Start Me Up
December 30th, 2011 § 2 Comments
It was just a tick or two above zero this morning, so I duffed around for an hour or two, hoping it’d warm up a bit before I headed outside to replace the starter on the tractor. I would’ve waited for a warmer day, but the tractor had already been down for better than a week, and the projects are piling up and tomorrow we’re killing pigs and by gum it’s handy to have the loader to hang them from. So today it would be.
At a little after 9:00, fortified by a second cup of coffee and with the thermometer nudging a full ten degrees, I swaddled myself in multitudinous layers and waddled down to the tractor. I’d remembered the old trick of bringing two pairs of gloves; I’d tuck one pair under my overalls to stay warm, and swap them every five minutes or so. It’s amazing what a luxury such a simple thing can be under the right circumstances: I’ll take a half-warm pair of gloves fished out from my overalls while lying on my back under a tractor on a late December morning over practically any other extravagance I can imagine.
I tell you right now, I am no mechanic. Replacing a starter is a fairly simple task, even if whomever designed your machine saw fit to wedge it so tightly against the power steering pump that said pump must be removed, along with hydraulic lines feeding it, along with the fuel filter and a couple of fuel lines and… you get the picture. The bolts for the starter itself came off in about five minutes, but to actually extract the beast necessitated another hour’s worth of knuckle bashing. Then, install the new one and commence reassembly, cursing the fact that so many of the bolts must be threaded into ungenerous nooks and crannies that accommodate no more than a couple of ungloved fingers.
I’m a little ashamed to feel so dependent on our machines, grateful as I am for the toil they save us and gratifying as it can be to harness their power. But there’s a dead-endedness to them that nags at me, and it’s one of the reasons I end up crawling under them on a 10-degree morning: I just can’t bring myself to invest serious money in something that feels like such a backwards and callous way of interacting with the world around me. I recently read about someone who gave up cars for 17 years, and I swear just reading about it made my breath feel lighter. Over the holidays, we didn’t leave our land for three days straight, and it felt as much like freedom as any trip I’ve taken.
Still and all, it felt damn good to get hear that old diesel engine purr again, both for the personal satisfaction in having overcome both the elements and my mechanical ineptitude, and for the very real comfort in knowing that I again had so much sheer capacity at my command. Someday, perhaps, we will have figured out how to do without it. But for now, and at least until the next breakdown, I’m damn grateful for it.
Satisfaction
December 23rd, 2011 § 5 Comments
On Monday I spotted a road-killed deer along Interstate 91. I knew I should pass it by; it was 8:00 AM, and I was headed to Massachusetts to do some interviews for a magazine story I’m working on. I knew the deer would be in the car for at least a dozen hours, and I knew that Penny’s parents were arriving early the next afternoon for a three day visit, and I knew that the house was a disaster of epic proportions and I knew that I would arrive home that night road-weary and grumpy. I knew it would be stupid to pick up that deer.
Naturally, I hit the brakes.
It was a nice deer, a doe carrying a winter’s worth of back fat on her slender legs, all four of which had been shattered by the impact. I pried and wedged her into the back of the Subaru; a few miles down the road, I stopped for a couple bags of ice and then continued on my way. Every so often, I’d glance in the rear view mirror and see her feet protruding over the backseat headrests. For some reason, this sight confirmed to me that I’d made the right decision.
The next morning, we let the boys go at the deer. They’d been wanting to butcher a large animal, having paid their dues on squirrels and chickens aplenty, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. I hung the deer from the bucket of the tractor, sharpened the butchering knives, and left them to the task. They built a small fire over which to warm themselves and roast bits of meat and stayed at it for nearly three hours straight. By the time they drove off with Penny to retrieve their grandparents at the bus station, the deer had been reduced to primal cuts, and I was left with only the final processing and cleanup.
In the big picture, I suspect it doesn’t matter a bit whether or not I made use of that deer. It could just as easily have been left to rot at the side of the road, another victim of our culture’s self-serving choice in transportation. It would have fed a few birds, rather than us, and one could argue that this would have been a more appropriate use of its gifts. After all, we don’t particularly need the meat, though we’ll find ways to share it with those that do. To the deer, struck dead by two tons of metal and rubber, there is no preference. Everything that mattered – abundant browse, surviving winter, a fawn by its side come spring – ceased upon impact.
So I’m left with the inescapable conclusion that my satisfaction in having pulled that deer from the frozen shoulder of the interstate, in watching my boys apply themselves so completely, enthusiastically, and skillfully to the task of dressing it, in slipping the packages of venison in the freezer, in the smell of the simmering bone broth that wafted through the house for the next two days, is both self-serving and naively righteous.
