Yesterday was spent in sheer self-indulgence. What does that mean to this farmer? It means that the man who works for me came yesterday, did miscellaneous little things rather than big, serious, and obviously needed things. I had him cut up a downed apple tree for the Christmas fire and some pine branches for my French ceramic stove, the one that calls for hot-burning wood, pine or thorn apple. I painted the far side of a gate and a drop latch on another smaller gate that was left unpainted for both the lack of paint and the knowledge that only I could see the unpainted side. Ernest rebuilt a sawhorse I put down by the brook in which to cut up the kindling the beavers created when building their dam. He cut down a branch from the maple tree that obscured the view of the house from the road and in doing so caused said maple to appear to spread itself above and around the house in a broad embrace. An orange sign by the roadside announcing children at play was removed, since the children who played are no longer children. Some willow cut down a year ago was tied and brought to the wood room. And in all manner of things, details were arranged in ways creating order in my mind and took away, quietly, some of the pressure I live with every day. I think, when the pressures of life are so urgent, that it becomes necessary to lose sight of who one is as a way to protect oneself. But it is that personal self that provides solutions and a dimension of being without which one does not survive. Therein lies the dilemma.
I realized something the other day about writing stories for the county newspaper. I realized that they are the only way that people here in the town where I live have ever been able to get to know me. Oh, I have, as everyone does in a small town, a reputation. Partially true, partially false, and partially a creation of the minds of the storytellers. I have heard, of course, much of the unflattering aspects of what people think of me and, as human nature usually dictates, very little of any positive aspects of my reputation. The world knows I am poor, certainly. That is obvious. And, in being so, have some of the problems that most people do when survival is the key issue of their lives. However, because I have never actually integrated into the life in the village, or even the lives of my neighbors on the Creek, I have rarely had the opportunity to give to the community what my nature would wish. Some efforts have been rebuffed and others received in the spirit in which I intended. But I have rarely had the ability to give what I would really like to give, except in the weekly writing over the past eight years of the stories of the farm. There are several threads that I understand to be common throughout them all. And those threads are what I perceive to be the gift. I stand here on this farm, alone of course, but not quiet. Over a hundred sheep, two dogs, one donkey, one barn cat, three geese, one heifer, and a multiple of roosters and chickens disqualify me from considering myself to be absolutely alone, but it is to be understood what I mean. And that gift is the demonstration that it is possible, no matter how hopeless one’s life may seem or how impossibly difficult a situation, or how much of a sense of failure one’s heart can absorb, it is possible absolutely, without qualification, to hold on to one’s dream. Never, no matter what the circumstances, to let it go. If that can be my gift, it is the very best I have to give.
FEBRUARY DAYS, FEBRUARY NIGHTS
FEBRUARY, AND all I have ever known it to mean, brings with it a touch of dread to the mornings. Every day I steel myself to face the thermometer reading in the kitchen. With any luck the first number to greet me will be a sturdy forty-four degrees. Inside. And a pleasant twenty-two degrees outside. The only comfort in seeing forty-four degrees inside is the memory of my handwriting on a page one July morning. I had written: “kitchen 42 degrees, 6 A.M.” Last night the weather created an accident. Cold descended upon this farm with a ferocity of speed that I have rarely seen. I had prepared some bottles and went to the barn to feed out hay and the bottle lambs. It was nearly dark. By the time I got from my kitchen to the barn door, my hands were locked with cold. My fingers froze onto the metal door latch. And downstairs my hand froze once again to my hay knife. I did my best in the barn, not good enough, and ran back to the house. The water had frozen in the front bathroom where it had been running quite nicely two hours before. The temperature was zero on the outdoor thermometer. The motor in the washing machine had frozen. Again. I did all of the things that one does, experience born of desperation, and waited. Then I did all of the things once more and waited. By eleven o’clock at night, I had stabilized the life here and went to bed.
