Day: March 2, 2016

Life on a farm is mostly chores, routine, some vigilance, punctuated every now and then by true fright and challenge. I was sitting in the living room this evening, about to start dinner, when Fate jumped up and ran to the window and began whining. It was unusual, she seemed alarmed – I think I know now when dogs are trying to tell me something –  so I got up to look out the window and saw something I have only seen once or twice and never want to see – Maria running as fast as she could to the house, no jacket or gloves in the biting cold, a look of great concern on her face.

I ran to the door, “please come,” she said, “Chloe is down in the pole barn and I need help getting her up.” She ran back out to the pasture ahead of me and I grabbed my jacket and gloves – the wind was brutal this afternoon. “Bring your phone,” Maria yelled, and I knew that meant I might have to call the vet, it was serious.

I had heard the donkeys braying in alarm and sympathy, I thought it might be one of them.

When I got to the pasture, Maria had gotten Chloe on her feet, and the pony was dropping to the ground and rolling, as if in some pain. We got her on her feet and kept her moving. I called the Granville Large Animal Service. They paged Josh, a young and extremely capable vet we have seen at the farm before.

Chloe rolled in the pole barn and had caught her legs in the bottom of a wooden gate, Maria said, and couldn’t get up. I know that rolling is often a sign of colic, the vague but dread affliction that is the number one killer of horses. Colic can be anything that affects the stomach and indigestion, it’s a term used to describe symptoms of abdominal pain, usually caused by problems in the gastrointestinal tract. There are scores of different types of intestinal problems that can cause colic symptoms – rolling on the ground being one – and some are mild and inconsequential and some can kill a horse.

Maria wrote about it on her blog.

We suspected colic but had no way of knowing how serious it might be. Apart from rolling and obvious agitation, Chloe looked good.

Dealing with livestock has its own special challenges. One, they are large and when they get frightened, can be dangerous. Maria and Chloe have a strong connection, Maria visibly calmed Chloe and talked her, she seemed to settle her. The other is that they can’t tell you quickly and clearly what is bothering them, you have to guess.

There is always the  need to remain calm. Since animals can’t talk, you don’t really know for sure what it troubling them or how serious it is.  And if you panic, they almost surely will. Animals are closely tied emotionally to the people who feed and care for them.

If you stay quiet, they almost always stay calm. We both saw that Chloe looked good, her eyes were clear, her breathing was normal, she was not sweating or showing any signs of panic. We have been through this before with donkeys, sheep, our first pony Rocky,  and even chickens.

On a farm, we are all First Responders.

Unlike medical issues with people, there is no 911, no screaming ambulances to show up in minutes, no police to come tearing up the driveway. It takes large animal vets 30 to 45 minutes to arrive, they are usually traveling over wide areas. More than once the vets have been so scattered and busy they can’t come at all. In blizzards, if animals are suffering, they are known to ask if you have a gun and know how to use it.

Ken Norman, our farrier, was 90 miles away. A half hour is a very long time to spend with a sick or frightened animal in the cold. it is a helpless feeling. A real farmer would never have called the vet for Chloe that fast, they would take their time and fix it, one way or the other. As a rule, they don’t pay emergency fees.

Maria handled it beautifully, talking to Chloe, keeping her moving, relaying her observations.  We always work well together, there is no argument, no sniping. I think the animals pick up on that. You could see Maria and Chloe’s close connection to one another, Chloe trusted Maria, she was still and agreeable, even when she was being poked and prodded in sensitive places. “Sorry to be rude,” said Josh.

We got Chloe into the barn, closed off the gates, kept walking her and walking her.

She seemed to improve steadily, I actually called the vet to cancel the emergency call – those are expensive – but then Chloe tried to roll again, and Josh and I agreed he should keep on coming. He arrived shortly and we got Chloe into a stall. Josh took her temperature, heartbeat, checked her eyes, listened to her stomach. I was glad we let  him come.

I admire the large animal vets, it is mostly the work of the young, it is physical and dirty, and the hours are difficult for normal humans. The phone can ring any time. They have to use their eyes and instincts, there are few good diagnostic tools out on pastures. They wrestle large and uncomfortable animals and are often kicked or bounced off of barn walls.

They have been with us in some intimate and difficult situations, they feel like family. We always catch up on each other’s lives. We might see them tomorrow, maybe not for a year.

Josh was pleased with the new smartphone the practice had given him, he could take Chloe’s heartbeat with it.

Everything was normal, she looked good, he said. if it was colic, he said, it was very mild and was just about gone. She wasn’t rolling any longer, was eager for a carrot, seemed her regular self. If Maria hadn’t heard her kicking, we probably would never have known there was a problem, but it was a good call to bring in the vet. Peace of mind and a good precaution. Call me if there is trouble, he said.

