Month: January 2013

Culling the Flock

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Mommy Mind, Pics2 Comments

First our hens weren’t producing enough eggs. Now they are. Only problem is, over Christmas break some of our regular customers weren’t around and our good ol’ gals just kept on doin’ their thing. We should be glad, but instead we find ourselves in a tad of a panic. We’ve got some 200 eggs now in our mudroom, awaiting their hopeful future delivery. Good thing that eggs keep really well. Cuz it’s gonna take a minute to move em. Did you know that your regular, everyday white eggs that you buy at the store may be as much as a month old? And yet still, eggs are just as healthy to eat even a month after that. Truly, this is some miracle food. Our girls eat table scraps, glean what they can from the grass and nearby woods, and turn it all into eggs. I am continually impressed with their efficiency.

These days, however, the snowfall of a few weeks ago has caused an unforseen hitch in our business, Eggs of Hope. Because the girls can’t spend the day foraging in the grass, they now depend entirely on us for food. And that – crazy at it sounds – means we must provide nearly twice as much feed as before. And at nearly $20 a bag, 2 bags a week… well, you can see this has really become more of a hobby these days than a business. It’s frustrating, especially when I’m having difficulty just buying ourselves food, but for now we’re hanging in there. I went through my pantry and cooked up every bit of pasta and flour over six months old, I opened ancient cans of vegetables I knew darned well we would never eat ourselves, and I even added a few scrambled eggs into the mix. Yup, the girls love eggs. And chicken too. ! Hey, whatever works. They are the world’s very best recyclers, of that I have no doubt. Daily I stand in awe of the miracle of a hen and her magical egg.

We sure do have a lot of magic in our house right now. Happily, we’ve got some new customers, and I’ll post some flyers in town, send out some emails. Should be able to move some if I put a little muscle into it. But still, Elihu and I have both been thinking lately that we might need to adjust our strategy a bit. We’ve had a couple of folks ask us if we sell chicken, and while we do eat our own chickens, it might not be a bad idea to step up the meat sales too. Last night Elihu and I spent nearly an hour going over numbers, ideas… I just love that he is so thoughtful about our process, so careful to consider all our options. I am so incredibly proud of him for having such a good business sense about it all. He’s just as mindful of the details as I am – and honestly, sometimes even more so.

And I’m also so very proud of him for being the farmer I myself can’t quite become. When we decide upon butchering all the non-layers next week, I hesitate. It was our original plan – how can I be getting sentimental now? I knew that the old girls were freezer-bound. I just find that it’s an honest-to-goodness personal challenge for me to follow through. But Elihu? Not a problem. In fact, he’s the one coaching me. Telling me that we tend to anthropormorphize them. That they may be individuals, but in the end they’re not that smart. They don’t return our affection. Or at least necessarily remember us from visit to visit. They are simple creatures, he tells me. They know we feed them. They’re funny to watch, and yes, he agrees, we love them…. but they’re just chickens. And after all, he tells me, they were domesticated for this very purpose. Sheesh. All right already. You’re the bigger farmer than me, it’s clear. Ok. Let’s do this thing.

So tomorrow, we’ll vent our chickens. Check out their rears, their egg-laying holes, to see if they’re wide enough to be passing eggs, or if they’re in a dormant, non-laying state. We know that if we have 42 hens but we’re only getting 27 eggs a day, 15 gals aren’t doing their job. And that makes em dead ends. Feed goes in, nothing productive comes out (and what does come out just adds to the mess and future cleanup!). We’ll vent em, paint a big white X on their back if they’re not up to the task, and plan to move em out. I’ll call the Amish farmer on Monday to see when he’s butchering. Then Elihu will help me gather and box the hens up, and load them into the car. I may take him out of school that morning to help, maybe not. It used to be a big deal, a special event, but now, not so much. He’s so nonchalant about the whole thing. Now he knows they meet with a speedy dispatch, and that’s all that matters to him. That they have a good life and a quick, humane death. Like I said, he’s a real farmer. And one with a good heart. A very wonderful combination.

