I am not a farmer, but a writer with a farm. Farmers lead different lives than I do, and I have always wanted to be a writer, I have never wanted to be a farmer. I love living on a farm, it is a great teacher and now, a focal point of my life work, as it became for E.B. White, one of my inspirations.  My crops are books, stories, photos, podcasts,  a life with animals and the farm is, in a way, my mother,my teacher, my muse

it is demanding and challenging to be on a farm, farms have a life, spirit, minds of their own, you have to feel them, listen to them, watch them closely. The Lulu Dilemma is a perfect metaphor for the farm, it can drive you mad or it can change you, open you up, keep you up at night. Farms are not for everyone, but if they are for  you, you will have to find one and your life will be changed. I call it a kind of chess, it makes a move and you make a move. Nothing could be simpler than my original idea for adding a third pasture to the farm. Our farm is 17 acres, most of it deep woods. The grass available is not predictable these days, the weather varies and last year was a tough one for the hay farmers. We began rotational grazing, but I was concerned that if the weather continues to change and warm up in July and August, we will need to buy hay in the summer as well as winter.

But there is nothing simple on a farm.

Todd Mason and I negotiated for quite awhile about how I could put a fence up around the outer pasture (once a cow pasture) that was affordable. Not a lot of extra cash right now. Maria was dubious about this project, she said there is enough going on. I pushed ahead, Todd came and worked brutally hard as he always does, affixing some conductors to trees, coming up with a plan that would cost around $1,500. It’s a lot of money but a good price for a new, eight-acre pasture that runs around streams, brush and woods was perfect for donkeys and sheep and would prevent us from ever worrying about grass in the warm weather. Hay is around $5 a bale now.

But the farm  has its own plan. It poured for days, and Todd had to get heavy equipment in an out and it poured for days and the stream bubbled up and heavy equipment went back and forth, so there is a bog, a pond by the pasture gate. Donkeys are intensely loyal and protective of one another, and if Lulu doesn’t go in, the other donkeys won’t stay long, and if they don’t stay long, the sheep won’t either, as they feel safe around the donkeys, their guard animals.  So there is the new pasture, nobody in it but the deer who hop the fence at night. Lulu is not really the problem, she will eventually figure out how to get over there, especially if the grass runs out on the barn side. If the pasture isn’t grazed down, it will become a jungle and the money building it a total waste.

I don’t want to leave the pasture like this, the stream running through their has expanded its track into all of the new ruts and holes, they are widening. Maria thinks it might dry out in time, and some people say well just put a few planks down there. The stream runs strong in rain and Spring and it needs a better solution in my mind. Every day the stream runs, the little pond gets a bit bigger. Tough to get a truck through there now. Tight money or not, you have to maintain the farm and care for it, just as we do for Mother Earth. Or it will decay and deteriorate and get away from us, there is so much it needs.

So Vince came over yesterday and proposed a good plan, one tube in the ground for the water to run through, set in a bed of stone so animals, people, trucks and tractors can get over easily and safely. Maria is uncertain, she is wise and sensible, but she thinks there is just no end to projects and solutions – there are almost always complications (Todd reminded us that there are two wires for the electric fence running right under the water and mud bog there) and I always want to do them, and money runs like the stream on a farm sometimes, often in only one direction – out. We butted heads about it yesterday, a rare disagreement. Maria is not often wrong, and we see the world in the same way, but I feel strongly that this is needed, for now, for the future. I think you have to stay ahead of a farm, or it will just gobble you up. I think you have to love it, and it will love you. Lots of options, many questions, the farm is chuckling and jeering at me sometimes. So you think you know what you are doing, eh, Katz. Hah!

The farm makes trouble sometimes, it thinks it is the Queen, the boss. I used to think I was in charge.

There is no way to know really about these things.  Maybe five planks would have worked, maybe it will dry up in a few days. But the idea that a few wooden planks would hold a tractor in mud or the weight of a donkey in soft ground doesn’t come from a farmer. Maybe a new Spring will open up from the ground and give us a lake, or a meteor will hit the pasture and divert the stream. We’ll see. I think I have good instincts about farms by now, but the farm is wilier than me.

At Bedlam Farm, there was plenty of money to make all the chess moves I wanted. Here, the match is different. Life is fascinating, life is wonderful. You have to make choices, ponder each move. It is not possible to do everything that needs to be done, not at once.

Once again, this wonderful game of chess, one move, another move, one thing leads to another. I did not imagine Lulu’s dilemma, nor the mud bog. It is unnerving, it is wonderful. There is nothing like a farm really. Vince said the 20-foot tube would not be a problem. Then we heard about the wires. I could see the look in Maria’s eyes. She has heard this before. Did she marry well, I wonder? Now she has a studio, but she also has a lunatic with a farm. Good thing she loves her donkeys and sheep so much. We’ll know more next Friday.