For the dignity of the birds...

Tomorrow, Friday, June 9th, commenting will close on the USDA’s National Organic Program’s new set of rules referred to as the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP). If you have been following the new revamping of the organic standards you might be experiencing deja vu for it was just this time last year that the Obama USDA was accepting comments for the OLPP. In the final days of the Obama administration the OLPP were finalized and set to go into practice in May 2017.  As the Trump administration’s modus operandi has been to undo anything the Obama administration had done; they have temporarily delayed the implementation of these standards and have offered them up to public comment with the potential to delay them indefinitely. This of course is to be expected but it is not to be tolerated.

In the past decade the organic food market has grown to reach, in 2014, a $39.7 billion dollar force and with this the term organic has become more vague and more open to interpretation by big Ag eager to get a slice of this organic moneyed pie. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service estimates that 50% of organic eggs are laid by hens who have never been outdoors. Organic egg cartons are covered with meaningless adjectives like “free range”, “natural” and “happy” that create an illusion of the barefooted Sally Henny Penny scratching for worms in the pasture but in fact are not subject to any standard of definition.

Obama’s USDA aimed to change that by narrowing the definition for the organic label in their National Organic Program standards. These standards were aimed -mostly- at poultry practices but encompassed a broad spectrum of animal welfare from birth to slaughter. One such proposed change would be to require more indoor and outdoor space per bird and a requirement of at least 50% soil coverage on any outdoor bird space. The current lax organic standards allow for poultry producers to provide ‘outdoor’ space in the form of ‘porches’ that allow for the bird to see neither sky nor ground and thus stretch the definition of ‘outdoors’.

Detractors from the NOP site fear of Avian Flu outbreaks as their primary concern against such luxuries as the outdoors. The 2015 Avian Flu outbreak cost the poultry industry some $3.3 billion in losses. While the fear of another outbreak is understandable it has nothing to do with outdoor access; all of the operations that suffered from the 2015 outbreak were confinement operations with their birds laying, and suffering, inside.

More frankly opposition to the OLPP  is about money and the producers that are resistant to these proposed changes are motivated by economic concerns. The buildings currently housing organic laying hens, for example,  would need to be modified and in some cases rebuilt. This is a cost the producers could pass along to the consumer, but they are reluctant for the risk and would rather continue to keep animals in gross confinement.

The new OLPP rules have been a decade in the making and will bring more clarity and enforceable standards to the organic label. The new administration has just 2 more days of the comment period before they decide what action to take on the standards. Go, and comment. Lend your voice.  Use these great talking points if you need inspiration.  Tell them, on behalf of all of the animals that give us our food, that we insist on these standards that they are good for us, for the animals and for our environment.

Trees that rain apples, and such.

Yesterday I found myself lying in bed, battling my (now) usual fit of insomnia and enumerating my reasons for living rurally. Particularly, in response to a recent question of why anybody would want to live in Vermont. More specifically when the punishing March that we have had is dolefully forecasting yet another foot of snow this weekend, two weeks into spring.

So, while my over-caffeinated and under-slept body fought mind, this is what they came up with: 

1. You can pee wherever you want.
2. You can waltz naked from house to pond and back again. 
3. Milking a cow, in the field, at first light, and again at last light.
4. Eating snow with maple syrup. 
5. The trees that pour maple sap when you poke them.
6. The wild trees that rain apples when you shake them, and the resulting cider.
7. Mushroom hunting, specifically in May, for morels, but also in July, for chanterelles.
8. The internet that is often out for long, blissful stretches of weeks. 
9. The complete absence of cell phone service.
10. The dogs that run free. 
11. The bear that lives on our North hill. 
12. The heron that fishes our pond every summer. 
13. The baby moose that spent one early winter sleeping on the side of our driveway.
14. My child’s confidence with the forest, with fire, with cows and sheep and pigs.
15. My child’s friendship with house piglets. 
16. Our freedom to be filthy.
17. Feeding the winter fires.
18. The winter's night sky.
19. Fireflies.
20. The sound of sheep chewing their cud.
21. The sound of pigs snoring in a pile.
22. The mama hen that lets herself into our home, uninvited, with her clutch of chicks underfoot, looking for crumbs. 
23. The animals that feed us.
24. The animals that break our hearts. 
25. Driving a tractor. 
26. The smell of Nick bucking a pile of firewood.
27. The smell of the hay barn BUT NOT the sting of it in my eyes and throat.
28. and 
29. and
30. and….

Its not a complete list and the list of things I dislike about rural life could easily lap the one above. But it is March. Morale is low enough. Focusing firmly and a bit artificially on the positive. Forgive me.

On drowning goats.

