Charlotte released * * content warning * * (animal killed)

     I released Charlotte from her physical body yesterday.  Living in relationship with animals is complex.  There are so many variables to consider.  She may have lived through the winter.  Now comes the definition of living.  Her physical body may have stayed upright, hay going in and poo coming out.  But Charlotte is a milk cow and really living for her means getting fat, being pregnant, and growing a healthy calf to nurse after it’s born.  None of those milk cow activities were possible for her anymore.  She was damaged, wounded, less than.  And so brave, she still mooed for her 4 month old calf and she had a good appetite.  But she was limping and the wound was stinky and I believe she was uncomfortable.  She was not living her best milk cow self so she had to go.  Allowing her to continue on means less hay for the cows that are thriving.  It means all that fuel and time bouncing around on the tractor was for a creature that is not able to give back her milk cow share.  Charlotte couldn’t carry her end of a milk cow relationship but she can still contribute to the farm.  That’s where the decision lies.  Her physical body is immensely valuable to the farm as compost that will support gardens and trees just a few short years from now.  Her spirit will remain here on the farm, celebrating and encouraging the beauty that thrives here.  Maybe she will return as a new calf someday.  

     Cutting Charlotte’s throat did not destroy her.  It was what started her next phase of form, just like when she was conceived from stardust in her mother’s womb, and again when she took her first breath of air.  Physical beings are continuously transforming from spirit into physical, and back again.  Charlotte used to drink milk from her mama’s udder, then she stopped drinking milk and ate grass.  Now she will become the soil that feeds the grass.  

     So it was a big deal for me to release Charlotte with my own hand.  The decision that it needed to be done was relatively easy, especially with winter coming on, the wound, and her limping.  To keep the balance on the farm, she had to be released.  Then I had to come up with an actual step by step plan.  Where was she going to be, what knife was to be used, exactly where do I cut her?  I was so scared.  It felt like a huge responsibility to release an 800 lb animal from  her body.  Not something I could do half way and then call for back up.  It needed to be done, done right.   There is an element of danger too, when killing something that big.  I was pretty scared.  

     The whole process went really well, Praise the Lord.  I called upon my God and held big, strong faith out in front of me.  I chose to know that to keep the balance, it was the right thing to do, and that Charlotte wanted to go.  I let myself be Lovingly guided by the Universe that is bigger than me and that I willingly participate in.  She came up to the milk house easy and I got a halter on her no problem.  She was really calm.  Because my decision was clear and solid, I knew that Charlotte already understood what was happening.  We had agreed and we were doing it together.  I mean she’s 800 lbs with horns, if she didn’t want to walk across the yard to the red barn, she certainly would not do it.  But she did.  Little me hanging on to a skinny rope, led her into the barn and tied her up, just as sweet as anything.  

     Charlotte stood in the barn while I finished my morning chores.  Then I put on some yuck clothes, sharpened the knives, and went out to be with her.  She was very calm.  She let me secure her head uncomfortably tight and close to the wall with a halter and a rope around her horns.  I was constantly thanking God that she was so calm.  I know for sure that Charlotte has never been tied up to the wall in the red barn.  This was all new and strange and she participated in her gentle cow way.  Then I felt her neck and tried to figure out exactly where the knife would go in and then what direction it would travel.  It was very important to me that I cut the big vessels and the air all at once, quickly and cleanly.  I owed that much to Charlotte, to honor her by doing this exactly right.  Part of me screams that someone qualified should be doing this important work.  Another part of me agrees.  Then I look around and realize, as I have so many times living on a wild farm, I am qualified.  I am the one to keep the balance.  God put me here and I love it and I am qualified because I know how to listen, I know how to be led.  That’s how I had a baby in the front bedroom of this house.  I listened.  I was led.  

     Feeling Charlotte’s neck made it clear.  I stood back and connected to spirit and then cut her.  The knife in my hand released her.  It was quick and clean, one cut, first time, done.  Well done.   

