Category: Farm Life

Coop to garden. A mountain of learning.

Get Crackin’

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Mommy Mind2 Comments

So much yet to do. The biggest item is off the list: make sure the automatic coop door opener really works. Although I bought it last year (paid for a pricey rush delivery in fact) it sat uninstalled all year long in my garage, as I just couldn’t manage to do it myself as I’d planned. Even bought a sawsall to make the cut in the wall – really, how hard could it be? As I set out I discovered, hard enough. Maybe if I’d had more practice with the saw – which was much harder to control than I’d expected – I’d have been able to cut myself a hole into which I could then install the door. But I simply couldn’t manage it. The whole project, for as simple and straight forward as it looked was too much for me to muster on my own, and in the end I hired my brother to watch over my flock as we left town for a couple of days on divorce business. (And I gave the sawsall to a kid who mowed my 5 acre lawn in trade.)

This year, having a much larger flock and hoping to go away for a much longer time, I simply had to get it installed. When I unpacked it, we discovered chimpmunks had not only filled the entire thing with corn (the industrious little fella was dead at the bottom of his own cache) but had cut both the cord that pulled the door up as well as the wiring that told it to do so. God bless this handyman that I found at random from the local Pennysaver. He fixed it. And installed it. Then, as it began to appear a task completed, the timer got knocked to the ground by the birds on the first night, and came apart in pieces. Day two of coop preparations, four days to departure. I was beginning to panic. Lower back pain had me all but immobile, and now this. Swearing like a sailor, I wrestled the pieces back together in the obscene heat of the garage. It worked, but not quite as it should have. It took two more days until we had both a successful raising of the coop door on its own as well as a successful lowering of the door. Hooray! Right? Nope.

First night it was the new guys. The chicks – who are now just about full grown chicken size, but who eat like teenagers and don’t know the routine of the mature flock quite yet – they haven’t figured out where to go at night. At dark, when all the others are high on their roosting bars, safe for the night, the younguns are in a crowded clump on the ground, huddling for safety. How else do young ones learn but to be taught? I’d thought they’d imitate the elders, but no, apparently it’s up to Elihu and me. So, one by one, Elihu puts the little guys through the tiny open door, where I then take them and place them on a roosting bar. We are teaching them. We hope. Day one it’s forced. Day two, the timer still isn’t working right, so we miss an opportunity. Day three – complete success! Out on their own in the morning, up and safe on their roosts by nightfall! And the tidy little door shut all by itself! Houston, we have liftoff!

Except for Maximus, who walks around the empty pen, waiting for us to come and talk to him. He fits through the small door just fine, but for some reason he has chosen not to follow his flock. He’d rather wait for me to come out and make my nightly check; he likes to talk to me. He gurgles and grunts low to me, follows me on my feeding and watering chores, stays ever close. “Oh Max” I cry to him in frustration. “You’re supposed to use the door too!” Maybe he needs some teaching like the little ones did. I can’t open the door or I’ll throw off its timing, so instead I open the large door with the diamond patterned window panes (Elihu called it the ‘Shirley Nelson door’ the moment he saw it cuz he said it looked ‘just like the kind of door a woman named Shirley Nelson would have in her house’.!) I pick up my soft, white goose and I carry him across the threshold, depositing him gently inside. “You must go inside with everybody else, Max” I scold. I’m happy to see the little ones have all now found their own spots on the new roosting bars. All seems well. If only the goose would go in on his own. I’m prompted to do some googling on the subject of geese and raccoons – could a raccoon, of which we have plenty, really take down my gander, attitude and all? I learn that yes, he could. So I have a goose problem still. Earlier I’d had too much testosterone in the pen, so I’d placed Bald Mountain on his own in the brooder pen for the week. Sorry, you’ll be ok big guy. It’s still a lot better than being stuck in a tiny cage for the 4H poultry show at the county fair for a week…But what to do with the goose? I’m trying to make it so that ALL my birds go in, roost and the door closes. Period. So the gal who’ll watch them has only to fill the food and water. That itself if enough of a chore. One more dilemma to solve before we go. Geez. Will we go at all? I wonder.

While I try to get every last piece of laundry folded and put away, and while I refresh my bed with a seldom-washed sheet still hot from the dryer, Elihu takes up a corner to help me make my bed as we begin to discuss the Max situation. It is clear that we cannot simply leave him outside in the pen. He will likely be gotten. The only option is our garage. Full of crap, some garbage, much of it not – in fact there are many nice things still left from my mid century life that I need to find good homes for.  But I do not want to come home in a week to find the furniture chewed on, green sloppy goose shit all over the cement floor… but what choice do we have? “Look”, Elihu begins, “it’s not a tiny garage, he’s got enough room. You just have to cover up the nice stuff and make Max his own little area. Wood shavings in that corner by the brooder pen. That’s all he needs. He’ll be fine”. Good lil man. Yes, if we doctor up that one last open bit of garage and make it his, he’ll be comfortable. Leave a fan on. He’ll be ok. And I can put up the baby gate by the door so that when our chicken sitter comes to set out food she won’t get goosed by our goose. (Sweet creature to me, to everyone else he is his master’s protector. )