In the morning the outdoor thermometer read thirty. The indoor thermometers read thirty-two in the living room, thirty-four in the kitchen. I’ve never seen so small a gap between the two before. The washing machine intake had thawed and the machine had run sometime in the night, but the drain is positioned in an unenviable spot and was, therefore, still frozen. The laundry still sits, soaking, in cold and dirty water. I’ll hang it to drip in the basement and then hang it to dry in the kitchen. I have an Excedrin headache. A rare occurrence, but nonetheless I have one now.
Of all the things I have learned living here, one of the most important is that in February the washing machine must be made to work. And in order to achieve a state beyond that of simply surviving, a virtue unto itself, details must not be ignored. Clean curtains in this wood-heated house, and tablecloths starched to within an inch of their lives, and scrubbed kitchen tiles all contribute to the sharpness of mind and eye that will help me keep my livestock in the best health and state of well-being. I become error prone in February and misstep on occasion. I do know how to avoid the dangers midwinter affords, but the line is a fine one. Carefully drawn. I must use all of what I know not to cross it.
It is a fortunate thing indeed to be blessed with this farm and all of the abundance and joy that its creation, maintenance, and possibilities afford. It is also a fortunate thing to have been able to apply who I am and who I have become to this farm, because in no other situation would I have been able to play out so many sides of myself. While I am an imperfect farmer, lacking the instincts and experience that ultimately make one that in the truest sense, other gifts that I have to offer have served us well. And my farm shows that. It is unique unto itself, its own kind of place, with its own spirit and vitality. I am glad of that. The issue at hand, however, is how best to husband us all using our strengths to overcome our weaknesses in this intensely treacherous month.
February is a month when books are of great importance to me. I need to get away, cabin fever, and nothing has the power to take me away as much as what one finds on the pages of a book. Unfortunately, I am a fast reader. Equally unfortunately, it is only a certain kind of book that will do. There must be a variety of visual images, preferably of another country, England or France will do quite nicely. There should be some smells of fine food as well, imagined, of course, possibly to be recreated in my own kitchen. Simenon does that best in his Maigret series, as Superintendent Maigret loves to eat, and the stories always include some detailed and memorable descriptions of French cooking. I do recreate some of it on my wood stove, to enjoy while reading. If I am lucky, I will find a nice autobiography to provide a distancing from the sameness of days that February affords in such great abundance. The Horse of Pride, about a village in Brittany, served me well, as did my newly discovered A Country Woman in Twentieth-Century France (which, by the way, would have been more appealing had it retained its original title, translated from the French, A Soup of Wild Herbs).
I read mystery books not for any interest in the mystery itself; I rarely figure out in advance, nor do I care, who done it. What I love is the variety of people who are introduced into my evenings when I am curled up in my tidy green chair in front of the living room fire, after the lambs have gone to bed, and the countrysides, all of them, float back and forth in my mind’s eye. Michael Innis makes me want to read with a dictionary at my side, or at least a pad and pencil. While I understand of what he is speaking, I don’t even recognize some of his vocabulary and find myself searching his words for their Latin roots. The joy of English mystery writers w
ith classical educations.
There is a downside to all of this mental extravagance: the blurred edges of housekeeping in both of the houses here, mine and that of the sheep. The abrupt turn of the last page of a book brings my eye to the upswept hearth, or the crumbs on a tablecloth. Do I spend the hot water on the washing of saucers or washing of tablecloths? Is there any bread left from Saturday’s baking or, better yet, some coconut Danish? Do I bring in the remaining firewood left outside or sweep the barn? Which gives me away. I’ve been known to finish a book in the early hours of morning rather than begin my chores immediately. If there is disorder when I return from these journeys to France or England, or total immersion in a book about the history of mathematics, the benefits of travel are lost, as I become depressed and as overwhelmed proportionately as I was distanced from reality.
