Imbolctide

The wheel of the year turns once more, and we arrive at Imbolc, one of the four "cross-quarters" or turning points of the Celtic agricultural year. This is a festival sacred to Bride (a.k.a. Bridgit)--an Irish Goddess or Saint (you choose!) One excellent reflection on this festival can be found here. Here on the farm, we're celebrating in grand style: we're going to play at yoghurt-making while pumpkin soup simmers on the woodstove. There are also rumours of a whipped-cream cake in the making, to be flavoured with lavender or whisky!

For Northern, pre-industrial folk, this was a hard time indeed, as winter storage foods dwindled and the prospect of new nourishment glimmered and wavered far off in hunger's haze. Imagine, then, the joy that came with fresh milk as lambing time approached and the ewes "bagged up" in preparation! The old name for this cross-quarter is "Imbolc," from old Celtic words for "ewe's milk." Traditional feast items for this time featured milk and cream and butter and cheese. If you don't have time for fancy stuff, celebrate by making a yoghurt smoothie!

In the deep February cold, this was also a time to celebrate fire--the fire of creation, captured in the blacksmith's work as well as the poet's inspiration. Smiths and poets were celebrated along with midwives and dairy animals. In fresh milk and creative fire, the hopes of earthborne people are renewed!

Here is a bit of bardic work for Imbolc, with a nod to Robbie Burns, Violet Jacob, and other Scots poetic forebears. (Hmmm. Haggis & Neeps might deserve a place on tonight's table, as well. They, too, are seasonally-appropriate elements for an Imbolc feast!) The poem incorporates the imagery of the "Cailleach," (pronounced KYLE-yok) or Old Woman of Winter, whose silver hammer kept the ground hard and cold until Spring.

IMBOLCTIDE

When yon Auld Grannie gyres an gimps
an unco dance on cranreuch groond
an gies her sillar curls a crimp,
Ye ken that Imbolc's comin roond.

When sillar hammers, blaw for blaw
fa habber-haird in hinmaist hone
then haud ye fast, for soon the thaw
will prize awa cauld winter's loan.

Nae lang she'll lanesame bide, nor sup
Wi'oot the dochter she lo'es best;
Nae grannie redds the kailyaird up
But for the thocht o some comin guest!

Nae mair the lanesame anvil-drum
Will mark the pace o Grannie's dance--
The Lass o the Lintin Wand shall come
An lowpin lambies hae their chaunce--

For Grannie Cailleach's time grows short
An wee snaw-drappies rowthie ring
for Bridgit cams, blithe hope tae sport
An after Bridgit cams-- the Spring!


--copyright Mainecelt 2011

Glossary: unco=strange, cranreuch=frosty, ken=know, Imbolc=Celtic Feast/source of Groundhog's Day, blaw=blow, fa=fall, habber=stutter, hinmaist=last, haud=hold, prize=pry, awa=away, wi'oot=without, dochter=daughter, redds the kailyaird up=cleans the place, thocht=thought, comin=coming, Lintin Wand=glinting wand of Bridgit, lowpin=leaping, chaunce=chance, Cailleach=crone/Celtic Earth-Goddess, snaw-drappies=snowdrops, rowthie=abundantly, cams=comes, blithe=joyous

Autumn Thaw

The frost has come. The last late raspberries have been hoarded like a handful of rubies into the freezer. The pigs snuggle close in a nest of old hay, the cows lumber across the pasture in a quest for the year's last green tidbits, and the chickens scramble no longer for fresh worms and juicy bugs, their morning treat limited to scatterings of old bread. In the lower garden, all that remains are a few stalwart cabbages. In the upper garden the beets wear purple leaves in mourning for the black skeletons of tomato plants, recently uprooted and laid to rest on the damp branchy base of this winter's burn pile.

The land's production has ground nearly to a halt. We move slower too, weighed down by feedbags and slopbuckets, gathering firewood in the frosty air. But something strange is taking place, just as the cold weather sets in: we are starting to thaw.