All the while, my back continues to morph and shift, to become something foreign and new. I’ve had lower back episodes – one or two a year – for the past decade. I always bounced back within a week, nothing was ever any different afterward, and in fact it was all but forgotten by a month out. But this time I blew it, I guess. I went to a chiropractor. Initially , my experience was insightful and educational to a certain degree, but holy shit! That man actually did something to me! I was glad to leave my first appointment standing straight – when I’d walked in hunched over and to one side. But today it is a vastly different situation. I think I’d gladly take back my initial posture if I could get rid of this: I am now asymmetrical, my spine is twisted – as in no longer a straight line up and down – and my back sounds like jiffy pop being made on a stove… almost any movement at all and there’s a crackling sound. No pain, but the sound is new and disconcerting. And that I feel I’m a walking S is weird too. I can do stretches, breathe in deep, visualize my stretch and so forth… but nope. Nothing doin. I cannot straighten myself out. I seem to now have a new problem on top of the original one I’d come in for. !!!! I was so ready to receive this as the wholistic means of treatment and health from here forward…A practice that took into consideration the whole body, stress level,  diet, movement…but in reality it seems much more focused on simply vertabrae related ‘subluxations.’, one of which I believe the good doctor may himself have created. I know I sound a little paranoid here, but I’ve gone from a situation which though uncomfortable, was at the least, familiar, and at best, something I knew how to manage. But this popcorn popping, s – curving back is altogether new to me. What do I do with this? It’s annoying as hell! I can’t carry my bag on my left shoulder because I’m so newly outta whack. Huh? No one told men that new problems would likely pop up…. did they? Did I miss the handout?

Bed made. Kid asleep. Post slogged through, perhaps less intelligible than most, but well, it’s done. Soon I’ll update you on our itinerary. Our plans have changed so many times that to have posted updates as they occured would only confuse. This we know: I will drive us, with my new little popcorn-popping back, to the historic Mayflower II. (We’re smack in the middle of a historic kid’s book about a young boy on a whaling ship – and he speaks of my own mother’s home town, New Bedford, as if it were modern day New York City. It will be fun to see the town so described in the novel.) Yup, we’ll see the ship, then promptly ship out to visit my Uncle Paul and Aunt Sandy. Cousin Rusty seems a lot like my brother Andrew; he’s 50 and still lives at home. He slinks in and out, says very little and what he does remains mostly mystery to his family. Then there’s Janice, his younger sister and my other cousin. While younger than me, she is a grandmother. Yeeks. My paternal grandma had my dad at 45. Janice musta had hers in her late teens. Crazy. But for us, the craziest thing will be hearing ‘that accent’. We don’t often hear people who sound much different from ourselves, so it’ll be fun to be in the area and hear this local accent. Elihu will get a big kick out of it.

We have two decadent nights in Wareham, and nothing but beach and family to fill our time. Oh, and maybe a visit to the Plimouth Town Living Museum where the actors in costume speak as they did some 400 years ago, and where they don’t break character, where they serve food of the time sans utensils. That, we just might go see. Whale watching will have to wait. Money and time don’t allow it this run.

Next, our question is to return home? Or to continue west, via New Haven to New York City. My back pain will likely play a large role in this decision. We have yet to contact our NYC friends with the latest timetable, so friends, if you’re reading, please know things have been tricky. I hope that I may leave it at that and not cause hurt feelings or piss people off.  I’m also aware some may have altered plans on our account. Hope not too much. We’ll ask if you might receive us Tuesday, maybe also Wednesday night?? And Jersey friends, maybe the following two nights with you?

Little time. Lot and lots to do. I think I may even have forgotten how to pack. Hoooo – I’m woozy tired now. I’m gonna go and rest my crackin’ back so tomorrow I can start crackin’ the whip….

House Guest

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Divorce Diary, Farm LifeLeave a comment

Elihu’s father is here. He arrived on Thursday, and he leaves early tomorrow. More accurately, we drive him to the airport bright and early tomorrow. Which will be a bit of a feat in that we’ve just had two Fareed-style nights ending way past midnight. I don’t try much to change it; Elihu is so happy to have both his parents in the same place that I let the evening grow later and later, knowing that soon enough it will be a tiny, quiet house again with just we two.

My back is not much better. Fareed says I look like a pregnant woman from the back when I walk. I can either hunch over forward supported by a cane, or lean way back, waddling side to side. Not much room for comfort. I’m almost out of the muscle relaxers my local doc kindly prescribed for me a couple months ago during the last back episode, but thankfully have only to wait one more day for the chiropractor. I admit, I’m putting all my hopes in him. I don’t know how I’ll manage to make our proposed trip if I don’t get better. But honestly, I don’t know how we’ll make it anyway. A few kind people have been more than generous in our travel campaign, but in spite of sending out an additional hundred emails to friends and students, we haven’t received any donations besides those first few, so I’m really wondering how this can work.

And besides, I’m beginning to feel a little sick about my open solicitation for money. Was I too honest? I am poor, but do I need to be so blatant about it? I thought if I likened the gift to the purchase of an ice cream cone it might lighten things up a bit. Now I just don’t know. Without the benefit of a live audience I have no idea how my show is going over. I see the stats and discover that people in Pakistan are reading my posts. Relatives? I think first. Might they help us out? But no – it couldn’t be. The Haques fairly swept me under the family rug when Fareed changed families. (Jill and the boys are welcomed at family gatherings, while my absence has neither been explained nor asked about.) Besides, Riaz has always been the one to send money back home – not the other way ’round. I need to just relax about this. But I can’t! Between my back and students’ summer vacation plans I’ve already lost so much income these past two months. It’s crazy. I made less than half my usual take. So now what?

