I milked this morning in a tee shirt, the wind gusting, the high clouds dense and layered and strangely still. Painting-like. I think today will bring the last swim in the pond; I went in two days ago and it was almost colder than I could bear, though the truth is I bet I could bear it a lot colder. I just don’t want to.
The wind has coaxed the leaves from the trees; what foliage remains has mostly gone dull. It’ll drop soon, too. Yesterday we passed through Stowe, where the sidewalks bustled with tourists. A little late to the party, but they looked happy enough.
Later in the day, nearer to home, solo now, I passed a dairy farm on a little-traveled backroad, slowing to watch a young family drive the cows to evening milking. Jersey’s, mostly, tawny and narrow-ribbed. The family rode an open-cab tractor, the father driving, the mother and infant child sitting on the footstep, her feet just shy of the pasture grass, light green and low from overgrazing. Both parents obese. I say this not to demean, but merely as a point of fact. The baby loose in her thick arms. I could see they do this every day.
Back home, I mixed milk and grain for the big pig, hiked it to the top of the knoll where she resides, packed boot path yellowed by blown-down leaves, the pig moving fast to her bowl as I approached. She knows the routine. Well. I guess we both do.
Music: Whiskey Myers with an acoustic take on one of their new ones. Enjoy.
Ben Hewitt 
Read this one, turned and looked out the window, gray skies, homeschooling on going, and first this came: “We live as we dream: alone,” And immediately this followed: “What we do with our days is, of course, what we do with our lives.” The second is Annie Dillard’s. The first I don’t know. We are so much like animals.So so much. Ducks, hogs, lions, puppies, people. Here, alone, gone.
and on that uplifting note…
🙂
>
Will, Will, Will!! Complete disillusionment is the ultimate acceptance.
Ben, I love the Madona and a child on a tractor image, rustling the tall fall grass with her feet. Liked the song. When is the music party at the Hewitt place or the Hewitt brothers tour? 🙂
T-Shirt? Swimming! Wow! We are in our wool shirts, pants and hats.
We had a typhoon rip through our state last weekend, just as we were teaching our homesteading and wilderness retreat at our farm.
No T-shirts and swimming, but teaching cheese making and soap making with candle light and oil lamps!
Whiskey Myers! Nailing! Thanks! Needed that today!
Good looking piggie. Our girls are not nearly so far along. I thought a few weeks ago was our last swim in the pond but today is looking pretty tempting. Back to it.
A wild weather ride out West. Sunday night the low was 60 (what??) and the winds blew 80 mph. Early Monday morning a forest fire, ignited from a downed power line, consumed 16,000+ acres. This morning the low was 31 (that’s better at 8,000′ elevation) and the fire is marching forward again.
Survival in the coming years will require resilience beyond anything we can imagine.
http://homesteadingwiththewild.blogspot.com/
I think about that often.. the bubble bursting, so to speak. Not in a doomsday kinda way, but about how we need to buckle down and learn to live more conscientiously, and to use less.. a lot less, of everything. I spent the better part of today cleaning the muck off of window blinds due to the three feet of flood waters that entered our rental home in August. Parts of our city look like a third world country. It’s been devastating for so many. One thing is for sure, something’s gotta give.
Nice voice…
Once again, I can really see what your words describe. Thanks for that!
It probably means something. One of the window A/C units is still to be pulled and stored, The Child Bride’s passel of flower pots and baskets are still outside, the Ash trees have just dumped their last holdouts and the wood bin has not been filled with its first 10 days worth. Our bit of PA has yet to frost and though winter WILL come, it hangs back here too. Today is move her plants inside day. The temperatures are forecast to come closer to the frost line this weekend and the inevitable looms. We tolerate winter but it gets harder as we age. And it does no good to complain. The Ash are the last to leaf in the spring and the first to drop in the fall. No complaints, just he cycle as it always has been. The optimist is the Bradford Pear. Flowers early and holds her leaves until almost Thanksgiving, the happy tree, if trees can be happy. It will be warm again today and when I’m outside moving planters to the back steps and I want to find a bit of shade to pause and rest there’s always the Pear.