When you live for years under the ax, waiting for that dull blade to fall, you becomes well-acquainted with fear, despair, and depression. The threat--in our case, the threat that our farm would be lost--becomes a familiar, if not friendly, presence, and you forget what life was like before the sky was marred with that great hanging wedge of cold metal above you. You forget how to walk outside without bowing and wincing and wondering when it will finally fall...

And then, one day, the ax disappears--life changes, new possibilities appear, the loan comes through and we finally buy the farm--but we're not sure how to stop bowing and wincing every time we step outside. We experiment with lifting our heads. We flicker an experimental gaze now and then at the sky. We say to ourselves, "We're safe. This farm belongs to us. We belong to this farm." We try to say it like we believe it...once in a while, we succeed. We flash each other a grin--but the next minute we're ducking our heads and wincing again, returning to the movements and rhythms we know.

Call it a crisis of faith. We have forgotten that hope is a free gift, not an exclusive commodity. We are enduring the long-awaited thaw of frozen dreams, and our movements are still stiff and unsure.

Bear with us. Samhain, the Celtic New Year, has come at last, carrying the promise of warm fires and songs in the deepening night. Our spirits drape themselves near the woodstove, gradually unfreezing like a pair of trapper's mittens. We are stirring, humming, and warming to life's possibilities.

Just Ducky

I was a water baby. Almost forty years ago, I swam out into the world under the sign of The Fish. I spent most of my growing-up years on an island under grey Northwest skies, surrounded by salt-water rhythms and moon-drawn tides. I commuted to high school by ferry boat.

After a desert pilgrimage of sorts to attend graduate school in Colorado, I headed back out to the sea as quickly as possible-- this time in another direction, but with no less thirst in the journey and no less relief to arrive at a different ocean's shore.

I love oceans. I also love the North. I have spent time in Southern climes, testing my vocation and my ability to itinerate, but the North always feels most like home. It is my belief that we each carry an inner landscape--mostly a reflection of the place or places in which we grew--and I've found myself most at peace when my outer landscape contains the same elements (salt water, evergreens, mountains) as my inner one.

It made sense, then, to choose Alaska after Venezuela. It made sense, I thought, to choose Colorado for my next sojourn from my growing-up island--it had mountains and evergreens at least--but in that dry, high state I found myself thirsty and homesick nearly all the time. And then I made my way to Maine, seemingly the best of all options: ample salt water along its beautifully complicated coast, forests of spruce, hemlock, fir and pine, and mountains more ancient--if less dramatic--than the upstart Cascadian and Olympic peaks of my childhood home. Oh, and then there was the snow: famously cold, snowy winters, a longstanding source and inspiration for songs, poems, and legends galore. Add to this the lure of a certain bagpiper, and I was hooked.

So, now it's late February in Maine. Along with my birthday today, I celebrate almost a decade of full-time residence in the north-easternmost U.S. state. I have braved wild winds for New Year's Day walks along the shore. I have shoveled my share of deep, drifting snow. I have strapped on skis and snowshoes to traverse the winter woods in search of frozen water in all its beautiful permutations. But winter is changing.

This is our driveway today. In spite of my best efforts yesterday afternoon, the farm truck could not *quite* be coaxed all the way onto higher ground. I suspect my best hope is to make no attempts to move it until the weather shifts, the ground (hopefully?) dries out and the currently liquified muck freezes hard again.

Global Climate Change, I've read, is all about extremes. Wet seasons will be wetter, dry seasons will be drier, and storms will be stormier. Our current storm started yesterday morning and flood warnings are posted for our entire county all the way through tomorrow night. We often get similar conditions in April, but February?!? Oh dear.

But there are some things a flood does well. It may not beautify the landscape with white fluffy drifts, but it does help a farm dog find all her snow-buried tennis balls. It also highlights, for a farmer, those areas of the farm that would most benefit from some serious Spring Cleaning. For us, the work area beyond the woodpile demands the most immediate attention. That's where the spare lumber got stacked from last year's farmhouse renovation. That's where the leftover gravel sits, a remnant of plumbing and fencing projects. And that's where the farm dog dropped a most illustrative object that rose to the occasion for this February flood:

Another Leveraged Bale Out

The cows weren't expecting this. There they stood, in the pre-dawn winter darkness, looking aimless and sleepy in the middle of the snowy field. Our boots crunched in the ice-crusted snowdrifts as we approached the top of the hill. We would have to be decisive. We would have to be swift.