I’m trying to stay focused on our new plan. We need to cull back our numbers over the winter to reduce food costs during the snowy months. We’ll sell our meat birds in mid fall, restart the flock again in the spring (as we do every year with 24 eggs in our incubator) and then start the cycle over. Near the start of fall, as it genders become evident, we’ll butcher the boys as well as the girls who aren’t laying well anymore. We’ll keep the youngish gals and a resident rooster and then just do it all over again.

This is the plan, and although it’s been our plan in years past, we’ve yet to see this process through an entire year without hiccups. Seems there’s always some situation that arises to interfere…  but I feel good about 2013. We have both learned so much together these past four years, and I feel we’re much better equipped to see our business through a successful year. Elihu and I both think that this is the year Eggs of Hope will reach its stride, get its groove. Just need to make a couple nips and tucks here and there. (Our nips and tucks will be a hell of a lot easier to make than what Congress has ahead…) That should do it. Will let you know…

August 2012 921

163 Years Old

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...4 Comments

Well, they’re here. The three kings of Orient have reached the stable. The shepherds have finally found their way in from the fields, and the little drummer boy is doing his thing for the baby Jesus. Tonight is the real party. This is the day of gift-giving, the final day of Christmas. Tonight, everyone gets it. Tonight, we have an Epiphany.

And it’s also my mom and dad’s birthday. Though seven years apart, they both were born on January 6th. Imagine that! Dad was born in Passaic, New Jersey in 1928 (to a 45 year old mother who had been told she would never conceive a child) and mom was born in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1935. She would grow up in a household divided (uncharacteristically of the times) by divorce – seeing her father move out at just about the same age as Elihu did.

My dad is going through a process of dementia these days. For the most part he is still very recognizable as himself; he is present, there is a twinkle in his eye and he knows what’s going on around him. What he’s not always clear on, however, is when he is. He often slips back into his years as a boy in Passiac, and will reference his old house, his old neighborhood, tell us that mother is coming by soon… This all somehow blends in very naturally and seamlessly with his present, and when you tell him that it’s 2013, and we’re now in upstate New York, he agrees, he gets it… he adjusts. Nevertheless, he does seem to slip a little further into the great sea of his past just a bit more with each passing month… Not always noticeable to me, but old friends who come to visit will often be a little taken aback. Good thing that it doesn’t happen all at once, I guess. Kinda like being pregnant. Got some time to prepare, get used to the new way of being…

My mother has not enjoyed being referred to as my ‘aging parent’ in my ‘about’ page on this blog. Many times, in what I still cannot quite ascertain as either a passive-aggressive or merely humorous remark, she has described herself as my ‘aging parent’ when speaking about herself in a conversation while I was present (I recently re-wrote the page. I may offer her that tonite as a gift!) Well, I cannot believe any more than she can that she is 78 today. I am not good with change. I can’t seem to fully grasp it. In my mind she is a perennial forty-something (I am a perennial thirty-something, go figure) and dad is just a bit older than that…  When I was growing up, I can’t ever remember being too terribly aware of just how old my folks were… that is, until they became ‘old’. !

In a few minutes I’ll go over to their house for supper. Seems like it really should be me making dinner, or at least taking them out. But in reality, feeding people is my mother’s creative expression in the world, and she just doesn’t delegate that role. Besides, just getting dad in and out of a car or a restaurant – much less in snowy weather – is not a simple task these days. Dad himself, while summoning the focus to find his next step forward across the floor, will often remark that as a boy he used to look at old men like him and think that he’d never be one himself. Don’t we all. Dad didn’t really begin aging so dramatically until he stopped driving, about two years ago now. I understand. He doesn’t go out, except to doctor’s appointments. His world has contracted, and these days he really hasn’t much to live for. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but it really feels it. He doesn’t even play music anymore. Getting through a simple Scarlatti sonata isn’t possible for him now. This Christmas was his first visit to our house when he didn’t even venture to the piano. I try not to notice, but it makes me sad. Dad always played the piano while mom got dinner ready, and the house lacks a certain livelihood without it. Tonite I’ll take up his chair for a bit, just to keep the place a bit more spirited for their birthday.