Nonetheless, in the day, when all of the externals of life were dissected into a costs-and-anticipated-time-involved-to-achieve list, there were two things which appeared with punctuality on the list of ways best to survive and even enjoy February. Good chocolate and good books. In those days I didn’t mention a washing machine or a variety of brooms all appropriate to the occasion of use: barn brooms, house brooms, cellar brooms. Christmas this year afforded me good chocolate in an astonishment of variety. Justina, having become a pastry chef, now knows how to make chocolates. And what incredible chocolates they are. The rest of the family bought me a most generous supply of bittersweet Lindt bars. And I’ve rediscovered the Rose and Laurel Bookstore, in Oneonta, where I’ve been buying some books for a dollar or two on my weekly grain run. Which, I must admit, is an excuse for having lunch at Sweet Indulgence, always a restauratif for the body and soul, in addition to being the finest food in Oneonta. That, too, takes me away, to an Italian kitchen with the textures and flavors of a home-cooked delight.
What I need most today is the self-discipline to wax the kitchen floor and iron the tablecloths so I won’t become guilt ridden upon emerging from a book for an hour or two of running away from home. The haymow floors are swept and in order, no guilt to be found there. Discipline may be afforded by the momentary absence in the house of a book unread or a story to be written. February days, February nights.
THE SILENT RHYTHM OF THE DAYS
MISS CLARA Peggittee, doe goat on this sheep farm, has begun to bag. So why is it such a surprise? February 15th has floated around in my mind as her due date for quite some time. But also, in quite the incorrect time slot, has been the date August 15th, to designate when she was covered. The day I thought the pygmy buck arrived. She went into heat immediately upon seeing him. He covered her a few minutes later. She is not “showing” any signs of having a kid in the near offing. And that is in itself scary. I’m not sure if it is simply because she is carrying a pygmy type goat like the buck rather than a too small LaMancha like herself.
One of the things that amazes me the most about farming is how immediate solutions to long-pressing problems present themselves when it is absolutely necessary. Eleventh-hour solutions. I’ve not known where to put the goat should she freshen. The obvious stall in the carriage house needs be mucked out and my extra time recently has been spent making the barn ready for new hay, not in the carriage house readying for a kid. I’ve bought some very nice round bales that have been wrapped in an onion bag kind of plastic mesh, resulting in nearly perfect hay. Less than an inch of the outer layer of the wheel is spoiled. The rest is sweet and very beautiful first cutting. I’d like to be able to roll the bales out on the barn floor and rake the hay onto a tarp to carry out to the sheep. The carriage house was most thoroughly trashed by the flock this winter, and while cleaning it again shall be interesting, some of the other details in the lambing room and barn have proved to be more interesting. Therefore, I’ve been in attendance, with greater regularity, in the barn.
And so this afternoon when I noticed Miss Peggittee’s bag once again, I decided to check it. It was full. But she appears not to be. I went into the newly ordered upper level of the barn and made a wall of bales of second cutting, put a piece of plywood against another wall in between it and a long ladder lying on its edge to hold the plywood against the battenless bridgeway wall, pulled out a long portable fence and used that as the hypotenuse of the right triangle, tying it on one end to the ladder. I put more bales of hay to brace it and keep the drafts away. Suddenly, there was, in deep clean litter, a small but adequate draftfree pen for the goat. She is bedded down in it now. It’s not the roomiest stall in the barn, but it is quite cozy and nice, and she seems more content than I have seen her in a long time.
My lambing room is functioning at last, for bottle lambs and a mother whose smallest of twins can’t manage to hang on long enough to get enough milk. It is a pleasure to go down there. Lambs are fickle creaturers, racing madly from one delight to the next. New hay. Hooray. Cracked corn. Hooray. Lamb feed. Hooray. A bucket of warm water. Hooray. This morning’s hay fluffed up again. Hooray. The grain shook up a little. Hooray. They dashed everywhere, especially to wherever they see someone else, stopping short to stare up at me for bottles. Even the ones who were weaned a few weeks ago. Oh, knock that guy down, grab that bottle. Hooray. I fluff hay, redistribute grain, bottle, give warm water, or something, it would seem, all day long. And each time I’m down there they act as if whatever is being done for them is the most exciting thing in the world. And it is. Even when I open or close the shutters or put a chicken into the nesting box, excitement runs high.
