Journey to the Center of the Mirth (Part One)

It has been a largely unbloggable week here as we deal with the "joys" of farm refinancing. To remind myself of life's more celebratory aspects, I'm taking some time to chronicle our recent trip to the Pacific Northwest.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25th:
After doing the morning chores, grabbing a hurried early lunch, and laying things out for the farmsitter, (including three pages of instructions, a sixpack of local ale, and our entire library of Celtic tunebooks for his perusal), we departed for the airport. Both of our flights were happily uneventful, though the second flight became a bit more interesting when the captain came on the loudspeaker and announced that we were in the care of an all-woman crew, from captain and co-pilots to flight attendants. Huzzah!

We were greeted at the Sea-Tac airport by my father, who whisked us away to the island on which I grew up. We admired the last lingering sunset light over Puget Sound as we made our way to the ferry dock. Dad flashed two little cards at the dock-worker, who zapped them with a handheld scanner. I felt wistful for the plain paper tickets of my youth. Then it was over the Sound, up the hill, and along the winding island byways, under the looming evergreens, to my parents' garden-encircled house. We were greeted by the rescue beagle's shrill bugling, the tumbling, lolloping boisteriousness of two Gorden Setter puppies, my little brother's laughing attempts to corral them, and my mother's welcoming embrace. With my father still spinning stories, my mother playing games on her laptop, and my brother chuckling at sitcoms, we stumbled off to bed in my sister's old room, tripping over puppies on the way.


WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26th:
We woke at five o'clock. The place felt eerily silent. It felt foreign. Something was wrong. The Piper and I looked at each other in the dim pre-dawn light. "Er-a-er-er-oooooh!" I crowed, as quietly as I could. "Ah, that's better..." The Piper murmured. We willed ourselves back to sleep for an hour, then woke up again, fighting the urge to rush out and do chores. I was afraid this would happen. I don't remember how to have a vacation!

Mid-morning, we accompanied Mother on her delivery rounds for her organic cut-flower business. She and her friend run a handful of flower stands around the island with ready-made bouquets from their gardens, as well as selling subscription bouquets to a few local businesses. When we stopped to deliver a bouquet to my childhood chiropractor, Mom treated me to a much-needed adjustment. Our chiropractor is worth the trip cross-country! (I'm uninsured and the ones in Maine charge three times as much, so I rarely use their services, regardless of how much I need them.)

We headed back out of town. It was comforting to see some familiar sights--the old hardware store, the community art center, (a revamped Odd Fellows Hall), the "village green" where the farmers sell their wares... In between the familiar storefronts, I was surprised by a thick crop of new restaurants, including one with the words "sushi bistro." My goodness!

Mother walked us through her sprawlingly beautiful, outrageously productive gardens that afternoon. From the island's glacial till, with the help of abundant compost and added topsoil, she has coaxed an amazing variety of flowers and edibles. There were ripe strawberries and tomatoes. There were heathers and heucheras and hellebores. There were sweetly fragrant roses cascading over the old copper-pipe arbor I built for her years ago. There were bold dinner-plate dahlias and delicate sprays of my favourite flower, Love-in-a-mist (Nigella).

At suppertime, The Piper and I headed a few miles down the road to Holmestead Farm. There we were introduced to the family--and farm--of a childhood friend. We toured their massive restoration project: an orchard full of heirloom-variety trees, all carefully and lovingly pruned and tended according to biodynamic principles. We peeked through high deer-fencing at their bountiful berries and other garden crops and watched their children race and tumble as chickens strutted confidently around the grounds. It would have been enough, that educational and inspirational tour of another farm family's endeavors, but there was more to come: after The Piper treated them to an impromptu concert on the smallpipes, our hosts reciprocated with a phenomenal dinner of (island-grown Scottish Highland!) beef carpaccio and a lovely fresh vegetable soup with white beans and shrimp, followed by just-picked raspberries and sliced peaches for dessert. Fueled by such excellent food and such nourishing company, we talked until long after all farmers should be in bed-- especially an island farmer who has a long sunrise commute to an Off-Farm Job on the mainland! (Sorry about that, Toby-- hope you got off to work okay!) We'll savour the memory of this visit for years to come. We look forward to the day we can return the favour and host them as guests at OUR farm.


THURSDAY, AUGUST 27th:
The morning's agenda was laid out for us: set up several buckets full of hot water. Add a bit of sugar and a splash of bleach to each bucket, then stir until dissolved. Take the buckets into the garden and pick all the good blue, purple, green,--yes, green--white, pink, and peach flowers with the longest stems you can manage. Plunge the stems into the hot water. This helps "set" the petals and extends the vase-life of the flowers. When each bucket is full, take it to the Cool Room (Mom's flower-processing room in the garage). Early the next morning, these buckets would all be packed into my mother's Scion for the long drive to Portland, Oregon for My Big Brother's Wedding!!!

The rest of the day, we eased ever-closer to vacation mode, ambling out to stuff our mouths with wild blackberries, perusing my parents' bookshelves, watching the puppies play, and cooking. My little brother coached me through his favourite enchilada recipe. How lovely, to work together in the kitchen! Then it was off to collect The Piper's Son (with sweetie in tow) from the ferry dock so they could join us for an island potluck and music session. Ah, the glorious of late-summer potlucks! Smoked salmon spread! Paroxysms of Pie!

The music was hesitant at first, but The Piper played smallpipes for a while as the gathering made its way from lawn to deck. A couple of people thumbed idly through a copy of "Rise Up Singing" and called out lyrics and tunes. We managed "Bright Morning Stars" just as the sun went down.


(Tune in tomorrow for Part Two: comida a la Kelso, deck repair on-the-fly, and my Big Brother's Wedding!)

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!