It seems like a good year. Their age matches their street address, and I myself was born in ’63. So I like the look of the number. Mom heard somewhere that good things happen in odd years, so maybe 2013 will be a good one. I hope. We Conants have humor on our side, if nothing else. And it seems to me, that humor might make it a little easier to be an ‘aging parent’ (sorry, mom). So here I go, off into the wintry night to mark a 163rd birthday. That is certainly something to celebrate!

Old Monkey

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life1 Comment

There’s been some sort of change in my mind and body lately. I don’t like it; it’s familiar, it’s been part of my life for over thirty years and I’ve been lucky to have lived without it for the past decade. But it’s come knocking again. Haven’t opened the door to let it in, but I know that it’s sitting there, waiting. Shit. I honestly never thought it would come back. Damn. Really? Ok. Gotta face it head on…

If anyone ever tells you they “think they’ve had a panic attack”, then they most certainly have not had one. There are people who use the words ‘panic attack’ in a very casual and cavalier way. That can sometimes really piss me off. Because panic attacks can rule, run and ruin your life. They aren’t just some hormonally-related hissy fit brought on by something mildly upsetting… No, a real, honest-to-goodness panic attack is a nasty thing. A horrifying experience. An experience of pure fear which, once it’s gotten into your system, can take years and years to get rid of.

With all our social connection these days, it’s not difficult to find people sharing their own experiences with panic attacks. But it wasn’t always so. Mine first came on in high school, and I can tell you firsthand that the psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors provided to me had not the least understanding of what I was experiencing. Now, it is different. But no matter whether panic attacks have been officially diagnosed or not, it hardly makes a goddam difference. Once they worm their way in, they are insidious and threaten to weaken the strongest resolve to keep them away.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this during my life, and I have some notes to offer. But before I go on, I’d like to acknowledge that sometimes talking or even just reading about panic attacks can be very frightening in of itself to those who live – or have lived – with them. Doing so brings them back into your awareness, creating the possibility in your thoughts that they may reoccur. If you do personally know about this topic and feel some trepidation, I encourage you to come along with me in spite of the risk, because I mean to demystify this phenomenon and hopefully loosen its grip on us.

First, as I just said, if you think that you might know what a panic attack is, then honestly, you probably don’t. And second, speaking of this phenomenon as if it were one or two isolated ‘attacks’ is not at all accurate. Instead, there is a constant state in which the patient lives during which panic may descend at nearly any time. It’s this unpredictability which really makes the situation much worse. Sure, you might have identified some triggers, and you’ve developed some strategies to ride out the most intense moments of panic, but even being this self-aware is no defense against them. After three decades of having on-again, off-again panic attacks I have come to see some trends, which helps, but unfortunately there is a mystical element to these fits of horror that for the most part defies methodical inquiry.

One thing I know is that ultimately, panic first enters into someone’s life when there is some sort of threshold of stress reached; a divorce in the family, peer pressure, lack of self worth, getting too far behind in school or work…. And really, what all of that translates to is that you have lost control over things in your life… I think that feeling as if you have no control over your own life – whether consciously or unconsciously – is the soil from which panic attacks grow.

So, you’ve got this environment or event which ramps up your stress to a critical level, and then one day, some silly, seemingly unrelated thing  (loud noises, chaotic surroundings, all eyes on you, etc.) will trigger it and BOOM! You’ve had your first panic episode. Your heart is most likely beating as if you’re running top speed, your palms are cold and wet, and you are fucking scared. I mean really fucking scared. You know it’s just you, you know there’s no good reason for it, but you’re locked tight inside your private, hellish experience and you can’t begin to convey what’s going on… Plus of course you’re trying hard to hide it, oh and that’s just making it all so much more frightening… So that’s a panic attack in a nutshell. Stress drives it, then it becomes physical. It defies logic and therefore seems impossible to stop.

