Sylvia's Farm (12 page)

I must say, while the eggs are as delicious as they were when the chickens were free-range, the chickens themselves look a lot better. Their view of the farm is different each day. Their diet varies according to every new positioning of the coop. The ground from which they are moved looks awful, but I've been assured that their droppings will do wonders to the acidy strawberry-covered patches that they have covered. Somehow, I believe it will work. Next shall come the goslings. As fond as I am of pâté, I love a Christmas goose even more. But this enterprise has a bit more going for it than that. Symbols have a way of enduring in one's life, sometimes hovering in the back of one's consciousness for a long time before seeing daylight and opportunity to become a reality rather than an idea. The second cookbook I owned as a young bride, recently married to an Air Force man and drafted into the role of cooking for him and his Air Force buddies, was Elizabeth David's
French Country Cooking
. It was an ideal book for a novice cook with three hungry young men at the table most evenings, because French food or, rather, French country food is highly flavored and very, very cheap to prepare. I won't mention how long it takes to create those recipes, however.

One of the dishes that became a standard in my repertoire was a Cassoulet de Castelnaudary. In it was something called confit, goose preserved in its own fat. Meats have been preserved that way for centuries. I couldn't find confit in any store, however, locating it attained monumental symbolic status in my mind. If I had a crockery jar of confit, I would be a real cook!

Hence, the imminent arrival of a respectable number of goslings. Oh, not all are for this winter's larder. Some shall go to New York to Dean and Deluca, a store that is interested in having both livers and confit. Some shall become gifts for the family. And one shall fill a stone crock in my larder next to the metal bread box and the bottles of elderflower vinegar.

One of the nicest things about having the chickens outside is that they bring me out into a field I don't frequent much. I pretend that I go to check on water or mash or grain. And they do have to be moved. But it really is to look at them. I get to see the brook and the apple trees in bloom and look at the new fence, still intent on being built, and in other ways be grateful for the day.

The goslings shall add still another dimension to the dream that is Greenleaf. Should the weather ever improve with any consistency, I shall have them out on the pasture as well, in a large movable coop. My daughter will research what to feed them to fatten their livers. And we shall have our own pâté as well as some to sell.

In today's mail shall go the first installment of cash for my dear brother to use when buying me some books for the next winter. The fabric for covers for the pillows in the library is being washed in the basement as I write. But there must be still another dimension to this day of grace. Winter skies will come soon enough. Each task done needs bring its own joy. And the day requires being lived well without fear of tomorrow. It is in gathering the beauty of each individual moment that one, in truth, gains strength for what the future holds. June. Days of grace.

T
HE SUNSET
last evening held every variation of color and form that I have ever seen in a July sky. Feathers and stripes, combs and tails leading to nowhere conspired with the light to become all of the July evenings of my life, New England, New York City, and Central New York all in one dramatic display. Colors ranged with names such as hyacinth and cornflower and steel gray and purple, each touching the cloud formation in a way unique and glorious.

The sheep were well onto my neighbor Tom Connelly's second hill when I came down the back porch stairs into the evening. I sent Steele and Samantha out after them, all the while calling out to them. “Cahm ahn, cahm ahn.” On command, the sheep turned on a dime and went rushing back home through the pink gate. Steele and Samantha didn't pick up fast enough and so were not behind them to drive them in. But I was glad of it. I wanted to watch them, graceful, single file. The flock slowed down before the bridge and proceeded to cross it with decorum born of necessity and good sense.

I was standing by the great main gate to my June grass meadow, hoping to guide them to the pasture of my choice. The geese, all twenty-seven of them, followed.

June grass is a most beautiful color of rosy quince at this time of year. The field is covered with it, wild strawberries and clover beneath its canopy. The sheep's fleeces assumed a rose cast. They followed me as I led them to the center of the pasture and sat on a
blue-gray lichen-covered rock. Some came close, surrounding me, others wandered off. I sat for a while watching the sky, the sheep, and the ripples made in the rose-colored June grass.