I’ll ask Fareed before he leaves.  Maybe there’s a soft spot in him somewhere. And I know there’s a cushion of some sort; after all, no matter how broke he tells us that he is, he always manages to take us out to dinner, he seems to have enough for impromtu purchases, admission tickets and such, and he has enough to take a bus and a taxi if need be. Maybe he can set aside his feelings that I’m asking too much – maybe he can for a moment picture his son visiting the Mayflower, seeing a whale, visiting with kids with Achromatopsia, seeing New York City for himself. Maybe. Sometimes I feel a little pang inside when I hear that Elihu has just had another ‘first’ visit to some place significant – and that he was there without me. But I set it aside, knowing that’s not really what’s important, that such thinking is more about me than Elihu’s own benefit. But still. I realize as the parent who’s not a part of much of his son’s life, it’s gotta sting. And to help fund that kind of event – to help make it possible in the first place – that might even hurt a little. I don’t know. But just like I did with you, I gotta ask.

You know how when it rains, it pours? Been a good summer storm over here recently. Thursday night, with back out, Fareed here (oh, did I mention I got pulled over en route to the airport for speeding – then got an additional seat belt violation cuz lil man was out of his seat, having a post-dentist appointment tantrum about not wanting to get braces? Sheesh.) and heat now soaring, I discover that the pipes that evacuate my kitchen skins both ruptured at the same time, and greasy, soapy water came cascading all over my kitchen floor as I stood doing the dishes after supper. Really? Ok. I can take it. Clean it up. Call the plumber. Friday morning the plumbers came. Did a nice job. Didn’t even take long, plus they had positive anecdotal stories about chiropractors. But last night, with a profound sinking of heart, I noticed that my beautiful (remember, it’s all relative, but for me, it is beautiful) laminate ‘wood’ floor began to buckle. And not only that, but small bubbles have formed just under the laminate. Crap crap crap. I allowed myself some bitter complaints last night, but today I will try my damned best to pretend that it’s all ok, and that in fact nothing has changed. And next week I’ll figure out what to do about the $500 plumber’s bill. For now, it’s moment by moment.

I did manage to get out of bed last night to shut all the windows after the house had cooled off. That’s key. By early afternoon the heat will have caught up with the tiny house, and we may have to find a distraction someplace else, but for now it is very pleasant inside. By the time the midday heat gets a hold of the place, we’ll probably be on the way to visit the local aviation museum – which will be especially meaningful for the boys as they have been making a wooden model of a WWII plane (for the past half dozen visits!) and to see the real things will no doubt be inspiring. The air conditioning will be inspiring too, I imagine.

The roosters are crowing, and I am reminded of how hot it must be getting in the coop. I’m going to go and let them out for the day – and this time, rather than keeping them behind their newly installed fence (the original culprit behind this wave of back trouble), I will in fact let them have the run of the place. Much cooler shade to be had in the trees, more cool grass and tasty bugs as well. So off I go, hopefully finding distraction in this and other domestic tasks so that the bubbling kitchen floor doesn’t grab a hold of me as it did last night. I’ll put the rug back. That should help.

Just wish my other concerns were as easy to remedy as throwing down a rug or seeing a house guest off on the plane.

 

Travel Campaign link:

http://www.gofundme.com/q1ke4

Back at It Again

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

Can’t say I’ve actually thrown my back out again; there was no one event which landed me on the ground in a lightening flash of pain, but rather this time it’s been gradual. Each day my back has been springing up in pain at a certain twisting or bending point culminating in a situation today which has me unable to sit in any one position for long or pick anything of substance off the ground.

I know, I know. Core muscles. Yes, got it. I spend so much time fixing things and doing chores and taking care of chickens and kids that it just hasn’t made it into the daily routine. But I know, I know. I should floss, meditate and do sit ups. Yeah. Not quite there. But with this being event number three in the back department in as many months, I’m seriously thinking about a couple of reps in the morning. Doesn’t sound so intimidating. Not when the alternative is walking around bent over like a humpback octogenarian.

I did get a fair amount of work done this week as I slowly worked my back into submission. After having driven eight fence posts into rocky soil (Greenfield is notorious for being very hard to dig in) and having put up some 120 linear feet of chicken wire – complete with working gate – my body was feeling it, but not so much my back specifically. So with no red flags, I continued my work. My new fence was not the success I’d thought it to be when I made my up-beat post about DIY pride. Yes, it was up, no it did not keep the hens in. Oh, initially it did. For about an hour or two. When they first realized their confinement they lined up at the perimeter, staring out at my with big ‘love me’ eyes, pleading to be released. As I would not help them, they helped themselves. Within a couple of hours everyone save Max (too big to squeeze under) was out and about, underfoot and leaving fresh poop all over my front steps once again. This required the big guns. Our neighbor and his dad have a homemade mill, and they were kind enough to not only cut some scraps for me, but to deliver them. Zac even placed the big ones neatly along the bottom of the fence where they were intended. I simply placed down the rest. Not much labor, but again enough to begin to tip the scales.

