Sylvia's Farm (25 page)

There is a downside to all of this mental extravagance: the blurred edges of housekeeping in both of the houses here, mine and that of the sheep. The abrupt turn of the last page of a book brings my eye to the upswept hearth, or the crumbs on a tablecloth. Do I spend the hot water on the washing of saucers or washing of tablecloths? Is there any bread left from Saturday's baking or, better yet, some
coconut Danish? Do I bring in the remaining firewood left outside or sweep the barn? Which gives me away. I've been known to finish a book in the early hours of morning rather than begin my chores immediately. If there is disorder when I return from these journeys to France or England, or total immersion in a book about the history of mathematics, the benefits of travel are lost, as I become depressed and as overwhelmed proportionately as I was distanced from reality.

Nonetheless, in the day, when all of the externals of life were dissected into a costs-and-anticipated-time-involved-to-achieve list, there were two things which appeared with punctuality on the list of ways best to survive and even enjoy February. Good chocolate and good books. In those days I didn't mention a washing machine or a variety of brooms all appropriate to the occasion of use: barn brooms, house brooms, cellar brooms. Christmas this year afforded me good chocolate in an astonishment of variety. Justina, having become a pastry chef, now knows how to make chocolates. And what incredible chocolates they are. The rest of the family bought me a most generous supply of bittersweet Lindt bars. And I've rediscovered the Rose and Laurel Bookstore, in Oneonta, where I've been buying some books for a dollar or two on my weekly grain run. Which, I must admit, is an excuse for having lunch at Sweet Indulgence, always a restauratif for the body and soul, in addition to being the finest food in Oneonta. That, too, takes me away, to an Italian kitchen with the textures and flavors of a home-cooked delight.

What I need most today is the self-discipline to wax the kitchen floor and iron the tablecloths so I won't become guilt ridden upon emerging from a book for an hour or two of running away from home. The haymow floors are swept and in order, no guilt to be found there. Discipline may be afforded by the momentary absence in the house of a book unread or a story to be written. February days, February nights.

M
ISS CLARA
Peggittee, doe goat on this sheep farm, has begun to bag. So why is it such a surprise? February 15th has floated around in my mind as her due date for quite some time. But also, in quite the incorrect time slot, has been the date August 15th, to designate when she was covered. The day I thought the pygmy buck arrived. She went into heat immediately upon seeing him. He covered her a few minutes later. She is not “showing” any signs of having a kid in the near offing. And that is in itself scary. I'm not sure if it is simply because she is carrying a pygmy type goat like the buck rather than a too small LaMancha like herself.

One of the things that amazes me the most about farming is how immediate solutions to long-pressing problems present themselves when it is absolutely necessary. Eleventh-hour solutions. I've not known where to put the goat should she freshen. The obvious stall in the carriage house needs be mucked out and my extra time recently has been spent making the barn ready for new hay, not in the carriage house readying for a kid. I've bought some very nice round bales that have been wrapped in an onion bag kind of plastic mesh, resulting in nearly perfect hay. Less than an inch of the outer layer of the wheel is spoiled. The rest is sweet and very beautiful first cutting. I'd like to be able to roll the bales out on the barn floor and rake the hay onto a tarp to carry out to the sheep. The carriage house was most thoroughly trashed by the flock this winter, and while cleaning it again shall be interesting, some of the other details in the lambing
room and barn have proved to be more interesting. Therefore, I've been in attendance, with greater regularity, in the barn.

And so this afternoon when I noticed Miss Peggittee's bag once again, I decided to check it. It was full. But she appears not to be. I went into the newly ordered upper level of the barn and made a wall of bales of second cutting, put a piece of plywood against another wall in between it and a long ladder lying on its edge to hold the plywood against the battenless bridgeway wall, pulled out a long portable fence and used that as the hypotenuse of the right triangle, tying it on one end to the ladder. I put more bales of hay to brace it and keep the drafts away. Suddenly, there was, in deep clean litter, a small but adequate draftfree pen for the goat. She is bedded down in it now. It's not the roomiest stall in the barn, but it is quite cozy and nice, and she seems more content than I have seen her in a long time.

