A Bad Winter Moo-d
You bring so many talents to this world. In this moment, we need your warmth, your creativity, your passion, your indefatigable strength more than ever. — Petey, whose talents include fiercely defending the flerd, mooing extremely loudly when the hay lady is late with the hay, and picking his nose with his tongue.
Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm
There’s a new rule on the farm: When there’s snow on the ground, no critters get moved to new pastures. Normally, I move the cows and sheep every two days, making temporary pastures out of reels of hotwire and movable posts. But the hotwire is white, and the posts are mostly white, and the act of moving onto fresh grass turns my normally docile cows into rambunctious, fire-breathing dragons. The result? The cows take off at a gallop into the new pasture, can’t see the lines, and run through the whole thing, making a giant mess of downed wire and posts (and loose cows and sheep).
I thought I had the problem solved by adding flagging to the wires, and adding blue posts.
Unfortunately, I thought wrong. After spending an hour flagging the new lines, in all of 11 seconds, the cows had galavanted right through it and were heading for the hay stash.
So, the new policy will be that they just stay put until the snow melts. It’s annoying, because I spent the fall stockpiling grass in my pastures for all-winter grazing, and I’ll need to feed them hay ($14 a bale!) when I delay their rotations. But loose critters are far more annoying (and potentially expensive, as the whole “bull in a china shop” saying is truly rooted in fact. While they were out this week, they broke one of my lines and badly bent a metal stand that the lines sit on. That’s about $490 worth of equipment damaged in minutes.) Julia refuses to take responsibility for her actions.
In other news: Is it spring yet?
Here’s What I Loved This Week
I’ve been thinking about the Surgeon General’s Prescription for America since I read it last Monday. Finding community in rural America, a place where people move because they want to be self-reliant, has been difficult. Now, online communities, which I have relied on to fill that gap, are becoming increasingly problematic due to bad decisions by billionaire owners.
Since chickens can’t be my only friends (although they are great companions!), I’d love to hear from you on ways you’ve found connection—be it in person or virtually, and how you’re turning towards others even when our devices seem to want us to spend more and more time with them.
For making more human connections, I often think this old bit of advice from Anne Lamott to compliment strangers when you can, especially the elderly. For me, it has led to some good interactions in grocery store parking lots and in the streets of big cities.
Thanks for sharing the Prescription for America -- I wish it would somehow be required reading of everyone. It's something I felt deep inside for large chunks of my 20s and 30s, and thankfully I realized I needed to really, really, really emphasize making connections, which is hard for me because I'm naturally introverted and disinclined to make the first move.
The rule I've applied to my life as I've tried to grow my connections is "keep showing up." That, too, can be hard when you are totally into solitude, like me. But my strongest and deepest connections have come with the groups where I've most deeply invested my time over months and years (and years and years.) I've found this with my book club, my neighbors and a group of folks who love open-water swimming/cold plunging no matter the weather. I had a bit of luck in that invitations were extended to me to join the book club and the swimming group, but I still had to push through some discomfort with feeling awkward and disconnected in those early days in both groups.