My hens were now contained – a huge advance for us and one step closer to getting out of here this summer – yet I had more before me. I’d made nesting boxes last fall but petered out of DIY steam and left them on the floor of the coop for the winter. Tired of waiting for some handyman to come to the rescue (this is a busy time and none will take my piddly little jobs. Very frustrating.) I decided I’d just do it myself. So I screwed on some L brackets, then hoisted the shelf up and above my waist – oh oh, it’s getting dicey, I can feel it…  Out-of-shape muscles shuddered to hold it in place while I leaned in with my drill and tried to get them secured to the wall. I did it, and it was something that had to be done. But I do think that was the moment when my back had had enough. I noticed I was unable to stand up straight after that project.

A few more chores later – several trips carrying two five-gallon buckets of water down the hill to the garden, beginning to shovel the year’s poop and litter out of the coop (heavy stuff), washing the grimy walls of my house that face the driveway, moving all the unused tools back to the garage – after these tasks and more, my back has finally had it. Slept last night on a heating pad despite the fact that it was 85 degrees in my bedroom. Felt better this morning, so I know I’m on the right track. And I’ve just about accomplished all that I can do myself. So in the end, it was worth it. I’m used to muscling through things, but what I’m not used to is a body that doesn’t follow my lead. I never thought aging would get in my way. Getting older is for other people, right? Reading glasses? Those are for wimpy mamby pambies… and me. Who can’t open a jar? Can you imagine arthritis so bad that you can’t even do that? Well, yes. I can.

Ah, mortality. I still don’t get it; that I too am being swept down the river. I too am aging. My body is simply not able to plow through life’s tasks without a bit more TLC. Damn. Really? Me too? There must be some mistake. Right? As I make the merest shift in my seat while sitting here, writing, a searing mass of pain stabs at me from out of nowhere, reminding me that it’s all true. Crap. Still so much to do, but alas, I just don’t think I can do it today. I have students coming later; I need to make sure I’m doing ok by the time they arrive. Elihu can amuse himself with his rc helicopters and books, so I suppose the best thing I can do right now is accept my mortality…

…and go back to bed.

Sweat Equity

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After waiting and waiting for some magical sum of money to find me in order to do some much-needed tasks around our homestead – and realizing that it simply wasn’t going to appear from nowhere, I set out, full of purpose and ambition to git her done with what I had or could glean from the land. As it were.

What seemed an incredibly daunting project came slowly to fruition as I plodded forward, one task at a time. Get the kid in the car. Get to Home Depot. Get fence posts (they cost what I made in lessons this week – so far, so good.) Get home (after feeding pigeons and taking an rc helicopter break – oh, and then lunch…) and finally set to work. The goal? Create a larger run for my expanding flock. One that will finally keep the goose and the roosters contained so that I don’t have to personally escort my piano students into the house for their own safety. A run that will keep my hens happy and healthy and prevent me from accidentally stepping in piles of poop every time I step out of my kitchen door. A much needed improvement. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I had a variety of handymen and fence guys over to give me bids. The highest was $3,800! Can you imagine? Sheesh. Guess I thought I’d present the project to my good old mom for underwriting. Couldn’t bring myself to. Glad I didn’t.

Yesterday was a long, hard day. But after a good eight hours of hard labor, I now have an expanded run, complete with gate and even flower boxes under the coop windows. Lovely and functional and a source of great DIY pride. I must credit my generous neighbors for donating the chicken wire, which relieved me of a good $200 purchase. As I’d loaded up the second-hand roll of wire into my car, I still didn’t believe I would transform it into anything useful. I truly doubted my abilities to deal with the mess of wire with any success. But aha! I have! Invigorated with what I accomplished, I have also now begun other little fixes. The door that won’t close. Done. The nesting boxes that are coming apart. Done. And after having used my chop saw once again I can feel my blood boiling with the possibilities of added improvements…

I was utterly exhausted last night, yet ironically find it hard to sleep in this morning for all the things I’ve yet to do. My goal is to simply “de-sketchify” my place. Make sure it’s in basic working order. And in the back of my mind one goal looms, still cloudy and unattainable as yet: to make my place easy to watch over should Elihu and I go out of town. We really hope to – and have for these past three years, but it has been our feathery charges which have blocked our escape. If I can make it easy to feed and water them, to get them in at night, then I can hire someone to do so. I need the girls to stay put for this to work! I am fueled by the vision of everything in perfect working order. There is no going back to bed for me.

Night Snack

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I think I’m dreaming, but I’m not quite sure… my son and I are running through the tall grass of my parent’s property in the dim light of early night, searching for the source of a skirmish we hear. A bird of ours is in distress, she is being attacked by something. He is far away from me, nearing the hen and her attacker faster than I am, and I begin to fear for his safety. ‘It can’t be any creature that would harm him’, I think as adrenaline comes over me. It looks a lost cause as I get nearer to the spot. The grass is too long to pinpoint the trouble, and it’s dark enough now that I believe our attempt to save her is lost. I am now aware that if it’s a dog moving in on her there may be more dogs closing in soon. My son himself is hardly tall enough to be spotted in the undergrowth and he seems all of a sudden vulnerable to the imaginary pack now sifting out of the woods and coming in closer. I call to him to stay back, I tell him we need to call this off. “Just come back!” I yell across the darkening field whose perimeter of forest now appears as lightless as black velvet. I feel some relief to hear his feet rustling back to me, the sound of his footsteps blending with the terrorized movements of our hen.

