Snowshoes, Death, and Taxes

Towards the end of January, I set out to visit my friend SuiSui, over in our horse pasture. SuiSui, our long-time friend and CSA member, honored us by asking if she could have her ashes on our farm someday. Someday came too soon, and that January morning was the anniversary of SuiSui’s death. We loved her, and she loved us, and she loved our farm, and we love our farm, too, mostly.

That morning I felt a little annoyed at our farm, because it was requiring me to gather financial records for our taxes, which is not my favorite thing to do. A nice walk in the snowy fields would do me good, I thought.

But the nice walk turned into a hard slog, as I went knee-deep into snow after breaking through the icy crust at every step. I had to stop three times in a hundred yards just to catch my breath. SuiSui kept waiting patiently for me, and I finally made it, and had a long talk with her about how things were going. 

I was getting chilly, but I wasn’t looking forward to struggling again through the drifts. SuiSui gave me an idea: “Snowshoes!” she and the wind whispered around me, and I perked up, and trekked back.

The snowshoes are an old wooden pair, discovered when we were sorting through the piles of useful farm junk that the previous owners left. The buckles are stiff and contrary, but they work. The last time I used those buckles was when my now-22-year-old daughter was in the second grade, and she had a little pair of orange plastic snowshoes, and there was a two-hour snow delay for school. That snowshoeing was the nicest use of a two-hour delay we ever had.

This is all to say that I am not an expert on snowshoes, and the first time I fell down was when I was trying to get up from the ground after the buckling. Since the streams were still running, I didn’t want to get the snowshoes wet and attract big globs of snow or ice. I decided on the route up to the big-oak field, thinking there would be a narrow stream to cross, rather than tackling the wide stream that led up to SuiSui.

The narrow stream wasn’t as narrow as I thought, and I hugged the snowy shrubs on the bank, leaning over the water, as the shrubs poked me in the eye, and my snowshoes slithered around at an angle. But I didn’t fall in, and I made my slow snowshoe way up the big hill, with side excursions to see a nest full of snow in the bushes, and other nice things. I was happy that I wasn’t breaking through the crust. I got so warm in the sunshine that I unzipped my jacket. I went swaying and clomping along, pleased with my big adventure.

Next I went across the lane to the hayfield, which is the sunniest spot on the farm, but the snow was too soft for snowshoeing there. I had my second fall when I tried to heave me and my big feet over the stone wall. I ended up fall-crawling over the wall into the pine woods, where the snow was perfect, and I heard the chickadees, and where I zipped my coat back up. By then, I was getting a little tired, and fell some more on the rough terrain, when my snowshoes got tangled up with each other.

Then, in a perfectly satisfying conclusion to my adventure, I circled back around from the other side to visit SuiSui again. I cleverly turned my next fall into a roll under the wire fence. SuiSui was very glad to hear about my enjoyable afternoon. She said, Life’s too short for taxes. She said, Well, hurry up and get them done, and then come out again into this beautiful world.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 8 -
March 14, 2023

Farm Budget Committee Meets the Leatherman

My fellow farmer has been the delighted owner of a Leatherman for some years now. A Leatherman, in case you don’t know the secret code, is a multipurpose tool that unfolds into any number of things: screwdrivers, bottle-openers, scissors, files, pliers, flat and serrated knives. 

Leathermans are made in Portland, Oregon, and there are many different models: the Surge, the Signal, the Wave, the Wingman, the Sidekick, the Raptor Rescue, to name a few. You can even customize your own Leatherman to have just the tools you’d like. 

You can also carry the Leatherman on your belt in its own special Leatherman pouch, as my fellow does, and anyone who knows the code will say “Hey, what model do you have?” 

My fellow has a basic model, the Rebar, which he bought used on the Internet after the budget committee (i.e., me) objected to buying a brand new one. 

“That’s a lot of money,” I said, when he first started longing for a Leatherman. “Especially for something you’re not even sure you’ll use.”

My fellow enumerated the million ways he could use a Leatherman.

“That’s a lot of money,” I said, “For something you might lose in a day or two in the field.”