But it's hard to be swift when you're moving a 4-foot-diameter 500-pound bale. No matter how deep the cleats are on your boots, it's hard to gain purchase in ice and snow. By the time I'd brushed the snow off the plastic-wrapped bale and rocked it loose from the ground, those cows--in spite of the darkness--were acting suspicious.

So, we pushed. The Piper and I leaned our shoulders into the bale, muckling on as well as we could with our gloved hands. We paused to re-plant our feet and rocked the bale some more. Finally, we leveraged that behemoth up...and...over...so that it rolled two full revolutions down the hill. Unfortunately, it was headed exactly NOT towards the pasture gate.

Pause for another correction. The Piper and I stand at opposite "corners" of the bale and push, slowly spinning it a quarter-turn until it's aimed in the right direction. Now the cows are lined up at the gate, snorting and tossing their forelocks. Iona, queen of the cattlefold, firmly plants herself at the fore.

Cows are not good at physics. I suspect their phenomenal digestion is the primary location of their intelligence. No, perhaps that's unfair-- there's nothing in their primal cognition to help them respond when a pair of two-leggeds starts rolling a giant marshmallow down the hill towards the pasture gate before dawn. We had the right voices, at least, so we weren't intruders... and when we sliced the haywrap just before the final push through the gate, those cows caught the clean vinegarish scent that announced incoming food. Hunger and curiosity dictated their subsequent arrangement.

And so it was that, when we gave the final push, that bale rolled down the hill, through the gate, farther down the hill with gathering speed, and...smacked broadside into that poor silly heifer. She gave a surprised wee jump forward, then turned around and stared reproachfully (balefully?) at the still-wrapped bale. I hustled down into the field and pulled off the haywrap. As the tasty contents were revealed, the heifer hung back and stared a minute more--just long enough for me to pull the wrapper off and out of the way--then moved in, determined to bite her breakfast right back.

So this is how the New Year begins: with rolling bales, chores before dawn, well-fed cows, strong women, leverage and surprises. We're ready, even if the cows aren't. Bring it on!!!

2009: A Term for the Verse

Today marks the Winter Solstice-- the year's shortest day and longest night. As the minutes slipped away prior to the Official Astronomical Event, I wormed my way under our new house for one last intimate encounter with the earth. (The practical reason for this ritual was that a faulty extension cord needed replacing; the shower drain--so carefully surrounded with heat-tape, insulation, and a tyvek-wrapped, earth-banked styroboard frost wall--would do us no good through the winter's whistling winds if the heat-tape could not be trustworthily plugged in!)

Now I am back inside the house, grubby but warm, relaxing into the knowledge that the last great ritual has been successfully performed and we shall henceforth be able to Hold The Wolf of Winter At Bay. (We won't make any bold predictions about any other wolves just yet, but suffice to say that we're really boning up on our wolf-wrangling skills and getting better every day!)

The Proper Activity of Northern Winter Folk is repair and creation: the careful tending of tools and gear, the mending of strained relationships, and the creation of things both useful and beautiful. My heart is ready, now--and if you will permit me a bit of creative indulgence--my rusty bardic muse is in need of some warm-up stretches. Like any stretch, the following will involve the potential of painful reaches and the appearance of ridiculousness, but these seasonal tasks simply MUST be done...


2009: A TERM FOR THE VERSE

January started out
cold and full of gripes:
Our year began with frozen folk,
cold house and frozen pipes.

February came along
with icy, sparkling jaws--
We went outside and froze some more--
for a worthy local cause.

March brought hard digging
and--finally--joy! Let
us now praise installers
of pipes, shower and toilet!

April--on windowsills,
seedtrays sat out,
dark soil dreaming
and sending up sprouts.

May--month of sweet melting
and warming and growing!
New piglets were bought.
In the fields we went sowing.