I now realize this is a dream, and the fearful mood dissolves just a bit, enough for me to begin to consider that I am replaying a version of what might have happened to the hen we had recently found dead in the garden. Then I begin to associate the dead carcass we’d seen in the garden with the meaty, tangy and tough strips of cured beef we like to indulge in every so often, and note how that kind of food feels as crude and real and death-like as the event that’s going on before us. As my focus now begins to turn in earnest to the idea of beef jerky, I realize that I would very much like some of that now. My dream fades a bit more; one half of me wants to remain in that dark field and finish our quest, retrieve our bird and scare off the predator, yet the other half of my mind is now seriously attached to the idea of beef jerky. I realize I’m hungry…. hey, I didn’t really have supper, did I? No, just broccoli. Man, I really do want something like that.. do we have any? Now I am indeed waking out of the dream. I am still able to shout one last thing to dream Elihu, but now I’m not sure he’s with me anymore. He’s still putting his energy into stopping the kill… so I finally leave him there, and open my eyes.

12:12 am. I smile to myself. That’s a number been in my world a long time. Got married on 12/12. And I am hungry. Salami. Got some of that. Started to buy it only recently for Elihu’s lunches. Is it enough to get me out of bed? I wonder, as I take an assessment of just how comfy I am, lying here under my warm covers rather than with cold, wet feet out in the middle of a field as I just was… Ok. Now I am awake. Yes, salami it is. And then the other half of the second-to-last sleeping pill to make sure I can truly get back to sleep.

I’m up. The salami does a good job. Not jerky, but salty, chewy. Kind of. I step outside and notice that it must be cloudy, because it sure is light out for the middle of the night. All that light from the mall, from the stores on 50 that stay lit all the time. All of it bouncing up onto the ceiling of low-lying clouds, keeping the land underneath bathed in a constant glow. Maybe something healthier to cap off this snack. A strawberry. Have one, leave two for Elihu’s lunch tomorrow. Just as I finish it, I realize I have bitten the inside of my mouth ever so slightly, and I notice the sour taste of the small cut mix with the tang of the strawberry’s last flavor. For a microsecond the two tastes are almost one. I worry it with my tongue to check how much it actually hurts. It upsets me for the briefest moment, til I remember what a familiar sensation it is. All the dozens of times throughout my life in which I’ve ever so slightly bit the inside of my cheek by mistake, the lingering salty, sour taste of an open cut left behind. I imagine myself if I were dying of some disease, thinking with nostalgia on something as preciously mundane as this, and becoming happy instead to experience it once more. Hm. One swallow of seltzer water will end this snack perfectly. Without checking the bottle, I grab it from the door of the fridge, take the top off and take a swig. It is not what I’d intended; instead it is the sickly sweet, no calorie sparkling lemonade I’d bought in anticipation of Elihu’s school chum coming over. Our seltzer water is too foreign and fancy for him, so I’d bought this. A taste of plastic hits me, and immediately I see the flourescent lights of a grungy corner garage where they sell Mountain Dew and stale candy bars.

My snack ends. So many images, all in a matter of mere seconds, wafting up from disparate corners of my memories. Waking in of itself becomes a dream. I shuffle back to my bed still going slow, energy mellow, hoping the transition back to the dream side might be more seamless than other nights. Roll into covers hardly pushed back, my body’s form still held by the pillows and blankets. Onto my right side, for I am a mostly a right side sleeper. Tuck it all in around me, and very soon am dissolving into the mysterious dimension of dreams once again.

Dead Hen

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I guess it’s a little easier now than it was in the beginning. But it still feels kinda crappy to see a little creature that you’ve nurtured from birth, lying ripped open and dead on the ground.

Yesterday, Elihu and I took a walk down the hill to our garden to check on things when he spied a form in the tall grass. “Mommy, there’s dead chicken here!” he told me. I was surprised, and not. The chickens, for some reason, don’t often venture down the hill to this spot; the only times I’ve known them to come down here is when they’re following me. Even Max doesn’t bother with the garden. (He does, however, become a threat to the young plants when he carelessly tramples over them with his big, webbed feet as he waddles along after me.) I came to look and saw that it was one of our dark red girls. Who? I don’t know. It’s most often the head and comb shape that tells us, and the head on this girl was missing. And honestly, even after having had them for two years now, I can’t always tell the dark red ones apart. A couple stand out, but for the most part they’re just red hens. I’m relieved to see it’s not Thumbs Up or Madeline or Shirley Nelson, but nonetheless I’m sad to think that this little gal, who’d made it through two winters and all the many nighttime attacks on the coop, had finally met her end.

The question we chicken farmers always consider first is ‘who did it’? But in the end, there’s never a definitive answer. One can speculate all day – and indeed, one can spend hours online in various chicken chat rooms discovering all sorts of anecdotal evidence that ends up telling us everything and, well, nothing. Raccoon, weasel, fisher, hawk, fox. All equally possible. All may well take off the head. All may well leave the prey and return for it later. Just yesterday Elihu had told me there were two young hawks outside talking to each other. I’d thought they were probably just blue jays – but as usual, he was right. We looked up to see some juvenile red tails circling above our yard and immediately made sure our flock was close to the coop for safety. So it might have been one of them. But really, there is no sure safety for a free-range flock. You do what you can, keep your ears open and use common sense, but ultimately there will always be a missing hen at some point.

I picked up the headless hen and saw her breast flayed open; I recognized the pink flesh – it looked just like the chicken breasts I cooked for supper nearly every night. I wondered to myself why the animal hadn’t eaten the meat. Seemed a waste.  She was still flexible, so we guessed she had been gotten fairly recently. That she should not go to waste, I flung her body over the steep edge of the hill into the brush for some lucky animal of the forest to come and finish.

