News Flash-- Bye, Bye Birdie

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post to bring you this important update: as of this morning, all surplus roosters have been...um, dispatched. The year-old broilers-turned-stewbirds, denizens of the Very Bad Year, pre-dawn hellish harmonizers, feathered idols of concupiscence and caprice...them birds had to go.

For the sake of more squeamish readers, there will be no pictures of the process. Suffice to say that the knife was sharp. They were dispatched most humanely with reasonable skill and speed. We thanked them and vowed that nothing would be wasted...and nothing was. What didn't end up in the freezer or the stockpot went to fertilize the garden. As the Wise Ones say, "everything is food for something else."

These birds have been a bane for so long that the final bird's death felt like more than just another unpleasant-but-needful barnyard task. It felt elemental, primal, like an offering of sorts, or some ritual banishment of bad spirits. Perhaps offering IS the correct word. We offered its soul back to the Cosmos and its blood and feathers back to the earth. We transformed its body into more nourishing forms. With these acts came a lightness, a curious sense that we have released ourselves from the taloned hold of last year's suffering.

Did our Celtic and British ancestors feel these things, when the wheel of the year turned to harvest and their hands fell to the hard work of culling and butchering? Did they offer prayers of release? Did they sense the tenuous, terrifying beauty of nature's balance? Did they speak aloud their thanks, breathe deeply, set their jaws, and bloody their hands, killing and taking only what they had to, using everything they possibly could? And were there special words or tales or tunes to honour all of this?

I found the tune of an old wassail song welling up in me as we worked. There are many wassails-- songs of seasonal blessing and honour, from ancient roots meaning "be whole." (There is one called "the Apple Tree Wassail" that I sing to my fruit trees when I plant or prune them. I am of the belief that no creature, rooted or footed or winged, can be too often blessed.) I reshaped the words to our purpose and sang them--not cavalierly, but with genuine joy, recognizing that every harvest is a time of death, but reapers need not be eternally grim. There is a time to reap. There is a time to sow and a time to gather in. It is good to move with The Great Wheel's Turning.

Goodbye, roosters. Farewell, four-thirty A.M. alarmers. Tomorrow is the sabbath. We shall celebrate by sleeping in.

Flying the Coop

It's five in the morning. The roosters have been crowing for half an hour now, reminding me with urgent, combative dissonance that the world's agenda rarely matches mine.

These roosters should have been done in nine months ago. Initially their necks were saved by the burst plumbing in our old house. It's hard to butcher and process chickens without a lot of clean, hot water. Further months of intense house-building kept those birds alive as our energies were consumed by our own 30'x30' nest. I managed to do in a few of them between March, when we got our plumbing, and June, when the rains came. Last week I finally had a little bit of time, but no remaining freezer space to receive the processed birds. (It's all been taken up by our surprisingly meaty little bull, who arrived home from the butcher in eight big boxes of little white packages!) Now, as we near the end of our house-building--and the end of Maine's wettest Summer on record--the pre-dawn ungawdly chorus is enough to make me want to run far, far away.

So I'm gonna.

Later this morning, The Piper and I will leave the state. No fear-- we're not moving, as evidenced by the fact that we have a bank appointment to discuss refinancing on the way to the airport. It's an awkward time for a vacation, but--as those roosters keep reminding me, life's wake-up calls and urgent messages rarely meet us in a place of perfect readiness!

We are headed to the Northwest for a week with kith and kin. My older brother is going to be married this coming Saturday. Our presence and services have been lovingly requested: wedding music from The Piper and a wedding homily from me. (Good heavens. What does a farmer-preacher-poet say to her own incredibly hip urban brother and his smart, professional, no-nonsense wife-to-be, in front of such a cloud of witnesses?!? Guess I need to start writing on the plane!) In addition to the wedding and a series of long-awaited visits with Northwest friends, there will also be ripe blackberries to pick, plant nurseries to peruse, rambunctious new puppies to meet, and another farm to see: the burgeoning homestead of a childhood friend I haven't seen since sixth grade!

We are leaving our farm in the hands of an experienced farm hand, a young man who loves animals and will tend our creatures with joyful care. It feels wonderful to be able to step away with confidence. (Friends have been ribbing me all this past week with the ol' "farmers don't take vacations" line, and I confess that my stress level and general exhaustion caused me to reply a little more harshly than I'd have liked, but I promise to have a better sense of humour when I return.)

Oh, and WHEN we get back... those roosters better watch their backs, 'cause we aim to be rested and ready!

(P.S. I know that's not a very roostery-looking bird in the first picture-- it came in our broiler batch of chicks but turned out...um...well...less roostery than the rest.)

Friday Five: Game On!