Often, it takes stupidity-in-action to really learn my lesson. I blunder through life, I learn, I hope to blunder less.  If I’m lucky, the blunders don’t cost me too much. Recently, through a series of impetuous blunders,  I learned that melting ice will break under a grown woman’s weight.

Last month, during an unseasonable February melt, I was jogging with the hound when I came upon a pond filled with (4) drowning goats. Each had fallen into individual goat-sized holes in the ice, created by their not insignificant 40 pound selves. Having spent the frozen part of winter reveling in their ability to walk on water they awoke that morning, to the warm air, thinking only what a great day for a romp instead of the more urgent and human wouldn’t it be foolish to ice-skate today?

Their humans were away and given the total non-presence of neighbors in our parts, the hound and I were the first to happen upon their sickening cries. 

I didn’t know that goats could swim. I suppose most land mammals at least make a go for it when given the alternative of death, and these four creatures were doing their damnedest to live. I have never witnessed a drowning and I wish I could tell you that I kept my cool and Did What Needed to be Done. Instead, I panicked. I ran towards the pond, hound in tow; a pair of flame-bent moths. 

I proceeded towards the goats at a crawl assuming that if I spread out my weight thusly I would be less likely to fall in. Hawkeye followed my lead. Any sensible person could see that this didn’t work for the goats and thus was unlikely to work for a human but I was panicking, not thinking, so I missed that crucial bit of logic.

Predictably, we fell through almost immediately, many meters shy of the goats. It is a shocking experience and was my first time falling through ice. I panicked [again!] but quickly recalled that I could swim and broke the ice frantically back to the bank for the both of us. 

Sopping wet, I understood that it would be foolish to continue my half thought attempts at a solo rescue. Nobody knew I was here, in this remote pond in the woods. If nobody could hear the goats they were unlikely too to hear my cries for help should I continue to make idiotic decisions. 

I thought briefly [briefly!]  of abandoning the goats and continuing on my run. Just a half a second, but such is my selfishness and I would be remiss to not mention my wickedness. 

Fortunately the unearthly sound of the goats knocked me out of my selfish reverie. 

I would need to find help to save these goats who were still screaming and trying not to drown. 

First the dog and I ran east up the road to where I had seen a man parked on the side of the woods taking a phone call. He was gone. I tried yelling for help into the sugar bush but the trees remained ever passive. Next we ran west. I passed six homes over a mile before I found humans at home. The mile was uphill and my legs had an extra 10 pounds of winter over them. It took me so long that I got distracted with how much I hate running hills. I kept taking breaks to curse the incline and slow my heart and then I would remember the goats and heave my wet self forward.

The neighbors I found were capable and recognized the urgency of drowning goats. Perhaps they were unsettled by my muddied and frantic appearance but they were kind enough to come. 

By the time we arrived one goat was floating dead and the other three were washed in a sickening silence, still swimming but somehow slower. The man had a Vermonter’s sense of how to proceed. He walked to the far side of the pond and waded in. Breaking the ice before him, he dragged each of the goats out. Something, of course, I should have had the presence of mind to do 20 minutes earlier. He saved the remaining three and even went in to the furthest -the dead, fourth- to give it and the day the decency of removal. 

We carried their sodden bodies up to the homestead and lay them in the sun, toweling them off as best as we were able. They couldn’t stand, much less walk. They were tiny Nigerian Dwarf goats, ones that could sit in your lap if you were willing. I and the woman held them against our bodies, trying to steady their shaking.

There was an awkwardness to the conclusion. We had stopped the drowning but the goat’s humans were not yet back. A mother-in-law -hearing the commotion- had stopped by and was in the house making the necessary calls to the necessary humans.   

We wet three were most certain the goats would be dead from exhaustion or hypothermia within the day. There is a unsentimentality in rural life regarding animals that I am still fumbling with. The Kate I was before Vermont would have called the vet, no matter that they were not my animals. But here the austerity of life forces practicality. I followed the lead of the pair of seasoned Vermonters;  these goats will likely die, we reasoned, the most we could do was give them a dry, safe space to do so. No sense in spending anybody’s money on a vet who would tell us the same. We locked the three in an empty and warm duck house and went our separate ways. 

I was shaking. Cold, certainly, but also from the adrenaline of the situation and the shame of having not acted with intelligence when I first found them. I could have gotten myself into a whole lot more trouble and was lucky I fell in where I did and that I wasn’t wearing heavy boots or heavy clothes when I did. My uncertainty and panic cost the life of the little black goat. 

Later that night, I got an email from my female accomplice. She had a visit from the goat’s human, thanking her, naturally, for the work she and her husband did. She was happy to tell me the goats were recovering, the owner had carried them to the wood stove when she got home and the dry heat appeared to be the needed remedy.