Ironically, that night we had chicken for supper.

Good Moment

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Mommy Mind2 Comments

Should get to bed soon, but for now I’m not worried about it. I sit on the couch admiring the new orange candles I got recently for the mantelpiece. Every season I swap out the throw pillows on the couch, the shades on my tiny table lamps, the three wick candle on the piano and the candles on the mantel for a change of color and mood in the room. And I trade out whatever organic specimen I have in the tall floor vase for whatever’s reflective of the season. It being June I decided to embrace orange. Haven’t done orange before, but it felt fun. Happy to see that it really does look cheery and fun as I’d hoped. And it goes with the giant sunflowers. I sit on the couch taking it all in, feeling an end of the day kind of good. Elihu is sitting at the piano finding every melody he can think of. I don’t offer any help. This is a perfect moment, and he is doing just fine. He’s getting better at finding pitches. I notice his improvement as I sit here, enjoying this moment in time. He plays sorrowful, ancient melodies, he plays folk songs, he plays polkas. My mind wanders as I listen, eyes caught by the flames. I know that for now, there is a vast field just beyond the stone wall in which a female woodcock sits on her clutch of eggs. In the back of my mind I know that field may well not be here this time next year, but for now she is there, we are here, and all is well.

Paradox of Poverty

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As we were first hit with instense heat and humidity this morning and then tropical-style storms in the afternoon, I spent much of today inside tending to office tasks, one of which was to research how to get my brother on Medicaid so that we might help him lift himself out of a deep and bottomless depression. He’s been out of sorts for almost all of his life. He is a hoarder, a hermit, a social recluse and an angry, dry drunk. Until this week. He’s started drinking again, and this time I had to take action.

These days I am poor; regular readers know my plight – yet I’ve worked to glean what help I can from the systems that have been set up to help folks in my position. Through state assistance I’ve kept us fed and warm. But it was not entirely easy. I’ve often said that being poor is a part-time job. It takes a certain drive and tenacity to fill out all the necessary forms, make and keep appointments with case workers, let alone travel the distance to simply get to the office to which you must apply in person. My brother isn’t able to do any of this for himself. And he really has no true advocate to help him navigate the process. Our mother loves him dearly of course (what a new perspective I have on this situation just considering how I might feel were Elihu one day in Andrew’s position) but her role in this has been to feed him, to keep him alive. That is also, sadly, the role of enabler. Shortly after I moved here and learned the ropes of the social services world,  I got Andrew set up with food stamps. He’s long since let them lapse. Easy to do when mom is making his one meal a day. So today my mission was to re-establish his food stamps and get him some health insurance. It was a project perfect for the day’s inhospitable weather.

It’s ironic that the people who need and qualify for assistance can’t often muscle through the process required to actually get the benefits that were created for them. Those who love someone who is mentally ill have their hands tied; unless the person in need makes the effort to get help, none will come. To get help requires a 911 scenario, literally. All the folks I’ve talked to today told me again and again that the only way to get him hospitalized was to call 911 at his next violent episode, and he would be taken to the ER. This is nonsense! You mean to tell me that we can’t stop the train before it leaves the station, but instead we have to wait til it rolls off the tracks at high speed before we can get help? If the troubled soul can’t do it on his own, the laws prevent anyone else from doing so on his behalf. I can understand it’s designed to protect that person from being placed in a situation against his own free will, but often those who are so badly off can’t fully appreciate that they need help. And so they will rarely volunteer themselves to the appropriate programs. I mean really, if someone is depressed and can hardly wake up, get dressed and feed himself, can we expect him to have the drive to jump through all those hoops? No. And so today I began to navigate the labyrinth of the system so that somehow, through some tiny window I can manage to coax my brother into the help he desperately needs. It was a good day. I did find new resources, new tactics. Hopefully by this time next week Andrew will be in a hospital and on his way to a much healthier and happier version of himself. There are rules, laws, protocols, yes – but there’s also the power of a strongly motivated sister who loves her brother and will keep swingin til she hits a line drive through a break in the defense. We’re much closer today than we were yesterday.

And as for my own paradoxes, they have me a shakin my head. Recently, we were at risk for losing both our electricity and then our phone and internet. And I simply did not have the money to pay them. I was desperate, and pleaded with the woman not to shut off our power the next morning (by some divine intervention the cutoff was postponed 12 hours due to a technicality.) I gave up, accepted that we’d be camping for a while, then hung up. But then it hit me: I have a legally blind child living with me. I called back. Asked them what if I had a blind child in the home? What then? You know what? The whole game changed. Because Elihu is legally blind, the electric and cable company have rules in place to keep our services in place for an extra grace period. !! What a flash of inspiration – but how ironic. My kid can see, but imagine the irony of a totally blind kid having the lights cut off. Not such a big deal, huh? Made me laugh. Course then I pointed out to the woman on the phone that a child without any disabilities still needs to eat just as much as the blind one – and ya can’t do that without power! No fridge, no stove. Ya know? Crazy. But if my dear son hadn’t been ‘blind’, we’d have lost our services. Thanks, kid.