Jan, over at RevGals, writes:
"In less than three weeks, my family, including children and their partners, will be gathering in Seattle, WA for 12 days...With nine adults (from almost 20 years old and up), I am thinking that we need to have some activities pre-planned--like GAMES! (Any ideas will be appreciated.) So this Friday Five is about games, so play on ahead..."

1. Childhood games?
A childhood friend recently befriended me on Facebook and shared a memory of playing "Wonder Woman" with me and a couple of other friends in our back yard. Poor guy-- I think we spent most of our time chasing each other and tying him up with the "lasso of truth."
In general, my childhood games were messy and elaborate and based on raids of kitchen drawers and my mother's fabric cabinet. There was much tent-making...also an alchemy lab under the lilac and snowball bushes, where we invented countless experimental potions and fermented-blossom "perfumes" that reeked to high heaven.

2. Favorite and/or most hated board games?
Hands-down favourite: "The Farming Game," which I used to play ad nauseum with my best friend as we were growing up. According to the box, the game was "invented on the seat of a tractor" by farmers in Eastern Washington State, and since my grandparents were Western Washington dairy farmers, I felt it was somehow a matter of loyalty to enjoy the game...considering how my life turned out, I guess I took it a bit too seriously! I loved going around the agricultural year on the board, rolling the dice for harvest yields, saving up for cattle and fruit tree tokens, and drawing the cards called "Farmer's Fate." The best one involved a true-to-life explosion of Mount Saint Helens, with all players rolling dice to see if their farm had escaped the cloud of ash. I bought a used copy--one of only three items I've ever bought on EBay--and tried to get The Piper & The Piper's Son to play it with me. Sadly, they were not as impressed...but I STILL love it!

3. Card games?
Best all-ages card game: MilleBornes, a racing game in which cards can be dealt to increase mileage or cause hazards. With a little explaining, it can be played with pre-readers, as the cards contain well-drawn visual clues.
In college, I loved playing the game, "BS," because none of my peers would believe that a pre-ministry student who still wore home-made dresses could bluff everybody under the table. I also liked "War," "SlapJack," and "Egyptian Rat Screw." Card games bring out a devilishly competitive streak in me that I find slightly disturbing, but fun.

4. Travel/car games?
Car trips were about equally divided between sibling squabbles and great game-playing in my family. There were I-spy games, like watching road signs to find all of the letters of the alphabet. We played "20 questions" and "Hink-Pink," in which a person thinks of a rhyming term and then gives out a non-rhyming definition, then has everyone guess the rhyme. (ex: "an insect outlaw" is a "mosquito bandito.")

5. Adult pastimes that are not video games?
We own neither a television nor a game console, as we recognize our own potential for time-wasting and addiction! To be honest, the work of farming, our off-farm jobs, and our community responsibilities keep The Piper and I too busy to indulge in much recreation of any kind. Our big outlet is music. The Piper plays not only the Great Highland Pipes, but also Lowland Smallpipes and the fiddle. She also knows lyrics to the most amazing array of songs, from shape-note hymns to bawdy English Music Hall bits and hard-luck ballads. We have friends that can play other instruments and remember or invent even more verses for our favourite songs.
My idea of heaven is a ceilidh: an evening of organic shared entertainment from singers, story-tellers, musicians, jokesters, and poets, with a bit of dancing and lots of good home-made food added in!

Bonus: Any ideas for family vacations or gatherings?
Share stories! Go around the circle and have everyone share "most embarrassing moments" or "a time when I felt really proud" or "the strangest thing I ever saw" or "the hardest thing I ever did" or "the outfit I wore that upset my elders most" or other good conversation-starters. It's good to do this while people have something to do with their hands: shucking corn, building sandcastles, scrapbooking, etc. so nobody feels too self-conscious.
Planning ahead, I'd encourage everyone to bring digital cameras and some old family photographs or albums. Pass them around and share the stories behind the images. Collaborate to identify places and people and dates, then write all this valuable information down. Asking for favourite recipes and family traditions is also a good idea-- get craftier members of the family to put these all into a book.
Preserve and expand your collective memory!

(Check back later--I'll look through the photo CDs my family had made, and post some great old family images from various generational gatherings!)

The Not-Yet-Dormant Bard

The buds are swelling on the small lilac in the dooryard. This morning's golden light glanced off the smooth brown twigs of new growth coming on the plum tree. The world is preparing for its Winter Sleep, but new growth always comes in the harsh peace of the frozen Dark.

Some animals forage and feed, stuffing themselves to prepare for hibernation. On this December day, I find myself ravenous not for food, but for poetry. I started with my favourite snack: the Glasgow Herald poetry blog. Then it was over to the Reflectionary, where--oh surprise and delight--another poem greeted me. Now I'm about to be late for work, but my bardic belly is oh-so-well-fed...

And later today, I'll post some bard-work of my own.

