Up!

Kat — Sun, 04 May 2008 10:28:00 +0000

The river shoulders its banks apart. Rain comes. The air hangs swollen: opportunity, promises, humidity, warmth. The aspens go first, their catkins unfurling into long swaying tails, the tiny leaves that start as a vague haze of green and then grow. They glow, florescent yellow-lime-life-colored, paintstrokes from a sudden new palette on the hillsides. Beneath, bloodroot and dandelion lift their faces, shy trout lilies and crimson trillium. Slowly behind them come the more hesitant: maples, alders, larches, violets and columbine.

An orange hen went broody back in April, and last week her eggs began to hatch. Having raised chicks only from cardboard boxes, nobody knew quite what to do; except, of course, the hen. She herded the chicks over to the waterer and showed them how to drink, settled herself carefully on the rest of the as-yet unhatched clutch and let the chicks burrow down beneath her, fluffed up all her feathers, and screeched at anyone who came too near.

The piglets came last week, as well. Two of them, one brown and one pink with spots. Both outrageously cute and demonstrably smart: they needed to stay in their crate for a day or so to get used to the new location, and we decided the best way to feed them would be with those bottles used for hamsters and the like. At first, of course, they tried just sucking as they would on any other bottle, and as had worked for them on every other bottle they'd seen before. Biting and head-butting came next, but within about ten minutes, they'd figured out the little valve and were grunting happily away at their milk. By the next feeding, they hardly spilled a drop. Once we let them out, they also figured out the electric fence and found the one spot they could wiggle under - and proceeded to do so immediately. Luckily, they're friendly and curious, so rounding them up involved more coaxing and little chasing.

Last week, the week of insanely cute baby animals, was our last week on the first farm. We start Monday on our new farm, where we won't even have dial-up. J has a pretty good video of the pigs that he's planning to upload before we enter into the internet desert, so keep an eye out over on farmtime. And if you happen to be in Montpelier on Saturdays, stop by the farmer's market and say hi.

Kat — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:42:00 +0000

Ramps! Oh hell yes. Spring for real.

Kat — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:57:00 +0000

A good mouser,
and he gets fed in round with
the cows and chickens, but not too much:
a working cat, so keep him hungry. And the barn
is undeniably mouse-free.

But then what?
The small bodies pile up:
moles, chipmunks,
baby squirrels,
just-returned songbirds
caught in mid-song.

Twice a day I scruff him,
and the fear-frozen thing drops
paws up, shaking,
and I throw him in the house and hope.

Of course he doesn't know
the difference between pest
and wild. To him, they are the same:
a swift-beating heart with sweet-tasting blood,
a bright dark eye, a game to play out slowly
to its end.

Kat — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:06:00 +0000

After the first thunderstorm of the season (of the year!) the frogs in the marshy field sang their cold little three-chambered hearts out. The weather report issued flood and fire warnings both yesterday, but that was before the storm, when a week of hot weather brought up the grass and dried all of last year's fallen leaves. Today the mud sucks softly at my boots - which J's mom bought me for my birthday last year, and which I've already nearly busted, as they are designed to be very cute and not necessarily to muck an entire barn - and when I let the chickens out they get busily to work finding the earthworms that came up for air.

Before the storm yesterday, we built an egg-mobile for them and set up a few hundred feet of fence. (Couldn't find a good link - the egg-mobile is a portable coop so we can move them about and let them graze.) Then we herded them all into the smallest part of the coop and set to chicken-catching. Chicken-catching involves being faster than the chickens, who are surprisingly fast, and/or sneaking up on the chickens, who are prey animals and therefore pretty sensitive to being snuck up on. Alternately, and especially when you've got the whole flock to choose from, it involves wading into the middle of them, and grabbing. Best is if you can get both legs at once, but one'll do if you can get the other real quick. Once they're upside-down, they mostly go quiet. I can catch and hold about three at once; N. the garden manager can get four or five. They're heavier than you think.

