March 20, 2022
According to the calendar, Spring has arrived. According to the cold air forcing its way down the mountain hollow, the trees bending to that force, the roar as it surrounds our home, winter is still with us. The blades of the ornamental windmill seem desperate to keep up and I wonder if it will eventually come to pieces under the strain. This battle of wills between winter and spring will continue to be waged for a while yet. One day spring will score a point with perhaps a bud on the heartiest of trees, and the next day winter will cruelly step up and try to cancel out any advances. We know that spring will eventually be victorious and the cold, winter months of 2022 will become a distant memory; but right now, at the end of March, it seems like winter is going to last forever.
Because this old house isn’t airtight, to keep the drafts at bay we draw
the curtains tight on the coldest of days, especially where windows run the
entire length of the enclosed (but not properly insulated) sun porch. No matter how hot we burn the stove, we can’t
get the temp much more than 65 degrees in this part of the house, which opens
into our sitting area. It doesn’t bother
me much because I am almost always moving, working, and often in the kitchen
with the stovetop or oven in full use. In
the evenings during winter, I spend very little time in our front room, choosing
rather to set up camp with my books or computer in my bedroom. The stove, positioned in the basement at a point directly beneath this room, begins by heating the bedroom floor and the wooden boards beneath my feet are as warm as sand on a summer beach; then as the heat continues rising, the air in our
bedroom becomes a good ten degrees warmer than the sitting room. I also have a wood burning fireplace in the bedroom that I can use. Before we put the woodstove in the basement, we burned the fireplace all the time (but the warm air was trapped in the small room and didn't help much to heat the rest of the house, thus we installed the wood burning stove in the basement of our home). That first winter we were in this house, we spent a lot of time in the bedroom where it was more comfortable. I even cooked meals over the logs using my cast iron cookware. Compared to that first winter in Laurel Fork, the house is much more tolerable now but there is a nostalgia about that first winter and the roaring fires in the fireplace.
I also took down the
darker curtains from the kitchen windows and put up old favorites. The Waverly Norfolk Rose valences are over 20
years old now and somewhat faded with use.
I have used them in three homes and in various rooms…. bedrooms, living
rooms, dining rooms and kitchens. I’ve
tried to find something else I like as well but I always return to my old,
familiar valences with the faded roses. This
is the first time I have used these valences in my kitchen here in Laurel Fork
and I needed a complimentary fabric for the skirt under my kitchen sink. I looked through my fabric pile and didn’t
find what I needed, so I used some old curtains that I had on hand, cutting
them to size. Working quickly, I changed
my surroundings, needing to beat back what seemed like more than winter blues
this year. I was filled with purpose,
cleaning, moving furniture, pulling down old curtains and putting up new….
trying to sweep away the last traces of winter and usher in spring, aided by the newly acquired daylight savings time that poured through my windows on
Sunday evening.
So much of the last six weeks has been spent just “getting
by”. I haven’t felt well, and I had to
sort through all the ugliness that goes along with my taking prednisone. Prednisone and I are not friends. In fact, my reaction to it was so bad that I
made Mike promise if I am ever unable to make decisions for myself, he will not
allow any medical professional to prescribe me prednisone in the future No matter what life has thrown at me, I have
always found a way to grasp the positive and work my way through the difficulties,
but the last few weeks have left me with very little reserves, much anxiety and
extreme fatigue in dealing with it all. This wasn’t something over which I had
any control and that was foreign to me as I have always been able to manage my
emotions. I believe my desperation to “let in the light”
and “move on to spring” a week or two ahead of any permanent change in the weather
was in part fueled by my attempts to be finished with the challenges of the
last six weeks.
This past week I have been more content. Happy with my
clean house. Happy with my lighter,
brighter valences in the front of the house and my old, familiar, faded
valences in the kitchen. I’ve enjoyed the warmer days that have crept in from time to time, and
the long walks with Buddy. Even the
days, like today, when Winter blows angry all around us beating back Spring for
yet another day, I am not discouraged because I know it won’t be long now. The Forsythia bushes are ready to bloom, but still holding back for just the right moment. The Hosta plants have peeked through the brown leaves that
still blanket them but are laying low and protected. With
any luck, maybe, just maybe they will not get frosted and browned like last
year. “Don’t awake too early”, I warn
them. “Lie low and emerge gently so as
not to be scarred by the cold that continues to creep back into this mountain
hollow.”