My fellow extolled the virtues of the special Leatherman pouch, securely attached to his belt, which is securely attached to his pants. “I’d have to lose my pants to lose this Leatherman,” he said.

“Is that right,” I answered. “That would give our farm a whole new vibe.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, studying the Leatherman website. “Look at all these great models! There’s one for everything. Farming, hiking, carpentry, raptor rescue. Hey look, here’s a Poetry Leatherman!”

“No, really?”

“Yeah, look!” he said. “It unfolds a teeny tiny pencil, and a pad of paper!”

By this time the poetry-loving budget committee was laughing, but still able to muster up another objection: “I don’t like the name.”

“Leatherman? It’s the last name of the guy who invented it.”

“Okay, but still . . .”

“How about Leatherwoman?” my fellow offered. “Leatherperson? I can’t wait to get my Leatherperson. It’s going to be great.”

“Can’t you get a nice second-hand Leatherperson? If they’re so well-made, there must be a few out there looking for a new home.”

“They’re so well made, nobody wants to get rid of them,” my fellow said, but he hopped over to Craig’s List, and found his Leatherman, at less than half the price of a new one. Then, of course, he had to buy the pouch separately, but at last all was secured to his belt and pants, and he went happily out into the farming day.

Within hours, my fellow had used the Leatherman multiple times, and he detailed each critical Leatherman event for the budget committee’s edification. I had to admit the Leatherman seemed like a good purchase, because not only did my fellow have the tool he needed, he had it right away, rather than after the usual frantic hours of searching in the disaster of a tool area.

But the Leatherman clincher came later, when our nice draft horse Molly came limping into her stall. My fellow looked her hoof all over, expecting a stone in the frog. Instead he found a streak of blood on Molly’s fetlock. Then he found a tiny black spot in the blood. 

My fellow whipped out his Leatherman, unfolded the pliers, and grabbed hold of the black spot. Then he pulled and pulled, drawing an enormous splinter out of the fetlock. You could almost see Molly’s relief as the thing was being extracted.

My fellow brandished the huge splinter, still firmly gripped in the Leatherman. He was triumphant, with good reason. The Leatherman had saved the day! Plus it saved a lot of vet bills, and saved my fellow’s reputation with the budget committee . . .
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 8- Feb 14, 2023

Farmer Astonishment: New Good Things Can Happen

  Sometimes we farmers astonish ourselves. 

For example, we’ve been putting our horse-drawn machinery away in the barn for the winter for twenty-plus years. It’s always a chore, partly because we have to clear out all the junk that has filled up the barn floor during the gardening season first. 

This year, we had our regular junk, plus a large collection of political signs that my fellow farmer had kindly volunteered to store for the next election. 

“Don’t these politicians have offices? We don’t need any more junk around here,” I grumbled, as we hauled the signs up to the barn rafters. 

Wisely, my fellow said nothing, only smiling encouragingly, hopefully, don’t-you-love-me-even-though-I-am-adding-more-junk, until my fit passed.

Then we started the real work of pushing and pulling and jiggling and coaxing the machinery into the barn. 

Every implement has its own idiosyncrasy. One is really heavy. One pinches our fingers if we’re not careful. One refuses to go in the direction we steer it. The worst are the two hay loaders, which are too tall for the barn door. 

We maneuver a hay loader as close as possible, then heave the bottom up until the hay loader reaches its balance point. One farmer holds the bottom edge, keeping the balance, and the other farmer pushes one wheel ahead, chucks it, hurries to the other wheel, pushes that ahead, chucks it, and repeat.

Once we are through the doorway, things don’t get much better, because the rafters are also too low. So we wobble and push and chuck our way along, and then rest the edge of the hay loader on two stumps stacked up.

Then we do it all over again, with the second hay loader.

But the hardest part of putting machinery away is leaving a narrow alley on one side so that we can get through to feed hay to the horses all winter.

Some years we have to hold our breath to get through our alley. Some years we bark our shins daily on the hub of the wheel that sticks out at just the wrong place. One year we had to clamber over the plow, the disc, and the cultivator, because we had no alley at all. That gets a little wearying, considering that hay-feeding happens three times a day.