A day or two before, the haymow of my barn collapsed. It was filled with a winter's worth of food for the sheep. A beam broke and 1,850 bales of hay crashed down upon the sheep. All ninety-one of them, blocking their exits along with the goats and two of the cows, were caught underneath, trapped by broken beams and floorboards, bales of hay and shards of wood.

A series of incidents, small and large, had compromised the barn and all who lived within it. A gate placed in order to keep them from danger had trapped them. A gate placed to keep them out had let them in. With the exception of Lady Francesca Cavendish, all of my livestock was trapped inside. It was she alone who remained outside of the barn.

I came home on Friday from a trip to the village only to find hundreds of bales of hay spilling out onto the barnyard. The front wall of the barn was missing two thirds of its face.

I ran around to the north side door and went in. There were five sheep trapped in a corner. And the floor of the mow was down. All I could see was hay, beams, and broken wood. And those five sheep. Staring. The barn swallows were silent. There was not a sound. All was absolutely still. I was certain all the rest of them were dead. Two or three, in my now hazy memory of what I saw, seemed to be in the aisle, but I am no longer certain. There was no possible hope that I could free the five trapped by beams and a collapsed wall by myself.

I ran to the house and called everyone I could think of up and down the creek. I never told anyone who I was. I simply shouted, “Please come if you can. My mow collapsed with 1,850 bales of hay in it. My flock is trapped inside,” and hung up the phone. I called the Sheriff's Office, which called the Fire Department, and the great
whistle went off in Delhi. What happened next is housed in my mind like images on a Polaroid, fading in and fading out, and in the sounds of men's voices. A laughing one saying where is everybody. A worried one saying this is dangerous. Colors and blurred edges. Sounds. Voices. And the sight of the first sheep coming out. I called them by their own names and by sweet names. And they kept coming out, but not enough of them. I ran to the south side. The firemen had pulled out bales from a corner that had few intact boards remaining. They made a tunnel from which more came on through. I ran back to the north side. More sheep kept coming out. Some stayed close to me, looking deep into my face. Others went to the corn that was on the ground. I heard someone say they're all out. My knees went out from under me. I held on to the door and started to slide down it. I don't want to faint when the Fire Department is here, I thought, and let myself down slowly, grateful no one was around at that moment to see me. I had been so terribly frightened.

People left more quietly than they came. I barely had time to reach out and thank them. Before I had turned around, several others had slipped away. And then more suddenly than it all had happened, I found myself alone with two good friends, my flock and herd and dogs. As if anyone could be alone with two good friends, a flock, a herd, and dogs.

I have had some very hard times in my life. And during each one people have said to me, “It could have been worse.” Those words never brought me comfort. Until now. Standing, looking at a simple clearcut disaster, I knew from the deepest part of my soul that it could have been worse. That it wasn't was an equally simple and clearcut miracle. Had I lost my life I wouldn't be knowing it right now. Had I lost but a single animal I would be feeling it forever. No one died. My beloved barn, home of the best part of my life in the winters, has been ravaged. But the remaining three sides stand a
proud testimony to the men who built her. The corresponding wall can be a pattern with which to reconstruct the one now lying on the ground. I've listened carefully to suggestions and am accepting some innovations and sound advice. Good friends have come through with help and offers of help. Some sheep have become a little bit clingy, and I am aware of the same need in me. Or perhaps they are simply reassuring me and I don't understand.

The barn shall be rebuilt. We shall be housed for the winter. I still can't begin to know how it shall happen, but it shall. Over and over again I go inside and look at the ceiling that collapsed on my flock. I go closer to the damaged ceiling each time. Today I even reached out my hand and touched a broken stanchion. There will be a moment when I will help to move it all away. Oh, it could have been worse. Much worse. And for that, I am deeply grateful.