    I will always feel appreciation for Charlotte.  I needed to do this.  

bee sting

      As we become closer to nature, wisdom will flow and life will become easier.  There may be no need for emergencies.  We will live in and truly inhabit a place on earth.  All the creatures and unseen forces will become as extensions of our own physical bodies.  Our humanness will melt into the natural world and we will become part of that thriving ocean, flowing as a wave in perfect place with all the other waves.  

Imagine:  humans in a garden, gathering fruits, receiving an abundant harvest from mother earth.  One human notices some beings communicating.  BBZZzzzzzzz… Their home has been stepped on, made part of a foot path.  Maybe someone hears the buzzing with real ears or sees the bright yellow with real eyes.  Another one could feel the message clearly, look up from her work and tell others, choose a different path.  Our friends request that their home remain undisturbed.  We all greet the beings and appreciate sharing this beautiful place, our home.  A new path is flattened from the large, ripe pumpkins to the waiting wagon.  The day is sunny and bright.  

How we are still learning to live connected to mother earth:  a human walks along a path, intent on the harvest.  Hand feels sudden, intense pain while heart senses aggression in the sting.  Human expresses offense, takes personal offense at being stung “for nothing”, all while feet continue forward over the path.  Another human immediately knows and offers that those creatures live in the ground, suggesting an acceptable explanation for the painful hand.  And then failure.  She becomes focused on silently criticizing the offended one, and a small human walks along the path.  

There is no reason to explain anything now.  Just hold the crying child, return to the house with square walls.  Comfort and reassure while the pain is endured.  I can see how people feel confident when they are good at responding to human emergencies.  It requires focus and can bring calm because the responder is now connected to universal knowledge and simply receiving instructions.  What I strive for now is to live in a peaceful way with nature.  To receive instructions from the earth and from all the creatures.  The moment it was known that our path crossed the bees home the child could have been brought in to that new understanding.  Time spent observing buzzing concentrated above their home.  Celebrating our new relationship, grateful for their warning.  Appreciation to the one who “took one for the team”, helping us see, take a different path.   

When we spend time in the garden we are entering an ecosystem that can demand careful attention.  As my mind quiets with its own sad habits it will learn to listen to and enjoy the chorus of love and celebration that surrounds.  The child is fine.  He handled it well.  But what if we lived in a way that honored all creatures?  We will slowly continue to see ourselves here as equal to all creatures.  Not even equal because that may suggest separateness.  I want to live in the flow and just be basking in the gorgeous creation all the time.  Bee sting was a dynamic lesson and I feel much appreciation for this clarity.  