June--to market and home again,
all in a whirl
to host a church picnic
and the dear Wild Girls!

July started wet and grew wet enough
to douse any forest fire.
Pigs being pigs, in the mud they did dig,
and slipped out under the wire.

August brought an island journey--
oh, sweet farm-women's reprieve!
Our first home-grown bull met his meaty end:
a choice we did not grieve.

September: batten down the farm
and rush to catch a plane
For a family wedding we piped and preached--
so good to see kinfolk again!

October came to
a bittersweet end.
With bards and musicians,
we mourned a dear friend.

November brought the cold and dark--
a fearful time for the farm.
But oh! We gave thanks for our sweet new house,
where the woodstove kept us warm!

December sang softly of flickering hope,
now fanned to a stalwart flame.
We plan for years, fields, and friends to come.
Solstice Blessings! May you do the same!

--copyright MaineCelt 12/2009


(This post's images were taken during a visit to Trustworth Studios.)

Dames of Hazzard

"Why don't you take MY car? Then I'll know you're safe."

I had to agree with her. The forecast was for snow, hard and fast, starting around four o'clock, and my off-farm job had me scheduled 'til six. My car--of recent rock-meets-window fame--sat in front of the house with bald tires and a trendy rural tricolor look, courtesy of a 2003 meeting with a mailbox and some black ice. Ever since that accident, (which happened when I was going, literally, five miles per hour), we've designated mine "The Summer Car" and hers "The Winter Car."

The Winter Car is one of those ubiquitous Maine vehicles: an eleven-year-old Subaru Outback. We've used it to carry bagpipes to gigs in Fort Kent and Kennebunk. We've hauled bales of hay for our cows and grocers' gleanings for the food bank. We know exactly how many eight-foot-long 2x4s we can fit inside--22--if we align them and drive slow so they don't bump the windshield. I love station wagons. Most farmers seem to pride themselves on their pickup trucks, but not me. I'm happy to borrow one now and then, depending on how much hay or lumber we need, but my vehicle of choice is a station wagon: a serious, safe workhorse untainted by too much testosterone.

It was time to warm up that workhorse and go to work. I didn't relish the thought of standing at the cash register all day, but I knew enough to take the work while I could get it. I put on festive holiday garb and--in anticipation of long hours--tempered the effect with cushy socks and hiking boots. I was glad of those boots as the day wore on. There were trips up and down the steep back stairs, baskets in hands, to restock the shop. There were hours at the register, smiling pleasantly as I rung up and bagged items I could never possibly afford, myself, to buy. When the snow began to fall at half-past four, I was glad. The day of retail purgatory would soon be ending.

My co-worker looked out at half-past five, and told me to go home. I was happy to oblige. The roads seemed to be fine, judging from all the shoppers zooming by. The extra half hour would give me time to go get the milk. (Our cattle are beef animals, not dairy cows. We buy milk from another farm and take pride in our support of other local producers.) I drove off with joy and caution, keeping a slow pace to match the medieval carols on my CD player as well as the road conditions.

At the farm, my milk was waiting in the old soda cooler in the barn. A big jingle-bell was tied to the handle of the jug, a whimsical seasonal nod. I thought about cows and Christmas and the hard work of dairyfolk, work that has no regard for human illness or holidays. I lifted my milk-jug like a toasting glass and whispered my thanks to the quiet barn.

Back down the driveway, past the pasture fences, and onto the road... the snow was coming down heavily now, but the pavement seemed fine. I checked my brakes and kept my speed down. Other drivers observed the same caution and everything went well for a couple of miles. Then, suddenly, things didn't. The car started to fishtail and skidded toward the edge of the road. All I could see was a swale of darkness, an enormous looming nothing framed by skeletal stands of birch. The car gracefully floated over the edge, into the void. Remembering anecdotes of unhurt infants and unscathed drunks, I willed my body to relax--the only helpful action left for me to take--and prepared for the assuredly awful impact.

