I relaxed my grip on reality, sensing I was in for another rural life lesson. Seems in 1969, Laura and Leonard’s van had its final spasm of death on the road bordering my farm, at the exact moment that Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country” boogie was playing on the radio. This portentous event meant they had been directed to that very spot by cosmic forces. So, they had been living in the woods behind my farm ever since. That’s over forty years of subsistence hermitage, earning them a mythological persona of mixed valence in the local community. They had a small but committed cadre of supporters, Sarah being one of them. No one knew where Laura and Leonard lived, exactly, because they moved camps frequently and were, well, socially retiring. Their forest craft was so skillful that they could not be found unless they wanted to be found.
And that was Sarah’s dilemma. Laura had a severe tooth ache and had asked to be seen at the local community clinic. A dentist willing to do pro-bono work had been located and would be there in two days. Usually Laura visited the library a few times per week to read, get warm, and stay connected to the millennium. However, she hadn’t been seen recently, and time was becoming urgent.
I was sympathetic to Sarah’s plight but wasn’t sure how I would get a message to these ghost creatures. Sarah paused. “How about I come by early tomorrow and we search together? Just a short hike in the woods.” Sure, I thought, I could use some social contact myself.
The morning was cold and damp, with curtains of mist obscuring the contours of the forest. At those moments, it can feel in our dense, coastal woods as though the veil between the physical and spiritual world is lofting open, allowing all manner of creatures to pass through. Sarah selected a promising path, but soon it began closing in on us. We stumbled through underbrush, our feet tripped by vining maple and our clothes snagged by blackberry thorns—or were they ghost fingers pulling us down? We didn’t stop to inspect, instead calling louder to Laura and to reassure ourselves with the sound of our own voices. At one point, in a hollow of a tree, we found a cache of poles and black plastic tarp secured with baling twine resourced from the farm. We were initially encouraged that we might be close to their campsite, but it was just a cache. They probably had dozens hidden throughout the forest.
The trail opened into a small clearing. Probably an old campsite, but no sign of residence now. There were paths leading toward the creek, but made by who or what? Going where? When? Impossible to say. The undergrowth gave way to moss and rock and the sound of rushing waters.
Creekside, we came across Laura’s handiwork. A pole bridge lashed together with bailing twine, knotted with an economical precision honed from a life in the woods. It was both durable and ephemeral. Sound enough for us to cross but soon it would be overtaken by seasonal floods. It stood as an expression of a life attuned to the transience of nature.
The hour was growing late. Sarah was due back at the library, and my sheep needed feeding. We surrendered to the enormity of the forest and instead wrote Laura a note, wrapped it in a sandwich baggie, and tied it to the railing of the bridge. Then we left.
We never located Laura, but we did find a new friendship. Sarah and I realized the hike had been an adventure—an adventure worth repeating. To this day, I start my mornings with a cup of coffee, a brisk hike, and the companionship of a woman who will trudge the coastal forests to deliver a message of assistance to the less fortunate. That was worth finding.
And after a fashion, we did find Laura. We found her trails and her woods. We smelled the moist earthiness of moss and ferns. We saw mist swirl and envelope her trees, only to be broken by shafts of sunlight striking through to forest floor. We heard the thousand-voiced calls of rocks splashed by water as her creek rushed to the ocean. We found her bridge and her expressions of life in these woods. In the end, was she ever really lost except to us?
And did Laura ever find our note in time to keep the appointment? Sarah didn’t know. A week later I went to the barn to toss the morning hay to the sheep. Suspended from a rafter was an origami lamb, made of tufts of wool and strips of woven cedar bark. Attached to the lamb was the note we left at the bridge with “thank you” scratched on the back. Seems I made two friends that day. One from the sunlight and one from the mist.
THE SHEAR OF SHEEP
February is sheep shearing time in our little valley. I didn’t know this until Brick announced it one morning over coffee. You want to shear before the ewes are too pregnant to handle but close enough to delivery to count. Our sheep are sheared to make the delivery more hygienic and reduce risks of fly strike, rather than for the wool. We shear in late February for those reasons … and because it’s when Jesse is available. Professional shearing is not a job that many entertain as a career path. When Jesse is available, we shear.
