Better together (and with feathers)

Some personal news from Good Spirits Farm

Everything about you is fabulous, you gorgeous creature. Go ahead, strut your way into this weekend. — Heebeejeebees

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Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm

This was one of those weeks where I was forced to reckon with the fact that everyone needs a little help sometimes. On Sunday, I went to fire up the tractor only to find it had two flat tires. I thought: I have an air compressor! I can fix this! But both tires were so flat they’d come off the rim. No matter how much air I tried to pump in—and how fast I tried to do it—the air just gushed out the other side. I had to call both a friend and my neighbor for backup, each bringing a few tools and tricks to try and get the tire back in place (including dousing the bead with lighter fluid and lighting it on fire; don’t tell my mom).

Two hours later, we had one tire fixed but the other just refused to cooperate. We gave up, loaded the entire wheel into my truck for a trip to the tractor tire place on Monday. Meanwhile, I resigned myself to not getting the 1200-pound round bales taken out to the field for a few more days.

When Monday dawned, though, I had a whole other situation to deal with: The 70-mile-per-hour wind gusts that show up every March had knocked over a bee hive.

In four years we’ve never had this happen before, but I knew instinctively it was a situation demanding immediate attention. I put on Chris’ bee jacket and tried to dive into righting the hive. That was a mistake. I am mildly allergic to bees and the jacket doesn’t protect my legs. I think the entomological description for how the bees were feeling was really f*cking pissed off. I ran back to the house (bees in hot pursuit the whole way) and put an SOS on one of those normally best-to-be-avoided community Facebook groups. Minutes later, an experienced beekeeper was on his way.

So: It’s probably time to divulge some news. Chris and I are getting divorced. As many of you have likely gathered, we separated early last summer. Although it’s been a horribly hard decision involving a heck of a lot of tears, I believe moving forward alone is my best path.

My hope is to keep the farm, although I am going to need a lot of stars to align to make that all happen. If I am able to keep it, I will be running things solo here for… a while? Possibly forever? This week made that feel both impossible and possible. Staring at a jumble of angry bees and not knowing where to start is enough to make you hope to meet a nice man with a condo. Having a neighbor say, be right there, I’ll bring tools, however, makes you realize you are not totally alone (and probably too feral for condo living at this point, anyway.)

And, of course, I am not really alone. I have the sheep.

And Veli. And my chickens.

And, of course, I have you all. I am so grateful for every last one of you.

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Here’s What I Loved This Week

Learning to be brave. When Chris moved out, running our large tractor was the thing I was most afraid of. It’s so unwieldy, so valuable, and is unnervingly capable of taking out $20,000 worth of fencing with one slip of the gear shift. It felt oddly fitting that I spent the first day of my 39th year piloting the tractor around the farm, bringing the sheepy equivalent of birthday cake (hay) out to the flerd. No fences (or tractors) were harmed in the taking of this photo.