If I were making up holiday postcards, I might choose this one. Lulu, Simon and Fanny were taking in some sun along with their favorite human, Maria and they turned to me and the camera and gave a great showing of donkey smiles. Donkeys are shy, gentle, curious, willful, hardy. They love to hang out with us, so I think I will let them wish you of you the happiest holidays. Donkeys enrich the lives they are in.
Every morning, we bring hay out to the donkey feeder and the hay feeder. The sheep rush the donkey feeder and the donkeys kick and rush at them, and if people are standing nearby by – me or Maria, namely – somebody can get hurt. So I bring Red out every morning, with the command “hold the sheep” and he walks in front of the sheep, lies down and fixes them with a gaze that would melt steel. He does not move, even from the bitterly cold and frozen ground, until I give him the command, “That’ll Do,” and he rushes back to where I am standing, usually in the barn. Red has brought order to the morning feeding.
He is an indispensable farm dog.
There was a foolish farmer who sometimes acted before he thought. On his old farm, he spent a lot of money and bought the best of everything – fences, watering systems, gates, barns and shelters. But life changed for him, and he re-married and moved to a new farm. He was in a swivet about getting new stuff to make the old farm work. He didn’t have as much money as he once did, and he couldn’t afford a whole new underground frost-free watering system. So he went on the Internet and scoured hose sites until he found a heated hose for $130. It looked great.
But it had some requirements as new and expensive and cool gadgets do. He had to plug the heating element into an outlet near the water faucet on the outside of the farm house. And he also didn’t have a frost-free faucet to attach to the heated house. So he called a plumber who installed the frost-free water faucet for $200. And an electrician came to install a special outdoor socket (with plastic shield to keep the snow and rain off) for $300 so that the farmer could plug the heated hose into a socket right near the new outdoor frost-free faucet. He was excited, eager to get the new system working before the winter came.
And he ordered his heated hose and had it sent special 2nd day overnight delivery. And he was proud of himself for figuring out how to get water out to the barn in the middle of water, when normal hoses freeze. He would turn on the faucet, plug in the hose, and fill buckets with water and carry them out to the barn and fill up the heated bucket there.
The animals were happy, they had fresh water. Things went well for a month or so, but then winter came and the thermometer plunged. The end of the heated hose – the non rubber part – froze, so he had to bring out a pan of hot water and stick the end of the hose in it until it melted. And then he read the instructions, which warned that the heated hose had to be unplugged when it was not in use, or it would burn out. This meant he had to go in and outside of the house several times to plug the heating element in, and then go and unplug it. Sometimes he forget, or got confused, and he had to wait an hour or so before the hose melted the ice.
On the first really cold day of winter, he came outside and found that the heated hose wasn’t working. Not only was the hose frozen – it had short-circuited in the cold – but the frost-free faucet which was attached to the hose had frozen too. He and his wife had to haul buckets of water out from the kitchen. He went to his computer to look online and order a bigger, even more expensive heated hose (he found one guaranteed to work at -30 degrees). His wife looked uneasy. She was a smart woman, and spoke her mind. But when it came to things like farm design, she knew he was sensitive and generally left him alone.
What’s the matter, he said? What’s on your mind? Well, she said, why don’t you forget the new hose, and just fill the buckets with the frost-free, which doesn’t free unless a broken hose is attached to it and will cost us nothing. It just means carrying the buckets a few extra feet. And it doesn’t need to be plugged in. Nothing needs to be installed. The farmer was shocked. Not buy a new hose? Just use the faucet? Just like that? A bulb went off in his head. Of course it would work. He turned off the computer, kissed his wife, grabbed a bucket, filled up and took it into the barn. It took seconds. It worked every time. It cost nothing. It was already there.
Why didn’t you tell me this before?, the shocked farmer asked his patient wife.
I did, she said. Many times. You just didn’t seem to want to hear it.
The parable of this story – a true metaphor for the times – was instantly clear to the farmer. I would wager the good people reading this got it long before he did.
My Shaman’s dog Jack is nearing the edge of life, she asked me to come and photograph him and then as she lost her cameras in a house fire. Jack is a spirit dog, and it seems to me he is close to leaving this world. Carol has an agreement with him – when he can’t walk, she will help him depart. He is still moving around but struggling. I was touched by this dog and by the chance to photograph him and I will share some of the photos will you over the next day or so.
Something in me loves a storm, perhaps the police reporter I was for some years. On a farm, a storm has particular meaning, and we have a set drill we go into to prepare the animals. The chickens will be in their coop for a few days – we are expecting 10-15 inches starting tonight – so we had to scrape out the bottom of the coop (chickens are filthy) put in some straw and bedding and water. We will pull the hay feeders into the barn, as the wind snow and ice will make it difficult for the donkeys and the sheep to eat in their usual places. We will the water buckets, and brought a couple inside the house in case the power goes out and there is no water pump. We brought extra hay bales down into the barn and put old hay down as bedding as the donkeys and sheep will be inside for at least 48 hours it sounds like, and that means the barn will be a mess.
We will turn the cars to the road, bring the shovels into the porch, put some dry food out for Minnie. I’ll be taking photos and blogging. Storms are beautiful as well as disturbing. I hope to catch that, it is our first storm here. We are ready.
This afternoon I’ll run to the Cambridge Co-Op and get some fruit and vegetables. We’ll be inside for a bit also.