Thump. That was it--just, "thump." No breaking glass, no grinding metal, no shattering bones, no blood. I scanned my surroundings. Two great black circles, taller than the car, stared back at me. I had gone over an embankment and landed at the base of two culverts, in the drainage swath. Clumps of ice in the slushy water nudged the running board and swirled lazily around the wheels. Our Winter Car was in its element--or elements--now. A truck--yes, a pick-up-- pulled to a stop above me, at the top of the embankment. A woman hollered, "Oh my God-- Are you hurt? Do you have a cell phone?" I cheerfully, if dazedly, answered "no" to both questions. She called 911 and stayed 'til the police arrived, five or ten minutes later. As much as I love my station wagon, I did appreciate her truck for those few minutes, and thanked her for biding there.

The best part, (riding home in the officer's car as IT fishtailed along was the worst), came after the firetruck arrived. The police officer and the fireman, both burly in their professional gear, came down the embankment to "rescue" me from the car. I opened my door and leaned my head out. "If one of you fellows could just pop the hatch of my car," I said, "I can crawl right out through the back." The fireman looked surprised and, well, a little disappointed. I grabbed the milk jug, threw my purse and registration papers into my handy reusable grocery bag, and scrambled between the two front seats, over the back seat, into the back of the wagon.

"Now, be real careful, Ma'am. The footing's really uneven. We'll give you a hand." The fireman and the policeman both reached toward me, prepared to Do a Good Deed to a Damsel in Distress. I gave them the milk and the grocery bag instead, and stuck my hiking-booted foot out. "Whoa," said the fireman in a reverential tone, "Appropriate footgear!" Flanked--but not held--by my two grocery-lugging public servants, I stomped up the hill without hesitation. Sure, the car was probably totaled, but I was alive, unhurt, and I had appropriate footgear.

Home again, thanks to the Man in Blue, I put the milk in the fridge and recounted my harrowing tale to my two Godsons. I regaled them with the fishtail and the swerve, the black hole and the swale. "Cool!" they said. "Did you catch air?" Upon reconsideration, I realized I just might have "caught air."

It must have looked pretty impressive, like one of those 80s "Dukes of Hazzard" chase scenes where Bo & Luke, once again, outwit Boss Hogg. I'm not saying I'm ready for NASCAR or anything, but I do know one thing: when we hear back from the insurance adjuster, we're zooming up the road to Norm's Used Cars. They specialize in Subarus. Yep, we're gonna buy us another Winter Car.

Making Hay...?

"No, I never said that." So claims the woman at the end of the line, bringing me to the end of mine. Back in June, she said she could get us a winter's worth of haylage from her fields. We were jubilant--the favorite winter food of our cattlefold, sourced locally from another Farmer Woman. "Put us down," we said, meaning, "Add us to your official customer list."

Yesterday we learned that she had, indeed, put us down... that is, she dropped us.

We had called at the request of Iona, Cattlefold Matriarch, who announced with insistent mooings that the pasture grass was about used up, and the musty henhouse hay just wouldn't do. How lovely--how luxurious-- it felt to ring someone up, knowing we'd planned in advance. How wonderful it felt to rest and wait for an answer, knowing her supply would be there to meet our demand... Then came the awkward pause, followed by denial. "I never said that! No, I don't have enough to feed my own!" Turns out the fellow who was supposed to hay two of her fields never did the job.

We asked who, and she gave out a name we've heard for years. It's Farmer Drown, the same guy we tried to get hay from last year, the same guy we get referred back to EVERY time some other tractor operator claims they're just too busy to work our fields. "Why don't you call Farmer Drown?" they all say, "He lives near you." Then we explain, once again, that we have indeed called him. For three years, we've been trying to buy his hay, trying to hire him for tractor work. Farmer Drown never calls back. That's the point where the other guy usually scratches his neck, looks away for a sec, then says, "Yeah, he IS kinda hard to get ahold of..."