Catching the mean rooster comes about by accident when he flies at your face and you just grab him - feet in one hand and neck in the other. Catching the other rooster is much easier than you expect because it turns out he's a scaredy-rooster and he runs and hides in a corner and is very easy to grab. (I tried to think of another word so that I wouldn't use "grab" three times in a row, but really that's the only word for it. And scroll down a bit to the video on that link up there to see the second rooster do his thing.)

Kat — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:56:00 +0000

For the past four days the farm has been ours. All of the six people who live here are currently away, and so is the garden manager who doesn't live here but ends up here pretty often anyway. He said, "take care of the greenhouse and the chores, I'll be back Monday." And then here we were, with a farm to take care of.

We mucked the barn, as has been previously mentioned. We had some help at the beginning, but the brunt of it was just the two of us and our pitchforks (we each broke one and then had to go down to the hardware store, covered in stinky muck, to get another). We watered the seedlings, opened and closed the sides of the greenhouse at appropriate times. We fed all the animals and made sure they had lots of clean water. We watched the calf -- there's no other word for it -- frolic. We came inside at the end of the day tired and hungry and happy, all our muscles whispering good work.

And nothing died, so I think it was a success.

Kat — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:16:00 +0000

I come in from the barn, hungry for words. They sing themselves all day in my mind, while the pitchfork rhythm lugs my shoulders into strong knots and the sun burns me brown. We mucked almost all of the barn in the past few days, moving sheets and snarls of shit, piles and piles of wet-brown straw and the winter's worth of four cows' shit into the pickup and back out onto the compost heap. And all the while, the words spin up and around and out. I come in from the barn, wash my hands, change my clothes, feed my belly, sit in front of the screen, and then there is quiet. The words are gone. I want to tell you about the calf running mad circles when we let him outside for the first time. I want to tell you about the full orange moon above the twilight hills, the feel of good work in my muscles, the wondering about that question of husbandry, of herdsmanship.

Is it always wrong to kill? Always cruel? A good life and quick death may be all we can ask for in this world; done right, fear need never enter into it. Can you make a trade for death? I'll have spent twelve hours and more just shoveling shit for these cows; I spend an hour or two every day on their care. Today, calf-deep in it, blistered and burnt, I thought yes, I'm going to eat these cows, and that's fair.

But my parents spent a lot of time on the care of me, and mostly nobody thinks that entitles them to my death.

I want to tell you how I love that calf. I've been told that I'm supposed to keep him afraid of me, but I don't buy it. Anyhow, I can't. And so far, he'll follow me around the pen, let me pick up his feet and clean them, let me pull the baling twine out of his mouth, let me clean the shit off his tail. I don't know what happens when he gets big - the yearlings are half-nice and half-stupid, but they weren't really socialized when they were smaller and I don't know that much about cow behavior. Sometimes they all crowd me into a corner and then, yeah: I want them to be afraid of me.

But the little guy? My baby cow?

I want to tell you about the robins, and the flies, and the soft evening smell of dirt road. I want to tell you about how utterly I sleep these days, how easily I wake. I want to tell you about my hunger, how much I've been wanting poetry and green leaves. I want to tell you everything, but I can't find the words.

Kat — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:51:00 +0000

First peepers and first sunburn of the season. Spring is officially and undeniably here.

Kat — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:03:00 +0000

We're changing farms! Check out farmtime for the scoop.

Kat — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:43:00 +0000

We chant a continuous stream of blessings for our future farm. On our farm, things will work. On our farm, things will be in order. On our farm, we will do it right the first time. On our farm...

On our farm also, he suggested today, we should label by scientific name. I tried to point out gently that, while I appreciate the sentiment, it wouldn't work out so well in practice. A little stick that says Solanum lycopersicum - for instance - wouldn't cut it for the several kinds of tomatoes a body is like to grow in one season; Brassica oleracea wouldn't help us distinguish between brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and broccoli. But think of all the time we'd save on writing labels!