But there have been a few critical times in my life when they did stop. Cold. One was a situation in which I really couldn’t screw around; somehow my inner psyche overrode the panic and disabled it for a while. I’d broken my neck and was told I might not walk again if I didn’t lie there perfectly still. Ok. That’s some serious news. I felt a little pre-panicky in the beginning as I lay there pinned to the bed, but I noticed the feelings dissipated soon after. Kinda seemed like panic attacks knew they weren’t really out to paralyze me in earnest. So they took a back seat for a while. Thought that was interesting.

I also didn’t experience panic attacks during the busiest, most enjoyable time of my life as a working musician in Chicago. And I think it’s because my life was truly mine, I made my own creative choices, I was expressing myself, I was living in freedom, unhampered by rules and restrictions – and also feeling very much in control of my destiny. (Ha!)

And as a mother and soon after the owner of a nightclub, I was just too busy for panic. And  I was enjoying a good amount of control over my immediate environment. No problem there. But how about when my husband asked for a divorce? That might seem just the perfect time for some good old-fashioned panic attacks, right? But not for me – cuz the real life shit was hitting the fan and I had a child to take care of – I had to take care of bidness for real. Again, the panic attacks politely deferred for a bit as it seemed I had much more pressing things to attend to. So I did the things I had to, and eventually, the dust settled…

So here I am. Couple years down the line. Not really digging the older version of myself that I see in the mirror, certainly not digging that I’ve let myself add on an extra 30 pounds, and as I stand back and look around, I realize that my life is really quiet. In the past it was the chaos, coupled with a loss of control that zapped me with panic. I think the pre-panic cocktail is a bit different these days… the physical sensations are familiar, but they’re not brought on by chaos and confusions these days…. Rather what gives me a chilling, pre-panicky sensation is the awareness of a vast, unending emptiness that seems to stretch out before me… Yes, I’m feeling that familiar, almost out of body sort of buzzing energy – I reach to touch something, but it doesn’t feel like I’m in my arm… it’s someone else’s… oh, I remember this part… Why is this happening now? I ask myself. Then I sit to think in earnest. Think. What’s the same this time? And – just what is different?

Got it. What’s the same as previous episodes? Loss of control (weight gain, aging, arthritis getting worse in hands) and the sense of falling behind (I have no friends here, not creating these days, not keeping up with the world outside). So now, what is exactly different than before? There’s no chaos around me to trigger me into a panic, but rather… there’s so much of… nothing. So much quiet. So much space, so much time alone. This is the new stressor. Can you imagine? Finally alone with myself and I am driven to panic. ! Come on, Elizabeth, that ain’t right. You’re no dummie, you know there are a couple of things you can do. Yeah, you’ve had Yoga on your list, and yeah, it’ll help, but for now we’ve got an emergency situation – it’s time to get proactive about my panic.

So I sit on the couch facing one tall, straight pine tree down the hill. I align myself with the tree and begin to ground myself, imagining roots going down, down… breathing in through the top of my head, washing all the chatter aside with simple, specific tasks…. “I breathe in abundance, I breathe out peace..” I don’t plan the words, they just seemed the right ones. I continue this for several minutes. Yes, I notice that I feel better. I’m more in my body now. In fact, this is comforting. I knew it would be. Stop thinking, Elizabeth, keep doing that abundance peace thing… I bring my wandering mind back more than a few times, til I feel it again. Not the way I have in years past, but it’s there. Just enough of it to remind myself that it is all ok. In spite of how goddam scary this world seems to me, yes, it is ok. I am supported. Breathe in, and out….