I've run passed the homestead several times since as it is a loop to which I am devoted. There is no further sign of the goats. 

A land where beasts rule humans.

The dogs and I took Amelia for a walk this afternoon. The boys are still away, reluctantly returning this evening after a weekend playing with old friends in New York. I wanted to go too. I can presume the fat and bored babe on my chest would have been up for it. Farm doesn’t allow for both Nick and I to leave at once. Farm is a needy, greedy beast. Too many lives dependent on us. Too many nuances to responsibly ascribe to a sitter. 

It is a conclusion I’m coming to belatedly: farmers don’t vacation. I have a vague recollection of concerned friends warning me of this. Farmers are poor on disposable money and rich on work to do. I come to farming from the suburban and spoiled life of somebody accustomed to the Getaway. We’ve squeaked out trips away in the first four years. Nothing too egregious; a drive down to North Carolina; Christmas with my parents on the Vineyard; a wintery week on Cape Cod; a handful of summer days with our families.

When we both leave inevitably something goes Wrong; an animal develops a debilitating case of maggots-in-the-ears, the tractor smokes and sputters, a waterline freezes, the dogs kill a lamb. This is not for want of capable farmsitters. To the contrary the help we’ve hired is, historically, overqualified, capable, well-read, respectful and kind.  Rather, the inevitable happens whether we are here or not.  Our Systems are overly nuanced making it rather painstaking to describe solutions over the phone and unfair to the good kind soul who volunteered for a weekend of light farmwork.

As I write, there is a heifer out of the cow pen, eating dropped bits of hay. She is free to the world, able to, should she choose, saunter to town or go shit on the hood of my car [blessedly the latter has happened but the former has not, yet]. One heifer does not an emergency make. An hour earlier, before our walk, three were out. 

Heifers are the most disagreeable of cows as they are full sized and not yet burdened by calf.  This results in a propensity for adventure and mischief [qualities I favor in human women but find unduly troublesome in our cow-nterparts]. My solution an hour earlier was to run at them as a madwoman, dogs in tow, scaring them back into the pen. Now I sit here, at my desk, writing -a beer, nearly empty and aggressively gripped in one hand- watching a new heifer flaunt my attempt at a fence. I’m not alone in my vigil. I can see, from my perch at the computer, the herd watching her from behind the dubious strand of un-electrified poly wire that we blithely thought might keep them at bay. 

The herd is fighting their collective Cow Brain. They know it is our preference that they not cross the fence. They know that when they do they often find themselves chased by a pair of dogs and a madwoman. They know too that one of their number has crossed the fence and seems to be enjoying herself and a fresh bit of hay. They are struggling with all of this logic. We are about an hour shy of sunset at which point it is my hope they forget the temptation and fall asleep. 

A herd of 20 cows galloping through snow is not an easy group to tame with an infant strapped to ones chest.

Clearly the fence needs to be reinforced. But this is why -nearly always- at least one of us remains behind. It would be irresponsible [shitty] to leave a farmsitter with such a likely doomed scenario. 

Because we are required here to supervise such unfolding scenarios we put great stock in our daily walks. Today we went chasing the setting sun in the old hay field. Amelia trotted along attached to my chest, blinking, and occasionally letting out happy sighs while we watched the dogs somersault over one another through the snow. The four of us making slow but good-natured progress. 

We made it to the old hay fields and spun around to face the sun that was already obscured by some taller trees. We blinked, searched our pockets in hopes of a mid-walk treat: a nib of chocolate or a stale almond but came up only with a few bits of lint, an egg shell and a trio of rusty screws.  Disappointed but sated from the walk and sun we set back towards home. Limping stoically through the deepish snow. 

Amelia was asleep by the time we reached the house. I lay her down in her crib. She had lost both shoes, apparently, as I unwrapped the sling to find her only in socks. Fortunately it wasn’t cold -warm by some perverted Vermont standard- so Amelia survived the walk to the far fields without frostbite. The shoes will melt out in May and they will be a happy, forgotten, sodden treasure when they are found.

In the middle of writing to you the cows did overcome their brains and charged through the fence. The break of the levee poured them en masse from the cow yard into the Open Farm. With great resignation I finished my beer,  grabbed sleeping Amelia from her crib, stuffed her into a wooly and sling and ran at them -this time with a shovel so as to appear menacing. One sight of me and they all scurried like bad lambs back to their cow yard. We poured a kettle of hot water on the frozen barn gates and locked them in for the night, leaving the fence-fixing for tomorrow. 

