Passing By

The greying fence that once wound around the corner of our property is gone now. Every morning I looked out at it, close range, from my writing desk. There was not much reason for it. What was it keeping out? What was it holding in? I decided we'd have more light, and I'd get a better sense of the gardens around the house without it. The wood could be repurposed into a wood shed, and possibly an outhouse. My argument was sound, and so the fence is gone and we have a wood shed. 

My morning view has improved. I see the sunrise slap the sides of trees, the frosty grass of the field across the road, and I wonder who is awake in the neighbors house when there's a light on. I also see traffic up close. Yesterday I saw a driver cut someone else off, and the victim gave the offender a solid middle finger. Not a flash, not a flicker, but a switched-on-for-good fuck you. Some drivers who stop at the corner notice me and my little green lamp. This morning there was the older man in the black pickup who shamelessly stares as he makes the turn. His head is fixed like an owl. Yes, someone lives here, and yes, she can see you passing by on your way to work.

Backstage

Don’t worry, spiders,

I keep house

    casually. 

                - Issa

Yesterday, while eating a quick lunch of ramen soup "shooshed up" with garden vegetables and a dash of chili oil, a gentle knock came to the kitchen door. Helen looked at me, and we shared a mild panic. "Who is that?" Dan stood up and opened the door a crack, and partway up the steps stood two women. "We're here to pick up an order of cinnamon buns."

Dan laughed and said, "Ah! How did you get past my camera alerts? We usually get a notice when someone is here." He abandoned his soup, thrust feet into boots and was out the door helping them in no time. Lunch is almost always, without fail, interrupted by a customer.

Helen and I stayed to slurp up noodles. It was rainy, and we'd already been out in it a number of times, getting thwacked in the face by the sodden mulberry, or slipping in duck goo. It was unseasonably chilly. The soup was just right.

"How did they even find their way to the kitchen entrance?" I wondered. Helen posited that they walked through the barn. We'd left the door open to the path, which means they went through the disaster of a prop room, where art supplies and theatre props are piled. Then they had to walk up the mangled path, where jutting bricks make a challenge even for the surest of feet. The fig and mulberry meet to combine a low soggy arch on rainy days, which if you aren't paying attention, will lick you in the face and leave your hair all combed with leafy bits. They worked through obstacles to get to our porch.

What was the prize for making it all that way? They saw all our coffee cans filled with rotting scraps for the compost heap, a muddy array of boots and shoes, an entire closet of plaid coats, pants, and rain gear hanging on hooks, a filthy rag dangling on the banister to dry (not working well on this day). Then, a few surprised faces sitting around a kitchen table.

While we are used to visitors to the farm stand and the barn theatre, we are not accustomed to people knocking on our kitchen door. I felt exposed.

All the coffee cans filled with banana peels and eggshells, loose boards, undusted surfaces, were seen by the audience. Not to mention the cast of maladroit insects we're too lazy to kick out.

 

 

Delight in Clearing

It's been a delight to be outside again, uncovering what's been quietly growing all around us these past few months. Including, of course, our favorite pal, Toxicodenron Radicans, poison ivy. Helen and I got a good case of our systemic rash a little over a week ago when we went wild by the Beatrix Garden and the fence by the road, which has some vines.  I call it the Beatrix Garden for Helen Beatrix Potter, and the Helen who lived here before us, and our Helen who lives here with us now on a part-time basis. 

I have seedlings in the greenhouse to plant in that garden, and I'm excited to see what takes there with all the other beautiful perennials that bloom. Seedlings that are sprouting are Foxglove, Forget-Me-Nots, Delphinium, Stock, and a quiet, cold loving bunch of seeds of English Lavender that rest in the fridge by Dan's beer.

Rashes and rounds of steroids aside, there is an immense sense of satisfaction in clearing. A couple of weeks ago, Helen and I put our focus on the kitchen garden by the farmstand, which will be a family-friendly "Pick Your Own," space this summer. We broadforked, hoed, and fed the goats what was left of beets.

We stirred up the contents of the compost bin like it was a cauldron, and pulled the nutrient rich dirt out from the bottom layer to add to the soil. I stored away a lot of the tools, posts, and items that flotsammed their way by the fence. Dan and I put away every coil of old fencing that had come to rest there too, and it is much improved.