It’s a lonely thing to have panic attacks. You can’t just tell anyone, and you can’t explain them, because even you yourself know they’re unreasonable. I once sat on my bed, my mom right beside me, and I physically felt as if I were free-falling down an elevator shaft. I mean literally, that’s the feeling I had in my body. I was almost surprised that my hair wasn’t being blown back, it was that convincing. And there wasn’t a thing she could do calm me. I was in a private universe of my own. Yeah, it’s really not possible to explain what it’s like. And there are many different sorts of symptoms too. Suffice to say, there’s no logic, but the experience is nonetheless terrifying and real for that person.

So, loss of control sets the stage. My advice? Try not to take things too seriously. Know that a better situation awaits you. And if you’re in the middle of panic – ride it out, keep moving – walk around – and don’t be shy about telling people. (Sometimes I worry that will make it worse – but it almost always helps. Remember, panic attacks are made worse by your having to hide them!) And if you can, when you’re still in that ‘pre’ panic mode, try doing what I did. Not sure if it would have worked for me ten years ago, but today it took the edge off. Sit still. Just give your attention to breathing in and breathing out. Try to turn down the chatter in your brain. Don’t make it about doing it any one way – the goal is to quiet your mind, to find peace, to come home.

I’m not saying that I’ve got this figured out. Seems my new personal challenge will be about learning to live in stillness, cuz that’s making me nervous. I’m in the right place. Got country all around and cute little birds at my window to keep it real and give me a laugh when I feel the fear trying to sneak up behind me… I mean to meet my new fear and transform it. Can you imagine? Getting panic attacks from, well, nothingness? First the chaos of the city overwhelmed me, now the peace of the countryside is doing the same. Interesting to say the least.

Thankfully, I know I’m not alone in my handicap:

“I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”    Blaise Pascal

My main efforts – and self-prescribed remedy for panic attacks these days – will be to work on being still. And quiet. Might not be easy. Will let you know my progress. This monkey is persistent, I hope I can persuade her to sit quietly beside me…

Indo Rant

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...1 Comment

So just who are you, out there, somewhere, in Indonesia? Who are you, Indonesian readers? Bored expats? Unintentional visitors? On your way to another blog down the street a ways…?

Oh, I have such a feeling for that place, that country of many smaller countries… I have dream-like remembrances of that place, those places…. or were they just dreams? I think not… I do remember the call to prayer, the workers atop construction cranes stopping to kneel before Mecca, I remember trading menthol cigarettes for a ride in a Bajaj through a monsoon-like rain… I remember a river of vehicles, scooters passing Bentleys, chickens hanging off the side of the family bike..  a mass of humanity in motion some ten lanes wide…I remember a volcano, I remember the cicadas were so very loud in the heat of the morning… I remember funeral processions, blossoms everywhere, shadow puppet shows, gamelon orchestras, exquisitely beautiful dancers whose eyes moved eerily side to side, I remember rice paddies, terraced, green… carved rock with chunky reptile faces, I remember the man in Celuc who made enormous penises out of wood… no joke… but he laughed with us and let us take a picture… sat with an ancient man and his prize cock – who’d won every battle he’d ever been in. Sat with the bird on his lap, stroking him gently… remember the scents, the heavy scent of fruit just turning, the fruits probably belonging to the offerings left; left on stone walls, tucked away in corners, offerings with bright flowers and ripe fruit… scents of humidity, of the dirt road, the coconut-based curry sauces the likes of which I’ve never had since… I remember a nightclub in Denpasar… then leaving the nightclub so that I could go outside and listen to Maribeth singing Denpasar Moon on my headphones while tourists danced with people from absolutely everywhere… the whole time covered in sweat…. Oh I loved Indonesia. It’s a place I want to return to one day.

So, who are you, you there in Indonesia? And where in that incredibly long and diverse country are you? I would love a hint, a story, something, anything…  (maybe even some real Beef Rendang if you can find a way to send it thru the post… it just doesn’t taste the same when I try to make it!)

Ok, I’m done. Thank you all. I feel much better now.