Amelia and I skipped proudly home; I feeling intolerably smug in my role as MotherFarmer and Amelia thrilled with the adrenaline of galloping beasts. It wasn’t until I had undone her from the tangles of the sling that I noticed I had wrangled cows in my underpants. Such is my mental state that I can hold a 7 month old while running through a foot of snow to terrify a herd of cows through the small mouth of the barn gate but I am incapable of remembering or realizing the need for pants.

The Lunacy of February

February is my least favorite month. Fortunate then, for its 28 days. 30, or worse 31 and I would have left Vermont after that first winter. It snows every day in February. A law passed by the state legislature in 1892 requires it so. Coupled with a bone chilling cold and an utter lack of sun we spend hours looking at photos of summer wondering at the possibility.

Snow at this point in our winter has lost all novelty. Oh, its snowing says the mistress of the house as she descends in her pajamas that were yesterday's clothes. Not, Oh! the exclamation when one has found a forgotten stash of Christmas chocolate. Rather, Oh, the resignation when your mate suggests cuddling up to The Walking Dead instead of The Good Wife.

Some afternoons, after shepherding my son from house to car to co-op to car to house the guilt of his winter imprisonment overcomes. There is a break in the snow.  I stuff his chunky appendages into tubes of wool and tunnels of down. I wedge the hand-me-down-woolen blob that was once my son into his sled and pile ratty blankets reserved for this purpose all around him. He is sufficiently shielded from Winter with only the triangle of his eyes and nose visible. The absence of any screaming tells me I can proceed. I tie the sled off to my belt and mush forth.

We ascend the driveway, just a half mile to the top. The mailbox sits there and provides our walk a humble goal. I gingerly unfold the broken mouth. Oh! bills. I'm forever optimistic in my expectation of a package. It is unreasonable as they never come of their own volition and I never order anything online to warrant one.

Disappointed I turn to head home. My small shadow is still stoic and breathing, watching the dogs smell each other's marked trees. I stuff the bills into a pocket that I suspect carries a broken egg. With gloves it hard to distinguish between an egg yolk and an eyeball but my money is on the egg. It will have been the third broken one this week. And we are not a household that can afford such carelessness.

Our chickens are laying one egg a day. 29 hens producing one egg. Curiously, its almost never the same egg. They've decided, collectively, that one egg a day should keep us off their backs 'til spring, so I reckon they take turns. With every $20 bag of organic scratch we bring them I do the humiliating math. Three bucks per egg returned.  If we were better farmers these hens would be stew birds in the freezer by now. We have a soft spot for old layers...and motherless lambs, and mean knobby kneed goats, and 3 legged pigs, and mastitic dairy cows. Farming for us has always been a delicate balance of hoarding lunacy and responsible shepherding.

We are nearly home. I slide in behind Leland and we sail downhill the last hundred meters to the front porch. I roll Stay Puft through the front door. As I begin to unravel the wooly layers the reality of our return to prison hits my tiny son. He screams, a guttural awful noise. I hold him as the angering reality of mid winter courses through. A piece of buttered raisin toast seems to appease him and within minutes he is chewing thoughtfully in front of the fire. I sink  into the sofa on the far side of the cell and look outdoors. Oh, its snowing I say to nobody.

August 30th, 2014

It turns out we weren't legally married on that day.  Getting married requires more timely paperwork than either Nick or I care to complete. Which is to say, not a lot, but the combination of marriage license, visits to the town clerk, and the expiration of said license, proved a powerful and ultimately worthy nemesis for me and my "husband". We got married, legally, just recently on January 1st in the living room of our dear friends Melissa and Brent Jordan in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Which was a good 4 months past the day we will always think of as our anniversary.

The exact date of marriage doesn't matter for our purposes here. Nor does it matter for the purposes of the events surrounding August 30th. Because, with or without the seal of the state, Nick and I committed ourselves to one another on that day. We did so on our land, under two wickedly ancient and twisty apple trees, with our son as our witness.

At the risk of sounding like white laced cliché, it was the wedding I dreamed of. At least it was the wedding my thirty-year-old-bohemian-wannabe-exhausted-mother-frantic-farmer-self had dreamed of.

It was a modest affair. Mostly immediate family and local friends. A handful flew thousands of miles or drove cramped hours to be with us and for that we were humbled. We said our vows in the far northern field, overlooking the farm. Our beautiful friend Brent married us. Our fathers read poetry. Nick's entire family cried. My good Episcopalian family kept it together.  My sister and Jacob played us music they had written for the occasion. Leland insisted on nursing while I read my vows.

We walked the whole gang across the farm and at three long tables ate and supped in the belly of the new barn.