Little Molly Malone is down there, getting bigger and brighter every day. She is a pretty little fluffy thing, with black eyes and the soft cocoa spot that characterizes the lambs I’m keeping for myself this year. The newly named Thumbilina also shall stay, daughter of Brunhilda, sheep terrible. Thumbilina has learned the merits of sitting quietly in my lap and allowing herself to fall asleep. Her dam has calmed down considerably and even came near me without trying to ram me into the ground.
I have not been concentrating on which I shall be keeping this year, except for those lambs who have been born with the thick curly fleece and a cocoa-colored spot on the back of their neck. There are about sixteen of them now, maybe seventeen. Two, who came close to specification, are living at a friend’s. And of the rest, six ewes are here. The first years of the cocoa-spotted lambs provided only ram lambs. This year were the first ewes and the greatest number of lambs with these characteristics. The lambs usually have one bent ear, the right, which sometimes but not always remains bent, a remarkably soft thick wavy fleece, a cocoa-colored spot on the back or back of the neck, black hooves, and a squarish head, and are very, very pretty. They are perfect I think for this farm. Lambs who are born walking and talking (their dams have been fed haylage) and have thick fleeces to brave the winter are already three steps ahead of the crowd.
The other thing that amazes me about farming is the never-ending wellspring of hope that comes from nowhere, or rather, could seem to come only from the hand of God, a hope that springs forth with a purity and joy and resourcefulness absolutely without warning at totally unexpected moments. This farm is in a dramatically drastic position. One of my jobs ended in November. My tenants moved out a few weeks ago, owing two months’ rent. The bank is breathing down my neck for a mortgage payment. Late, per usual. It is remarkably warm outside so I didn’t make a fire in the living room, where I sit writing. After all, it’s been fifty-two degrees here before with the fire blazing. Why waste the wood?
And yet all I am thinking about is the goat freshening, a possible new cow arriving, the neatly packaged round bales, and choosing which lambs to keep and how to fence them. In my mind’s eye I saw my prettiest pasture, by the road, with the dark green outdoor chicken coop and some black and white hens, a new portable coop for the goslings, Toulouse again, to be bought late spring, and a half a dozen or so pretty lambs racing around inside the dark green wooden fences with all of the world driving by to see. And my spirits lift on shining wings with the question to be asked of my helper
when he arrives next about what kind of fencing to add to keep the appropriate stock in and appropriate stock out.
Snow stares at me from a distant hill. The rattle of the electric heater in the basement reminds me to run downstairs to turn it off. Every penny counts here at the moment. My coffee is cold. I haven’t washed my face yet. The living room floor begs to be mopped and polished. In other words, things are a bit grungy here for the moment. But my stock has been fed and my heart is full of joy at the thought of putting up still another few hundred feet offence in which to keep the new young Greenleaf breed of sheep. To me, it is that astonishing wellspring of hope and joy that is the essence of farming. The thought of what will happen next when this farmer does this or that or the other thing. Despair has not entered. And the silent rhythm of the days rolls on, each day bringing its own beauty.
A REMARKABLE WOMAN
MY MOTHER was a remarkable woman. All of us, I’ve come to understand, are the amazing products of varying degrees of appropriate parenting that we received. Some parents “doing their best” were not to be good enough. Some were too good. My mother’s mothering was famous. It was famous for the overprotective aspect, not of her nature but of her experience. Her nature was determined, strong, forceful, and profoundly loving. However, tragedy bound itself to those qualities, therefore she overprotected me in ways most complicated.
Sylvia's Farm Page 19