Dan cleared the space between the trees by the driveway, which opened up the view to the fields, and now there's a lovely tree to take shade under in the summer. There will also be much less poison ivy, since we can mow there.

Yesterday after doing some performance work (filming myself, a nightmare), I suited up to join Dan outside. He was clearing away the fencing that used to be a dog kennel between the barn and the greenhouses. I swept the birdseed and last bits of firewood from the kitchen porch, then raked my way around the path past my writing room (the quince is budding!), and toward the front of the house by the Secret Garden Path. It's not that secret, really. I just call it that because it is cozy and enveloping, the kind of space you want to stoop in so you can hear the ants.

It wasn't long before I was on my hands and knees, pulling up whole "carpet rolls" of grass, revealing new-to-me stones in the path. I had chosen the perfect day for this task. The shade of the space and rain we had the other day made all conditions right for path clearing.

 

What a delight to find the artifacts of the family who lived here before us. Their handprints, snail icons, dog prints, and a footprint with a hand. I slid my hand into the largest handprint, was surprised that it fit, and felt connected to those who took care of this land before us.

When I stood up, I heard the bees working in the Leatherleaf Mahonia. Its spires of tiny yellow blooms are opening (the bees do good work),  releasing a honeysuckle scent when the breeze is just right. A thrill.

The Jumblies

The wind is pushing us through March's runcible early days, thrashing our hair, frisking the chimes, knocking the branches from dead trees. It is waking us up out of a long winter sluggery.

Helen and I spent a jovial afternoon pushing a wheelbarrow full of moldy, decaying fruit through the snow to the Rot Spot, an area of ground we are filling in and enriching with compost. In the fall I chucked pumpkins there, our neighbors dumped their chicken coop compost into it, we buried a dead and quite frozen feral cat nearby a couple months ago, the giant sunflowers we harvested in the fall were piled on, and ecetera. It's an area of ground making swift work of what is shared there. The earth is quiet and efficient.

We had to share pushing the wheelbarrow, each of us taking one handle and forging ahead, avoiding (not quite) frozen footprints from previous walks. There were many near misses of toppling over, sending our icky fruit basket rolling onto the snow. We made it, laughing the whole way.

While out there, in the lower fields, we tackled the mess of dried out cosmos, and plants yielded easily from the soft ground. It was good timing. I was hot in my three sweaters, and robot gloves. Hints of summer, memories of flop sweat while weeding, played through my mind.

Our neighbors toy goat was on the outside of her fence. I told Dan to text her. Their goats are the tiny, demure version of our big, meaty dunderheads. They sound like dog toys, and are about half the size of Boer goats. Pygmys, I think? The sweet escapee was happy to just be on the other side of the fence, and didn't wander at all. 

After several trips to the Rot Spot with the cosmos plants, we pushed the wheelbarrow back up the hill together, and went inside for tea and seaweed.

Then it was time to move the goats from the barn to the outside paddock, which required a good hour or more with rearranging the fence while being whipped in the face with thorny underbrush. We made the mistake of leaving the stanchion inside the paddock, so while the fence was charged and all was well, they figured out they could leap from the stanchion over the fence, clearing it without shock. 

When I went outside to put the ducks in for the night, the goats were at the duck run, and then they followed me to the kitchen porch where I called for Dan's help.

Later, I read a poem by Edward Lear aloud to Helen, who was working on memorizing Latin plant names. I'd never read this poem before, and I really love the playfulness, the nonsense words that make some sense, and the rhyme and meter. The title. "The Jumblies," made me think of the day we'd had, and how many of my days now seem like I'm riding a sieve out to sea.

The Sunday Morning Variety Show on Kutztown Road

Yesterday morning before getting dressed I decided to clean out the duck run, since the thaw of snow was revealing an archeological treasure of sludge-filled containers. The coop needed some fresh shavings, too. I was trying to beat a forecast of rain. A bright green front loomed on the radar.