Plus there is always at least one pole, if not two, that sticks out under the barn door, because we can’t jam the implement in far enough. Then we trip over the pole, as we lug our forkfuls of hay out to the mangers.

But this year! This year we astonished ourselves, entirely by accident! Normally the machinery is lined up on the barnyard side, ready to be put away. But this year my fellow lined them all up on the other side of the barn, and voila! it turned out that putting the machinery away in reverse was the perfect solution. Not only do we have a nice clear alley, but there are no poles sticking out to trip us up.

“Why didn’t we try this years ago?” I said to my fellow farmer.

“Because you don’t like to do anything new?” he ventured.

“Hardy har har,” I answered, feeling mightily pleased with our project. Even after twenty-plus years, new good things can happen!

“If only we could fit the spreader in the barn, too,” my fellow said wistfully. “Especially since we just had the spreader rebuilt. How about we build a nice machinery shed, and then we could line everything up, and it would be so easy and roomy?”

“How about if we take a nice tarp,” I answer, “And put it over the spreader? Or hey, how about covering it with all those political signs? It would be perfect! You know, manure, compost, political signs.”

“Hardy har har,’” said my fellow, as I grinned at him.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jan 11- Jan 17, 2023

From the Zoo to the Farm

Not long ago, during this slower season on the vegetable farm, I visited the zoo in Syracuse with my sisters. The three of us grew up on a family dairy farm in New York State, and we are pretty familiar with cows.

So when we came into the zoo, and caught our first glimpse of a furry black animal, and my middle sister said excitedly: “Look! There’s a … cow,” we all had a big laugh. It was a nice little black cow, and had alpaca, sheep, and goat companions. 

We also saw some beautiful birds, from flamingoes to blue cranes. We visited the penguins, the primates, the red pandas, the tiger, the snow leopard. The gray wolves and the red wolves were holed up for the day, but we saw camels and mountain goats, tiny deer and great big lizards. We admired each one, and worried a little too – zoos certainly bring on mixed feelings about our relationships with animals, even as we admire them.

The reason we had ventured to the zoo at all, despite our worries, was because of my middle sister’s love for elephants. She has read many elephant books, and watched many elephant documentaries, and dreams of working at the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. 

The Syracuse zoo has a small herd of Asian elephants, which my sister had visited before, but the big news was that a mama elephant had just delivered twins, which only happens in less than 1% of elephant births. It is also rare that both elephant calves survive. Much to the delighted surprise of the zookeepers, the two brothers are thriving, at a month old.

The public is allowed two viewing times during the day, a half hour in the morning and afternoon. First we watched three big elephants come out of the barn, going straight to their hay. Two started munching, and the third picked up a whole pile of the hay in her trunk, and moved it a good distance away. Apparently she wanted to lunch alone.

It was too cold and wet for the little ones to be outside, so they came into the barn’s viewing area instead. There was the mama, and the grandma, and there were the two tiny elephants! Of course, they might not have seemed tiny if we were standing right next to them, as they each weighed over 200 pounds at birth (and the placentas together weighed 90 pounds). But they sure looked little next to the adults.

The mama and grandma spent the half hour reaching up their trunks to pull out hay from an overhead feeder, and then cleverly sweeping up the bits on the floor with their trunks into little piles, and eating them too. 

One little calf amused himself by peeking out from under the mama’s back leg. Once he tried to catch the mama’s tail in his trunk. The other calf was a little bolder, and would periodically dash away from his mother, run a circle, play in the sand, and dash back. It was funny to see how much his trunk flopped around in his dashes. Trunk skills come gradually, and we were impressed when he wrapped his tiny trunk around his mama’s big one. 

It was wonderful to see the elephants, and the zoo is well-maintained and helping with larger animal and habitat conservation projects, which is heartening. It made me think about animals everywhere, wild and domestic, in zoos and on farms, in forests and on plains, and about my hope that we can more fully recognize and respect our kinship.

Then, when I got home, ready to recognize and respect my kinship with our draft horses, they seemed more interested in their fresh piles of hay than in me, just like the elephants. But maybe that’s the point: it’s not all about me, but all about all of us, human and more-than-human. 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 14 - Dec 2o, 2022