Rub an ear

And win a donkey’s love.

Rose delivers

September 3, 2010 – Rose delivers, in real life and fiction. More great reviews coming in for “Rose“, this one from the Amazon.com “Vine” program, the first review online for the book, and five stars. This is the best way to start a book tour, and I’ve rarely had reviews this enthusiastic as early. Rose and I are going to the Saratoga Springs Barnes & Noble at 5 p.m. on the pub date, October 5, to sign some books. This is a tradition for me, a place I go every pub date and where the staff leaves a big pile of books for me to sign. This is an unofficial event, so I will just stop by the story, and can deny everything. This will be Rose’s second signing, and she will probably not like it, but if Frieda could have a reading this is the least I can do for Rose, who inspired this ovel.

Speak up

For yourself, and for the right to tell your story. And to live your life, not somebody else’s version of it.

Ed Rouse. Teaching me

I’ve spent a lot of time with Ed Rouse in the last two weeks. I enjoyed every minute of it. He taught me a lot. And I learned a lot. About cows. Breeding. Milk. Droughts all over the world. Barns. Fences. Silos. Feed. And hay and grass. Tails and  udders, teats and hooves, myriad regulations, animal rights demands,  artificial insemination and drainage. Tractors. A hundred different machines. And Barns. He knows a lot, is by necessity the master of many things.

He is an honest man, a direct man. He has little patience for wasting time or for people who waste time. He is religious, conservative, Republican. He  speaks his own mind, and very directly. He works brutishly hard. He is devoted to his family and grandchildren, and brothers and sisters. He talks about them all the time. He talks about the barns he and his father built. About his family, farmers going back five generations.

He lives in a narrow world, bounded by chores, ritual, tradition and back-breaking work. He is hopeful that family farms can survive. When he talks about them, and the challenges they face, he shakes his head. Evening thinking about the plight of family farmers makes him sad, and he shakes his head. I value him and my time with him. He is intelligent, a good listener. He misses nothing, and keeps a thousand things in his head at once. He put five kids through college. One of them wants to stay on the farm.

I have no idea if his farm will make it or not, and it isn’t my business. He told me yesterday the farm, the barns, the tractors, the silos and the farmhouse all need major maintenance. It is hard to imagine where so much money will come from. Milk prices are very low. The cost of everything is high and getting higher.

He is asking me more questions about myself. How writers make a living, something that bewilders him. About my daughter, my age, my farm. We haven’t gotten to the divorce yet.

Lulu, Fanny, living their lives

Lulu and Fanny seem content at Bedlam Farm, and we are happy to have them staying here. Maria says she will one day be a neat old woman with two donkeys. Sounds good to me. She’s a pretty neat woman now.

It is a sweet thing to see an animal making a real connection to a human being. Food helps. Lulu comes charging down the hill when she sees Maria and I and this week Maria is offering apples from an apple tree in our front yard. Before that, it was sweet corn. Lulu appreciates it, and so does Fanny.

When leaves

Walking on the path, I saw this beautiful dying leaf, a sure sign that fall is close, despite the nasty and sticky summer. Fall has its own rythyms. I have hay in the barn, and the water is almost ready. The sheep will leave shortly, the donkey will stay. Fall is my favorite time. Not only are there beautiful leaves, but “Rose In A Storm” comes out in October.  Fall is good.

New: Placements from Maria

Maria emerged from the sweltering Studio Barn with new placemats from Full Moon Fiber Arts. I am trying to order some, but I have to get to the bottom of the line. These and other artworks will be sold at our Creative Union/Affordable Art 2 Show to be held at the Redux Gallery in Dorset, Vt., along with the paintings of Christine Nemec on Saturday, November 13, from one to four p.m. Good stuff cheap for Christmas – notecards, placemats, potholders, e-book bags, and who knows what else might come out of there? Signed Bedlam Farm notecards, including the new flower and light series, are also up for viewing and sale on Redux. Or orderable by phone: 802-867-4211.

In the past few weeks, I’ve come nose to nose with the ghost of Andrew Wyeth. On Friday and Saturday, at 7 p.m., the Hyde Museum in Glens Falls is hosting a performance, “Andrew Wyeth in Music, Poetry and Dance,” in conjunction with an exhibit of Wyeth’s works, “Andrew Wyeth – An American Legend.” The performance will be by Catherine Reid. The producers of the concert were not able to get permission to use images of Wyeth’s works, so they asked me if I would provide some photographs. The performance is in no way about my work, it is about Wyeth’s and Catherine Reid’s interpretation of him.