I refreshed the coop with shavings, then dug into the mess exposed by the thaw. I keep the duck feeder on top of a snow shovel head. It works as a tray to keep the feed from getting all over the ground. This needed cleaning, and there was a second feeder, a red plastic one, from the early days of the new ducks being introduced to the group. I'd forgotten about an egg carton filled with corn, which resurfaced. The water container needed a cleaning. Ducks are adorable, but very messy creatures.

The sludge filled items I carried over to the compost heap in the kitchen garden, where I began to scrape the fetid gunk off with the end of a leek. I'm never prepared with a tool, even though I know I'm doing this work, so I just use whatever is handy from the heap. The uppermost layer of the compost heap right now is an array of onions and deflated, moldy oranges, useless tools for scraping, so the leek was a sign of good fortune. I began the work of cleaning the shovel head, and the plastic feeder, as the propane delivery guy was parked on the road, blocking the lane. 

A sporty car from the 90s, something white and sleek with tinted windows, pulled up behind the truck, and paused there with a full view of my plaid-clad, scrunchie ponytailed, pajama-pantsed self, holding a leek in one hand, and a broken shovel head in the other. I waved with the leek end.

Littleface, seeing an opportunity to add to the show since he had an audience on both sides of the paddock, leapt from the barn stall. He sailed through the split in the tree, and caught his leg on a poison ivy vine, which trailed behind him like a fuzzy shooting star (good goat!). Not one for curtain calls, he walked a few steps on the rock pile and munched on a thorny rose. 

An applause of quacks issued from the pond.

You're On Mute

Days of grey light here, the kind of color you might see as you wring out a used dishrag. This is February this year, each day a new shade of blah. At least it isn't a long month. 

Two feet of lingering snow has left us with challenges to overcome, problems to solve. No door to the barn opens easily, as each one is banked up with snow. Icy sheets periodically hang off the barn roof, then slide off (thankfully none on our heads), to bury what path we've shoveled out, and unfortunately, the shovel as well. We have one shovel, still. We didn't solve that problem yet.

The snow dampens sound and obliterates detail. The first few days of it are magical and playful, everything a new, sparkling whiteness. A celestial landscape. I marveled over the path of animals on our property, all their prints revealed, or one feather gentled on top of the crust of snow, something I'd never notice without the blankness.

It's been cold for days and none of it has melted. One day it melted a bit, then refroze, and turned the landscape into  a torturous board game for middle-agers: Luge of Potential Broken Bones, Slopes of Trudge, Overhang of Conked Noggin, Ice Shard of Bruised Shins, Icicle Fangs of Avoidance, Rocky, Frozen Underworld of Nope-That-Fencpost-Won't-Go-In.

The goats are in a new paddock against the barn, about the size of a one car garage, with a tree in the center. The door to their stall is open and they can come and go freely, but they don't. They are restless in their new winter space, thankless. Imagine! After all the work we put into it the other day, sledgehammering fence posts into rocky, frozen ground, carrying 16 foot cattle fence sections across the tundra, and zip-tying those sections to posts while ornery goats prodded our butts. The nerve. 

They are sensitive creatures. This is the first they've experienced snow in their lifetimes. They live for detail. Bright foliage to munch is the unmuffled, unmuted life they love. We've been taking them for walks and in some places the snow comes up almost to their bellies. They find a nibble of chocolate vine here and there, and get to sniff the hoofprints of deer, but it's not the spring or summer or fall landscape on which they thrive.

Spring, you're on mute. Please turn your mic on.

One Shovel for Two Feet of Snow

I imagine our neighbors observe us with an air of detached bemusement since we first appeared here. It's obvious we are learning as we go. One of our first challenges was poison ivy, so we "solved" that problem with goats. We adopted two brothers, wethers, so there'd be no musky territorialism. A shed was built, and electric fencing purchased so we could move their paddock around the property with relative ease as they performed their landscape management magic. Goats eat poison ivy, among other unwanted scrub, and they keep the land well fertilized. They are also sweet dunderheads, both stubborn and gentle. They follow me everywhere, love to be petted, are addicted to saltines, and want only to play and eat. Two toddlers with hooves and reptile eyes, with the combined spirits of dogs and horses.

