great low bellow when she hears the clanking of our arrival in the parlor. washing up before milking. we've taken her calf away from her and now it is completely on us to see this through. morning and night. every day. 

it is a responsibility to animals we have never held on our own. it makes this journey to farming feel more definite. no more nighttime outings to movies, to dinner, to friends, until we have milked. no more sleepins with nick. no more leisurely breakfasts before chores. no more weekends away together, until we find a capable farm-sitter. but i don't feel the loss of these things yet. i don't doubt that will come. but in this first week i -perhaps naively- only feel the excitement and ease in having her there in the barn. morning and night.