There’s another side to the paradox of poverty: the poor man’s diet packs on pounds. When you have a tight budget for food, what thrifty staples come to mind? Ramen? Pasta? Dry beans? Rice? Bread? Yup. Those things are affordable and can last in a pantry. Fresh produce? A luxury. Meat? We can’t both afford to eat it. At the start of each month when my food credit is given to me, I always go overboard on produce. I am renewed, hopeful. This time we’ll eat right. And it feels great to buy my son his favorite blackberries and grapefruits, my favorite arugula and broccoli. But I simply can’t keep it up all month, for by the second week I’ve spent more than half the month’s food money on produce. Mid month I pull way back, and some days we skip the fruits and vegetables so that we can buy meat. You’d think I’d have figured out how to even it out – so that we have more of a healthy mix throughout the month, but alas, I haven’t. And there’s never enough to make it four whole weeks. So in the end we’re back to pasta, ramen, bread. Ich. Poverty and pounds seem to go hand in hand. At least for me. I have to figure this out. I’m poor, yet you couldn’t tell by my girth. Or maybe you could. Yup, it costs more to eat right. To eat well. So here I am, like the old 80s song lyric  “under nourished and over fed”. What an insightful man that Rick Springfield.

Surprisingly, poverty has made some things possible that otherwise might not have been. The big one – the biggest, most positive change in our lives might not have been open to us had we fallen in that nether land of the not-quite middle class. I don’t think Elihu would be attending the Waldorf School had we had just a bit more money in our budget. Seriously. He’s there precisely because we are poor. We easily qualified for generous tuition assistance.  I think of that often, and it has me reconsidering whether this great change of life might not have come with some incredible blessings.

Also, we live on a gorgeous piece of land. I’ve found business cards in my mailbox asking me to contact them should I ever want to sell. People casually tell me to remember them if I change my mind. Forget it. This corner of the world might be the best blessing of em all. Again, there’s an irony here too; while I look out to a great vista and can see no neighbors from my spot, I cannot afford to cut the grass, so it shortly becomes covered in knee-high grass. The grass grows tall around my lawn chairs and sometimes hides the rim of the trampoline. Looking out I sigh at the disparity between my inner vision of what this place could look like and what it looks like now. Elihu, however, loves the grass. It makes the place feel magical to him (consider how tall the grass must appear to him!) and almost always cries when I have it cut. Last time I had the place spruced up for his party, he followed the lawn guys around pointing out clusters of flowers to avoid as they mowed. So he’s happy, that’s for sure. So for the time being, I try to look at this as a wild meadowland. Changing how I think about it, I can appreciate it much better, and it takes away some of the guilt I can feel about not keeping the place up as I would if I had the means.

There are a couple of things that act as great levelers in the world: becoming poor and getting sick. All of a sudden priorities change and whatever might have been a mere detail of your old life-as-usual now becomes a treasure, an extravagance even. I may have had an idea of the value of things in my own world long ago – but until I was faced with the prospect of having no food or heat, I didn’t fully appreciate how good it is to have those things in place. I know the true value of simple things now.  I also have arthritis in my fingers these days – it seemed to have really gotten much worse over the past six months. Now my hands often ache. So on days when they don’t – oh how happy I am! I know how wonderful it is when your body works without a hitch.

A little change of circumstance can bring out a healthy change in perspective. I would never have known the deep joy of gardening or raising chickens or building things with my own hands had I not been thrust into this life. I’d never imagined myself living a life other than the middle class white suburban experience that I’d always known. But man am I glad I’ve had this chance. I’m poor, but I’m not. Crazy, huh?

F*ck This

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Divorce Diary, Farm Life, Mommy Mind8 Comments

In kind of a self-sorry funk today. My May support never arrived from Fareed, and here it is nearly June. I can’t pay my phone bill and may not make it the weekend without my internet, cable and phone being cutoff. I fucking hate being so dependent upon someone who doesn’t care. And I won’t have my son here this holiday weekend to distract me from my mood. Elihu gets on a plane today and joins his father – they meet at O’Hare. Dad gets in from London and Elihu from Albany. Hope it all works. Can’t fret about that. It’ll be fine. Now my kid has a watch, a cell phone and a good book. And good sense. He’ll be fine. As for me, I’m left with lots of pasta in my pantry, but just about five bucks in my pocket. And I’m pretty pissed about it.

I am sinking today, I admit it. I’m angry at Fareed for leaving. I’m angry that he had another woman pregnant at the same time as me. I’m angry that he CCs me on emails that rejoice enthusiastically in the “family all being together” when he talks about plans for our son, his girlfriend, their kids and my parents-in-law to have dinner at the Pump Room in Chicago. I’m angry at his parents for not caring how we’re doing, for not offering to pay for half of Waldorf. I’m angry at myself for having no life outside of being a mom. I’m goddam tired of having a fucking rooster crow in my open window all fucking day long and not having the bread to fence him in properly. I’m tired of being two dress sizes too big. I’m tired of being poor. I’m tired of having no friends, tired of having no life. I miss making music. I wish I could play my Wurlitzer again with a band. I fucking miss the world I knew. Been here four years this coming August, and I still have no appreciable life to speak of. My son does – and this, of course, is the current priority – but I myself have little to look forward to, little to do that I enjoy. It really seems like all I do is the goddam dishes and the goddam laundry. I so wish I had a dishwasher. Must spend an hour a day washing goddam dishes, and seems there’s laundry every day. The only social life I have is when my piano students and their families come by. If it weren’t for them, I could go weeks without seeing another person besides my son.

Today I’ve fucking had it. And about the only thing that feels good is typing the expletive “fuck”.