Butter happens

     Butter happened on Tuesday.  It is a different process than making a pie.  Seems like a human makes a pie but butter just happens.  Its a mechanical process, stirring really fast, and then bam!  Butter appears where there used to be cream.
     Last year we were blessed with about 12 pounds of butter happening every 10 days from May until October.  This year butter started happening in June, once a week, to give us around 4 pounds each time.   This farm life continues to change and evolve with each season and that really appeals to me.  I enjoy the challenge of observing, planning, and then adjusting my activities so everything flows.  It requires creativity and attention and that stirs my soul, makes me feel human.
     So butter happens.   We are receiving around 4 gallons of milk each morning from our cows, God bless them.  One gallon comes in the house each day for "house milk".   The other 3 gallons stays in the milk-house refrigerator for two days.  During those 48 hours the cream part rises and settles on top.  I use a huge ladle to skim off this lovely, thick cream and store it for up to a week in the fridge.
At the end of 7 days I dip my finger into the oldest can of cream and taste.  It is usually a bit, oh, how to describe the flavor?  Funky cheese, yes mild funkiness, in a good way.  The fresh cream is incredibly sweet so its easy to taste the difference.  The next oldest can of cream is mostly sweet with just a hint of "I'm six days old, not so fresh".  The total gallons of cream and their diverse flavors will make a real nice batch of butter.
     Now down to the  basement to set up the super-cool Cadillac of butter churns that we are so blessed to have.  The butter churn that was here when I arrived 8 years ago was a beast, difficult to use, and physically dangerous.  It made good butter but I started complaining immediately.  My partner had been fantasizing about a churn he had seen a few years before so the abundance of the farm paid over $1,000 for the new churn.  And its wonderful.  So easy to clean, easy to handle.  Its still dangerous but it takes a much more idiotic move to be hurt by this one.
   When the churn is all set up I dump in gallons of cream, (up to 7), turn it on, and just wait.  The cream is violently whipped by a large paddle inside the churn.  It hums and vibrates and I love to hear the noises change as the texture and consistency of the cream changes.  At some point when I stop the motor and lift off the lid, there are tiny bits of butter floating in butter milk.  Done.  How does that happen?  I put cream in, washed a few cans while listening to the churn, then there's butter.  It has taken me a few years to learn the art of when to stop the churn but that's about all the skill it takes.
     Now the rinsing of the butter.  Butter likes to be rinsed.  First the buttermilk is drained off from the cool spigot on the bottom.  At least one quart of this must be drank immediately by anyone present.  The rest feeds the happy pigs.  Then the churn is filled up with cold water, mixed with the paddle just for 2 seconds and then allowed to rest as the butter chunks float to the top.  Open the spigot to drain off the water, fill up again with cold water for the final rinse.  The rinse water drains clear and now its time to squeeze the butter.  Butter likes to be squeezed.  I used to put the butter in a milk pail and squeeze the water out with the back of a wooden spoon.  Using my hands is much more fun.  Reach into the churn and scoop out a large snowball-sized lump and start squeezing.  Its a fantastic arm and shoulder workout.  Each lump can be squeezed about twenty times then formed into a nice ball.
     That's how butter happens here on the farm where I live.  No,  I do not know what buttermilk is except that its the yummy white liquid that floats the butter pieces.  I do not know how butter happens.  I guess all the fat pieces stick together when they get whipped around well enough.  I do know that I love to eat butter and it is a wonderful way to store the milk.  The skimmed milk turns into bacon, thanks to the pigs.  The abundance from the cows continues to boggle my mind and fill my heart with joy.  I do not know how to make a pie but I do know how to let butter happen and for now I am satisfied.

old trees

I live in a wild life sanctuary, a little piece of earth that is yours as much as it is mine. I steward this wild wonderful place.

look us up on google maps 5660 & 6111 Austin Rd. Camden, MI

Opportunity for anyone interested in immediately and directly supporting the health of Lake Erie:

The St Joseph River in Michigan is part of the Lake Erie watershed. Currently this river carries significant run-off from conventionally farmed land here in South Eastern Michigan. The water carries chemicals that directly contribute to the poor health of Lake Erie.

The East fork of the West branch of the St Joseph river travels through 380 acres of land that I have been co-stewarding since 2011. This land is an informal wildlife sanctuary established in 1979.
These 380 acres naturally and sustainably filter and purify water in the river, thus directly contributing to the health of Lake Erie. The current owners of 180 acres of sanctuary land intend to sell it to local conventional farms.
This letter presents the opportunity for the land to be purchased and then allowed to continue as a sanctuary.

