I am missing my farm already. I will always miss my farm, I hope, just as I will come to love my new farm. Farms work their way into your blood, your neural system. They shape your days, define your life, suck up all your money, fertilize you with love and open you up to the nature and reality of life.

Farms are rife with crisis and mystery, challenge and drama, change and confusion. They are never set, never done, never over. They are living, organic, evolving. They are needy. Tonight I came home from a talk at a library. A black cat was fighting with Mother. A fox was moving on the hill. A sheep had gotten into the barn. The waterer is filling with algae. The grass, just brushhogged, is too tall again. Frieda dug a huge hole in the garden. Lenore ate something revolting and threw it up. The charger for the sheep fence sputtered and died.  The latch on the pasture gate is broken. The chickens hopped up on the garbage cans and left a lot of things to remember them by.  A tree limb fell on my car. Deer got into the garden. Mice are in the woodpile. A barn window is broken. There are flies on the porch.

I started a to do list in my iPhone, and then threw it away.  I’ll take a look around tomorrow. I would rather pour honey on my butt and sit on an anthill than live in a nice clean apartment. I love my farm, precious thing. It defines me.