My lambing room is functioning at last, for bottle lambs and a mother whose smallest of twins can't manage to hang on long enough to get enough milk. It is a pleasure to go down there. Lambs are fickle creaturers, racing madly from one delight to the next. New hay. Hooray. Cracked corn. Hooray. Lamb feed. Hooray. A bucket of warm water. Hooray. This morning's hay fluffed up again. Hooray. The grain shook up a little. Hooray. They dashed everywhere, especially to wherever they see someone else, stopping short to stare up at me for bottles. Even the ones who were weaned a few weeks ago. Oh, knock that guy down, grab that bottle. Hooray. I fluff hay, redistribute grain, bottle, give warm water, or something, it would seem, all day long. And each time I'm down there they act as if whatever is being done for them is the most exciting thing in the world. And it is. Even when I open or close the shutters or put a chicken into the nesting box, excitement runs high.

Little Molly Malone is down there, getting bigger and brighter every day. She is a pretty little fluffy thing, with black eyes and the
soft cocoa spot that characterizes the lambs I'm keeping for myself this year. The newly named Thumbilina also shall stay, daughter of Brunhilda, sheep terrible. Thumbilina has learned the merits of sitting quietly in my lap and allowing herself to fall asleep. Her dam has calmed down considerably and even came near me without trying to ram me into the ground.

I have not been concentrating on which I shall be keeping this year, except for those lambs who have been born with the thick curly fleece and a cocoa-colored spot on the back of their neck. There are about sixteen of them now, maybe seventeen. Two, who came close to specification, are living at a friend's. And of the rest, six ewes are here. The first years of the cocoa-spotted lambs provided only ram lambs. This year were the first ewes and the greatest number of lambs with these characteristics. The lambs usually have one bent ear, the right, which sometimes but not always remains bent, a remarkably soft thick wavy fleece, a cocoa-colored spot on the back or back of the neck, black hooves, and a squarish head, and are very, very pretty. They are perfect I think for this farm. Lambs who are born walking and talking (their dams have been fed haylage) and have thick fleeces to brave the winter are already three steps ahead of the crowd.

The other thing that amazes me about farming is the never-ending wellspring of hope that comes from nowhere, or rather, could seem to come only from the hand of God, a hope that springs forth with a purity and joy and resourcefulness absolutely without warning at totally unexpected moments. This farm is in a dramatically drastic position. One of my jobs ended in November. My tenants moved out a few weeks ago, owing two months' rent. The bank is breathing down my neck for a mortgage payment. Late, per usual. It is remarkably warm outside so I didn't make a fire in the living room, where I sit writing. After all, it's been fifty-two degrees here before with the fire blazing. Why waste the wood?

And yet all I am thinking about is the goat freshening, a possible new cow arriving, the neatly packaged round bales, and choosing which lambs to keep and how to fence them. In my mind's eye I saw my prettiest pasture, by the road, with the dark green outdoor chicken coop and some black and white hens, a new portable coop for the goslings, Toulouse again, to be bought late spring, and a half a dozen or so pretty lambs racing around inside the dark green wooden fences with all of the world driving by to see. And my spirits lift on shining wings with the question to be asked of my helper when he arrives next about what kind of fencing to add to keep the appropriate stock in and appropriate stock out.

Snow stares at me from a distant hill. The rattle of the electric heater in the basement reminds me to run downstairs to turn it off. Every penny counts here at the moment. My coffee is cold. I haven't washed my face yet. The living room floor begs to be mopped and polished. In other words, things are a bit grungy here for the moment. But my stock has been fed and my heart is full of joy at the thought of putting up still another few hundred feet offence in which to keep the new young Greenleaf breed of sheep. To me, it is that astonishing wellspring of hope and joy that is the essence of farming. The thought of what will happen next when this farmer does this or that or the other thing. Despair has not entered. And the silent rhythm of the days rolls on, each day bringing its own beauty.