Those tiny sentences seem inadequate to describe the love, the joy, the drink, the music that filled the farm on that fine day. But I am not long for words these days as this absent blog can attest. So I allow here the photos to fill in the rest.

Photos 1-10 by Ben Jacks and Photos 11-20 by Ben Fleishman

Half Diary of June 2014

I'm cheating. Did you know you could back date posts? I do but I can't figure it out. Today is Feb. 7th and I am finally posting the diary of farm observations I wrote back in June. So, I am not backdating but backtracking. I would apologize for such slimy behavior, but I want desperately to write here again with some frequency and to do so I must delude myself into thinking this space hasn't been so deserted.

Reading about the mundanities of June in February feels forbidden and good. It was disappointing to see I couldn't even get through half a month of observations but June is a crazed month and so it is unsurprising. I can tell you, the last 15 days were filled with fireflies, many house guests, and grass that grew like weeds.

June 1st. Buttercup. Dandelions.  Coyotes were very loud tonight. Nick and Hawkeye slept on the porch to keep them back.
June 2nd. Timber-framers are back. Beginning to put together main story of the barn. They've spent the winter notching, sanding and oiling. Now it is a veritable 'game' of lincoln logs.
Planted winter's squash, watermelon, cucumbers, string beans and dried beans, eggplant and peppers. Mulching with one of the remaining round bales per the suggestion of a friend whom I trust implicitly with matters of the garden. Seems very good and thick, but I'm concerned with the heat of the fermented grass against the starts.
June 4th Hawkweed (orange and yellow) and Aster flowering.
June 5th Planted the flower garden.
June 7th very warm June. High 80s. The pond is magnificent. Winnie calved! Bull calf. Will definitely steer him.
June 8th Great Blue Heron stalking salamanders in the pond.
June 9th Built fence. Vetch and clover are flowering. Lupine too. Brush hogged spring pasture. Have had to water the gardens every day. No rain to speak of.
red clover are flowering. Lupine is flowering. Brush hogged spring pasture.
June 11th. Daisies & Bedstraw flowering.
June 12th Mama snapping turtle crossing by Laurel and Henry's. Moved it. They think its the same one they've seen a few years running now.

Diary of May 2014

Before June gets too far along I thought it prudent to post the farm ledger for May. May was a hot gorgeous month with very little rain. We are making up for that now in sodden June (but more on that for the next post). Suffice to say, we got sunburned and it felt deserved and restorative after the winter we went through.

To watch the way in which the frozen earth here in Vermont has melted and become so viciously alive again is humbling in a way that hitherto was foreign for me. It is hard to reconcile that just a mere 2 months ago our house was encased with snow and ice. Here we are, as was promised, reddened from sun, not from cold. Sleeping on the porch. Fencing sheep in undies and a t-shirt. Dancing naked on the rocks of the pond. Worshiping the closeness of a sun we forgot could give such warmth.

May was a spectacular month.

May 3rd:  ramp harvest. 20 lbs in 2 hours. It was our first "date". My parents were up and watched Leland.
May 4th: Trevor  up for a visit and Vermont buying trip. Bought all of our ramps. We have vague plans to harvest again but I honestly can't imagine we will without somebody here to watch the babe.
May 9th:  Tractor clutch died, has to be trucked to the shop. Nearly runs Nick right through the back of the equipment shed.
May 10th:  Albert (the bull) breaks out of stall. Mounts Annabelle. Possibly breeds her. Nick's mother visiting and caring for Leland.
May 11th:  With tractor broken and no way to feed out remaining 4 round bales we are putting everyone on pasture earlier than expected. Cows out. Mamas and babies and Winnie in one pasture. Albert and steers in adjacent pasture.
May 12th:  Walked Bella, Annabelle and Busy over to pasture at the neighbors for 2 months. The walk over began as complete chaos but we managed to end rather gracefully just in time for the audience of our neighbors.
May 13th: Found a home for the two doelings and the buck. Going to keep and milk Chickadee, but cannot have a herd of goats, however small. Must focus on the sheep and pigs.
May 14th: Rototilled a new kitchen garden. Just a few paces West from last year's, but I think the combination of the slight change in space and raised beds should result in a dried, healthier garden.
May 15th:  Raleigh (the boar 5 month old) is trying to breed Rose. The height difference may be hard to overcome for a few more months. He is a little pig with tremendously large balls.
May 16th:  (evening) Wicked downpour. The kind of rain that makes you sit up straight in bed. A freight train of a storm.
May 17th:   I found one of our milking Devon mamacows with lying on her side this morning with her horn stuck in the ground. Despite attempts to get her up and a call for the vet she died. Possibly bloat. Possibly grass tetany according to the vet.
May 17th: (evening)  middle of the night Monsieur (our first and oldest rooster) carried away by a fox.
May 18th: Planted potatoes with mom and dad (in mulch, not in dirt?!?!).
May 20th:  Forest flowers abound. Alpine strawberries. Trillium. Spring beauties. Violets. Sheep shearing this afternoon with Mary.
May 21st:  Moved sheep to garden pasture
May 22nd: Asparagus harvest! Bed looks to be in pretty bad shape. Mental note to pay attention to it.
May 24th: My 30th birthday.  Chickadee kidded, 2 boys.
May 26th: Second kid born died but he didn't look good to begin with; planted 36 tomato starts.
May 27th: First kid born died. Selenium deficiency? Asparagus beetles in the asparagus bed.
May 28th: first kale, chard, and arugula harvest. Anxiously searched for morels.  Misha found one, but way past its time. Rumors of a man finding hundreds in the next town over. Angry with myself for not knowing my property well enough yet as to know where she hides her mushroom jewels.
May 29th: Wild chervil is blooming. Fortunately none on found on the farm, yet, but pervasive nearly everywhere we drive.
May 31st:  Took the VW to New Hampshire to see Nick and Lindsay get married. Camped in bus with baby who slept like a....baby.