T
HIS IS
the first morning I can remember in a very long time that I've woken up feeling in my heart that life is possible. I don't know if it is because Fiona MacDonald has turned up or because of the kindness of friends about the barn or because the weight sitting on my chest for so long has felt its purpose and has finally been outlived. The joy I've always known that keeps one here and lifts each burden has returned. The day is spelled out with its own version of glory and stands before me, crystal clear. For the past few months a cloud had obscured my vision and erased intent from my vocabulary. Where I once used always to do two things at once, I had begun to do only one. Or more often half of one. Yesterday, to compensate for the past two months, I did three things. At once. It can be possible, although even I found it hard to eat lunch (bread and butter) while carrying grain to the chickens and water to the cow. But three things at once it had to be if I am to make up for the stretch of spring and early summer when hardly anything was accomplished at all. Something for the mind. Something for the body. Something for the soul.

Fiona MacDonald turned up, you ask? Wherever was she? Fiona MacDonald has been a joy to me ever since she was born. The first time she broke my heart was when she was but a few days old and disappeared for an entire day. I gave her up as lost to the coyotes, blaming myself for letting her and her mother out too soon. Her mother stared intently at me in the fields. She knew I loved to hold
Fiona and that whenever Fiona was gone for a few minutes it would be because she was in my arms. That night, I found that beautiful creature running in back of my house in front of the carriage house. Alive and well. How she got there or why was beyond my imagination. By one week old she was able to race like the wind and outrun everything on the farm.

A day or two after the barn wall fell and my winter's hay came tumbling down, a new person turned up in the driveway wanting to buy a pet lamb. I tried to sell him one of my tamest young ewe lambs, but his eye caught sight of Fiona. Mark was so persuasive as we stood near the collapsed barn that I convinced myself I could part with her. The argument went that the money was needed for the good of the whole flock and I must be practical. Funny how that argument never works out in the end. Especially the one about practical. So off went Fiona in the big blue truck and I tried not to think about it. I did call, however, the next day to see how she was doing. Fine and taking her bottle, was the reply. The next evening there was a blinking light on the answering machine. I picked up and heard a frantic voice saying, “I've lost the lamb. She's gone!” Fiona had been gentle and docile her first day in her new home. However, when her new owner opened his barn door the next morning she ran like the wind, racing up his driveway, down the road, and back into a neighbor's yard. There she came face to face with a dog, and veering off, raced into a thicket. The woods there had little brush, but the edges of the fields were overgrown. Mark didn't stand a chance. I went with him to look for her but there wasn't a sign. We brought another lamb over, both to lessen Mark's heartbreak over this lamb alone in the woods, there were no farms within easy reach in which she could find refuge, and perhaps to draw her back. The next day I brought her mother to Mark's. Matilda had lamented so loudly on my farm for her lost lamb that I was certain she would call
it in. Matilda, however, didn't believe her beloved Fiona could possibly be in this stranger's place and didn't make a peep.

The thing that worried me the most was the behavior of Mark's dog. In the evening, around dusk, its fur would stand on end and it would become alert and menacing, facing a stand of tall trees on one side of the house. I didn't want to tell him, but I thought he had a bobcat in his woods. A few days later, he told me his neighbors had seen a bobcat racing across a field. When he went up to look, it had just killed a fawn.

Every night for the first few days I would wake up thinking about Fiona alone in the woods, her white coat a perfect target for a great horned owl, a bobcat, or a pack of coyotes. As each day passed, hope slipped more agonizingly away, and the wish for her return was replaced by one that her death be a quick one.

In a way, I felt punished for letting her go. I hadn't lost any livestock when the barn wall went down, but because of it I lost Fiona.

In all of this I had ignored who she is. Fiona MacDonald, chaser of pigs. Fiona MacDonald, strategist par excellance. Fiona who has raced her brothers and sisters round and round the big pine trees only to stop short, turn around, and race back into their unsuspecting faces, scattering them everywhere. Fiona MacDonald.