M
Y MOTHER
was a remarkable woman. All of us, I've come to understand, are the amazing products of varying degrees of appropriate parenting that we received. Some parents “doing their best” were not to be good enough. Some were too good. My mother's mothering was famous. It was famous for the overprotective aspect, not of her nature but of her experience. Her nature was determined, strong, forceful, and profoundly loving. However, tragedy bound itself to those qualities, therefore she overprotected me in ways most complicated.

While we never fully know our parents, time most gradually unfolds our understanding and our experience of them, myth blends with reality, and the reality of who we are enlightens us about them.

I read recently an article about some, and I'm glad it is only some, women writers who struggle with issues of creativity. These few seem to blame their mothers for their problems. Some resort to psychotherapy, others to support groups “to work out issues about wanting to be creative.” My first response to reading about such people is to want to shake them and shout into their ears, “Wake up!” My next is to feel horrified at being so judgmental. My third is to want to tell them to get a job, a real job, milking cows or in a factory somewhere, or force-feeding ducks, a job that will make you so tired you can't think.

I know that when I was in my thirties I spent a lot of time complaining about what my mother hadn't done for me. One
cousin, Norma, said of my mother, her aunt, “She did the best she could,” and I retorted, “It wasn't good enough.” I was wrong. It certainly was good enough. I now understand that the grand mix of “not good enough” and “good enough” is what has helped create the person I am and am always in the process of becoming. If some of those poor souls in the newspaper article had parents who interfered with their creativity, I should only feel sorry for them. My mother, who was herself without a tiny bit of creativity in her nature, had only admiration for what she saw as creativity in me. “She's creative,” she'd say, drawing out the word to the magnitude that three syllables can afford, emphasis on the “a” every time. On the other hand, she never thought to provide me with any of the materials that would have helped creativity bloom. So be it. I had to do it myself. I still do. And I'm glad of it. When I ran out of paper on which to draw, I drew pictures with crayons on the windows of my room, making “stained glass.” My mother, a very tidy housekeeper, didn't mind. “She's creative,” she said.

I used to complain when I was nine about being told to draw on the back of typing paper I used as art paper, if I ran out of it. Years later she apologized. She just didn't understand, she said. How could she have? She didn't have a doll to play with until she was five or six, and then made her own. She took it to the show her grandmother, who had been a wealthy woman once and knew of store-bought things, who said to her, “You call that a doll?” My mother threw it away and never had a doll again.

She told me that story when she was eighty years old. “And don't you go make me a doll,” she said. “It will only make me cry.” I didn't. I wanted to so badly, but I didn't want to make her cry. This winter, when some hurtful things happened to me, I decided that whenever I am deeply hurt by someone, I will make a doll to give to a child whom I don't know. I wasn't thinking of my mother at the
time, only of what would make my sadness go away. To give a child who didn't have one a beautiful handmade doll. Yet my mother named me after her grandmother. Almost all things in life are multifaceted. We carry with us threads and ribbons of so many different colors, weights, and textures. It is amazing we are ever one thing. And who I am is, in some parts, a great-grandmother I never saw and my mother in ways I may never understand.

I am a farmer. It is a matter of great pride to me to call myself that. I never call myself a writer. In part it is because in our society to be a writer is often considered being a special person. It is a highly overrated evaluation, in my opinion. I think being a farmer is being a special person. I, and other farmers, feed people. Without farmers we'd all starve. Being a writer feeds the heart and soul, of course, and it provides grain for my chickens, cow, and donkey every Wednesday when I cash my check from writing a story for the local newspaper.

I don't wish to say writing has no value. But I know its claim to the quality of being creative is grossly exaggerated. Creativity lies in all human endeavors. Washing my cow's udder and getting it right at last is the height of creativity to this farmer who also writes stories. And hitting the pail just right to make sweet, thick foam is fabulously creative to me. And making cheese, and planning new fence, and looking for a calf, and finding the right basket for collecting eggs, and making a nest for the geese, and braiding a halter for the cow all give me a deep sense of satisfaction.