Fromm Family Food is offering three new dog and cat food recipes this month and they have graciously offered to give a bag of the new food away free to one of the readers of the blog. On Friday, I’ll post a Fromm Giveaway topic on the blog and the Facebook site and I’ll choose one of the replies to get a free 26 lb bag (their largest) of the new Fromm Four-Star Park & Peas Recipe for dogs. Fromm nutritionists said they drew inspiration from the Pacific, and this new grain-free entree is specially prepared with pork, peas and an assortment of handpicked Polynesian fruits and vegetables including mango, pineapple and melon.
Fromm send me a bag of this food last month and I have been giving it to Red and Lenore (Frieda gets senior Fromm Food), and they both seem to be thriving on it. I can endorse it with confidence. The dog’s coats are shiny, their weight is great, there are no allergies and their stools are very healthy. Our vet is very happy with the results of this food. Fromm is the oldest family-owned holistic pet food company in America. Their customer service is wonderful and their emphasis on nutrition – they do not outsource any of their food – is very passionate. This is not a corporate dog food company and it shows. They really work on their food products.
Many of you saw Red’s dry and coarse coat when he came to me, and many of you have also noticed that is is now dark and shiny. Frieda’s allergies are gone, so is her very dry coat and Lenore is healthy and very trim on this food, the first non low-fat food that has worked that way for any of my Labs. I am very proud to have this company as a sponsor.
I’ve been feeding my dogs Fromm Food for nearly a year now and it is the best food I have ever given to my dogs, which is why I agreed to have Fromm become the first and only sponsor of the website. The impact from my perspective has been startling and many of you have written to thank me for recommending this food. It feels good to be able to do that, I wouldn’t do it for any other food. Fromm is offering a new Game Bird recipe and Seafood Tunachovy for cats. Maybe it’s time for me to expand this program and give this to the barn cats, although they would never again catch mice. You can check out the new Fromm food on the company’s website.
So I’ll post updates this week, and put the giveaway topic up on Friday here and on Facebook so one of you can win a free bag of this neat new food. I can vouch for it I’ve been using it for a month, and I am grateful to Fromm for offering this to one of my readers and blog followers.
Sometimes I think the world is not spiritual enough, sometimes I think the world can be too spiritual. I guess that’s the yin and yang of it.
We had a lovely couple come to look at Bedlam Farm, the nicest people, but since they don’t want animals and are looking for a part-time second home, it didn’t seem right to them. I always want people like that to buy Bedlam Farm rather than the nose-twitching types who want to talk about wallpaper and taxes, and I am always disappointed when they don’t buy it, no fault of theirs. I am always a little surprised at how emotional this selling of a home is, it never was before for me, maybe it is only to be expected given my relationship to that place.
Buying and selling a house used to be a fairly routine thing, and so did moving to another city. I moved 15 times before coming to Bedlam Farm, I love the excitement, drama and change of moving from one place to another. I was always ready to move at the drop of a hat, and the minute I got to a new place I was ready to move again.
Then I discovered the problem with moving for me – I came too, along with my many issues, neuroses and unresolved problems. My many fears and frustrations did not seem to notice I had moved, I always seemed to pack them. I found when I moved that everything changed and nothing change and that I never gave myself the time to face life’s biggest problem – me. So I decided it was time for me to stay put, to take root, find friends, make connections and that has worked out for me. I met Maria, for one thing and got on with the business of life, which I found is pretty much the same wherever I was. Funny, I think it’s like getting a dog. You always think it’s about the dog, never about you and it always is.
I remember my Aunt Fanny moving across Providence. She hired a couple of teenagers to carry her furniture and moved with her husband Joe in an afternoon. I asked her how the move went and she said it was great. “There are Jews living in the apartment downstairs and a kosher deli across the street.” What else could one want? It was the only time she ever mentioned it.
Fanny would be shocked at the aura that hovers around selling houses and moving today. There is a great deal of mystery involved, you can hear about it all the time. Moving is no longer just about moving – a better job, more room, be closer to Mom and Dad. It is a quest, a journey, a psychic transformation and ritual involving fate, trust, faith, what is or isn’t meant to be, accompanied by the spiritualist trappings of choice – statues, Feng-Shui, positive thinking, shrines, prayers, chants, tears, incense and spirit guides. If you do not sell your house and move, I am told, it is because the house hasn’t released you, you have to go and talk to it, make amends.