This week we had the heaviest snowfall in several years, with two feet spreading out over the land like a weighted blanket. It was lovely, ah, a fire in the fireplace, soup burbling on the stove. But wait, the water buckets are frozen, I can't get to the paddock easily, the duck run roof is sagging ...

We made a trip out the day before the storm to pick up a few needed groceries, and livestock feed. Dan fixed the problem of the icy water buckets with the purchase of a heated bucket and a long extension cord we could run from the barn.

But we forgot an extra shovel, and found ourselves taking turns with the one shovel we have for snow, digging our way out to the cars, around the house, to the duck run and pond, and I finally made my way to the goat paddock. 

Littleface and Brick watched as I shoveled my way towards them. They stood at the edge of the electric fencing, chewing their cuds like two men at a gas station might stand around with their coffees, observing the customers at the pumps. I imagined them thinking the phrase "humans and their constant toil," as I took breaks.

When I arrived, I took some time to play with them, since the day and a half of snowfall kept us from our usual playtime. We trudged to the rock by the road and the Rainbow Tomatoes sign, and they hopped up to get petted, pushed into my chest with their stubborn heads for a hug, and hopped off sideways like springy circus artists. 

The snow buried the ground lines of the fencing. The battery was brought inside to recharge, but to no avail. The goats wanted to play, and now that I had a cleared path to the house for them, and there was no working fence to stop them, my afternoon went like this:

1. Put goats back in paddock after plying with Saltines.
2. Go inside.
3. Take off several layers of outdoorsy clothing.
4. Put on tea kettle, finally. Relax time.
5. Go to living room window to check.
6. See goat standing in the path like a dopey ceramic figurine.
7. Put outdoorsy layers back on.
8. Get crackers.
9. Put goats back in paddock.

Rinse and repeat, three times. I never did have the tea. The kettle just kept brewing. But when dusk arrived, they appeared to be over the escape acts.

The next morning, yesterday, as I went through the usual rounds of breaking the ice on the pond for the ducks, I was joined by the goats, who had no reason to stay inside their useless toy fence. 

They followed me to the kitchen porch where they lingered, expecting to be let in for some scones, cocking their heads with curiosity as the windchimes were frisked by a breeze. It was charming, but we had a problem. That fence does not work in the winter.

Solutions were tossed around. I missed an important meeting with a mentor, and hastily texted her my wild excuse with a photo of a goat at the kitchen door.

By the afternoon, both goats were in the side stall of the barn, the one with three windows they could easily break through, a thin wall they could easily break through, and probably a skunk living underneath. (This morning the air is awfully fragrant.)

I've never seen Dan look so wild-eyed as after the last round of getting those goats into their new place for the next few days while we wait for a fence tester. 

What do we think we're doing here? Poison ivy - goats - bad fence - elephants next? I don't know what's next. Probably building a permanent paddock space for the winter months. 

One shovel. Two tired backs. Several chuckling neighbors.

The Perfect Tomato Sandwich

This is "German Pink," an heirloom tomato we're growing at Rainbow Tomatoes. Yesterday we had two sandwich tomatoes for sale, along with an array of other varieties. A guy stopped by the stand, eyeballed the offerings and said, "You only got one tomato?" He got the spiel about the 320 varieties we're growing, and how they will ripen, and then he hopped back into his pickup and left. Well, lucky for us he didn't take our "one tomato."

Last night after no one bought this baby, we decided to have our first tomato toasty of the season. I made a quick coleslaw as a side dish. The day was brutally hot, and cooking was not on the list of things to do. This was excellent timing for German Pink to still be sitting in the green produce box at the end of the day.

I sliced it, made toast, applied mayo, pepper, and salt. We sat on the sofa to eat (kind of a regular at the end of long, hot day), and were just starting to watch an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? when I bit into my sandwich. I asked Dan to turn off the TV. I wanted to taste it better, without the noise of the television. This sandwich demanded my focus.

This was the best tasting tomato sandwich of my life. It was the Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings tomato sandwich, all the notes a complete swoon.