Insta-update

This is (frivolous) public service announcement that my Instagram handle has been changed to longestacresfarm.  Much more official with the addition of "farm", isn't it? There you can find me harassing farm animals and tickling my baby. That is, sadly, all for today.

Declining baselines/ Diary of April 2014

Last summer I read an article in Orion by Derrick Jensen regarding what he terms declining baselines. 
I won't bother going into too much detail about the article as it was succinct and poignant in a way that I will not be able to capture. Go read it instead. To be brief he defines declining baselines as "the process of becoming accustomed to and accepting as normal worsening conditions." Specifically the worsening conditions of our natural world. His personal example is of the euphoric reaction he had to seeing a black bear, a pair of silver foxes and a raccoon in his backyard all in one day. His euphoria is dampened when he remembers that it used to be common (pre-Europeans) for a man to see a grizzly bear once every fifteen minutes in his region. Thus was the richness and density that existed once in the wild world.

In Jensen's conclusion he begs of the reader a more conscious and observant relationship with their natural world. He argues we need to be aware of our natural world so that we can truly love it and when we begin to lose it we can fight for what we loved. Be it in a city or on a farm there are annual events that we always celebrate (cherry blossoms, daffodils, fireflies) and those we may not notice (robins, wild geese, black flies). Jensen requests of the reader to keep a diary of their annual observations to note for when you first see a harbinger of the new season and how many. We need to observe, then love, then feel the pain of loss of our natural world, then fight. Our baseline stops declining; we know what we are missing.

It is a painful request but one I think we should be moved to heed. After such a wild winter of Arctic Blasts and record lows in Vermont and elsewhere, it is so obvious that this climate is changing and so heartbreakingly oblivious we all wish to remain.

I have mixed my observations of the natural world in with that of the farm. In attempts to look back year after year and see the chorus and the dissonance between farm lives and the wild ones. As with climate change the rhythms of our farm too will be forced to change.  It has always been my romantic intention to get an oversized leather bound ledger in which I would sit at a big desk (that I don't have) and write in a sloping penmanship (that I can't sustain) with a silver fountain pen (that I have lost) the daily brief of the farm and of this land. But, this will have to do for now.

Here is my diary for April. It is my intention to keep one for every month of every year. Perhaps I won't bore you with it here, but to record it nonetheless.

April  1st: Nasty ice storm last night and into today. Ardea lambed. Boy and a girl, we brought them to the upstairs part of the little barn where I formed a makeshift jug.

April 2nd: Still very much covered in snow, about 2 feet. Saw a black bear around 5pm crossing the back pasture. There is some snow melt around the base of the apple trees there and it appears he was having a little late winter snack.  Sap running. Black capped chickadees and the occasional raven remain the only birds we see, though morning songs of other birds have begun but unable to identify. Must work much harder at my bird studies.

April 4th:  Heard, but did not see, the honking of a flock of Canadian geese overhead. They must have seen the ice covered pond and the snow on pastures, and thought better of landing. Mud season has begun in earnest on our roads. Driveway holding up well! Twin lambs born today to Otus, a boy and a girl.

April 7th night:  Massive rain, thunder, and wind storm. A few trees down. Much snow melted.

April 11th: The thaw began in earnest this week. About 6inches left to go on front pasture and woods. Back pasture nearly bare. The creek is raging.

