It was our first wintry day, and while I miss the color and light of the summer, I have also come to love the austere beauty of the winter pasture. I saw these maple leaves hanging on behind Maria’s studio as it snowed and rained, the wintry mix I thought these leaves captured the feeling of it.
It snowed today, it won’t stick long. We got 30 more bales of good hay, they are all stacked neatly and safely in our barn. That’s a good feeling. Maria woke up early today, she said she is worried about leaving me along in the farm in February when she goes to India.
I love her for that, but I told her stop worrying about me, I can and will take good care of myself, as she will take good care of herself in Kolkata. Barring massive snowstorms, I’m not concerned. We have a wonderful helper who cleans out the farmhouse from time to time and I’m planning to ask her to come by the house twice a week while Maria is gone.
My big concern is not having Maria come home to a house that is a mess – no dirty dishes, stacks of laundry, unpaid bills, clothes and junk stacked all over the place. My plan is to put some extra money away, pay every bill the second it comes in, do laundry three times a week, clean the farmhouse every few days.
She will have enough of an adjustment when she returns, she doesn’t need any of that, and I normally shop and cook anyway, that won’t be a change.
I’m not worried about the animal care,I often do it by myself, when Maria is away or with her friends. I was alone for years in Hebron, the first farm, and I do chores with Maria every morning. Animal care in the winter can be messy and uncomfortable, but not complicated. Hay twice a day, shovel out the manure. Pray the pipes don’t freeze, inside or out.
If it snows heavily, I might ask for some help shoveling the paths and walks. I have good people to call.
Maria and I have rarely been apart in our time together, it will be an adjustment for each of us, we tend to share the important things in our lives. It will also be healthy. Love is about independence as well as connection.
I am thrilled about her trip, I have this feeling it will be a life-changer, and I do not want her worrying about me. If I need help, I will yell out for it. I see these things as creative challenges, I will focus on this around December and make sure I have plans ready and in place. I can’t wait to see the first texts and blogs from India.
In his wonderful book The Hidden Lives Of Trees, Peter Wohllenben writes that there are unwritten guidelines for tree etiquette. I read his book in bits and chunks at a time, and then I walk in the forest with Maria, it is a special joy to learn to see trees in a completely different way, this fascinating life form, filled with its own traditions, dangers, customs and social systems. You can look at something every day of you life and not see it, including life itself.
A mature, well-behaved deciduous tree has a ramrod-straight trunk with a regular, orderly arrangement of wood fibers.
The roots stretch out evenly in all directions and reach down into the earth under the tree. In its youth, the tree had narrow branches extending sideways from its trunk. They died a long while ago, and the tree sealed them off with fresh bark and new wood. Only at the top does one see a symmetrical crown formed of strong b ranches angling upward like arms raised to heaven. An ideally formed tree like this can have a very long and healthy life, hundreds of years.
Do trees care about their looks? The biologists don’t know.
But there are good reasons for trees to have an ideal appearance.
The large crowns of trees, says Wohllenben, are exposed to turbulent winds, torrential rains and heavy loads of snow.
The tree must cushion the impact of these forces, which travel down the trunk to the roots. The roots must hold out under the onslaught so that the tree doesn’t topple over. To avoid this, the roots cling to the earth and to rocks. The redirected power of a windstorm can tear at the base of the trunk with a force equivalent to a weight of 220 tons.
If there is a weak spot anywhere in the tree, it will crack. In the worst-case scenario, the trunk breaks off completely and the whole crown tumbles down. Well formed trees absorb the shock of buffeting forces, using their shape to divide these forces evenly throughout their structure.
Trees that don’t follow along the manual for the good etiquette of trees find themselves in trouble. Now, every time I walk in the woods, I look upwards, and see the crowns of the beautiful trees, reaching to heaven.
I’m enjoying observing the very special relationship between women and their horses. Maria and Chloe are constantly communicating with one another, and it is remarkable to see the ways in which Maria can get this big and headstrong animal to do what she wants her to do.
They communicate without too many words, with a lot of feeling. Trust is important, so is patience. In the morning we put Chloe in the old work horse stall she eats her morning hay in there and has a couple of quiet hours, which seem to ground her. Then, she follows Maria around like a puppy as the stall is cleaned.
I like the trust I see between them, and the unspoken but very visible affection. Talking to animals is better than dominating them. (You can pre-order my new book “Talking To Animals” and get a free tote-bag if you get the book from Battenkill Books, my local bookstore. I will sign and personalize it. Order here.)
I’ve known Ed Gulley for awhile now, but I was blown away by the tour he gave us of his extraordinary collection of tools, engine parts, chains and hundreds of artifacts that tell the story of the family farm over the past century. Truthfully, I’ve never seen anything like it, and Ed knows the history and meaning of every single one of the thousands of exhibits that spread out over three barns on his dairy farm in White Creek, New York.
Ed and his wife Carol publish the wildly popular Bejosh Farm Journal blog, they write about their rich and evolving lives every day. Maria and I went to the Gulley’s Bejosh farm the other day, and I wanted to take a short video of what I thought would be his workshop.
The video ended up being eight minutes long and I could have gone on for another hour.
Ed has been collecting historical and very timely farm artifacts for decades, they inspire his art, but also his daily work and life. His is a working dairy farm, and there is a new adventure every day. Ed is himself a walking museum of the family farm, and his art is recording and evoking the life of the farm through it’s discarded implements, of which there are many.
Come and see his collection, I imagine it will mesmerize you as it has fascinated Maria and I . Ed is the real deal.
His life is his art. All his sculptures come from engine and other industrial farm tools and parts, and having seen what I call his Family Farm Museum, I grasp the reach of his imagination and experience, and of his art.
Family farms are not pastoral, they are not like the Vermont calendar photos of farms. They are real, gritty and industrial, tractors, cans, pipes and boards lying all over the place. Family farmers are masters of many trades, they fix and patch and repair all day. They castrate animals and birth them, fix tractor engines, re-build barns, build additions and stalls, do wiring and plumbing, run complex systems.
I was shocked by the depth, organization and history of what I call his Family Farm Museum – he calls it his workshop, and it is that. But I sincerely think his collection ought to be seen by anyone interested in farming, it’s history, and the remarkable impact the family farm has had on American life.
Family farms are disappearing, they are struggling against animal rights harassment, too many regulations, competition with giant corporate farms and suffocating federal bureaucracy. I hope Ed will set up his remarkable collection as a museum, everyone should see it. Here’s your chance. I hope you find the tour as exciting as we did.
