Sunday, October 18, 2020

Morning chores

     Opening the chickens is the first thing to do outside every day.  There is a little door, just the size of a chicken, and it lifts up when the rope is pulled and hooked on a strategically placed nail.  If the chickens come blasting out of the chicken sized door then it could have been opened earlier.  I like to find that sweet spot of opening their door when its light enough to see as I’m walking down the path towards the coop, but before they all hop down off the roosts and start scratching around on the floors.  There is a pecking order and for some of the chickens it can be really uncomfortable to be trapped in a building with particular members of the flock.  Its nice to open their door early and let the chickens exit peacefully instead of running for their lives.  The rooster starts to crow and I am already up and about well before daylight.  Opening the chicken door too early presents the possibility that a night creature may enter and take a chicken for a meal.  Possums and raccoons find the roosting chickens such easy prey so the door must be closed as darkness falls each evening and only opened as morning light brightens the sky.  

Then a bit before chore time, I head out to the milk house and begin.  Chore time lately has been about 8:30 am and it adjusts with the seasons.  The water heater gets turned up to high after resting all day on low.  Two 5 gallon cans sit waiting, mostly full of clabbered milk.  One can gets emptied into a bucket and the other can is lifted and about 3/4 of the thick, sour milk is poured into another bucket.  The empty can sits by the sink to be washed later, when the water is nice and hot.  Milk remaining in the 2nd can returns to its place by the door and will be added as the starter, to skimmed milk, for another batch of clabbered milk.  Buckets are moved into the holding area and eagerly await their trip down the lane to feed the piggies.  I think of these as buckets of sausage and they are precious, not to be spilled.  A bit does get poured into pans in the yard where cats, chickens, and dogs gather to enjoy their morning treat.  

Now its time to skim the cream.  Two milk cans, each holding around 4 gallons of milk, have been sitting in the refrigerator for two days.  Over that time, the cream has generously risen to the top and can be easily skimmed off.  Transporting these cans involves careful attention to the contents.  They must be lifted and moved in a way that does not disturb the cream layer, which could be easily mixed back into the rest of the milk that it sits upon.  These cans are heavy and they must be sort of levitated out of the refrigerator and held quite still until coming down to rest where the light is good.  Normally when carrying a can full of milk, say for cheese making day, the weight of the can may rest against the legs and the whole body used to move the can around.  For skimming cream, the can must be brought out of the refrigerator and held out away from the body, clear of the legs which are moving, walking towards the final destination.  This technique allows the cream to remain on top, in skimmable position.  Its quite satisfying to be able to move a full can in this fashion and I feel it demonstrates my love for, and devotion to, cream.

To receive the skimmed cream, an empty two gallon stainless steel can rests between the two full cans and the large ladle is rinsed in hot water.  I take my place on the green crate and lean over a can for the best view.  The forward edge of the ladle is pushed gently down to break the surface and thick, heavy cream reluctantly releases and flows into the bowl of the ladle.  The angle is changed as the ladle fills and then the load is carefully poured into the receiving vessel, minimizing drips and saving as much cream as possible for butter, or ice cream, or coffee, or whipped cream, or just plain drinking.  The cream almost displays layers as it is removed, changing from thick, heavy, and sticky to thin and loose.  There comes a moment when a distinct color change appears under the lifted ladle as the bluish-white of the skimmed milk shows itself.  This can is through offering cream and now cream from the second can may be lovingly harvested, beginning again with the thick cream that clings to the ladle.  At the end of a can, It is fun to try and skim off as much of only the cream as possible, playing with the color change as the pale blue skimmed milk tries to slip in to the ladle along with the yellower cream.  It reminds me of video games played as a young child.   Any anxiety about “getting all the cream” or “not too much milk” in the cream can is soothed with the knowledge that it all just becomes sausage.  Cream not harvested from a can will be fed to the appreciative piggies.  Milk put through the butter churn will drain out as butter milk and get carried down the lane in a bucket to the happy pigs.  Just relax and skim in joy.