On our farm, we probably won't have cows. There is a sweet rhythm to the twice-daily chores, but also a slightly panic-inducing feeling of monomania. They are constantly getting into where they shouldn't be and out of where they should; eating or trying to eat objects as varied as plastic buckets full of manure, gloves, pants, elbows, and four-inch bolts; shitting in their (50-gallon, heavy, and difficult to move) water tank; eating their bedding hay instead the feed hay I just put out for them; deciding that the mucking fork is a terrifying enemy that must be vanquished; deciding that the water tank I just emptied by five-gallon bucket and hauled outside to hose out is a terrifying enemy that must be vanquished; deciding that if I'm wearing a hat they don't know me and I'm a terrifying enemy; and generally being a pain in the ass. Also, I'm pretty attached to them and I'm unsure about my ability to shoot them in the head when the time comes.

Though if they get out into the road again, I might reconsider that.

Kat — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:09:00 +0000

We open the windows
let air in. The smells come in.
(There are smells
again now.) Robins are everywhere.
The compost stinks.
I sink into mud past my ankle
lose my boot pulling out,
lose traction, but
(but the ruts never throw you
off the road, only take you home
in a way different than you thought
you were going. It isn't like ice),
it isn't like winter.

The ground sighs beneath me,
opens beneath me. The cows are mudded
nose to tail, the calf kicking,
the chickens sunning themselves
on the final banks of snow.

The robin perched in the compost pile
singing.

Kat — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:41:00 +0000

I'd like to take a moment to endorse my personal favorite treatment for menstrual cramps. You can see the Swiss-Bob in action over at farmtime. I don't know why it works, but it does. Really.

Kat — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:21:00 +0000

We're supposed to get a major thaw on Tuesday - 58º and raining! - so we're going to spend today sledding. Horray!

Caitlin — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:16:00 +0000

The door is frozen shut.
We pray for thaw. We pray
for sap, for anything green,
for the gauntbellied deer
who carefully, thoroughly,
remove each bud from each tree, we pray
for a wind that will warm us,
we pray for warmth.

The wind
turns my fingers useless. I fumble
tack after tack into the straw,
wield a hammer like the bludgeon
it is, strike my fingernails, the wood
everywhere but the target,
cursing the wind, the winter,
the chickens too stupid to stay in their pen,
the straw that spills out of my socks
every night, cursing the barn
and its thousand states of disrepair,
cursing the damn fool who thought
she wanted to be a farmer -
and the chicken still escapes
to lay eggs that freeze
in the hayloft.

Caitlin — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:41:00 +0000

The apricot sunset reflects dark spires of fir trees in the newly-open water just past the shooting range. On sunny days, the flies in the windowsill have been coming back to life. There is an indefinable but undeniable haze of color on the bare-branched trees: some red, some yellow, some green. Like anything made of magic, you can't see it straight-on.

The cows barrel outside, yelling their fool heads off and tugging bites of hay out of the bale I'm trying to carry to a clean patch of snow. The southfacing slopes are shaking themselves free, baring their breasts to the sky. The deer browse very close to the road and do not look up from their work as we pass; they knock the lids off the sugaring buckets and drink the sap.

Lacking dust, the chickens take snow-baths.

At the top of the fire-tower, the wind blows cold and wet and hard. It is terrifying and it smells like spring.

Caitlin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:29:00 +0000

In my dream I did nothing but stand still amidst a forest in full leaf, blinding green, birdsong and running water and sweet hot air. I held a basket of peaches. I breathed deep. It lasted a long time.

Caitlin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:59:00 +0000

Though I am suspicious of the thinking that maintains that all things old and folksy are superior to all things newfangled - as much as I am leery of the idea that all things new and shiny are better by virtue of shininess - I do have a warm feeling toward the revival of old-timey skills that seems to be unfolding, at least here in Vermont.