Josh gave her a shot of Banamine for the pain that might be in her legs and to settle her stomach.

We’ve checked her every 30 minutes and we are tired. She looks great.  One or both of us will get up and check on her through the night. She looks fine, Josh said he wasn’t worried about it, she might have eaten some wet or decaying marsh grass in the back pasture.

i am always learning the rhythms of the farm, routine that is predictable and numbing, punctuated by life and death dramas that are neither.

We both remembered the morning Simon fell ill, the outcome was not as good. We definitely felt the echoes of that, especially at first.  We prepared ourselves for the worst, got the best instead. Chloe is fine, another one of those jarring things that are surprisingly common and routine on a farm. We knew the drill, felt comfortable and confident handling it. The farm is a teacher, life on a farm is not perfect,  Life on the farm, but it asks the best of us and makes us wise about life.

Maria is exhausted, me too. Going to bed. It is fine, but it is  draining, scary stuff.

The Bejosh Farm Journal is two weeks old and picking up steam, off to a great start. Carol and Ed Gulley, dairy farmers from White Creek, N.Y., have lots of stories to tell and lots of feelings to share. They are telling the story of the small family farm, an embattled and iconic institution in America. Ed believes the people who eat food need to understand more about the people raise and grow food. Two great stories this week, Carol’s account of bringing calves into the world, Ed’s anger and helplessness over the archaic milk pricing systems that keep most farmers broke. Check out the Bejosh Farm Journal.

The Bejosh Farm Journal is important and unique, very few small farmers have ever tried to tell their story, and Ed and Carol have it down. The blog is giving them a voice to the world. In our twisted system, the politicians and economists have decided small family farms are no longer efficient, not in the new global economy.

The farmers are stubborn and tough, like Ed Gulley. They have no  immediate plans to vanish.

If superstition worked, I would be rich and famous.  I am not rich or famous, but I am still superstitious.

When I wrote my first novel – it took five years to get it published, it was rejected by some of the best minds in publishing – a best-selling author I met at bookstore reading gave me some advice.

“If you are not superstitious, get superstitious,” he said, the writer’s life is so uncertain and unpredictable you need all the help you can get. Try voodoo.”

I am superstitious. When we were struggling to sell Bedlam Farm 1.0 friends told me with absolute certainty that I needed to plant St. Joseph’s statues in the garden and bury some in the lawn. Feng Shui devotees told me how to rearrange the house to draw buyers, and various spiritualists urged me to talk to the farm and tell it to let go of me. Some psychics gave us a pouch to hang in the windows, it would, they said, attract nice and wealthy people.

They said the farm was angry with me, I had to make things right.

We were fairly desperate at the time, so I will tell you in all candor that I had a number of meaningful conversations with my farm,  I stood out in the barn and earnestly asked the farm to let go of me, and open itself up to someone new. Nobody else seemed to hear the conversation.

it took four years to sell the place and Frieda dug up most of the St. Joseph’s statues and ate them. Still, what if…?” No sane writer would forego any chance to write a great book, and I do believe in spirits and angels, I couldn’t really tell you why.

Groucho Marx wrote that if a black cat crosses your path, it means the cat is going somewhere. Christopher Hitchens said that superstition was one of the most viral forms of stupidity. He would not have liked my office.

I have my beautiful muse on my right, and a growing corner of talismans and figures to the left – a very old madonna statute, a garden sswan with flowers, a turtle sculpture from Ed Gulley, one of Maria’s intuition dolls to the right, my “head” statue with yellow flowers, even two beautiful pink crystals on the desk, I got them 30 years ago to enhance my creativity. There are candles as well.

The little corner of my office grows over time, it has taken on a character and dimension all of its own.

There is enough superstition in the room to launch the next Hemingway or Faulkner, but the fates are not feeling it so far, and I have no evidence to give you that any of these things work in any way, except that I believe in them all. They comfort me, inspire me and keep me company on the sometimes lonely writing trek.

I think Hitchens was too hard on superstition, those of us who take the leap into the unknown, and live without certainty or weekly paychecks sometimes need to be as creative about their hopes and dreams as they are about their work. I feel the same way about superstition that many people feel about God: I’m  not sure if it works or is real or not, but on the off chance that it does, I want to be prepared. It can’t hurt, and I have come to love my eclectic companions, they seem very real to me, and they seem very nice to me.

It depends, I guess, on what you want.

In a funny way, these figures and rocks and statutes are part of my family now. And if I don’t ever get precisely where I want to go, look how far I have gotten? That is something of a miracle.