But then again: When is it ever different?
The Other 99%
December 13th, 2011 § 4 Comments
A couple of nights ago we ate an early dinner, strapped on our skis, and headed out across the hayfield above our house. It was the night after the full moon, and there was barely enough snow for skiing – three inches, maybe less – but our neighbor had let his milkers graze the field after second cut, so the surface was shorn low and smooth. The only obstacles were of the bovine fecal nature, and because these deposits were frozen, we could glide over them without breaking stride. Did I just say that we skied on cow shit? Why, yes, I did.
The idea had been to ski under the nearly-full moon, but we were too early, and for a while I had everyone convinced that the idea of a waning moon is a myth, that the lunar cycle goes from full start to full stop in just one day. At first, I thought I was joking, but after another moonless half-hour, I started to wonder if perhaps I was onto something. Such is my hubris.
Then we saw it begin to rise, emerging from behind the northeastern horizon first as a preceding glow, and then by inches as itself. We stopped and watched, and even the boys – especially the boys – were transfixed. It happened so fast, we could actually see it rising, as if it had been catapulted from somewhere deep in the earth’s core. Within minutes, the entire landscape was brushed in a warm, almost intoxicating glow. After a while, we skied on.
At Thanksgiving, friend of ours told me that humans can perceive only 1% of what’s out there. In other words, there is another 99% of sights and sounds, smells, tastes, textures and feelings that we know nothing about. I’m not sure how she knows this or if I should even believe it. Still, for whatever reason, I decided to. At first, I found it mildly unsettling, if only because I am at times already overwhelmed by how much I do not know.
But the more I’ve thought about it, the closer I’ve come to feeling comforted that so much could exist beyond the realm of common human understanding. The older I get, the more important it feels to me to believe that we are only consequential within the context of our humanness, that all the havoc our species has wrought upon the natural world only matters in the very narrow and specific perspective of that single percent. To think that there might be another 99% that could be as ignorant of us, as we are of it, is immensely appealing, if for no other reason than it grants me a complicated (and arguably naive) form of absolution.
There’s another reason it appeals to me, and it’s the same reason I stood still for a dozen minutes in a hayfield on a freezing night in early December watching the moon climb into the sky: A sheer, unadulterated sense of wonder at forces so profoundly beyond my control and with it, the simple gift of the knowledge that I’m not nearly as important as I think I am.
Waiting for Winter
December 7th, 2011 § 3 Comments
Given the disturbingly mild weather of late, I felt compelled to revisit this piece, originally written for Vermont Commons.
The season’s first big snow finds me on the shed roof by 7:00, trying to nail down the last few sheets of tin before the storm begins in earnest. Already, the air is thick with driven flakes. When I look up, I see the cows, bent to their feed, broad backs coated with white. I see the boys, sleds in hand, trudging through the accumulating snow. They are yelling. Maybe they are arguing, maybe they are just yelling to notice how the snow hushes their voices. I yell, too, but they don’t hear or, if they do, don’t acknowledge hearing. They are getting older, learning that I can be ignored.
It is 16-degrees. The bare fingers of my nail-holding hand burn with the cold, and I have to stop every three or four nails to tuck the fingers into my armpit. Beneath my feet, the tin is extraordinarily slippery, and twice I almost slide over the roof’s edge. It is not a long drop, so I allow myself to enjoy the sensation of sliding, knowing that even if the worst should come to pass, it won’t be that bad. But it doesn’t.
I have always loved winter. For years, it was for the skiing, the cut-loose feeling of falling down a mountain, of being at once in control and out of it. I still covet this sensation, but have noticed a shift in my appreciation of the season. Maybe it is age. Maybe it is fatherhood. Or maybe it just is. Whatever the reason, I find it in the sight of those cows, uncomplaining as the snow piles atop their hides. They stand so still, as if giving the storm permission to fall upon them. There is something honorable in it.
And I find it in the way a block of hard maple sounds when it submits to the maul. Goodness, but I love that sound, love the lubricated feeling of my muscles working in the cold, love gathering up the wood and carrying it indoors and watching the flames take it.
Even the absurdity of laying roof on a 16-degree morning, in a snowstorm, no sure footing to be found. I should be cold – hell, I am cold – should be miserable, should probably wait for the storm to pass. It’s not my work ethic that keeps me up here, nor some misguided notion of what defines valor. Believe me, I have no surfeit of these particular traits, although it is true that a small part of myself will measure its worth against the portion of the job that remains unfinished at day’s end. It is true that I can feel myself taking strength from the sight of those cows, from the sound of his boys whooping in the cold.