I’m not sure how many photos are being used, or  in what way, but I am happy to see them used in conjunction with Wyeth’s work. I’ve been reading about Wyeth and studying some of his paintings and I feel a strong connection. I do not compare my photos to his paintings, but I do see that some of the same kinds of things touched each of us emotionally, and that is a powerful thing. So I am going be there Friday night, and it will be an important night for me. To meet Wyeth’s ghost.

Happy Birthday, Layla

Ed says he wouldn’t raise a kid anywhere else but on a farm. When the milking is done, he rushes up to the farmhouse on the ATV to fetch Layla, who helps him get the cows across the road and into the pasture. Today was Layla’s second birthday, and they had some cake and Ed sang “Happy Birthday” as they pushed the cows into the pasture and through the gate. This is already Layla’s life.

Women make good farmers

Ed’s daughter Judy, the only one of his five children who wants to go into farming, says she thinks women are good farmers and good milkers.

“It’s an emotional thing, I guess,” she says. “We understand them, and they get less stressed around us.”

Debt chokes a family farm

Ed Rouse says debt kills off family farms more than anything. Just don’t go into debt he says, and you might be all right. On the other hand, he adds, most farmers have to go into debt to survive. His house, barns and silos need work, and a bad year like last year can wipe farms out in a hurry and put them in the hole. “I only know one farmer who isn’t in debt,” he says. “He pays cash for everything, or he just doesn’t get it.”

Judy goes to work

I will never drink milk as obliviously again, knowing hot much blood and sweat goes into it. In addition to raising two young girls, Judy does most of the milking at Big Valley Farm. It is rough, smelly, brutish work. It is hot. There are bugs everywhere and cows urinating and defecating. Judy attachs milkers (those tubes) to the cows and the milk is sucked up down a pipe and into the milking room. She knows each of the cows and handles them with authority. I asked her why she does it. She shrugged. “In the blood, I guess,” she said.

Cows reporting for duty, Rouse farm

A little after 6:15  a.m., Ed gets on his ATV and goes up into the pasture to get the cows moving to the milking barn. His daughter Judy, who lives with her husband Tom in another house on the farm, will come be shortly to do the milking It is hot and humid, and buggy, and nobody much wants to move. “C’mon, c’mon,” he says, “Let’s go.” By 6:45, they are all in the barn.

Off to the cows

My Ipad alarm clock app went off at 4 a.m. and I turned to Maria and said,”I’m going off to milk maw,” and she mumbled something and went back to sleep. I’m actually going to watch Ed Rouse and his daughter Judy milk and take some photos. Rose looks puzzled as I put my work boots on. But she is not coming.  Be back soon.

Home of the brave

Maria and I went tubing on the Battenkill today and it was well into the 90′s and great to be in the river. On the way home, I passed one of my favorite homes, baking in the strong sun, flags in the window, and a faded stencil above which read “Home Of The Brave.”  I love this house, and I tried to catch the blazing sun off of it.

In the meadow, a wondrous gallery

This is where true artists show their work, and it is free and hanging almost every day.

A real artist, in the meadow

Out walking the dogs early this morning, I came across the work of a real artist, out in the meadow, on the gate, in front of a stand of trees. I went back for the camera, and got there before the dew burned off, and the artwork vanished. It is sometimes humbling to be reminded what true art is.

Rising sun

Every morning, the sun rises over the farm right next to the Dairy Barn and the wren house. It always lifts me up to see it. This morning, it seemed to me that I might actually finish out my days here. And then the tax bills came ): And the washing machine flooded again. And there were ants. I love the rytthyms of life.

Mother's return

September 1, 2010 – Mother returned from her two-day vacation in the woods this morning, as she always does. Having a barn cat means learning to let go. They need their freedom, and their life, and one day they will not return. That’s the way of the barn cat. I always enjoy musing on Mother’s little secret journeys. I imagine her dancing in the moonlight in the hay barn, swatting bats and spiders and barn swallows. I picture her prowling through the brush in the deep woods, keeping an ear and eye out for coyotes, mice, owls, rats and chipmunks.