For this divine meal, all we did was tear up the earth, plant thousands of seeds in the greenhouse a few days after lockdown, untangle seedlings and separate  the strongest plants so they could grow under lights, bring the hundreds of grown starters outside daily in shifts to get used to being in the sun, bring them back in at night, worry over loss, cultivate fields, measure and plant the starter plants, water, weed, fling tomato hornworms off, trim the low branches, stake and tie the plants up, then tie again and again as they continue to grow. Now we're just beginning to harvest the fruit, display it, and offer it for sale.

In about a week we'll have way more than one sandwich tomato. But last night we had only one, and it was all ours.

Imagine the Video Montage

Lettuces harvested this morning to be delivered tomorrow.

Cue the happy stock music! It's the Hill-Waber Family Homestead video! Imagine a fade in/out montage of the following:

Sweat dripping from eyelids while weeding.
Flies in the duck coop.
Engorged tick on a goat neck.
A flattened tick being slid into an envelope to send to the lab.
Poison ivy rash between the toes.
Planting corn angrily.
Mouse poop in the shed.
"What do you want for dinner?"
"I don't care."
Tater tots. Again.
Cat pee on the ottoman.
Two exhausted people on the sofa by 8 p.m.

And cut!

If you've ever done a YouTube search on anything like "how to trim a goat hoof" or "how to build a duck coop," you know the sunny videos I'm referencing above. Where everything is edited and just Wonderfarm! No ticks, no balking goat, no field of poison ivy. No one has a life like that. 

There's a lot of beauty here, and progress, and plenty to share. It is lovely because we work to keep it so. My eyelids sweat. I am in bed by nine. Today we finished weeding "the anger corn" and Dan tied up tomato plants while I trimmed low leaves from each plant. We did four rows and called it a day. I am wilted, sticky, smelly, and wringing this writing out of my spongy brain.

I took photos today, because it is beautiful here, especially in early morning light.

The ducks might find this tasty if they'd go on the pond.

So many bespoke insects.

The anger corn, fully weeded, with Rainbow Rutalegga, the scarecrow.

"Give us the saltines."

Tiger lilies blooming near the pond.

Morning light and pond.

Dan with the lettuce haul.

The Duck Squad, during morning rounds.

Microtoms. So sweet! They remind you that tomatoes are a fruit.

The driveway to the produce stand was started today.

Pure evil.

I Dream of Rain

My body buzzes with the grumble
of a tractor beneath it, my feet
become tires, my back a cart
that carries pails of water
to dry fields, and stones
to fill the swale. There’s
a heavy hope in our air,
tension in each lump of clay
we release to crumbs.
I point out the boulders
across the road, and later,
returned to my own legs
for balance, crouch to lift
a duck feather from the grass
and watch it drift,
a weightless curve
of what we dream on,
find our rest.

Excavation of an Uneven Path

I prefer to kneel in the ground
until my back and neck ache,
use my hand as a trowel,
a rake, my fingernails filling
with dirt
as I search for a path
someone else laid out decades ago.

Here it winds toward the shed,
and there it ends
in a profusion
of terra cotta shards and gravel.

A pale grub of frustration
from not knowing
which way to turn
dissolves
in a spontaneous mudpie
experiment. I find reward
in the tiny
ceramic basket with gold trim
excavated six inches below
where I began this morning.

It makes sense to me to bow down
to where the path might be, search
many generations worth
of stories I hold,
handle,
hear,

let anger (that lowly, but helpful worm)

with my spatial lacking lead me

to feel the grit

of whispers
from everyone who lived here before.

I listen, aware of my spine
and every impulse my body
still has in its living cells,
I hear what it feels like
to not know what I
might unearth next.

Black Vulture

Guess who has been up on the barn roof three days in a row? A Black Vulture. He looks a bit like he's been taking classes in Commedia dell'arte. Nice mask, friend.

Uh, friend? Maybe not. My ducks are out and about. The first day, I shook my fist at him, and off he flew. The second day, the same, and this morning, he was back, waiting for the thermals to start, or keeping an eye on the dead racoon at the edge of our road.  I felt like a jerk when I realized I shook my fist at the clean-up crew. He's eating a natural predator of my ducks.