A simple way to directly support the health of Lake Erie is to preserve watershed land that cleans the water. The current owners desire money. There are people out there with an abundance of money. The impact on the Lake’s health is cumulative because the longer this large piece of land is allowed to remain wild, the more efficient it becomes at cleaning water that flows into Lake Erie.

library love

I hit on someone yesterday at the library, homeschool-mom style.  It worked.  She took my digits and smiled.
     I was at the library basking in the loveliness of the experience when a woman walked in with 4 children.  Suddenly my kid wanted to leave and I became determined to find a movie.  I wanted to wait long enough for shyness to pass and see if there was any connection between teo and these new humans.  Frequently in this situation there is not and so we just go on about our day.  With his third request to leave lovingly refused the reward came as joyful noises from the toy dinosaur area of our sweet little library.  Contact!  I casually observed the children and then shifted focus to the mother.
     She seemed like someone I could talk to and my habits of thought quickly attacked the idea.  Then from somewhere warm and loving, a new thought came.  Just try it honey.  This is a beautiful, sincere desire and the risk is much less than the potential benefit.  It was nice to focus on the possible outcome rather than the unlikely event of total failure and embarrassment.  So I melted into the new thought and lurked by the sale books, waiting for the right moment.
     Finding home school families out here in the boonies has not been a simple google search.  Humans here are spread out and there are a lot of close neighbors who participate in a cult-type culture that is not something I desire to be welcomed in to, and their rules do not welcome outsiders, thank goodness.   One thing that has been easy and very comfortable is the library.  For such a small town we have a beautiful, functional library.  We visit regularly and teo is on speaking terms with both the nice people that work there.   I have suspected that if there are any homeschooling humans around, they could be found at the library.  Sure enough.
     After observing these particular children for a short time I felt confident enough to ask their mother is she was homeschooling them.  She smiled again and said yes.  I have been in the library enough times to watch what happens when public school kids come in to know the difference.  It felt so good to walk up to a stranger filled with desire for a lovely life for my child.  That was my motivation and it finally was bigger than all the old fears.  I have gotten really good at focusing on what I love and on what I want.  So now there is hope for a play date and even a new friend for me.  Someone kind who seemed to enjoy speaking with me and has nice skin and pretty eyes.

dog person

     I love Dixie so much.  I love going out the front door each morning and receiving her love.  She comes over to me wiggling because her tail wags so hard she can't really even walk.  I rub her neck and her chest and her chin and she turns around and around slowly at my feet all the time wagging that tail.  Dixie's tail is basically a club stuck on her bum.  When she wags the club, its heaviness moves her entire body.  When it strikes my leg I feel her solid love.  She can knock my kid down just by wagging her tail and nailing him in the chest with it.  I love Dixie so much.  When I come home she is right there to greet me and occasionally if she's not, I look for her and long for her and can't do anything until she comes bounding up the hill to beat me with her tail and lick my hands.  Loving a dog is such a wonderful, true, fulfilling experience.
     This is all new for me.  Dixie has been with me for almost a year and its the first time in my life to have a dog love.  I was not a dog person before I met Dixie.  I have friends who are dog people and I was not one of them.  I always respected their relationship and I knew that I just couldn't understand it.  Being a dog person was just a different love of dog that it was clear I did not have access to.  I liked dogs but my dog person friends loved their dogs on a level that was out of reach for me.  I figured it was just something to observe, never suspecting that one could be brought to the other side.
     And then it happened.  I met a dog that brought me over.  I found her on Craig's List and went to visit.  She jumped up on me and on her owner and on a tree and on anything she could find.  I don't like it when dogs jump up.  But I couldn't get enough of this dog.  She's big too, part Mastiff, part Pit Bull, real solid.  I could feel Dixie telling me that she just needed to run.  She was shut up in a small, fenced in yard in town.  Her humans loved her but their lifestyle just didn't fit her energy.  Somehow I just knew, like the sky is blue, that this dog would be wonderful once she got out of the yard and out into the open.  It felt like the deepest truth I'd ever known.
     So Dixie hopped in the back of my car and came home to the farm.  She runs every day for what seems like hours.  She never jumps up on me or anyone else.  She's my dog love and my heart just bursts thinking about her.

