Get your hands dirty
Thank God for seasons, marking our time, giving us rhythm. They measure time passing, and likewise make it endless in the repetition.
We are in the mountains, and this resort town is overrun with wildlife who’ve lost their fear of humans. The coyotes call each evening.
We cannot volunteer on the river this Fall, so SK said we should celebrate Fall in the mountains. What a great suggestion.
I’m so glad she thought of it!
For Joy, focus attention and watch until there is little room for expectations. What is true appears. Attending is Love. Allow them to become exactly who they are, each one in its time.
Attend the bee on the goldenrod, the children on vacation, the self.
These days of transition tear at the soul, threatening existential loneliness. The season mirrors the dying inside. The daily definition “Mom” drains away, like the green of active production mellows into yellow leaves. Winter winds soon blow at the door of my life, threatening to lay me bare. I stand, eyes on the fledglings, proud of my work, and faithful. There will be a Spring and a new version of myself.
Another recent transplant:
“We moved here because NC is so Nice!
We were so tired of the traffic, poor air quality, the noise.
You can hear the birds and the frogs here.
It’s just that.. we have to drive everywhere now.
I wish things were closer; back home we could walk everywhere. Luckily, they’re putting some shops close by…
That will be – so Nice…”
_____________________
We call it being muted.
I lost one home – my beloved farm – and I don’t intend to lose another.
NC does not have to look like the northeast. We can see where that led – everyone’s leaving and coming down to NC because, “NC is nice!”
It sure is. Let’s keep it that way. It’s slipping between our fingers, one DOT highway and expensive subdivision after another. Is this really the size of our dream? We can dream bigger!
Our work is ALL connected, and if we get connected, on the land, place to place, neighbor to neighbor we can greatly influence – steer the ship – toward our common goal. The resilience and restoration of NC habitats, the health of our state, is in our hands, every one of us – not in policies or taxes or legislation, though also there, but equally or even more so, in our own yards, neighborhoods and open spaces.
Every Environmental Educator, every school, every open space can participate in habitat restoration, recovery and resilience, building spurs and trails for wildlife and wild neighbors to move across and through the landscape.
Working separately, we cannot save NC from development, highways and destructive economic forces. If we are not all working toward this goal together, we cannot get there. It will take everything we have, and more people after us, to keep the forces of extraction, and capitalization from paving paradise into a parking lot. The song hasn’t changed, just the geography.
I want us all to own this goal, together. There is nothing, nothing, that I can do beyond my own yard. That’s not even mine, but it’s my place, it’s where I live, and I steward it. The rest, your yard, and yours, and yours – is up to you. What will you do? Will you dig into your values, dig into your soil, your “soul”, and become a member of the community of all beings who share that place? What can you do, this Fall, this year, this lifetime?
Registration opens in October for the Winter Wreath Workshop. We will focus on apples, magnolia and boxwood. These require meticulous work, offering elegant, traditional results. This workshop will be offered remotely. Supplies can be picked up in baskets for members by appointment. Preservation of materials begins in the Fall.
The cool of Fall comes in pulses. The rabbits are digging. They efficiently eat the yard, and their range expands accordingly. Thistle popped through above ground, and I used a wire grid to patch that hole. Her wee warren stretches under her cage and out the other side now. Gypsy and Zero are future mates, and sleep next to each other all day, separated by a fence and a few inches. Scent and familiarity will grow over the coming months and with Spring he will be ready.
We lost Ichor to fly strike. Horrific as it was, she went in my arms after hours of tender care, and she seemed to know we had done all we could to save her. Ichor and Thistle are too old to breed now. She went so fast. The day before she was peppy and eating, looking fine. When it comes, it comes with a vengeance. The name is apt.
Zero is enjoying his expanded pen, and I continue to play with pasture scenarios. My plan is to master this skill and share the results.
The kids and I walked Screech Owl and Bynum today. A nest of seed ticks got Rufus at Screech Owl; I so despise them. The mine was loud, and the road was being dug up as we entered. Always in pain, never beautiful, I struggle to find a way to embrace that place. Bynum is covered with pawpaws all along the road. We walked to the festival site. The bridge is covered with graffiti: profanity and politics; the underbelly of Bynum showed itself and we all felt better going home. As they dragged their feet to their desks, I added a post script to the trip that if either of them decided not to go to college, they could become farmers with me! They declined and got to work on Algebra.
What is it like to be raised in a time when your friends set up a virtual bed next to yours for a sleepover? What is it like to create instagram lives, play remote games with people you may never meet in person, wearing skins that resemble them only in imagination, texting conversations instead of watching their eyes? It is a lot of fantasy.
We were already prone to weaving stories. What ‘a tangled web we weave’ now. I worry for their authenticity. I admit my own history of big ideas, big views of self, while welcoming the ‘smalling’ that comes with mid-life. The youth seem to see everything as possible, strive for lives heretofore unattainable by their parents, and watch as digital lives create wealth; if that becomes the goal, Heaven help us all.
All I can do is head outside, drop to my knees, and pull weeds. I can sit on the sofa holding a buck rabbit, share photos of horses helped by neighbors who know them not but came to the rescue because community comes together in crisis.
…I can show them real.
Love always,
Your Velveteen Rabbit
“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
― The Velveteen Rabbit
The fires are raging outside Portland, near Salem, and Beavercreek. Amber evacuated her animals. Her horses are safe and her dogs and cats with her. One draft horse wouldn’t load. They spent hours. The ashes and heat got so bad they had to give up, and it was long past time to go. Clare, over in Gaston, is taking in more animals every hour. She has 10 horses in the barn already, six more on the way, and just set out to pick up 25 sheep. Thank God for neighbors.
Can you imagine? I can’t. I wasn’t home when it happened to us. Ironically, when Screech Owl burned down, I was in Portland. That was 2009. It’s been just over a decade now, and still she stands, waiting. We have a few more years of schooling and then the time will open up, to return, repair, and restore.
Unlike the dry west, it rained all summer here after we enjoyed a long and glorious dry Spring, with Covid keeping us home- an extremely beautiful Spring. We were the lucky ones, appreciating the opportunity to stop, slow way down, and just be together. Not all enjoyed that luxury of course. Many, like Colette, gave countless hours. I spent a good many myself, at the sewing machine throughout April making masks for law enforcement. The officers were so gracious and grateful, that repaid every moment spent in spades.
Officers. What a tragic year this has been in so many, many ways. I do wonder how the children will share the tale in hindsight. The phrase will never be the same. Neither will we: not my job, education in general, race relations, the economy, the dollar, the food system, our country, our culture.
The list goes on for me personally. My friendships have changed. My goals have collapsed. One friend is dying of cancer and choosing not to call it by name. Another called me racist and kicked me out of her life. She might be right, and ‘yet and still’, we all need to learn tolerance. I think she and I will mend, in time, as the earth grows back after fires. As for the other one, she may rise like a Phoenix as well – faith needn’t falter.
My priorities have clarified and narrowed intensely. The only purpose now is to know and love the earth, live well with her, and celebrate the gift of Creation – yes, with a capital C. Someone is the progenitor. This is no accident. Living in gratitude, increasing in competence and sharing what’s available, we walk into the next decade for Farm School, staying put where we’re planted.
Here it comes ’round again. My girl welcomed the season today. 
Tea and thee.