In the deep woods, the border collies challenge one another to a game of tag, sometimes hide-and-seek. Red runs ahead and turns, Fate locks onto him. The two stare at one another for a few minutes, and one of the moves. Usually Fate tears off after Red and the two of them run alongside one another at top speed, often out of sight on the long path.

Red never leaves the path, but Fate veers off into the woods and makes a giant circle, coming up behind Red and on his other side and the two race one another back to Maria and I. They will do it forever on a cool day, pausing to track some scent, check on us, eat some revolting thing. As hard as they run, they never tire of this game.

I spent much of my life dealing with fear, and it nearly destroyed me and damaged many of the people around me. It crippled me in so many important ways. It is always important to write about fear, so many people feel it and and are eager to understand it and leave it behind.

Fear in our culture is pervasive, promoted, encouraged and corrosive. It kills creativity, dreams, health,  love and peace of mind. I was into my sixth decade of life before I understood that I had two choices: either I could confront and control the fear that powered so much of my life, or it would consume me and deprive me of the opportunity to find fulfillment. It would also kill me, I knew, as it almost did, and more than once.

So I undertook a long and hard campaign to understand my fear and contain it. To regain perspective.  To find balance and strengthen the fragile center of me. To find peace and do my work.

In so many ways, our modern culture – politics, technology, aging, health, money – is built on different systems of fear. We live inside of fear’s terrain, it is a kind of ISIS of the mind.

We need to be frightened or we will not buy the things we are told we need, give up the work we love, save the money we are told we must have to live, to turn the news of fear and rage that is so profitable to others and so destructive to us. Fear is all around us, we hear it from family and friends, see it on TV, have it beamed into our consciousness by our addictive and intrusive gadgets. It is hardly possible to spend a single day away from it, so all the greater challenge to cope with it.

I came to see that fear was a geography, a space to cross. It was, very simply, the antithesis of life. It sucked the color and light and hope right out of the world around me, I was living the life of a hollow man, along and in perpetual panic. Everything around me seemed to feed it, my life, my family, my history, my soul.

I was fear’s partner, of course, I fed it and needed it. I came to see that it cannot live in me by itself, I have to let it in, open the door. But I could learn how to close the door, and I did.

in Corporate Nation even the weather has become a source of fear and alarm so that we will become addicted to it as well as all of the other bad news, because bad news is addictive, and good news is not. Because we are afraid to turn away from what we fear, not what we love. I learned to stop paying for fear, to stop giving money to the people who sell it, to turn to the light instead.

That is the curious way in which our human minds work. Animals know better, they run away from fear, they go as far as they can get. We look for it on our smartphones 100 times a day, we vote for it, argue for it, post the labels of fear right on our foreheads.

“There are two basic motivating forces,” wrote John Lennon, “fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace love.”

So I embraced life and love.I journeyed to the other side, a fearful passage in some ways. I did not really believe I could live outside of fear, it seemed too big and powerful for me.

My idea of the geography of fear helped to save me. I decided that I would not spend my remaining years in fear. I would not live for or by the fears of other people. I would reject the pleas and importunings of the corporations and politicians that profit by fear. I came to see that fear is often, if not always, a choice.

I am a citizen of the Fear Nation, but I also have free will, something I don’t need to buy or save for or deposit in a  bank for that day in the distant future that I can turn it over to my caretakers.

The more I rejected fear, the better my life got. The more I chose love, the more I opened to what life has to offer. The more I turned away from fear, the more creative I became. The more I chose self love over fear, the more I found friendship and community. The more I turned away from fear, the safer I felt. And was.

Anthropologists say humans have the emotions and instincts of fear because it was once so necessary to be fearful of much of what was around us, our lives depended on it. We don’t have to be so fearful any longer, we don’t have to believe everything we are told: that we can’t choose our own adventures, that we must be millionaires to age well, that our health needs to be in the hands of greedy, profit-making corporations, that nature and the weather is our enemy, that we can’t walk out dogs in the woods or drive them around in our cars.

I found that fear was a geography, and that I could see through to the other side of it, and go to the other side of it. It took help and will and discipline and practice. I always hope to write about fear and tell the many people who are tormented by it that there is another side of it, that it is a finite space. It is a geography, and that means it has boundaries. it is not an infinite space.

I must not fear, I refuse to live in that way. Life really is short and I do not choose to spend it in panic.

Fear is a kind of small death that obliterates the spirit and crushes hope. Every time I meet my fear again, I face it. I let it pass through me and up and down my spine. I turn to the color and the light, I re-affirm my faith in myself and my love for myself, I embrace my potential to create.

When the fear is gone, or when I pass through it’s terrain, there is nothing left of it. Only I remain, a testament to my decision to embrace life, not darkness. Fear is a choice.