April 12th:  First sightings of robins on front pasture. A pair of geese and two pairs of ducks land in the pond. Hawkeye has tried to persuade them to leave, to no avail. The swimming rocks are covered in shit.

April 13th: Four white-tailed does spotted by the apple trees where I saw the black bear. Moose tracks found running along the driveway and then crossing into the woods behind the sugar shack.

April 14th: High of 75F. Ice completely melted. Pastures melted. Snow remaining only in the shadows. North facing woods are draining in earnest. There is a bustling vernal streams that has formed cutting apart the lower driveway. Two vernal pools at the top of the driveway, one draining to the south, the other draining towards the homestead to the north.  Sap still running, our woods are cooler than most. Than man who sugars here expects we will have another week of sap here before the trees bud.

April 15th: We have had very loud geese in our pond every day since Saturday.   Hawkeye is beside himself. Full moon tonight.

April 16th: Nellie lambed. Twin girls. She has rejected the second (born nearly 3 hours after the first). We now have a house lamb.

April 18th: Planted arugula, beets, radishes, carrots, and peas in the raised beds that are workable.

April 20th: The bull broke through the door of his stall. We fear he may have bred Annabelle, which means a young mother and a chilly calf in the middle of next winter.

April 21st: Truly beautiful, summer weather. Took the goats on much needed walk. Still some snow in the forest. Nick foolishly wore Chacos on the walk.

April 22nd: Weeded the asparagus bed, no signs of spears yet.

April 24th: Given 25 raspberry canes, three gooseberries, and one black currant by a neighbor. Planting all afternoon!

April 25th: First peepers beginning their song. Very faint but definitely there.

April 16th: Getting back to splitting firewood. A task that was made much too difficult with all the snow in March.

April 28th: Bella calved, a heifer. Ramps are up.

April 29th: The peepers have begun their chorus in earnest now. It is nearly deafening at night outdoors. The unmistakable greening of the pastures. Especially the south facing cow pastures across the brook. Little bits of clover sticking up through the winter-killed grass.

April 30th: In an act of simultaneous desperation and unbridled optimism, moved the sheep on to pasture that needs the hay seed and manure. 6 hours later, in the dark, I ran the lambs and mamas back into the barn under the nasty attack of an icy downpour.

identity

Leland will be nine months next week and as I write that I stop and count the months twice, with fingers, to be sure, because it doesn't seem possible. I can't decide if it should be fewer or more than nine. Against my instincts, I yield to the math and move on.  For nine months then, my identity has been (nearly) wholly that of a mother. It gave way to farmer, daughter, sister, and partner. For the past 9 months I haven't been a runner, a friend, a baker, a woman who bathes or a blogger. I have been a mother, and it has required all of me. I've gone running once a month, and blogged even less frequently.  I forget to call my parents, my sister, and my girlfriends. I haven't been a particularly present or supportive partner to Nick. I barely see my animals but for the rare occasion of doing morning chores in Nick's stead.  Then, it is only to toss hay in their braying mouths and stomp on  frozen water buckets, curse the shit, the mud and the shit and finally shuffle back towards the house through the mountain of snow and ice that befell our land this winter.

I won't go into exhaustive detail about how much I love my son, as it is irrefutable that I do. My identity as a mother has become by far my most cherished. Yet, in the past few months, the need to attend to my other identities has grown frantic. I yearn to return to work in the pastures, woods, garden and barn. I ache to work my body to physical exhaustion and pain. I whimper at the promise to spend an unadulterated hour with another adult.

Naturally, the Doom and Gloom of this has been made bleaker by the wickedness of this winter. We have had more snow longer and colder than the Vermonters I ask can remember. I am obvious in my leading questions....This much snow in March isn't common....right? March is always the final winter kick to the nuts isn't it? It was especially wicked here. A neighbor called yesterday to talk trees, but talk turned to weather as it always does around here and he mentioned it was the coldest Vermont March on record (since 1884).  Which is both as unsettling as it is oddly comforting. We survived, with barely enough wood, with the luxury of propane just in case. And while we're at it, warm water on tap. And fully insulated walls. I imagine a colder March pre-1884 would have made little mewing kittens out of us.

But in the past four days Vermont began to succumb to the inevitability of Spring. With temps in the 50s our roads have melted, the fields will be next. We missed a snowstorm last weekend by a matter of 50 miles. Instead we got blessed rain. The thaw has me back outdoors. Shuttling animals around between the two barnyards. Sheep in with cows, pigs in with goats and chickens. Makes more sense than the reverse though the goats are indignant with the change.

We're beginning to plan the daily and weekly schedule of the summer and even talking of enrolling Leland in the local daycare a couple of mornings a week to free me up for more farmwork. I've been running more times in the past two weeks than in all of the 8 months of Leland's life leading up to them. I've got a routine baking English muffins and sourdough every Friday. I'm even planning a few days on the Vineyard with a girlfriend next week.