She must have gotten on the trail of something good. Mother is the first pet (if you want to call her that) I have ever lived with who could find food and water by herself. She goes out into the woods by the creek and often returns with something. She usually eats most or all of the things she catches. And no wonder. She has cleared all the rats and mice out of the barns. Good to have her back. Two or three times a year, she has these little vacations, as I do. Maybe she needs to get away.

Gone for a bit

I haven’t seen Mother for a day and half, and that always gets my  radar going. She’s vanished for a couple of days before, but I usually see her at some point. Maria thinks she saw her crossing the road today, up towards the woods. That’s the thing about barn cats. One day they disappear. It’s way premature to think she’s gone or that anything has happened to her – Mother knows how to take care of herself. But you always worry a bit about a barn cat, even one as independent and savvy as she is.

A farmer’s wife warned me once never to get too attached to a Barn Cat. “They always disappear one day,” she said. “Always. They will break your heart if you let them get too close to it.” I suspect Mother will be at her food bowl in the morning and that she has been wreaking havoc somewhere up in the woods. She would rather find her food than be handed it, where Minnie rarely leaves the barn or the area around the farmhouse.  It makes me think about the life of a barn cat, though, unique among animals we live with or near. The farmer’s wife was right.

A light whore

Maria called me a light whore once, and she is right. If I see light like this, I abandon whoever I was with or whatever I was doing, grab the camera, which I have never once permitted to run out of battery power, and run. Maria and I were visiting the donkeys when I saw the light falling on this sunflower and ran out of the gate, confusing Rose. Maria understood. She always does. She is unfailing sweet and loving, an whatever part of an artist was buried inside of me came out because of her. These sunflower photos are dedicated to her.

The right name

I see why they call it the Sunflower, because it absorbs the light of sun from both sides and sucks it up and then radiates it back out into the world. The sun was right on the other side, and you can’t help but think of life in terms of new beginnings, of endings, and of change. Still, for all it’s headaches life is, to me, a glorious privilege. I am grateful for it.

Winding down in therapy

Sunflower, Studio Barn

I went to therapy in Saratoga Springs three years ago, in the midst of an awful breakdown, the collapse of a long marriage, and engulfed by a tidal wave of fear and confusion. Now, I am ending therapy, the most intense psychological experience of my life, and the beginning not only of recovery, but real creative productivity, and most important of all, the ability to love and be loved. I was badly crippled at the time and we worked hard in therapy to understand the fear an to also help me gain control of my life. I never saw myself as suffering mental illness, but then most people who are suffering it don’t always know it. There is an ending process, and I am in it. I will halt therapy before the book tour, and it is always there if I need it, but for now, I am finished, and eager to stand on my own two feet.

Therapy opened me up, help me understand that I needed to find love, that I was looking for it. And like Dorothy, I found it was right there all the time. How lucky I am. My therapist told me that I am quite ready to live my life, and don’t need to be in therapy. She says I need to learn how to end things, and she is right about that. So I am marking the occasion by waiting for the hot sun to strike Maria’s newest sunflower, and to help me celebrate the power of love, and its many healing qualities.

Seeking galleys

On Goodreads.com, more than 1,700 people sought galleys for “Rose In A Storm” in an online promotion for Random House last month. The winners got galleys in exchange for writing reviews (whatever they wish). We were excited by the number. The novel is not about Rose, but is inspired by her. It was spawned in the years of amazing work we did together in running the farm, saving my life, and in teaching me some things about responsibility, loyalty and bravery. In the novel, I explored the emotional landscape of a working dog, not in a sappy or Disneyfied way, but in the way I believe the mind of a dog really works, as taught me by some brilliant behaviorists. “Rose In A Storm” can be read in excerpt on my site (buttons above and to the right) and can be pre-ordered in bookstores or online.

The pub date is October 5, a week before the book tour, and at 5 p.m., on that date, I will be making an unofficial visit to Barnes & Noble in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (Wilton Mall) with Izzy and Maria, a tradition for several years on the publication date of my books. Sort of a good luck thing.  This is where I have my secret appearance to kick off book tours.

This novel was an amazing experience for me. It is an awakening story, not only inspired by my wonderful dog but by my own life, Maria’s I suppose, and by the fascinating reality of many women I know, whose emotional lives exist beyond the consciousness of men.