Lulu is our most serious donkey. Simon is an affectionate ham, a sucker for attention and carrots, Fanny is quite sweet but shy and sometimes moody. Lulu is our lead guard donkey, vigilant, serious, she cannot be bribed or deterred, like Red. Her Achilles Heel is that she cannot resist getting her ear rubbed, like most donkeys. Maria gave her a good ear rub, donkeys love this, they lower their heads and their lower lips quiver, a sign of great pleasure. Simon waits patiently for his turn.
Donkeys ears are soft and sensitive, and they can never reach them. They melt when they get their ears rubbed, even the very serious Lulu.
It seems as if the last couple of months have been one continuous storm, capped off this weekend by the biggest continuous storm I have seen in years. We will be dealing with this one for weeks – melting, flooding, mud, roof damage, slate damage on the roof, swollen and frozen old storm windows, damaged gardens, problems in the barn roof, the rotting slats, flooding streams in the bad. It has not been above zero for nearly a month, we have to prepare for lambing, consider getting goats for the back pasture and we face a lengthening list of expensive problems in our old and lovely farmhouse – rotting window frames, an upstairs without heat, tiles falling off in the bathroom, a pantry that’s tilting at disturbing angles, water pouring off the roof front and back (new gutters) and a growing backlog of things we haven’t gotten to you.
I love old farmhouses and hope to live in this one until I die, but at the first Bedlam Farm, I had a bank chock full of movie money and I could do whatever I wished, I put a fortune into the house and barns (and am still a bit puzzled we couldn’t sell in two years) and I don’t have a fortune now, at least in cash. We will have to be resourceful and patient in fixing our farmhouse out, this winter is not a friend to old farms and barns. I have a feeling this kind of winter is not going to be rare. Even the old farmers, firm in their declaration that tough winters are a part of life here, say this one was unusual and ugly and relentless.
Still, there are many good things about it. Maria and I are a fine team, we just go to work and get it done. Both of us know so much more about things than we used to, we do all kinds of things. This weekend we asked our excellent new handyman Jonathan Bridge (Ben has moved on to greater glory, and good for him) to help repair the mailbox smacked off it’s pole by a plow truck, Jay as he is called will also replace the tiles in the bathroom, look at the shattered gutters and try and figure out how to keep the washing machine from hopping all over the pantry floor, which slants.
Despite all of the social media alarms about my shoveling and lifting – alarms and unwanted advice remains the scourge of social media – I have a good sense of what I can and can’t do, and Maria and I are an efficient team. When I can shovel, I do, when I can’t, I chop and she shovels. Having diabetes does not mean one can’t do things, you just have to be smart about the things you do, and as always, I will not live a life of warnings and alarms from strangers online or, for that matter, from people I know. I have no wish to live forever but I do intend to live well.
As I always try to be, I am mindful of those many people who have suffered longer and harder than we have, and I wish them relief. It will be above freezing on Wednesday and for a few days after that. I see Spring in the photographer’s light, it is coming. The donkeys will be grateful to see grass again, it will be awhile. These kinds of storms may bring us together, I hope so. I did not imagine that even the weather would be politicized. One day, perhaps we can all come together and our divided world and start working to heal our Mother, the Earth. Storm by storm, we are getting ready.
When I can haul water buckets I will and when I can’t, Maria will. We go buzzing through the place like some worker bees, creating paths, cleaning up the roost, stacking and preparing the hay, sorting it out all out. We dug through the mountain of snow that fell on the back door, we are eyeing the massive amounts left and the giant icicles forming on the roofs and eaves. This will go on awhile. Red buzzed around like a loyal deputy, happy to work, spurring us on. I don’t recall life without a border collie around, I hope I am never without one.
It makes a big difference when you have someone you love to handle storms with, we used to panic all the time, it takes a lot to get us panicky now. We went to lunch at the Round House, a bunch of nice people recognized me, as often happens, and said nice things about my blog and my books. I don’t mind, they are gracious and sensitive. I got some nice photos of Donna Wynbrandt making art.In the afternoon, Maria started preparing her quite neat Kickstarter project – reclaiming vintage hankies. We shot a video and she prepared the project, she ought to have it up in a couple of days. I think it’s quite wonderful.
I made vegetable pot pies and squash for dinner (I actually baked two I bought) and am reading a novel, “The Book Of Jonah.” For awhile there, I wasn’t sure we could get through all of this alone today. But we can and we did. It’s a good feeling, this is the life I choose, I rejoice in it and am glad for it.
Sometimes on Sunday afternoons, the artist Donna Wynbrandt comes to the artist’s corner at the Round House Cafe in Cambridge, N.Y. and does some of her sketches. Donna is a wonderful artist, she is an outsider artist, she works outside the conventional realm of galleries and artistic expectations. She gave me permission to photograph her, and I sat near her for an hour or so as the light poured into the cafe, and I caught the artist at work. Donna is one of the most interesting people I know and one of the most driven and prolific artists. She lived on the streets of New York for many years, then she and George Forss met while he was peddling his photos on the streets of Manhattan.
Donna and George have had one of the greatest of love affairs, each has helped the other weather so many storms. Donna has learned to cope with mental illness and powerful medications, she nearly lost her mind last week when something went wrong with some of her meds, with George’s help and her own determination she has worked her back almost to normal, back at the cafe sketching some of her wonderful art. I love photographing her today, I think I saw the pure artist at work, she and Maria are close friends, their share an artistic soul, a way of looking at the world, the experience of pain and fear. Maria asked Donna if the two of them might sketch together at the Round House on Sundays – this corner is a gathering place for readers, artists, singers, of whom the are many in my wonderful little town.
Scott Carrino has made the Round House a gather spot for writers, artists, farmers, merchants in town, local residents. It is telling that Donna, who is exquisitely sensitive, feel so welcome there. She did a sketch called “Olympic Judges” that I hope to buy from her. Donna sketches everywhere, just as George takes photos everywhere, the couple share a creative soul. I admire Donna, she is brave, honest, and creative.
I had the pleasure of photographing the two of them as they laughed, talked, shared the experience of making art. I’m putting an album of the photos up on Facebook. I treated this photo with software that enhanced the colors, I did so because I thought this image perfectly captured Donna, the riot of colors, the swirl of activity. It is, in fact, a Donna poster, a Donna painting, a Donna sketch.
Donkeys are hardy animals, they are easier to care for than donkeys, but they are two things they absolutely have to have, besides food and water and shelter: other donkeys, and some attention. Since the storm, we have been busy, digging out, shoveling, hauling water and hay around. This afternoon, the donkeys let us know, as they often do, that it is time to pay attention to them. Maria and I obliged, she gave Simon a good ear rub and he drank it up.
Donkeys can handle storms, but I think it does unnerve them, being trapped in a Pole Barn, nothing to graze or explore. Lulu, Fanny and Simon all seemed to need to rubbing and hugs, Maria and I took turns, Simon, above, was first in line.
There is a spirituality to cats, especially Flo, that I’m hoping to capture in my photography. There can be a calmness to them, an acceptance, a meditative state that I find is a kind of meditation all of its own. During all of these storms, I come into the farmhouse and I see Flo watching the storm, not so much looking at it as reflecting on it. There is a sense of acceptance I find touching and calming. I don’t think Flo knows her name, but she knows when I am speaking to here. It is fascinating to me to see the fine line between domesticity and the wild that lives in a cat.