The first task in shearing is getting the sheep in the barn. They have to be put up overnight so the wool is dry. That involves moving the sheep. Being wiser now, we signed a prenuptial before attempting to move them. Moving sheep is one thing. Getting them in a barn, which requires prodding them through a little door into a dark room, is another. They would stack up at the entrance, refusing to budge. Then one would leap over the entire wool jam to freedom. Then they would all break and run in every direction. Round up and repeat with added emphasis. Around the fourth revolution it just becomes déjà-vu.
This time, with the sheep in stack formation, we decided not to push but to consider our options and out-think them. We conferred. Neither of us had an alternative option. The sheep looked at us. I read willful resistance in their eyes. Greg felt sure it was a surly, mocking reproach. Then one just walked through the door. The others watched for a moment, then stampeded in. We raced to latch the door shut. Yeah, that’s how we do it. Out-think them.
Next morning a beat-up farm truck deposited a middle-aged man with stiff joints and a calloused face in front of our barn. He went in, surveyed the barn, came out, and told us to get more lights or forego the shearing. We wasted no time in scrounging enough lights to do surgery in the stall he would use as his work station. He secured long, spring-loaded arms for his electric shearers to the stall wall, then oiled his shearers and checked his supply of replacement blades. This was followed by back stretches to limber up and substituting his shearing moccasins for his boots. By the end of the day, the floor would become so slick with lanolin that only the moccasins would hold a grip. He was ready.
Greg waded into the flock, grabbed a victim by one leg and walked it backwards to Jesse, who flopped it onto its back. Beginning with the belly, Jesse cut the entire fleece off in one piece, flipping the ewe between his legs as he went. When it was done, the ewe was released while I opened the gate. With its modesty assaulted, the naked ewe jumped to its feet and, after collecting what dignity it could, trotted out of the barn. I gathered the fleece into a twelve-foot burlap fleece bag while Jesse was already flopping over his next customer. It went like that all day until the sheep were shorn and the shearer’s back was shredded.
It was late afternoon, but the dark barn held the chill and Jesse gladly accepted a hot cup of coffee. While he packed, he reviewed the age and conditions of our ewes, making suggestions for culling to improve the herd. We talked weight and price and which brokers could be trusted and what other farmers were doing to respond to the ever-fickle lamb market. Then he arched an eyebrow and noted that our dark barn made it one of the least desirable stops during his season. Greg took note, knowing that if Jesse dropped us, he would be the likely replacement. A barn rehab just moved to the top of Greg’s priority list.
Not all the sheep were sent to the pasture. Romeo went sullenly back to his bachelor’s quarters until next breeding season.
The following morning, just looking at all those naked sheep during feeding made me feel cold and irresponsible. I had spent the better part of the year learning to recognize the uniqueness of each of my ewes and now I couldn’t tell them apart. Naked is just naked. I consoled myself that the grass was already greening and spring was just aro
und the corner. Of course, then it snowed. School was canceled. We made the news in Portland. The sheep glared at me. I wondered at our luck with farming—shearing sheep and then it snows.
TURKEY EGGS
In March, our turkey hen began laying eggs. When she achieved a sizable clutch, she set on them. A week into it, she fell victim to a coon attack. To our surprise, the tom took over. For the next three weeks he did not budge from his task. Then one morning I heard the persistent chirping of hatchlings. I tried to get a peek, but father tom was having none of it. Each morning brought a larger chorus of peeps. Initially I decided to leave well enough alone, until I found a dead poult pushed out of the nest. After this I decided to be more active in my monitoring.
Over the next few days the mortality rate rose alarmingly. Two chicks disappeared—rats, I assumed. One chick drowned in the watering tank; two others suffocated under the weight of the tom. Time for an intervention. Driving the tom off with a stick, I scooped the remaining poults into a cardboard box. Off to the kitchen infirmary where I could keep a close eye on them while they basked under a heat lamp. A dozen remained. I drew my line in the sand, death would take no more. These chicks were going to be birds.
