I sure have missed Hardscrabble Farmer’s wisdom, perspective and truth over the last few weeks. But it was worth the wait. Enjoy.
Last night I dreamed of buildings. In the dream they were on our farm- a church, a small theater, a haunted house we had once looked at before we bought our place. I went from one to the other examining the flaws and estimating for repairs; rotten framing, new coat of paint, leaky pipes that ran inside the walls. I was overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of me and in each building were groups of people I didn’t know, a cluster of young girls waiting to dance at a recital, college boys gathered in knots by a fire escape, old men and women in recliners on the porch watching the evening sky.
[amazon asin=0990463109&template=*lrc ad (left)]Everyone nodded at me as I made my way from job to job and at one point an old friend I haven’t seen in years asked me to help him move a fawn across a large field to the safety of the forest before someone accidentally hit it with their car. I remember clearly the mood of the dream- it was neither ethereal nor fantastic, but mundane and simple. I was required to fix what was broken, to make the repairs and work while others went about their lives doing what was expected of them. I recall my work clothes and tools, the turkey leg someone offered me to eat, the fact that nighttime was approaching and there was still so much work left undone.
When I came downstairs this morning it was not quite light but you could see the water vapor ascending from the surface of the pond like a pillar of smoke, obscuring the lower pasture in a lavender haze. I made my coffee and[amazon asin=B00002ND64&template=*lrc ad (right)] thought about my dream while it was fresh in my mind.
A couple of years ago while we were visiting our family for Christmas the barn burned down. The shock of that loss has long since passed, but the memories of what people did for us remains the clearest and most profound artifact of that event. It took me six hours of driving at speeds that should have landed me in jail to reach the smoldering ruin of what had once housed innumerable possessions and lives. The firemen were wrapping things up, a few of them were hosing off the last of the smoking hay bales that continued to burn, and where that beautiful barn had once stood was nothing more than a blackened pile of ash and twisted metal.
[amazon asin=1491068620&template=*lrc ad (left)]When I got out of the car I was surrounded by neighbors who all seemed to want to hug me and hold me as if that would help fix what was lost. It was already getting dark and as I stood there trying to come to grips with what had happened I noticed a steady stream of pickup trucks ascending the hill, filled with hay bales for our animals. I knew some of the people, casually, but most were strangers to me. This outpouring of concern and unfettered kindness continued for days. In the morning there would be casserole dishes and boxes of baked goods left on the porch, notes tacked to the front door wishing us well, checks in the mail from people we’d met only once or twice. That night as the last of the firemen headed off to their trucks my oldest son stood at the head of the driveway and shook each hand, one by one and thanked them for saving our house.
The past month has been busy for all of us. We have spread composted manure and planted grass seed in the new pasture, brought in enough timber to split fifty more cords of firewood and make boards for the new equipment shed. We’ve slaughtered of the last of the goats and chickens for the year and filled the freezers. We’ve pickled and canned and hayed and dried more than enough to carry our family and livestock through another New England Winter. We’ve set new fence posts and split oak rails to line them.