With this burst of cleaning, I have slacked with my reading and writing. It’s good to take a little break from that and focus on the mindless, physical activities. However, I don’t want to break too long. In fact, I know that I want to lesson my work load by making permanent changes so that I can continue to do more reading and writing in the days ahead. I’ve waited my entire life to be here at this point, where I can focus more often on writing. And I must face the fact that the writing doesn’t’ come as easy for me as it once did. I must be intentional in my efforts. Someone once told me that when it came time to quit farming, I would know. Well, I am not ready to quit farming and I don’t know that I will ever be ready to let it go completely. I do think I understand a little more of what that individual was saying to me. It came to me without reservation that it was time to find homes for more of my cows and lighten my load once again. I decided on arrangements for two of them. One of them, more suited as a nurse cow than a family cow, went to a wonderful farm where she is happily raising multiple babies. The second cow will be headed back to her original home very soon. The cow was sired by a bull from our bloodlines, and I have a heifer calf from her. Her original owner has always said that if I were to sell her, she wanted first chance to buy her back. The arrangements have been made and I am happy to know that the cow will return to a place where she will be loved. She has become one of my favorites.
These arrangements will leave me with only one “heavy” producer. (Heavy producer is sort of a misnomer because over the years I have intentionally bred for cows that produce 2-3 gallons of milk a day. Any cow that produced more than that, I did not retain as I strived to breed smaller, homestead cows that do not overwhelm their owners with too much milk for an average sized family.) Ginger, at 2.5 gallons of milk a day (mid to late lactation with once-a-day milking) produces all the milk that we need. In addition, I have Fancy and Dottie who give a gallon a day on once-a-day milking. Their smaller production makes them very manageable and I can simply keep calves on them or dry them off when I don’t want to milk them. In this manner, I will have three dairy cows to calve next fall. I also will have Dolly and Misty to calve next year. I don’t expect a huge amount of milk from either of them, although Misty may be a slightly higher producer. Even though selling two cows sounds like such a small decision, the impact it will have on my daily schedule will be huge. Not selling dairy products and using all the milk for our family alone means that by reducing the daily totals, I will spend far less time in the kitchen and hopefully have more time for writing.
Currently, I am milking three cows, getting close to six gallons of milk a day and still busily storing away butter and
cheese for the lean periods when our cows are not in production. This past week, I have been mostly taking the
cream from the milk and stocking up on butter.
Soon, I hope to can some more milk, making it shelf stable and available
when we do not have fresh milk. Mike has
promised not to plant as much garden this year and I am hoping he can stick to
that plan and that I will not have more to put up than we can conceivably eat
in a year’s time. We still have a well-stocked
cellar from previous years, for which I am thankful, but at some point, we need
to scale back. When it comes to gardening, that is hard for Mike to do. The farming and homesteading life is taxing
and always busy and I am beginning to guard carefully anytime that I can manage for myself, knowing that the days of our lives just get
shorter and shorter. I wonder if
everyone feels an urgency to do what they have left undone when they reach
middle age?
March 21, 2022
Twenty-nine degrees at daylight but sunshine and sixty-eight
by afternoon, I’ll take it! The day was
filled with those minor frustrations that remind us that very little comes easy
in life but my attitude was better today.
Maybe all the funk is starting to clear from my brain, the prednisone is
finally wearing off, or maybe it’s the sunshine making things look
brighter.
I had Mike help me move a drop leaf table to the sunroom. I positioned a couple of plants and Josh’s picture
on one end, with my computer in the middle.
I set my chair so that I can see the meadow across the road in front of
me. The windows directly to my left overlook the point
where two streams join and swell. Sitting
in this spot is peaceful and I remember when we first came to Laurel Fork, five
years ago now, how I sat in this very spot for inspiration and began once again to write.
March 22, 2022
Five years ago today, I finished the evening milking and
headed to the hospital to coach my daughter as she gave birth to her second
child. Alissa was amazing with the
births of both of her girls, refusing any kind of pain medication and the epidural. I don’t think there is anything more
beautiful than witnessing the birth of your grandchildren. No matter how tired I might have been that
night or any of the subsequent events that followed, those moments remain crisp
and clear in my mind as I imagine they always will. Maybe the loss of Josh, my son, made the
births of the grandbabies even more precious to me. Nothing could ever replace my son but having grandchildren
to love helped to make life richer and fuller.
