Some winters hit you like a runaway truck, others slip past quietly, others settle into your bones and stay there. I think that happened this week. The temperature was 5 degrees this morning, and it will stay that way for awhile. Everything – feeding animals, mucking manure, moving water, caring for the chickens – changes when the winter finally arrives and digs in. The animals can’t graze much, the grass is frozen, the dogs don’t want to be outside, their paws sting. Red doesn’t care, he works in the same focused and methodical way. It is one day after the winter solstice but it seems dark and gray and cold to me. My task is to imagine the beauty and emotion out there – there is much – and capture it.
My first winter at Bedlam Farm, a blizzard greeted me right off the bat and it did not stop snowing until April. Rose and I spent months wading through knee-deep snow, moving sheep, cajoling donkeys, hauling hay and water. On the new farm, there are new challenges – frozen water lines, manure frozen to the ground before it can be shoveled, winds whipping across the pasture. Maria and Red and I do it together, and that is very different than before. I am a light addict, and I feel its loss. It might be awhile before I see much of it.