What I had yet to understand is that turkeys have a will to die. In short order, two went limp and fell under their sibling horde’s trampling feet. I scooped them up and stuck them into my bra. After all, a line in the sand is … well, kind of scratchy actually. Nestled against my breast, they both revived.
It was at that moment that Greg came in for a water break. From the cubby next to the stove, he noted the box of fuzzy chirps.
He took his time. “So, looks like we’re raising turkeys in the kitchen now. I have just one question. Are the birds coming to us or are we going to the birds?”
“Don’t worry, it’s temporary.” I launched into the whole story about the tom with infanticidal tendencies. I almost had Greg convinced that this was rational behavior until a chick popped its head out of my bra. There was a pause. Greg was looking at me with a turkey chick sprouting from my breast. I decided to act busy and started washing dishes in the sink. The chick launched a furious storm of “feed me” peeps. I tried humming but I’m afraid a chirping bra was a touch over the plausibility threshold.
He put his glass in the sink. “Please tell me this is not a new food fad, like grass-fed beef or free-range chicken, because breast-fed turkey breast just doesn’t have the same panache.”
I hit him. And he’s lucky that’s all I did.
Still, he was right. We had crossed into some new distortion of reality. The farmer feeding chickens in a cocktail dress, with turkeys in her bra. Well, so be it.
I wasn’t there in time for every poult that went down. When the brood dropped to eight, I was in trouble. Without inventory, you don’t have a business. That’s when I discovered the Neiman-Marcus of poultry catalogs—Murray McMurray. A week later I had a dozen new poults to supplement my declining stock.
The kitchen was warm and bright and convenient for monitoring, but as with all silver clouds there was a dark lining. Mine was a black cat. Bezel repositioned his napping spot atop the turkey cage. Every so often he would rise from feigned slumber and stretch the length of his arms through the bars and wiggle his little paw fingers at the poults. They responded with a chorus of alarmed chirps and sidled, en masse, to the other corner of the cage. Bezel would then hunch up into a pouty scowl waiting for one bird to not notice his intense predatory gaze. Meanwhile, the mice ran free.
It’s a funny thing about raising birds in a kitchen. One day everything is fresh and smelling of home-made cookies and the next day it’s rancid with bird drop and molting feathers. No longer small, downy balls of wonder, our chicks were now gangly teenagers. And like teens everywhere, it was time to push them out of the kitchen, but not fully into the world. We introduced them into the poultry yard in stages, allowing them a separate space before uniting with the adult birds. Turkeys are very territorial and will attack strangers.
Greg was happy to get his kitchen back. Bezel was initially despondent at the loss of bird hunting options in our house but recovered sufficiently to place the mice on notice. The turkeys grew into silly, beautiful birds—but that’s a story for another time. For now, I was still in the turkey business. Humbled in my ambition, modest in my launch, but with sufficient inventory to be commercial. I was farming.
BARN BUILDING
“Morning.” Brick was coming through the front door with our newspaper in hand as Greg was rushing off to work. I was pouring coffee. I passed a cup to Brick as he passed it on to Greg.
“Go make us some money.” Brick hollered
“Your tax dollars at work.” Greg saluted Brick with the cup and was gone.
Brick settled into his mayoral duties, reading the paper while taking account of the goings on of Hopping Frog Road. I told him of Jesse’s critique of our dark barn and the fear we could slip from his schedule. This drew Brick’s typical response: a toothy grin of anticipation. “Let’s go take us a look.”
Inside, our eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the musty old barn. Built in the 1930s, it stood three stories high with the top two stories designed to warehouse loose hay. The bottom story was divided between milking stations for dairy cattle and lambing stalls. The manure trough was still caked in poop from cattle that had been sold off in the 1970s. The floor sloped to the far right corner. From the outside, it was obvious where gutters had given way, pouring water under the foundation and washing out the rock pillars. So the job of rewiring the barn had just expanded into a new foundation as well. I began to feel the sensation of sinking again and the thought occurred that, maybe, there was merit to leaving the barn dark and me deluded.