Later:
I'm not sure when I wrote the following poem-- it might have been a couple of years back at an agricultural conference, because I recently discovered it on a scrap of hotel-logo notepaper tucked inside a book of other people's poems, and that's the last time I remember going to a hotel for anything! The poem was most likely written in Spring, in the church season of Lent, as there is a pre-Easter sense to the imagery. Now it's Advent, and I'd hesitate to include it here just now, except that Advent used to be known as "Winter-Lent," a natural time to slow down and hush and reflect before the next burst of hopeful, lively busy-ness.

SABBATH

Opening the hard-nailed, desperate claws
the must-have, must-work-hard,
the churn and trudge, chop and slop and strive
must manage scare commodities like turnip blood...

Taking off the hobnailed, ragged boots
exposing soles--and soul--
to air again, then...
turning tiptoe, shuffle slow, or spin
daring dearest dance
letting ground gather me in
again, again, again

Listening to land--
the tattered patter-song
the lullabye
the deep roots wrapping me
the waters whispering
the earth's warmth stirring me
like lichen, lily, lark
to rise.

(copyright MaineCelt 2008)

Into the Gap...

The Bluebirds of Gappiness showed up again on Saturday. This time, it was a mated pair, flitting between milkweed stalks and fenceposts by sudden, urgent turns. I wonder how much longer these messengers will remain before they start their annual migration, leaving Wise Old Raven behind as official mystic courier of the Frozen North. Perhaps they'll make the switch at Samhainn, (pronounced "sow-when"), which literally means, "Summer's end."

It's almost time... which, as a person with so-called A.D.D., is a state of being with which I'm most familiar. (I prefer to think of myself as "multifocal," since it's not a lack of attention, but non-singular attention, that best describes my style of engagement.) One book about A.D.D. describes the afflicted as "hunters in a farmer's world." While it's true that hunters spend a lot of time scanning their horizons, I don't buy this idea either. I've never met a farmer who DIDN'T have to keep their minds on a hundred things at once.

The more I study my Celtic roots, the less my so-called disability distresses me. Celts, it seems, have always understood the complex and flexible nature of time. Celtic philosophers and theologians have long recognized time as an embroidered tapestry, a mesh of the interwoven, the knotted, and the wrapped. An old Gaelic hymn to the Christ Child includes the declaration that, "although You are not yet born, people are praising the great things you've already done." The Divine Child is both "already" and "not yet." This speaks deeply to me. It describes my state of being, much of the time. It also reminds me that, as a Chronos-bound creature, I have my work cut out for me. I know, full well, that I can't afford to stop TRYING to do things "on time." I will never stop struggling to do business promptly and show up prior to the official start-time of shifts, classes, and meetings. This may never be an arena of particular personal grace.

Yet Grace does come--and it comes, most often, when it's "About Time." It is when I am most awkward, most unsure, and most open that the Holy Spirit shimmers and flutters and blazes into view. Poet Ted Loder calls this, "teetering on the edge of a maybe." I perch on the edge of self-doubt, which strangely doubles as the edge of cosmic acceptance. Grace unfolds in those awkward spaces between naughts and oughts. I am challenged, continually, to live more fully and step more willingly into the gaps.

And now it is Almost Time for one of my favorite Gaps of all: Samhainn, the Celtic New Year. Like Christmas and Fat Tuesday, this has long been celebrated as a "time beyond time" when the shackles of society are shaken off in favor of wildness. Yes, there's a sinister side--tricks can be cruel and damage may be done--but the essence of this time is a holy one. Where and when else, in our fast-paced, artificially brightened lives, are we given permission to see and acknowledge the dark?

Like the Jewish people and many other ancient agricultural societies, the Celts recognized darkness as the necessary time/place for all beginnings. Each new day begins at sundown. The year starts when the cold creeps in, the light wanes and the hard labours of harvest come to an end. It's a welcome respite, a seasonal sabbath. Seeds rest in the soil, new life sleeps in the dark womb, and all wise people take time to laugh and rest, doing the crucial work of re-creation, singing and sharing tales among deep shadows and flickering light.

Among the shadows: not an easy place to be. Yet our shadows demand attention, as our brightness continually invents them. Samhainn may wear the disguise of No-Man's Land, but what it really offers is Common Ground, a place for honest hopes and unreasonable fears to meet. Here is one meeting I will not miss. Here is one lesson for which I dare not show up late. (Hurry! Finish the wiring in our new house, so we can turn off all the lights!) Now is the time to step into the darkness, dance and wrestle with the darkness, shake the grief loose from my bones, mourn for all things returned to earth, and dream of new life that shall spring.

Happy New Year! May this "Almost Time" become a celebration. May we dance and weep around the bonfires of loss, feast on the richness of our memories, and--in dreams--step into the future's blessed embrace.