I'm becoming Kate again. Not just momKate. More KatemomKate. As with every step I have taken since I became a mother, I have found the one of reclaiming parts of my pre-baby life exceedingly humbling.

Crawling out of hibernation.

I've often thought of writing you. As the days keep running by, despite Winter's interminable stay, not one goes by when I don't think to myself, Ah! That would make a good blog icebreaker!

Like when the mercury barely crawled about zero for a week, and our roads and paths were pure ice. Every time we went to collect eggs one of us would fall, smashing all the precious edible gold every day, for nearly a week. It wasn't much to write on but it was sure entertainment in a bad farm sitcom way. Oh no! Not AGAIN! She exclaims, covered in frozen yoke. [[cue laugh track]]

Or the time I trudged up the cellar stairs with a plastic container fished from the bowels of one of our three freezers filled with the summer's haul. I announced proudly to my mother, Nick, and Leland that I would make chicken liver paté out of its contents, only for Nick to turn and laugh. I had found, not the livers, but my very own placenta, packaged discretely and hurriedly in a yogurt container, thrown into the freezer with the vague thought of planting it someday under a tree (but what sort of tree!?) to commemorate Leland's birth. A warning to all future visitors: It now currently resides in the upstairs freezer as I have become a woman of old bones who doesn't like to walk back down the very stairs I had ascended 10 minutes earlier.  

I thought about writing to speculate on the pregnancies or general fatness of my ewes. The white ewe is the size of a large truck. So flat and wooly on top that it isn't uncommon to see a chicken or two riding her back around the barnyard. I have spent many a breastfeeding (currently, my lone moments for reading) pouring over the lambing sections of our sheep husbandry books. I am a snarl of anxiety and excitement for the arrival of lambing. I am also uncertain as to their expected due date. I (shamefully) blame the baby for my lack of records last year. All I can be certain of is that they will lamb (if they are bred and not just fat) some time between last Friday and May. Which means I am checking their broad backsides and squeezing little sheep teats every morning in hopes of more precise information.

I thought about writing regarding our newest house-pig, Raleigh.  A boar piglet we brought back from North Carolina. He is wickedly cute and is currently a porch gargoyle. Emerging from his kennel stuffed with hay to snort and greet visitors. He and our one-year old German Shepard are bosom buddies, sleeping together on the dog bed and taking walks with each other up the drive way looking for Trouble.

I very nearly wrote you last Saturday when I saw two robins on my drive home, just 15 miles south of our farm. I almost missed them, they floated right up above my window, and then dived away to the side as I sped down the narrow road by the river. I've thought about that pair nearly everyday since, wondering if it was a mirage. Not 500 yards further a flock of snow buntings danced above a hay field thick with a foot of snow ice. They are birds of two separate seasons, requiring two separate kinds of pasture. I must have imagined the robins.  And so, there was little to write to you about there, except for the sad hope of a woman who wants to see spring under the blanket of March.

I stayed away from the blog this winter, because this winter has been about Nick and I and Leland getting to know each other. Watching our son grow has been the incredible lesson in humility and love I had hoped it to be. And that is mostly a private (and beautiful) matter, not fit for here, for me and my hopes of this space. It has been restorative to take this break (with the occasional peak into our lives and the lives of our friends via Instagram).

But I write to you today. Nick is at his new off-farm job, running a lab that tests milk samples for local cheesemakers (hooray for off-farm income!). Leland is sleeping. So are the pigs, the cows, the sheep and goats, and chickens. It is midday on March 10th. Everyone is fed. The snow is beginning to fall again with a week of steady snow promised. There is nothing much to do but revel in the quiet of winter. It is now that we must revel in its beauty, in is unrivaled silence. The rest is not eternal, no matter how long winter wears on. Summer is coming and our days will soon be filled with the physical exhaustion the farm demands. It isn't long now until I find myself, inexplicably covered in cow shit, weeding the tomatoes, and from the tiredness abandon my post to lay prostrate under the July sun. Catching my breath and shirking my garden duties I will surely fish my phone out of my short's pocket to fondle photos of this white and frozen landscape and think, ahh! I long for the rest of winter!

So I took the quiet of today to welcome myself back to this space I hold so dear. I look forward to writing to you again soon.  But for now one of the dogs just let in the aforementioned gargoyle (pig) and he is tearing into a bag of flour.....I must be off!

The above, are photos of our recent trip to my cousin's farm in North Carolina. Not of Vermont in the winter time, no matter how much I wish it to be so.