And just to put the torpedo to that blissful pursuit of ignorance, Brick added, “With that manure sitting on those timbers for forty years, what you got is a rotting wood floor supported by a foundation of air.” I had a three-story building about to fall in on itself and all I could think of was the army of engineers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, roofers, crane operators, and a catering company that would be necessary to repair it.
Brick smiled again, “Good thing you got me to fix it.”
“You? I thought you were a logger, not a carpenter.”
“It’s all wood. Same principle. Measure once, cut twice, and glue the mistakes. Twelve bucks an hour. Should take two weeks, maybe longer depending on what I find when I open it up.”
I still looked skeptical. So he attempted some genuine reassurance. “It was built by loggers, it can be repaired by loggers.”
“Okay, let me check with Greg, when can you start?”
“Soon as I get my dog.”
I was skeptical again.
“There’s bound to be rats under those floor boards. The dog will take care of that.”
Well, of course. Or maybe we could go back to leaving it dark and let sleeping rats lie.
Three days later, Brick and his dog had the stalls torn out, the floor boards up, and the barn resting precariously on a network of bottle jacks. This was not pleasant work. When removed, each board proved an archeological treasure trove of calcified cow poop and fossilized varmint skeletons in perpetual repose. The barn itself was laid bare to its bones. The timbers were giant single trees stretching the length of the barn and set on pillars of rock (piers). The pier-and-post foundation made the barn portable. Just hitch a large team of horses and move it to a new location should the need arise, as in the creek flooding. Except, our barn had a sagging timber in the corner. It was punked to the point of cardboard. Brick sank his pocket knife through eighteen inches of wood as easily as opening a box at Christmas.
I looked in disbelief at the dimensions of this log and began to calculate the cost of replacing it with a commercial-grade beam. Of course I had momentarily forgotten our earlier conversation.
From the hay loft, Brick surveyed the forest until he saw the spire of a right-sized cedar. Out of the back of h
is truck came a chain saw. Thirty minutes later the cedar lay on the forest floor, neatly trimmed into a single log. But a log on the forest floor is a long way from being a timber in a barn foundation. The difference lies in the skill of logging.
As it so happens, Greg had just purchased a new tractor. To be clear, farmers use tractors, loggers use crawlers. Crawlers are short, powerful tractors with low centers of gravity and continuous treads used to skid logs to their intended destination. Tractors sit high off the ground to avoid mud and ground hazards, making them very tippy and not suited for logging. And did I mention, this was a new tractor? More specifically, this was Greg’s new tractor.
If you let little things, like reality, intrude on your plans, you’re probably not cut out to be a logger. And Brick is a logger’s logger. Up into the woods Brick went on Greg’s shiny new tractor. He chained the log to the front end loader, estimating just the right fulcrum to tip the log completely off the ground and, carrying his trophy like a leaf-cutter ant, chugged off the mountain. A slight shift or misguided bump could have toppled the tractor into a fatal roll down the mountain. At the bottom, he glided the tractor around in a smooth arc and lowered the log into place like a banker counting money. Across his face was a large, self-pleased grin. Brick was logging and loving it.
I stared in amazement. An hour ago that log had been a tree in the forest. With a little luck, it will still be supporting my barn a hundred years from now. Brick hopped down and detached the chains, then used the loader to fine-tune the alignment of the log. Then he used spikes to nail it in place. And that was it. He sat on the beam, patting his dog stretched across his lap.
“Tomorrow I’m going to fix the piers. After that we’re going to need lumber to replace the rotted floor boards. Should take a unit and a half of rough cut. They don’t sell that at Home Depot. I’ll call over at the mill, but you’re going to need someone to pick it up. Maybe Will Ridout’s hay truck could haul it.”
Country Grit: A Farmoir of Finding Purpose and Love Page 6