This girl loves the chickens. Especially Fluffy—those girls have a special thing going.
The first thing she does in the morning is let the chickens out of the coop, and she puts them to bed last thing at night.
This afternoon I spied them on the patio, hanging out together in the sunshine, and my heart lept. I had this sudden notion that this is exactly where she’s supposed to be. Doing exactly what she’s supposed to do. There’s so much right about her in this little slice of time.
Another Farm Day has come and gone, and despite the fact that I carried my camera around for several hours, I took maybe ten photos. REALLY, one of these years I’m going to have an amazing photo set the day after.
A big thank you to everyone for coming out for another fantastic day. I’m always amazed that people carve time out of their busy schedules to come our way. The weather was downright perfect, and the food was spectacular.
This day has come to be my annual reminder that we are so very lucky to be surrounded by such good people. Our families come from near and far. I see our oldest friends deep in conversation with our newest ones. Kids run and chase and romp until well after dark, when they crack out flashlights and glow necklaces. And the most inspiring musicians always close out the night.
I might be a bit biased, but I think there’s something a little magic in these here parts.
Mark your calendars for Farm Day 9: October 8, 2011.
We’ve been having a cold spell. Every now and then a warm day peeks through and I feel like we have to enjoy every instant of it because the winter will be here before we know it.
I needed this moment at the end of a long day.
These children have a knack for beginning the most creative and inspiring activities about three minutes before bedtime.
Tonight Shep and Neko gathered their sketchbooks and pencils and headed outside. I think they’ve been inspired by art class at school, where they made their own sketchbooks and now are hard at work filling them.
Shep did a great rendering of the high tunnel and Neko did this drawing of the chicken coop.
And then we peeled them out of the back yard and tucked them into bed.
If I didn’t have a three-year-old to be responsible for, I would totally have taken a nap in the hammock on this perfect day.
On another note, happy birthday to my amazing mother. I. Love. You.
The egg, not the chicken, people.
I still get a little giddy every time we find an egg in the coop. It’s just like when seeds magically grow into plants—I get the scientific principle, but it still doesn’t stop me from wanting to tell every person that I see about the truly spectacularness of it all.
Today the frame for the high tunnel went up. (Big thanks to Jim and Glenn for coming over to help.) The whole time I felt like I should be in the kitchen with the ladies, making lunch and lemonade for our menfolk.
Yesterday I got a flu shot. I’m not much for flu shots, but after the Quarantine of 2009, we decided that the possibility of five cases of flu again this winter would be detrimental to our mental health. (Really, I would make a miserable shut-in.) As luck would have it, I’m that small percentage who experiences 24 hours of flu symptoms following the vaccine. Wheeee!
Anyway, I’ve been spending the afternoon in bed. (Thank you Barb for taking Ellery.) After a long nap, I stumbled outside to breathe some fresh air. I wandered over and sat in the middle of the butterfly garden. And breathed. And looked around me. And then I laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
When I was growing up, I grumbled about this town. Sure, maybe my parents decided to live here, but their move was more about a new job than it was about picking a dreamy place off the map. At the time, I thought to myself that, fine, I can grow up here, but when I’m an adult I will live somewhere glamorous. It will be urban and metropolitan. I will have culture and diversity. An important job and children who visit museums and ride subways.
Fast forward a few decades, and here I sit, in the middle of a field on the outskirts of the town where I grew up. My job is not terribly important, and although we make every effort to get to museums, my children don’t ride the subway. In fact, an old high school friend once confessed, after a few drinks, that they were surprised I was here. “I thought you’d be doing something more impressive, and certainly not here.”
At the time I remember feeling a bit sheepish. Like I had failed. That I hadn’t lived up to my potential.
But I know I could have had that life. In my early 20’s I was offered a position in the San Francisco office of our company. For several reasons, I turned it down. But mostly, the thought of being thousands of miles from my family made my heart a ache a bit too much. But I could have been in the thick of it if I’d chosen to.
Much to the surprise of many, we choose to live here.
I like my work. The many pieces that I tuck under my umbrella make me smile. And my co-workers are top-notch.
Although there’s way more laundry and cleaning involved than I imagined, I love being a mom. Although my kids might not play in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge, they get to run naked through the fields. They gather toads and caterpillars, and have room to roam without me three steps behind them. They have the breathing space to become who they were meant to be.
I have this amazing husband who has room to build. Whether it’s sewing a cape or pouring concrete for the new high tunnel, there are few things I love more than when he’s using his hands. I can’t wait to see him build that Ready-Made house he’s had on list for years.
While this town isn’t rocking with diversity, there are so many good people. And it’s taught me that diversity goes in both directions—I need to be tolerant of those who are not like me, because we’re all in this together.
And I get to wake up every day to this field of black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace. Chickens cluck at my feet as I pick apples off the tree or gather tomatoes from the garden. Exhausted from a morning of chasing every little noise, the dogs nap lazily in the perfect sun spot.
It’s good stuff, what we’ve got going on here.
And next summer? Maybe we’ll visit a big city and ride the subway.