Friday, October 9, 2020

"Look where I am"

 ...so you’re family and I love my family.  Especially ones like you that are basically strangers so you and I don’t have any personal history between the two of us, but I can talk to you like a friend because we sort of know a lot about each other's lives and where your mom and my dad came from.  I want to write some things out, I like to write.  Writing letters is something I enjoy and you are a perfect target because I can write to my cousin while I process some things by writing them down.  You can burn this letter if you want to.  Its sort of for you and it is also very much for me.  I will likely print out two copies and keep one.  

My dad left his physical body this past March, he died.  Your uncle Joe, he was the first of the eleven to go.  I think it really freaked out some of the other siblings because their own mortality was staring them right in the face.  I thought it was great that he died.  To me he did not seem peaceful or content.  He was surface-happy but I could see just under the surface all the old pain and anger, masking fear, that had always been there.  Seemed to me that transitioning back into non-physical was his only option.  I mean we are all going to die, but I am actively seeking more peace and more contentment every day and I am finding it, while I’m still alive.  He seemed to be just surviving, just keeping pain under the surface with activities that hid his heart and filled up time.  Now, my dad is Free.  He has returned to pure positive energy and he is fully Love, totally Free.  He’s still my dad and he is different now.  

My relationship with him while he was alive was pretty nice.  We shared infrequent visits and infrequent phone calls.  There was never any pressure to visit or call but when it happened it was pleasant.  I like my dad.  I had learned to navigate around topics and keep things easy and comfortable.  I had let go of all the stuff I was mad at him about.  None of my business.  I am healing.  I have my own child now so I see what its like to be a parent.  He did the best he could at the time he was parenting me.  So our visits were pleasant and we shared our current lives with each other. I live on a 200 acre farm with the farm partner who has lived here since 1979 and is the same age as my dad.  During visits we would walk around the farm and then eat really yummy farm meals.  My dad is intensely curious and he loves to eat.  He asked Miguel 1,000 questions about the farm and how things work and Miguel is very intelligent and felt comfortable with Joe so the two of them could talk forever.  It was fun to watch.  

After living here for four years and enjoying visits with Dad and his wife Donna, I got pregnant and they were both a wonderful support to me the whole time.  They continued visiting and were here 3 days in a row during the first week that the baby was here.  That was awesome and I was so glad to share such a special time with family. What I’m trying to explain is that the relationship with Dad was what it was.  It wasn’t fully honest and I didn’t trust him and it was all ok because none of that was really required to have pleasant visits.  I wanted him in my life.  That became important after I worked for two years as a home Hospice nurse in 2008 and 2009.  I watched these old people dying in their homes and thier adult children would come to the bedside with 30+ years of pain and questions on their shoulders, weighing them down.  Usually the person dying was not really affected by any of the weight.  They were dying, they had their own thing going on.  But the adult child was generally racked, just wiped out and confused and angry and the other parts of their life were really touched by this huge weight they carried.  I saw that enough times that I made a firm decision, no matter how much I didn’t like what my dad had done and how my childhood was, I was going to have a relationship with him and it was going to be a simple, comfortable relationship.  I didn’t know or care what it would look like but I was not going to carry around the weight and squish joy out of other parts of my life.  In the homes of dying people, the Universe showed me what I did not want and then the kind, generous, creative Universe gave me what I did want.  

The spring before Joe transitioned back to non-physical, 2019, I was building a yard out in the pasture.  I was stringing barbed wire and fencing-off a section of pasture for my camper trailer so I could have a place of my own, away from farm partner because we had split up.  (I am still single and I love it.  I live here, we share space, but I am my own human, in deep relationship with God.)  I had never built a fence by myself before and it was an overwhelming task for me on many levels.  I wanted help.  Where do I put the fence posts, is it ok to string the wire like this?  I started talking to Dad in my heart.  I was out in the deep pasture, next to the woods and I haven’t had a cell phone in years but I did have an active connection with God and I believe that humans can communicate through our hearts.  So I tried it.  I focused on dad and talked to him right out loud.  I was pretty angry because I was scared and my dad can handle anger so I talked to him and it felt great.  He’s real logical and engineering minded and I was able to hear his guidance about the questions I had.  I love building stuff with my dad and we put that fence up together over two or three weeks.  It was one of the most special times in my life.  Never once did I even mention it to him on the phone, I don’t even think we talked at all that spring.  My relationship with my dad had expanded from infrequent physical visits to heart space.  

