Category Archives: death

Bye-bye birdie

Perhaps I am in the entirely wrong frame of mind to write this, but getting it on paper (figuratively speaking) is helpful to me. I just buried Bonnie, one of my favorite chickens. She’s on the banner above. She laid our first egg. And this morning, she died in my arms. She was killed by a neighbor’s dog on the back deck of our house.

That it happened on the first day of spring, and likewise the fifth anniversary of the beginning of what we are calling The Iraq War is a bit ominous. Today is also Holy Thursday: a high holiday of hand-wringing in the Catholic and other Christian churches. Spring is supposed to be such a season of hope, of new beginnings. I hope that hope finds me somewhere, sometime, soon.

I ask myself: am I going around carrying a bagful of expectations? A file folder of Entitlements? I wonder.

Yes, I suppose it was not unreasonable of me to expect that a dog would come into my yard and find the chickens interesting: chickens ARE everyone’s favorite dish, after all. But why not take an obnoxious guinea, or one of our not-so-friendly chickens? I likewise expect (stupid of me, but there it is) my marriage to be a strong one, that my child grows up healthy and hearty and curious and happy. I expect my own health (mental and physical) to be good. I have a hope (can’t consider it an expectation) that we can continue to earn enough money to cover our basic needs.

I do expect my government to at least TRY to get out of this wasteful war. As an outlier, I expect it to admit that it was a mistake of our own making, so, hey, sorry to fuck up your country, why not just keep your oil profits from the oil you sell to us? We’ll gladly buy your oil, you know, as we’re too bullheaded to consider an alternative.

So this morning finds me considering the trappings of war in terms of electrified fences and other means to contain and secure the landholdings around here. I do not like this military mindset. Should the worst fears of many really come true, and Peak Oil and other disasters (all man-made of course) flesh themselves out into our worst nightmare, I suppose this is a mindset I need to embrace and keep. It wasn’t, believe me, why I moved to a farm.

I wish I had a job, though, where my main responsibility was to worry. Wow, would I be raking in the big bucks!

Maybe next year

If all these years of dirt-digging have taught me anything, the one thing I can definitely say is the word “Always” has no place in the garden.

I think there is something very gratifying in this statement, even though it’s a statement of insecurity. If there were an always, or a never, we would not try to plant things outside of our hardiness zone, or we would give up after one failed crop.

But it is a truism that pisses me off sometimes. I went into the main outdoor garden on Saturday, scissors and colander in hand, to retrieve some lacinato kale and parsley. I had a big pot of my navy beans boiling on the stove inside and needed the greenery to add to make soup. And lo, in the snow-covered garden, I was met with…green mush. What happened? This has never happened before, I have ALWAYS been able to harvest kale and parsley all year!

There is that word: always. It is humbling in its absence.

It also means that three seasons in one garden does not a pattern make, four is better and 15 better than that: I will know, in 2019, if I can expect kale and parsley to be reliably hardy. It means I have a lot of growing to do, too.

Alot at stake

The one thing I didn’t mention that happened Sunday evening, as I was washing up after my Grape-A-Thon, is that our well went out.

I can think of better ways to spend $5,000., can’t you?

But honestly, the well was the ONE thing we hadn’t replaced here on the homestead.

As seen from our front lawn
Saturday night as we were driving up the country road to our house I saw what I thought was steam coming off the nuclear power plant’s processors (it’s another 7-8 miles up the lake from us) and I thought: how would we know if something went wrong at that plant? Such is my life: the battery in the car had been recharged and the electronic code to restart the radio was in the glovebox, which was locked and jammed shut. A detail.

Driving closer I realized it was a fire. It was the fire of an abandoned farmhouse: a HUGE abandoned farmhouse of a defunct asparagus farm. We have (of course) explored the house in detail. We found mail, postmarked 1979, so it’s been vacant since then. There was still furniture in the house; many windows were missing, and raccoons were the only residents that we knew. I’ve been the diligent gardener and retrieved iris, sedum and columbine that had naturalized away from its old gardens. The barn had been burned to the ground a long time ago, but the well house and the outhouse and the tractor shed (complete with tractor) were still there.

When we first looked into the house, I had asked my husband what he thought were unusual about the walls and ceilings. It took him a couple of minutes, but he saw there were no outlets, switches or lights. There was wainscoting over most of the downstairs rooms. It was a 6×6 (six rooms up and down) and there was a larger kitchen attached to the back. The house was probably built around 1890.

I feel very sad about this loss. Yes, I would feel a lot sadder if the house had been inhabited. But I liked looking at its stately self up on its hill. I liked exploring its 100 acres, retrieving its asparagus, exploring its old rooms. Arson (for that is only what it could have been) is such a stupid crime.

I woke up our daughter to see it. “Honey, I hope you never see another one in your lifetime.”

Bloody Beatrice last night with a mouse tidbit (a gift from us after the cats were done with it)**

I got tagged by Monica a couple of days ago with a meme about “Six Weird Things About You.” Hmm. The rules indicate I should tag six other poor souls, but I think I will spare the lot of you. I had to think a bit, mainly because I am probably SO weird that I needed some help deciding on 6 things. So I asked my husband.

Here are the six things:

1. My husband. Seriously.

2. Even though I am a vegetarian of long standing, I can kill anything, usually without much hesitation. I figure I am channeling some farmer ancestors.

3. I have done much genealogical research, and I can’t find any farmer ancestors, or at least none for the past 5 generations.

4. I eat popcorn with a fork (but I lower my standards when at the movie theater).

5. I am really weird about old food. Three days, and it goes to the chickens.

6. Since 7th grade, I had painted nails. Long ones. Then I had the kid, and no more polish. Now I bite my nails. (What is up with THAT?)

Happy new year to you all!

**the red in the photo above? Not blood, just the glow of the brooder light we have in their coop. When they huddle under it, I am reminded of the roast station at an awful buffet-style dining establishment. Poor birds.