But it is truer that the settled, elemental nature of winter soothes and fortifies me in a way I can’t quite define. I do not see it as a battle with the elements; it is more like an acquiescing to them, a simple, humble acknowledgement that there is so much beyond my control. The cows know it; perhaps I have learned some of it from them. I’m pretty sure the boys know it, too, though it probably won’t be long before they forget. They are only human, after all. That is their only failing.
I come down. The task is unfinished but I am, at last, too cold to carry on. My fingers no longer burn, but I know it would be better if they did. I stick them under my armpit, look up through the hole in the roof, feel the snow on my face. In a moment, I’ll go inside, hang my coat, put my gloves by the fire to dry. In a moment, I’ll be warm. But for now, I stand there, doing nothing.
Reading
November 30th, 2011 § 1 Comment
At 6:30 this coming Friday, December 2, I will be reading at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hardwick. This event is being held as a benefit for the Hardwick Food Pantry and/or the Center for an Agricultural Economy’s Food Access Fund. Please bring a non-perishable food item for the former and/or a bit of fiat currency (or gold… you could bring gold, too) for the latter.
Better yet, I will be only one of five local writers reading original works. Julia Shipley, Pete Johnson, Annie Myers, and Bethany Dunbar will also be reading. We did this event last year, and it was a fantastic success. Come early to secure a good seat. And stay late, as a post-reading visit to Claire’s is inevitable.
Thanks, and hope to see you there.
The Other 1%
November 29th, 2011 § 7 Comments
Thanksgiving came and went the way I hope all of my family’s Thanksgivings forevermore will come and go. There were nearly 30 of us gathered around a long row of cobbled-together tables, friends and family ranging in age from 2 to 70. There was snow on the ground, and sledding, good conversation and laughter and, needless to say, food aplenty. We disbanded early; of the families present, four had milking animals to attend to, and of course milking animals don’t really care that you’ve eaten a few too many pieces of pie and might prefer to spend chore time splayed across the couch.
Like most of us, I take far too much of my life for granted. This is the almost-inevitable result of living amidst constant abundance and largely in accordance with my own peculiar desires. There isn’t much sacrifice in my life, or if there is, it looks and feels too much like blessing to be taken as such. Oh sure, I have my moments, little petulant temper tantrums that tend to crop up when I am pulled in too many directions and it feels as if the needs of others are usurping my own. But like most of the stories we tell ourselves, this one is primarily of my own internalized design, and after Penny talks me down, I am always struck by how much of how we relate and react to the world is of our choosing.
From which I can only extrapolate: It is my choice to take so much for granted. Therefore, it can also be my choice to be more consciously grateful. Grateful for what? My family, naturally. Our animals. The friends that gathered in our home on Thanksgiving Day and those that didn’t. That fact that in about five minutes, I’m going to shut this computer down, get up from my desk, and head outside to labor alongside my wife, doing work that feels so damn good and important I don’t care a whit that nobody’s paying me to do it. The fact that I have the freedom to do this. And on and on and on.
I’ve been thinking about all of this in relation to the Occupy Wall Street protests. The protests resonate with me, but only to an extent. Because while I understand intellectually the damage done by the lockjawed grip of corporate America on the politics and policy of our nation, there’s a part of me that feels sorry for the poor demented bastards at the helm of these institutions. Ok, so maybe they’ve taken more than their share of our nation’s assets. Maybe they’re the driving force behind the unequal distribution of wealth in this country. And for this, they should be held accountable.
But of course true wealth is not confined to the narrow metric of money and stuff. And to the extent that wealth can be described as living life on one’s own terms, amidst a community that understands, supports and honors this definition, I am almost embarrassed by my affluence. Because the more I think about it, the more it feels as if I am part of the 1%. It’s the 1% that has learned (or is learning) that money is at best a partial accounting of prosperity. It’s the 1% that has learned (or is learning) that money and time are not readily conflated. It’s the 1% that spent Black Friday making or doing or simply being, rather than buying. It’s the 1% that is probably much bigger than 1%, but having no particular need for acknowledgement, is content to go quietly about its business.
It’s the 1% that can say, in all honestly, let them have it. Because what I’ve got is better.
Pocket Change
November 21st, 2011 § 3 Comments
Below is a list of what I pulled from Fin’s pants pockets when I was doing laundry this morning. There are times when I am struck by just how far outside the contemporary mainstream American experience we exist. This was one of them.
Spent .22 shells (2)
Chipmunk pelt, most of the flesh removed, not as smelly as you might think (1)
Penny [the monetary denomination, not my wife] (1)
Turkeytail mushrooms (14)
Tools
November 10th, 2011 § 11 Comments
We just got the boys their first gun, a little .22/410 combo. “Youth model” is the vernacular, which I suppose is preferable to saying “this firearm, which is perfectly capable of killing pretty much anything it is shot at, was engineered specifically for children.” Indeed, it’s almost comically small and light; I’ve seen toy guns that looked and felt more like what I think a gun should look and feel like.