So I guess he's just going to do this work until there's nothing left to be done. This morning when we came inside after feeding goats and letting out the ducks I said to Dan, "Three days in a row. Kind of an ugly omen, don't you think?" And he did my favorite thing ever, he made the vulture speak:

"No one ever shakes their fist at the garbage man! I'm not the harbinger of death! Death came first ..."

The first laugh of the morning, hearing the complaint of the Black Vulture, misunderstood supervisor of roadkill, and hopeful player of Coviello.

What Lives There

The shed is home to a metal bouquet of tools,
hungry shovels, rakes of all stripes,
a carpenter bee snugged deep in a beam.
A nail holds the poultry waterer,
from another dangles a rag, red bucket,
a misanthropic hula hoop. Empty feed bags
(too good to throw away), sag in a corner
and complain with a coterie of fenceposts.
The shelf is a smattering of goat treats,
an opened bag of generic cheerios,
animal crackers, and the saltine box
where you found a field mouse
rustling around in a blissful panic.
The floor is rotted, just another task
we say “tomorrow” to, and from behind
a tub of sweet feed, the upside down
Mona Lisa smile of the scythe sneers
her editorial work — the instrument
made to cut out all we don’t want
from the living.

As Easy as Herding a Duck

"How do you herd a duck?" is a Google search string I've typed recently, and of course, I found a helpful video on YouTube. What we've learned in the past two weeks as we take the ducks to and from their tractor, is that when frightened, ducks will play-doh themselves through small spaces, get stuck in concrete blocks, huddle in brambles, and veer off under stairwells then shoot out the bottom openings like "Vend-O-Duck."

We've also learned that they have personal kinespheres, just like people do, and once you learn their comfortable space bubble, you can use their flock instincts, and some cooked corn, to get them to go where you want them to (mostly). This morning we had our first real success, getting them out of the brooder in the greenhouse, and outside to the pyramid without any real snags. This is the first morning they are out there early, rather than later, and with any luck, we'll get them into their coop tonight.

A couple of weeks before lockdowns and social distancing began, eight ducklings arrived at our local post office and I got a call from the postmaster, Fran, to come "pick up your box full of chirps." We've been fortunate for the past two months to be preoccupied with ducklings. We were not prepared for the constant stream of care required, or the endless questioning over brooder light wattage, how to build a secure coop, or what kind of grit is needed for their digestion. But I am glad we've had the vast opportunities for creative problem solving while we've been sheltering in place. It's kept our minds and bodies busy.

I've annoyed countless friends with texts of duck pics (for the record, you really need to proofread your text messages when mentioning ducks). I've hounded my friend Howard, the Animal Whisperer, for advice and guidance.

Ducks grow fast. They are messy. They outgrew everything within a few weeks, and we lost two of them (Moonlight and The Undertoad). They've spent the past few weeks growing in a brooder made out of a livestock waterer, in a corner of the warm greenhouse.

We began to build a coop with supplies picked up, and later had delivered, the chicken wire and two by fours piling up outside our house. We researched, and planned, and neither of us has carpentry skills or any particular spatial genius. We ended up with what I call "Patchy Milatchy," or "The Duck Bunker," or "The Quack Shack."

The whole build was a "it's a learning experience!" of problems overcome with ah-ha solutions. One I applied yesterday. A couple of screws were poking out of the walk-up side of the ramp, so at Dan's suggestion, I grabbed a couple of wine corks and screwed them on. Ingenious.

The coop has to be weasel proof, and it is, we hope. It is so tightly built, that when the wood swells during rainy weather, the door is difficult to shut. It's do-able, and then locked down with two sliding hasps.

We also built a "duck tractor," a moveable safe haven for them to be in while we're not out on the property with them. It's a pyramid, because that was the easiest to build with the materials we had, and also Dan's idea.

I'm not sure what would be out there for them if I was left to my own devices to build something. I found myself outside this week on a sunny day, snagged in a curl of poultry netting, with a handful of those jabby fenceposts at my feet, trying to envision a duck run with the materials we had left over. I gave up. So for now, the ducks will move from their coop to the tractor, or out onto the pond.

My next search string for Google is, "How do you get ducks to come in from swimming on the pond?"