listen to the wind

     I live on a farm, on a dirt road, 2 miles from pavement.  The house does not have a furnace, clothes dryer, TV, or microwave.  Cell phone is for trips to town only, as there's no reception here.   There is a wood fire cook stove in the large kitchen.  In the winter we gather fire wood from the woods and stack it on the front porch.  We heat the house, cook our food, make coffee, dry clothes, and relax with the wood stove.
    Get up in the morning between 5 and 6 am every day.  Set up the stainless steel cans, strainer, and milk pails.  Let the chickens out.  Miguel brings the cows in from pasture.  We milk them by hand.  Milking 7 right now and I usually get 3 done while he's finishing his 4th.  He washes the stainless while I let the cows out and spray down the cement floor of the milk house.  Then we feed calves.  They mostly eat grass but we have an abundance of skim milk and whey and there's no pigs here yet, so the calves get all they can drink.  The skim comes from butter making and the whey from cheese.
  Give the chickens some old cheese and milk so they'll stay away from the back door while we finish chores.  Stain the kefir grains and give them fresh milk.  Taking care of the kefir grains is important.  We both drink more kefir than we do milk.
      During the day who knows what we'll do.  Check the fences for a good charge.  Look at the dry cows to see who is getting close to calving.  Feel their udders for any hardness indicating a problem.  Work in the garden.  Post an ad to sell calves or bulls.  Let the lambs out and make sure all the gates are closed so they don't go across the road.  Sit and stare at the chickens.  Listen to the wind in the cotton wood trees.  Listen to the birds.  There are so many birds.  Feed the baby chickens and the adolescent chickens.  Make cheese, skim cream, wrap up the butter, take pictures...
     In the evening I collect the eggs from the chicken coop.  And check the one spot in the barn.  Usually there's a blue egg in there.  Close the chicken-sized door on the coop so a hungry fox will go to the neighbor's instead.  Feed the lambs some skim milk, just because we have it.  They are big enough now not to need it.  They will go back in the orchard much easier for a bottle though.  I wash the cans now too.  We fill up four, 5 gallon stainless steel cans every morning.  They're a little heavy and after a few days of this task I made sure to lift with my left arm at least as often as my right.

     Get to bed before 10 pm and read a little, then fall asleep.  Sleeping has been difficult for me off and on during my short life.  Not so much since moving to the farm.  Falling asleep is very easy and sleeping soundly through the night happens more often than not.
      There's no work here.  We just live our lives.  Time rarely matters.  Pace is slow and relaxed.  Cows will teach a person that.  A few years ago my life was totally different.
Now I live on a farm, on a dirt road.

next breath

         I left the farm yesterday.  Had to get away.  What did I do?  Went to visit about 9 other farms.  All my friends live or work on farms or gardens.  And they're usually home.  That's one of the great things about farmer friends.  No need to call, they probably won't be near the phone any way.  Just stop in and wander out to the garden.  Put on a hat, take off your shoes, crouch down in the weed pulling position, and the visit begins.  Talk and pull, talk and nibble, laugh and pull, look up at the sky, listen to that bird, stop and turn your face into the breeze.  Visiting farmer friends is such a joy.  We can talk about chicken behavior, food, poop, range, I'm not even sure, for 25 minutes before a confused look comes over some one's face as they realize they want to continue talking about chickens, but maybe we should just stop, for a bit.  So then we start talking about cows.  What they're eating, are they fat or thin, how's that back right quarter doing, who gave who the horn yesterday, what they saw over the fence... then again we look at each other and wonder, how much can one say about a cow?  But there's so much more to say, we know we could talk for hours, just about the cows.  And who else are you going to talk to about the cows?  Its not like we have a long list of people to call and discuss these things with.  Many of my friends will listen, some will even ask an interesting question from time to time.  But to really talk WITH someone about the cows, now that feels good.
     And the soil.  Oh the soil.  Hours of discussion there too.  And what's different about discussing chickens and soil from discussing say, heart disease or nuclear weapons?  There is truth.  Truth that can be learned through observation, intuition, prayer.  Call it what you will.  It will have a different name tomorrow.  The truth is there though.  And when I meet someone else who has discovered, uncovered that truth, caught a glimpse of it and is actively seeking more, then I've met a friend.  Then the human connection happens and another layer is peeled away to expose more beauty, more wholeness.  There are opinions about heart disease.  There are clinical studies and documented 'facts'.  Points to argue and positions to support.  There are ways to feel that maybe certain people understand these things, and that's their job.  There's no truth in it.
     Truth about soil and plants and animals, that is felt in the gut.  In the heart, in your chest.  You know it like you know the sun will come up.  Truth that feels like your next breath.  Some people learn it from books and then go out and drive it deeper with each seed that sprouts, each carrot they munch, each interaction with an 800 lb being.  Some people just walk out into the green, feet bare, hands outstretched, and they know.  Bit by bit, they know.  Absorbing it through their skin, their eyes, their open heart.  They are not accumulating information about the plants and the soil.  They are peeling back layers from their very own being to reveal the truth that has been there all along.  The universal vibration, unable to be proven wrong, even by a large sample size, double-blind, controlled experiment performed in a lab by experts in white coats.  The truth has no opposite.  It can't be proven wrong, because it is not right.
  It just is.