Or, perhaps more accurately, I have a warm feeling towards the unfolding of my own collection of old-timey skills.

The farmwork is satisfying in the way I'd hoped it to be: I use my body, I figure out problems, solve them or work to solve them. I have a concrete result at the end of most days. It is messy work, uncomfortable often. Yesterday we cleared six months' worth of shit - two feet - from the chicken coop. But then we laid clean sawdust and straw, and let the chickens back in, where they set to scratching and discussing immediately. The sugarhouse smells like steam and smoke and sweet, but the wind comes right through and it takes three days of boiling before we get any syrup. But we get syrup. One calf dies and breaks my heart, but the other leaps around his pen, bronco-style, bouncing off bales of hay and my laughing self.

It feels like a quiet rebellion. Today I learned to darn socks, and spent the morning doing it: two pairs of socks that were on their way to the trashcan, saved. No great thing, but a good one.

We've been making some nothing-bought-in-a-store meals: black-bean soup, with tomato sauce, corn, and a zucchini relish I made last summer; and potatoes, carrots, onion, dried hot peppers, and beans from the farm. Lots of scrambled eggs. Latkes with potatoes and onions from the farm with applesauce I made in the fall. Sauerkraut with the last of the root-cellared cabbage. I've been amazed at how corn-y the canned corn is - I swear to god you can barely tell it isn't fresh - how good the potatoes are, how good the eggs are, fresh from the hens.

It isn't anything like self-sufficiency, not yet. But it feels good.

Caitlin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:03:00 +0000

The snow is six inches deeper outside. The calendar and VPR told me spring is here, but I ain't seen her face, yet.

Caitlin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:34:00 +0000

The day is just past dawn. Early sun shines on a new inch of snow, shimmers across the greenhouse roof. The bottle is warm in one hand; the handle of the compost pail frozen in the other. The path from house to barn is short, but windy today, and cold. The cat follows me in.

Already the chickens are chatting to themselves, or each other. The yearlings bellow in greeting, watching with interest as I heave open the side door. They've been getting frisky, and seem particularly to enjoy charging the manure bucket while I muck. They aren't so big - still a few months off full-grown - but big enough when four of them are bucking and chasing each other around what suddenly seems like a very small pen.

We suspect at least one of them has a retained testicle.
I'm getting very good at jumping the fence, quickly.

After the big boys are outside jostling each other for hay, I take the calf his milk. (Once I did the calf first, and the yearlings all stood at the fence demanding their share. They remember the bottle, and the sweet starter grain, and they aren't so interested in their pile of dried grass afterwards.)

The calf grows so fast. When I first got here - two weeks ago - I could straddle his little body while I brushed him and hold him still with my legs. Now he hits me right in the belly when he head-butts me after he's done with his milk - he's the size of a great Dane, now. When I scratch him under the cheekbones, under his jaw, he stretches his neck out and his eyes roll back in his head. When I brush him, he is constantly trying to see what I'm doing, trying to find the udder that I must have, somewhere, he's sure.

All the while, the cat watches from a hay bale under the heat lamp, purring.

Caitlin — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:18:00 +0000

The rhythm of it all is coming together. It'll change, of course: in a month, the livestock manager is leaving and we'll be taking over the animal chores, and spring will finally come and then summer, and the blood will rise in our veins and the sun will rise earlier and earlier, and heat and growth will take over.

But for now, we are finding a rhythm of grey skies, boiling sap, mucking pens, and baking bread. We've each secured off-farm jobs -- the apprenticeship is only half-time -- and much stress has been lifted with the infusion of a little dependable income. (We can buy groceries now! Horray!)

Caitlin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:31:00 +0000

There is a calf in the compost pile.

There is an anger so sharp I can barely hold it, and grief setting her star-points into all my soft places.

Somehow, this is the death I cannot accept.

The calf was always going to die; we were always going to kill him. We were raising him for beef. The yearlings will go to slaughter this fall, and I was planning to eat them.