"So," we ask Hay Lady, "what's up with Farmer Drown?" After a few choice but unprintable words, she finally blurts what we've suspected, but never dared confirm: "the guy's crawled inside a bottle by noon." Now the familiar knot of anxiety rises in our throats, the well-known dread sinks back into our bellies, and the fragments of the tale fall into place: One man--one capable, strong, experienced local man with barns, livestock, good equipment and fine farmland--has allowed his personal demons to hold not only his own farm hostage, but ours and others as well. Because of his bond with the bottle, animals and families go hungry all over town. Because of this, we must thumb back through old phone logs and retry last year's exhausted list of potential hay suppliers. All this unfolds as the Almanac trumpets a coming winter of bone-chilling, mind-numbing cold.

The cold has settled over us early, indeed, though the thermo- meter shows the mid-sixties. We are cold in anticipation, shivering with stress and fear. We walk outside when the light is most golden, trying to warm ourselves with the beauty of the farmstead. We murmur appreciations at the well-feathered hens strutting in the green September grass, the fattening pigs with their deep bass welcoming grunts, the dear shaggy cows that come running... Then we wearily admit that their affections depend largely on being fed. Our minds spiral back to bald pastures, empty haylofts, and ever-higher grain bills. Back and forth we perilously swing, hoisted and hanging between two passionate extremes: "Why the hell are we farming?" and "Oh, we love this farm so!"

How grand it will be, someday, to look back and laugh at this year's comedy of errors. We'd been congratulating and comforting ourselves all summer over the hay--securing this supply was the one thing we'd done right. Meanwhile, we made the rounds of the aforementioned tractor-operators, trying to find anyone who could disc-harrow our newly-stumped fields. Most had traded in their disc harrows years ago: "Good luck finding one. Nobody uses them now." A few guys had disc harrows, but--curiously enough--were overbooked with work. A handful actually had the grace to come walk the fields and talk the job over, but they all admitted a hearty disinterest, citing other projects with better payback and less "fussy-work."

The last guy showed up two weeks before the last possible pasture-seeding date. We walked down and perambulated the potential pastures. Yes, he had the right equipment, and yes, he could do the job, but it wouldn't come cheap--see, he'd rather be working on his own house, to have it ready for the winter, so he'd charge us a premium for his time! Trying to hide our shock, dismay, and a fair amount of disgust, we continued on with our little farm tour, taking him over to see the orchard and the pigs. "Well, shoot," he said, shoving his John Deere cap back on his balding head as he caught the scent on the mellow breeze, "you didn't tell me you had PIGS."

Leaning towards us with a confidential air, he adjusted his bombast to an almost conciliatory tone: "Now, I'm always happy to save folks money if I can. You don't need me. You don't need my fancy equipment. You've already got most of the equipment you need. Here's what you do: get your lime spread, then lay out some temporary electric lines and fence those pigs out in the new fields. They'll work it over and till it up real fine. Send 'em off to the butcher, hunker down and let the snow fly, then--come Spring--it'll be plantin' time!"

Well, didn't we feel dumb. Good little Luddites like us, spending a whole summer in thrall to the Big Lie of Heavy Equipment, when we could have had our pigs out there tilling. Worst indignity of all--it took a Big Ol' Tractor Man to point the whole blessed truth out to us!

September 15th is the last frost-free sowing date for our "hardiness zone." We still have the pigs, but not enough time to get grass established in this calendar year. That means we can't fulfill the requirements of our farm's Conservation Plan, which had us scheduled for completion of "pasture/hayland planting" in 2008. Our farm has benefited from conservation programs--without them, we could not have afforded good fencing or the field hydrants we had installed last year. Unfortunately, due to this summer's misguided and fruitless tractor-quest, we'll miss out on this year's cost-shares. The money spent for stumping and lime delivery in preparation for tilling, (over $4,000), will haunt us like a phantom limb, aching long after its severance.

So, time to wrap up this entry and get on the phone. Time to see who, among the farmers in nearby towns, might have some hay or haylage they're willing to sell. Then it's time to finish off this year's pigs--maybe with a few weeks in the new fields--and sell all the pork to pay for that hay. Come February, sure hope those cows still appreciate us!

Some farmers make hay while the sun shines. Some farmers make way toward the cheap wines. And some farmers--like us--buy hay while we stun swines.

Wait 'til next year!