Rory, as we call her, is a delightful child with deep dimples and a
ready smile. She brings such a sense of
joy and a zest for life wherever she goes.
She’s the kind of child that makes it difficult for one to one’s eyes
off her. She simply draws people into
her world. There’s no greater joy than
being a grandparent, of this, I am sure.
March 23, 2022
Five years ago today we signed on our home in Laurel
Fork. The previous night was not one of
much rest, having spent part of the night at the hospital witnessing Rory’s birth
and then returning home to care for Analia our three-year-old granddaughter. Daylight meant it was time to milk again and
then we swung by the hospital to see the new baby. Afterwards, we were on the road for the three-hour
trip to Carroll County with three-year-old in tow so that we could close on our
new home and property there. I will
always remember Analia sitting sweetly on my lap until the meeting at the
attorney’s office, where we were closing, became unbearably long when the
sellers couldn’t produce all the documentation they had promised. She slipped from my lap and played good
naturedly for a while, before crawling under the table and appearing in the lap
of the lady who was selling the property.
Analia had been my side kick for so long, that it just seemed natural
for her to be at this event. Alissa, her
momma, had been going to college when she became pregnant with Analia, so she
had spent as much time at our house as she did at home.
At the time, we did not intend to move to Laurel Fork until
much later but after a year of making back and forth trips between Augusta and
Carroll counties, my heart knew when it was home. I’ve loved this house, this land, the friends
I have met here, and the community at large.
How does one explain how or why they belong to a particular place and
not to another? I haven’t been able to
make sense of it and put it into words but my very being has known when and
where I belonged and where I did not. I
belonged in Alaska and would have never left that place had I not been forced
to do so by circumstances I felt were out of my control. Looking back, I should have put that problem out of my life at that time and remained where I felt at home. Someday, I might write the
fulness of that story but for now, it must reside with me. When I left Alaska, it broke my heart, but as
is sometimes the case, after years of pain and sadness and a sense of not
really belonging anywhere, I found myself in Virginia and I met Mike. Good sometimes comes out of the bad and life sometimes brings restitution for our broken hearts.
March 28, 2022
It has been difficult to find time to write, or really to do anything other than to deal with each impending crisis that has arisen this past week. I had planned a week of writing a lot knowing that my grandkids were coming for a five day visit and the coming week would be filled with time spent with them. Instead, I just put out fires all week and once again found myself fighting the demons of depression. It feels as if the universe has conspired against me and I have to constantly remind myself that is not the case. My reserves are low after being ill and being slow to bounce back. Anxiety levels are the worst they have ever been for me. In this state of mind it is easy for old thought patterns to surface. I don't know if those who took part in my religious training as a child intended for some of us who grew up in that atmosphere to become victims of a fear of never being good enough and always being punished for our faults. Perhaps some were intentional predators who wanted to use religion for control and manipulation and the feelings of power that it gave them. I think most simply believed what they had been taught and in their desperate attempts to save the world from itself and keep all of us from going to hell, unwittingly taught us to live in desperate submission to a god who is always ready to beat us down in order to mold us into his will. I remember as a teenager wanting desperately to have that relationship with God that I heard talked about so much but also being told that everything that happens in our life is sent by him either to reward us, punish us, or "mold us into what he wanted us to be". I also remember vacillating between a sort of despair that I couldn't be perfect enough and rebelling against religion and pretending that I didn't care. At some point, as an adult, living in Alaska and finally under my grandparent's influence instead of some of the other churches I had attended as a child and teen, I began to see that maybe God wasn't as harsh as I had been taught to believe. I witnessed a softer and more loving attitude from my grandparents not only to me but also toward everyone they met. Their non judgmental spirit and genuine love for others helped me to believe that maybe God wasn't as harsh as I had been taught. A little bit of freedom from guilt and oppression felt like a lot at first, but I was still trapped in the old thought patterns and frequently found myself returning to that familiar despairing feeling of never being good enough. Frankly, so much of those patterns leave individuals wide open to abuse, but that will have to be an essay for another time.