Not that I’m any kind of expert on the subject. I did not grow up hunting, or in a gun family. If I remember correctly, my parents owned a .22 back in their homesteading days as part of their chicken defense strategy (to be clear, they were defending the chickens from predators, not defending themselves from the chickens). I’m not sure if the thing was ever fired in anger or even in practice.
I had a BB gun when I was a kid, but after plinking a few Budweiser cans and killing a squirrel or two, that phase passed. About ten years ago, when we decided to take full responsibility for slaughtering our pigs, I purchased a single shot .22 magnum. It has served us well, and would have been a good gun for the boys to learn on, except for the fact that neither one of them was strong enough aim it steadily.
The boys want to hunt and I want to hunt with them. That’s at least a year or two down the road, but clearly, we’ve taken a big first step in that direction. I know many people would recoil at the idea of a 7 and 9 year old in command of what is, inarguably, a weapon capable of deadly force. There was a time when I would have been among them. But the closer I’ve come to the messy reality of raising and slaughtering my family’s meat, the closer I’ve come to the understanding that guns are not conceptual. They possess no inherent characteristics. Whatever traits we ascribe them, we do from the frailty of our humanness, with all the bias, contradiction, and simple misinterpretation that implies.
In short, a gun is a tool. And like all of the other tools on our farm, I aim to provide my boys the opportunity to learn to use it well.
Coming Home
October 31st, 2011 § 5 Comments
Three days away, and I dropped back into my life, grateful for all its odd little concerns and pleasures.
I was hardly off the plane before being presented with the first: Would our 22-year old, $1200 Chevy, which has of late exhibited a stubborn recalcitrance when the key is turned, even start? Or would I be stranded at the Burlington airport, a cruelty made all the more acute by the fact that I’d just spent a full 12-hours in either car, airport, or airplane, half-stranded by the big October snowstorm?
The truck was in a jolly mood, firing with nary a hitch to fill the parking garage with its 80′s-era rumble, and I realized the unique joy of the freedom afforded by an unexpectedly cooperative vehicle. Suddenly heady with the realization that I would in fact see my family in little more than an hour, I basked in a surge of delight, pondering the truth that the pleasure of a running rig is best realized with the threat of it not running is most acute. Not exactly a revelation, I know, and one that can be extended to pretty much every facet of life. Health is not appreciated until we are unhealthy, money until we are poor, friends until we are friendless.
Still, as I motored down Interstate 89, pushing the ol’ beast to its top speed of 68 mph, I could not help but consider how many of my most-savored moments are preceded by hardships, albeit mostly small (had I been stranded by my two tons of cold steel and rubber, how tragic would it really have been? The answer, of course, is not very). The food we grow, and effort put forth. The firewood we cut, split, and stack each year. The sap hauled bucket-by-bucket, to be boiled for hours down to the sweet distillation of our efforts.
And then the further irony (if that’s the right word), which is the creeping recognition that because it is the so-called hardships making the pleasures that much more acute, the hardships aren’t actually hardships at all. They are part and parcel of the reward, because without them, there is no reward.
This is difficult to explain and I fear I am not doing it well. So I’ll conclude with this: I’m grateful my truck started. But in no small way, I’m equally grateful that it might not have.
Choose One
October 20th, 2011 § 4 Comments
The day was supposed to work out differently than it has, which is to say the tractor was not supposed to end up stuck beyond all possible means of self-extraction, under circumstances that are so wretchedly self-inflicted I can only laugh at my own stupidity. Learning, learning… always learning.
The time spent mucking about with the loutish machine is time I cannot spare, or at least perceive I cannot spare. Of late, I have not done a particularly good job of striking a healthy balance between paying work, the farm, and my family, and the result is the sense that I can’t quite get on top of my life, that things have developed their own chaotic momentum, leaving me with little choice but to hang on until I reach the bottom of my list of commitments.
If it sounds like I’m complaining, I don’t mean for it to. This is chaos that, like the miring of our tractor, is entirely of my own doing and is in its own way enjoyable. Each and every project on my plate feels like an opportunity, rather than a burden, and it is only when they are gathered into a whole that it sometimes feels like I’m carrying more than I should.
I’ve been to this place before, both in regards to the tractor, and the fickle balance of my life. I’m not sure if I should find this comforting (hey, I got through it then; I’ll get through it now) or dispiriting (I’m still doing this shit?!?).
Hell with it. I’m just going to choose one. And I choose “comforting.”