That didn't seem gruesome until now.

I sat with him, I don't know how long, crouched awkwardly in the narrow hay-bale pen, rain hard on the roof. A dozen times at least I thought he'd died, but I would stroke his cheek or throat and he'd flick an ear, or blink an eye. Once he lifted his nose, moved as if trying to stand. I cradled his head on my lap. For a long time I watched the pulse in his throat after everything else seemed to have stopped, when all my petting and cajoling could warrant no response. For a long time after I watched his throat, hoping.

The second calf - the bigger, stronger one from the start - seems fine. He nearly knocked over the hay-bale wall trying to get at the colostrum I was feeding the little one, and afterwards head-butted everyone he could as we moved him to clean the pen. This morning he was mouthing the bedding straw in imitation of the big boys next door, even though he hardly even has teeth.

I'm so sorry, baby cow.

Caitlin — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:35:00 +0000

I come in hungry
from the barn.
Wash my hands.
The eggs in their basket
are the colors of sky,
bare branches,
and snow.

The window faces east.
Morning comes easier
than I've ever known it
before. (Morning comes,
even, with joy.)

The calves' slick-sticky noses
crowd against me,
instinct directing them
to the wrong places:
They nuzzle my armpits,
my crotch. They suckle
each others' ears.
The ends of my arms
seem only to confuse them.

(They are easily confused.)

These days,
everything smells a little
like cow. I wash my hands
a lot.

(I'm happy.)

Caitlin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:18:00 +0000

The calves are the size of collie dogs. They stumble up from their knobby knees to greet me when I hop the split-rail and hay-bale fence. Their tongues are lapping and their throats working before we even have the bottles ready, their sideways eyes rolling in excitement. After they've drained the bottles dry - and after we've finished tossing hay to the yearlings, feeding and watering the chickens, fighting off the rooster, mucking, and breaking up ice with a sledge - I climb back into their pen. With a coarse brush I sweep down their spines, across their ribs, along their cheeks and necks. I run my hand down each leg, squeezing gently. I scratch under their chins - the little one likes that the best - behind their ears, on their soft foreheads. While I'm working on the little one, his brother tongues my sweatshirt, head-butts my hip, chews gently on my elbow. When I do him, the little one curls up under the heat lamp and watches us intently.

Outside, the yearlings are lowing at the spring-feeling rain, chasing each other around piles of hay and softening slush.

[Plus! Check out J's new blog!]

Caitlin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:28:00 +0000

Today is the memorial.

She said Thank you,
but I think it should be
family only.

So instead of standing
in my black dress, today
we are moving to the farm.

(where access to the internets will be scarce)

Caitlin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:27:00 +0000

It was the year that I first fell in love.
We were fifteen. It is too young, but Death
has no care for convention. She is too young now,
and that was ten years ago, almost.

It isn't my story; I have been always on the fringes
of her grief. A witness to the tragedies
- some smaller and some great -
that enfolded the daily movements of her life.

It isn't my story; I have often fought
the urge to tell it, the urge to claim it,
have fought the guilt that comes of standing beside a body
while those around me are shoved to their knees

in mourning. We were fifteen. She was fifteen
when first Death came to her. Two days after Thanksgiving,
and I was away. The answering machine caught her distant voice.
She said My mother is dead.

She said My mother is dead.

After the funeral, my mother sent me back to school
for a geometry exam. I wore my black dress,
did not cry, got an A.
I learned to keep pity out of my gaze.

I learned that Death has no care
for equity. Life either. We were fifteen
when Death first came to her.
It was the year that I first fell in love.

Caitlin — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:39:00 +0000

and then Death sat down beside her,
on the long flight across the sea.
and Death met her at the door,
brought her to the darkened room, saying

She's almost ready. We've just been waiting
for you. Death stood politely in the hallway,
until all the words had been said,
then stepped in, saying I'm sorry, honey

it's time.