After Josh died, I was struggling just to keep myself from total despair. There's no way that a parent can experience the death of a child under the circumstances that surrounded Josh's death and not come close to losing their mind. But some things happened during this time of deep grief. First, I began to read the New Testament with new eyes, reading the words of Jesus and studying how he responded to circumstances he encountered. Grief caused me to look at everything with fresh eyes. I didn't recognize the Christianity that I had grown up with as I began to digest religion by always returning to what we know of how Jesus responded and reacted and interpreting everything through this lens instead of interpreting Jesus through the rest of the Bible. I am not a theologian and I am sure that those who are will point out the many errors of my ways but until you have reached the desperate point of trying to interpret the intentions of a God who would allow your child to die alone with a bullet shot through his head, you cannot know the complete despair of trying to make sense of the maddening thought that God "allowed that to happen" and that somehow "he will use it to mold and make you into his purpose". And, well meaning responses from others who insist you should just "get over it" or "move on" or "trust that God has your best interest at heart" do nothing to soften the pain. Instead, in the New Testament, I found Jesus who came along side his friends and wept with them. I found Jesus who suffered by the choices he made and I am pretty sure he wasn't being molded into God's image through these "tests". I found Jesus who sat with his friends who were less than perfect and more often than not, he taught by example rather than resorting to beating folks over the head with Scripture. (He seemed to reserve that mostly for the Pharisees and Hypocrites). I also recognized that Jesus didn't get involved in the politics of his day, didn't seek to reform the Roman empire, and didn't set himself up as king, but engaged in activities like "suffering the little children to come to him" and breaking bread and passing out fish to those who were hungry along with touching the lepers and reaching out to those who were marginalized and abused by the system.
A book called THE SHACK by William Paul Young also influenced my life immediately following Josh's death. The author used a fictitious story to expand my thoughts on the nature of God. How beautiful to think of God with feminine attributes and a God who does not looks like a white American. I realized how God had been presented to me in a nice, neat package, molded so perfectly by "the church". Letting God out of that box revolutionized my thinking. My thoughts here could be another long essay for which I don't have time right now. Suffice to say I often try to shove God back into that box of evangelical, conservative Christianity because old habits are hard to break.
The third thing that influenced my thoughts on God occurred late one night after a difficult struggle with a cow who was giving birth. The calf did not present correctly and in the end, we lost the calf. That feeling that God was once again standing over me and orchestrating these heartbreaking events, allowing them to come into my life, and beating me into some sort of submission through relentless abuse so that I might somehow become "good enough" overwhelmed me. I remember distinctly falling to my knees, my heart literally breaking with the pain of it all, raising my face toward the night sky and screaming in pain, anger, desperation at a god who was so cruel. I screamed until I could scream no more and then I sobbed until I had no more tears. Finally, I got myself up and went inside the house and complete exhaustion overtook me. From that point on, I knew that my faith would not survive if I continued to believe in a god that would abuse in order to form us into something worthy of a relationship with him. I began then to explore faith in a God of love and grace.
Still, when times are hard, that old feeling of being punished returns. This past week has felt that way. My already tired and sad brain has wanted to revert to the old thought patterns that if I were only better, then maybe I would not be punished by events that break my heart. But, I have to return to my faith that helps me believe that the things I cannot explain are not punishments or some abusive form of manipulation.
Our own personal struggles can blind us to the pain of others, or they can work to open our eyes to the many needs of those around us by making us empathetic. When I become obsessed with my own struggles, I try to look at the difficulties others are facing. I don't have to look far. I pray for those in war torn countries knowing that they would gladly trade what is happening to them for the inconveniences and disappointments I am facing. As I complain of exhaustion from daily work associated with the influx of milk and a homesteading life, I realize those who are truly hungry would gladly trade places with me. As I struggle through any physical impairments, aches and pains I know that there are those unable to care for themselves any longer. As I complain about daily life, I realize there are many whose lives are ending far too soon who would love to have just one more day. Instead, even in my weariness and confusion, I must hold on to the belief that love embraces us and walks beside us through the storms and is not the orchestrator of those storms.
April 3, 2022
It's been a week full of various events that deserve to be written down and yet will not make it onto this page in their entirety. Two of our granddaughters spent six days with us and those days were filled from morning to night with the energy of one who just turned five and the other who will be nine in July. There were the typical sibling rivalries, misunderstandings, fights and tears. There were the occasional melt downs. There were some moments of missing momma. Mostly, however, the week was filled with activities, crafts, books, food, outdoors, play, stories, and time spent with the animals. I see them growing up so fast and I want to hold them back, but I know I cannot and in reality, would not even if I could. When they left, I found myself exhausted and battling a cold I had succumbed to the night before they left.