fear of death

     My understanding of human death has changed and it is such a relief.  When I was pregnant my friend Katherine told me her story about sputnik, which she defined as meaning 'fellow traveler'.  A sputnik is someone who will travel with you on a trip, or go together with you into a train of thought, following an idea.  After her husband died, Katherine was able to maintain communication with him,  deepening their connection over time as she learned to navigate this new form of relationship.   When I was pregnant and Katherine would think about our friendship and the coming baby, she always felt Garrick, her husband, say 'sputnik' very clearly.  She soon came to understand that the spirit of the baby and Garrick were fellow travelers, in the same form, on the same level.
     Knowing this from Katherine helped clarify many things for me.  I felt sure that the baby growing inside my body was alive and well but I did not believe that it was just a physical object created by cell division and growing from good nutrition.  I believed that the baby had chosen me to act as its mother and that it had chosen the time at which it came.  I knew that when I held this new baby in my arms for the first time, it would not be the baby's first time here on earth.  The body was new and that had formed inside of me, but the spirit was old and wise and independent, determined to live a life that it already understood would be full of expansion and wonder.
     Humans talk about where we go or what happens after we die.  Being pregnant made me wonder why it is not common to talk about where we come from.  I believe we come from the same place that we go to.  There are many words to describe it, all of them and none of them work.  Currently I use words like Universal Love,  the infinite, or just simply, sputnik.  Have you seen that Adam Sandler movie where he marries a friend so the fellow firefighter can gain insurance benefits?  The human that performs their wedding keeps talking about a circle, its like a circle.  The scene in that movie sums it all for me.  Its that simple.  Life is a circle.
     I keep wanting to put in a disclaimer and maybe here is a good place to do it.  In this physical life of mine, I have never had the experience of anyone close to me dying.  I am 44 and part of the issue is that I haven't been close to many people.   Katherine was my closest friend and she was someone I only saw once a month at best and had only known for 4 years.  And by the time she died I was already well into this understanding so she lives on so clearly in my everyday life.  When someone leaves that is someone I touch every day, I'm not sure how all these ideas will hold up.  That's partly why I want to get my beliefs sorted out as soon as possible.  This is a priority and writing about it really helps.
So
     I desire for my kid to grow up as free as possible, to live as a free human.  I believe he arrived totally free and mostly my responsibility lies in encouraging and supporting that freedom.  I try to speak very clearly and intentionally about issues that tend to box us humans in.  Like death.  I use the word die but I also use the words transition, change, return home.  But words are generally just Charlie Brown's teacher talking to a child and experience will really make the impression.  That is why I stand in awe of the infinite creativity and loving generosity of the Universe as I have watched my desire for a free child be supported by mama Jean.
     We met Annette about 2 1/2 years ago and became fast friends, and neighbors as she only lives 4 miles from here.  She lives with her mom, Jean, who is in her high 90's.  Over time we have watched Jean's physical body slow down and grow tired as they do.  Mateo and I have had the opportunity to talk many times about her transition, the process that she is going through.  We talked about how she is almost done with her physical body and her spirit will return to where he himself came from.  There has never been any sadness in these talks, only joy and awe at the beautiful human experience. We were blessed with the chance to visit only 12 hours before she left and mateo climbed right up in bed with her and stroked her skin, something he had never done in the past.  The next day we visited the family and he asked where they buried mama Jean.  Our friend and Jean's grand daughter Ashley, gave a lovely explanation of cremation and described how they would sprinkle her ashes and set her free.
     A few days ago we attended the Celebration of Life and mateo comforted Ashley by rubbing his cheek against hers and telling her that its alright, Grandma will come back in a different body.   (This is not something I personally have talked to him about but I like his idea that the spirit lives on and will continue to interact with our physical world.)  Ashley was comforted by his sincerity and that he sweetly allowed her to cry without becoming upset himself.  Oh the appreciation I feel for the whole experience is beyond my tiny human mind.  He is not even four yet and has had a lovely, intimate relationship with death and dying.  I am grateful to have known mama Jean for many reasons and I will always hold her dear as the generous being who left her body and left my child a chance to live free.
   embrace eternal