Or you haven’t imagined the new place long enough or often enough. Or maybe you thought negatively about the obnoxious people who watch too many reality real estate shows and sometimes come and are stunned to see that a farmhouse doesn’t have an attached garage. Or you hear that your unresolved Karma scared off prospective buyers and the house is hanging on to you. Or maybe the universe has other plans. Or you just didn’t conjure up the buyers in your mind. Or the St. Joseph’s statue was eaten by Frieda (which happened, maybe this is the real problem.)
Why didn’t I buy all of this when I’m happily meditating, seeing shamans, talking to spiritual counselors, planting flowers in my gardens? Maybe it was because I’ve lived through a number of recessions. Or I have respect for interest rates. Or the farm seemed to find owners for 200 years without the intervention of angels. Every day I get messages that say “the farm will sell when it’s meant to sell,” and I always nod sagely as if I know what that means. Gee, I wonder, doesn’t the real estate market have a bit to do with it?
It is possible of course that all of this is in the hands of the mystical fates, but on this issue, I find I am not hopping on for the spiritual ride. It is not my fault that the farm hasn’t sold yet, I will not be a hero if it does. Perhaps I’m just done with drama, I hope so. I had enough of it for long enough, and it sure doesn’t accomplish much, other than making lots of noise. When people turn over the realities of life to physics or the Gods, I get nervous. Going to the supermarket is an affirmation of faith too, if you think about it. But I don’t really want to think about it, I just want to have food to eat. And I wouldn’t mind one mortgage each month either.
I think I am done with moving as well as drama, I am making my own stand in my own life, and that feels good to me. I see that the longer I stay put, the more friends I have, the safer and more comfortable I feel, the more I understand the power and meaning of community the more grounded I feel. I remember a gypsy tell me when I was a reporter that she moved every other week to keep a step ahead of the evil spirits. Sounded feasible to me. I think when all is said and done, my move from one farm to another is a bug on the spiritual path, a pimple on the ass of life, not so much a dramatic and spiritual affirmation but a fairly common even mundane progress involving the economy, interest rates and just plan good luck. My wisdom about selling homes: when the economy sucks, it is hard. As the economy improves, it gets better. I’d be happy to tell St. Joseph that if I run into him on the lawn there.
I guarantee historians will not be talking about my house sale in 200 years, or even next week. Life holds all of the cards sometimes, and I don’t know that it cares much what I do or think. I’ll meditate on that.
We found this bottle in the ruins of the old farm, Alexander’s old farm, the ghost of Bedlam Farm. The story is Alexander was a soldier in the militia, and was called away to fight. He returned to find his wife and children dead of fever in the old farm at the end of the path where we walked the dogs. This, I thought, was the apparition I saw walking on the path with Rose when I first came to the farm. I don’t believe in ghosts but I do know I saw a tall and rangy man (he looked a lot like Todd Mason) walking towards us on the path. And I saw Rose’s fur go up and for the first and last time in her life, she ran. Then the man vanished, just melted into thin air. This is the bottle from his house, it does give off a spooky vibe I think.
I would not have thought this scene possible even a few weeks ago. We got Zelda from a farmer who was about to sell her and she was – is – not like any other sheep I have known. She became the leader of our flock, battled Red, jumped fences, broke through gates, led escapes, refused to be handled, touched or calmed. We never considered getting rid of her, we probably should have, there was something about her fiercely independent and intelligent spirit we admire. She was the only sheep who refused to wear a coat to protect her fleece for yarn. She and Red still keep a wary eye on her and until this morning, she never allowed herself to be touched by me or Maria, unless it was under duress.
This morning, Maria reached over to scratch Zelda’s hind quarters – sheep get itchy this time of year until they are shorn. Zelda started to bolt, then circled around and came back. It was touching to see this, a testament to Maria’s great way with animals, her calm and loving way with animals. If Zelda is not exactly calm, she is very different, she would never have permitted this. This took about a year.