The girls witnessed March going out like a lion and were in awe of the winds beating our house at 50-60 miles per hour, rain coming down in such torrents that we got an additional inch in less than an hour. They stood at the window listening to the sounds of thunder and exclaimed over the rising water in the stream in front of our home. They watched the stream of mud make it's way down our driveway as the rains eroded yet another layer of the farm and deposited it into the creek where it will be transported downstream. It is an amazing thing to behold. I remember the first time I witnessed such and thought that I had never seen anything quite like it. Now, that I have been here five years, I don't view it with such wonder but rather with the air of one who has been here before and knows that she will return at a later date as well. The week before, almost to the day, a tornado hit our little community. We had no damage but spent most of the night monitoring the weather, listening to our phones alternately screech out tornado warnings and then texts from Carroll County telling us to seek cover. Five miles by road and less than two miles "by the way the crow flies" the tornado destroyed several homes and caused damage to others.
Somewhere in the midst of all this unpredictable weather, the forsythia finally bloomed.
April 4, 2022
A milestone event occurred for us this past week. For Mike, it was bittersweet We closed on our Augusta County Property. The young couple who bought the home and property will transform it into an equine property as the woman already is an established and sought after trainer. I have always said it was the perfect property for horses and I do think this is a great fit both for the couple and for the property. I suppose this makes us officially "retired" although nothing is really going to change for us right now. Mike has committed to making hay on that property for the coming season so that the new owners can learn how to do it for themselves. He will also continue this season to help his nephew make hay and to make hay on the additional thirty acres belonging to a friend. Mike will get hay on shares for his labor and we will have hay for my dairy cows for the coming winter and possibly, if we stockpile, for two winters. By slightly reducing my herd but cutting the heavier producers, I am going to be easing my work load here in Laurel Fork by a margin and hopefully freeing up a bit more time. However, at this point our daily lives will remain the same. We will continue to live this homesteading life which focuses more on producing all of our needs and being self sufficient rather than farming for others. To live this way is a seasonal cycle that repeats itself endlessly until that day we decide we are no longer able to provide for ourselves in this manner. Sure, with time we will have to continue to downsize in order to slow down the pace in accordance with our physical needs and abilities. And, one must never rule out the possibility that our lives will take a different turn. If there is one thing of which I am sure, it is that we can never be sure that things are going to be as we expect them to be.
There are so many things in this life over which we have no control. The last few weeks, in a variety of areas, I have felt as if I have no control. No matter how careful, precise, detailed, proactive we may try to be and no matter how many years we have done things that have turned out to our advantage, it only takes a moment for everything to fall apart and become something over which we have no control of the outcome. I've beat my head against the wall many times fighting the inevitable, railing against the pain, wondering what I could have done differently to avoid outcomes that bring sadness and pain. Sometimes there are things we can glean from these experiences and dissecting them for this purpose should be encouraged. The lessons we learn are not necessarily things we have done wrong, but we can grow through the experience if we are open to it. So many times, things just happen in spite of all we have done to prevent such outcomes. The acceptance that we live in a messy world that is broken is a start and then learning to let go of the idea that we ought to try to control everything is key. We do our best and this doesn't mean that we always make the right choices or handle things in the best manner. Then, we have to let go and accept that life is a roller coaster of joy and pain. I write these things again and again, repeating myself in my journal year after year, as a reminder. It's so easy to forget.
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”― When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
April 5, 2022
Yellow daffodils look like young ladies dressed for Easter, lavender violets hug the cold earth, grape hyacinths haphazardly appear in a display of bright blue, rust colored maple buds peak out of mature branches, light green leaves hold tightly to the wind-tossed, spindly arms of the willows, the domestic forsythia and the wild spice bush dressed in a similar yellow looking like close relatives, dandelions lift sunny faces to the temperamental spring sky, and the the thorny quince bush blushes a deep salmon pink: spring fights back against the cold of winter that creeps in each night. The blooms and blossoms declare HOPE and RESURRECTION --- the return of LIFE to a dead landscape.
There can be nothing more beautiful than the breaking forth of spring in the Appalachian mountains.