I know I’ll feel better when some money arrives. I got paid for a lesson last night, and for a moment I almost felt as if I could breathe better. But it’ll barely pay for the gas to get to and from the airport today. So for the long weekend I got nothing. Not that I need it, I really don’t. And that’s the crazy thing about all this. When I think about it, having  money or not is really all kind of abstract and makes no true sense. When I know I have no money at all, my whole being gets bummed out, depressed, deflated – and the future appears to hold no promise. So then I get some cash and somehow – it is indeed all an abstraction, an illusion – I feel better. My whole being feels lighter, less threatened. But in reality, the influx of money isn’t much; it doesn’t actually accomplish a lot. If it takes away the threat of having my electricity cutoff, that’s understandable, and if it replenishes my supply of toilet paper, that’s good too, so there are some tangible reasons for its ability to lift my spirits. But beyond that, it’s really only illusory. Nothing amazing and truly life-augmenting will come of the new cash flow. Yet somehow, it lifts me from my funk. It carries me, buoys my spirit, makes all things suddenly seem possible. It restores hope. Crazy, huh? Yes. Crazy.

I need to rise above this crap. But today, being hopeful and upbeat is not my natural state. Plus I thought there was so much happy talk here that it might not be such a bad idea to temper it with a post that was probably more in line with my mood much of the time. Yes, I’ll turn it around, and no I don’t live like this most of the time – but the poverty thing is always present, and try as I may to pretend I’m feeling great, doing ok and fed and clothed, etc, deep down I admit I harbor a bit of resentment about not having what I’d like to have – what I used to have. And I should be ashamed, I’ve got it good. My child and I aren’t hungry, we’re warm, clothed. I have a grand piano and my son has a fleet of RC helicopters. By some luck, for being broke, we got a lot goin for us. Yes, I know this. But today I’m indulging. Just today.

I’ll be back to hopeful again tomorrow. I promise.

In Day, Out Day

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While the weather report told us today it would rain, so far it’s been a sunny and very warm spring day. Finally, finally I am without commitments (we’d had mid-day lunch plans that fell through just a few hours ago) and I can address the large patch of soil that will hopefully become our garden. Our very first real garden.

I involved Elihu in the preparations, cutting and winding twine, collecting stakes, poles for our beans and such, but when we began our walk down the hill to the garden he left me and ran for the chickens. I expressed my frustration that he’d already played with the chickens this morning – in fact he’d already had one in the living room – and we really needed to keep our focus and get to the garden. His reaction? Tears. An explosion of tears and sobbing and protests that ‘he just wanted to play with his chickens’ and then he turned and ran back into the house. He flung his shoes off dramatically and landed on his bed, still crying.

When something like this happens I admit my first response – the one that might feel the most organic and give me some feeling of control over the situation – might be to get angry with him, to try and explain to him why his outburst is pointless, his choice of leaving this project is immature, his need to play again with his chickens is silly. But I knew this wouldn’t net me anything. It wouldn’t get him back outside with me, and it wouldn’t make him any happier. So I took a breath, kneeled beside him where he lay on the bed, and I waited. I waited for him to tell me what was going on. “I don’t know why, but I just need to cry”, he told me. “I just want to get my pajamas on again and get into bed”. I guess I can understand. While we’ve had a great time the past two days visiting new friends and spending hours out in the world doing things, that kind of busy-ness, that amount of time away from home can wear on him. I could tell he’d had enough visits, projects, agendas, plans. And that’s just fine. At my age I feel a keen desire to use all the time that I can in the most productive way possible, but I am forty-nine. I didn’t feel like that at one time in my life. I can remember well when all I wanted was just a day to myself to stay in bed and do nothing. Maybe I was fourteen when I felt like that, not nine, but hey, if he just needs a break – then he should be allowed to take one.

I’ve come inside to see how he’s feeling – and to change into shorts. It’s a hot day, more like summer than spring. His father calls, and he jumps up and goes for the phone. An hour ago he didn’t want to talk to his dad either. Now his tone is light, he seems happy. Maybe a break really was just what he needed. I, however, don’t need a break. I need more time. More help. I have this crazy list that never ends, and I wish I had a pair of hands to help me get it all done. I do have an afternoon, and that’s a pretty big deal. Let’s see if we can’t both get what we want. He doesn’t want to be entirely alone, and in fact he’s had his heart set on making a certain paper airplane design for a while now, and it turns out he’s rather upset that the garden has taken precedence. So it looks like I’ll have to split my day. Before I can get to the garden, I’ll have to make a couple fancy paper airplanes at the kitchen table.

I remember it’s mother’s day, and I almost wish I could use that card to buy myself a time-out of mothering duties. But then again, is not what we celebrate today the very thing that I am doing? I am being a mother, and I am always grateful (although sometimes more than exhausted for it) that life has given me this priviledge.

So I’ll spend the next hour with Elihu, and we’ll see if we can’t make some of these pretty-looking planes. I’m not great with this kind of stuff – but I’ll do the best I can. I’m a mom, and it’s my job. I’ll figure it out.

Then after my inside day, I’ll go outside again to the garden. At least that’s what I hope I’ll do. Because that would be a nice mother’s day gift to be sure. But for now it’s off to to make a paper airplane or two… I need to give lil man some quality attention and focus. After all, the garden will still be there tomorrow after he’s back in school.

Inside, outside. Time with my child, time alone. All in its time and place.