Then he died.  About a year later, March 15th of 2020 my brother called me after church.  He said it right away, real plain and clear, “Dad died this morning”.  Time stopped.  My identity fell away, I was in a space of nothingness that people try to reach through meditation.  It was the most beautiful moment in my life.  Then, because of strong social norms and not being accustomed to that transcendental state, I came back into my body and spoke to my brother, into the phone.  “That’s not what I expected you to say.”  Anyway, I was happy for dad.  Now I know for sure that he is Free, he is peaceful, he is pure Love.  I know for sure that he is totally Free of all the pain he seemed to be dragging around with him.  And my relationship with him continues to grow.  Since he transitioned back to non-physical, he has helped me heal a food addiction that has caused imbalance for me most of my life.  He also told me a story that helped me heal my uncomfortable sensitivity to noises.

Its an old Blouin story so I thought it might be relevant to you.  Grandpa Blouin, Harvey, was a long distance truck driver for some time when the kids were little.  He would be gone for a week at a time.  Coming back into Sturgis, his truck would rumble past the house down to the end of the street and park in the empty lot there.  Marie, Grandma Blouin, would hear the truck and no matter the time of day or night, she would send Joe, my dad, to meet it.  Joe’s instructions were clear: get Harvey calm and safe before he comes back into this house.  So dad learned to read body language, tone of voice, and all the subtle signs that communicate a person’s state of mind.  Then he learned to manipulate the person into the ‘correct’ state of mind.  That’s sort of the part where my dad may have lost himself.  I’m not sure if he ever learned to know himself because his job was to know someone else.  He had to read and control Harvey upon returning from the road but also in just everyday life when they were all together in the house.  That’s what my dad told me later in my heart.  He explained that he liked things quiet in the house because it made it easier to monitor his own dad.  If someone was playing music or goofing around laughing, then Joe couldn’t hear the small, first noises that indicated Harvey was upset and required intervention.  Dad let me know that when it was quiet, he could hear the way a door closed or the particular sound a chair makes when someone stands up and scoots back from the table.  He was alert to any new sound so it could be diagnosed and evaluated for what it might reveal about a violent person’s present or impending state of mind.  Joe leaned this at a young age growing up and it carried over into his everyday life so I learned it from him just through simple imitation.

The Freedom from this noise sensitivity has been such a sweet gift.  It made me quite difficult to live with because I was always jumpy and quick to criticize anyone who caused ‘unnecessary’ noises.  It bothered me to feel such anxiety about noises that other people literally did not even notice.  Then dad explained it to me one day out on the deck.  I was standing in the sun, silently criticizing my partner for the sound created when he pushes the chair back from the computer desk.  Through my heart communication with dad, he told me the things above.  I understood some of what his life was like.  And right away I felt so sorry for him, “I am so sorry you had to live like that dad”.  This is the best part:  he said, clear as anything, 

“It is ok Kari.  Look where I am”. 

  Oh the beauty and the glory of it all!   So sure.  So clear.  Yes.  I know where you are dad.  Nothing can ever happen on this earth that could ever take one bit away from the astounding magnificence we all are headed towards.   Its all ok.  Everything melts away and is stripped of all relevance in the face of unspeakable beauty and infinite Love.  

So I don’t feel sorry for my dad, or any of his siblings.  I don’t feel bad towards Harvey or Marie, they lived their lives and its all ok now or it will be soon for each of us.  There is so much freedom.  Even from the little things like the sound of a stainless steel can clanging on the cement, none of it bothers me anymore.  I am so grateful.