Farm Line-Up

Wendell must be first. The King Rooster with spurs that would make Buffalo Bill shake in his boots. Last week someone left a rooster in our chicken yard, which was an unfortunate decision. Not only did Wendell undo him, but he was separated into an outdoor cage overnight and the raccoon, well, no point in going into real facts about a farm--it's not as bucolic as most would like to think. Anyway, Wendell is a beauty. The kids think that he is slimy, but it's just that his feathers are so luminescent and his strut so proud. Last Friday he strutted out of the hen house with a very embarrasing piece of bailing twine wrapped around his shank and spur. Oh yes, I picked him up, unwrapped the undiginifying piece of twine, and set him down again. I think we have come to an understanding.

This little rooster is a Bantam. He's about a third of the size of Wendell, so I'm not sure if Wendell doesn't see him, or just doesn't seem to think he matters much. I love this little guy. Imagine a rooster crowing on a tape and then playing it back on high speed. That's what he sounds like all day long.







Fernando is our drama llama. The sheep are secure with him around, although he does have a bum right knee because his mother accidentally stepped on him. He's no show llama, and nobody wanted him, but the Sisters at the Corner thought him dapper and brought him to be our poster boy. He loves to give "kisses" by walking right up to your face and blowing air through his nose. If he snuffles around, you are in. If his ears go back and the jaw starts to work, we recommend getting out.













There are 24 sheep at the Corner, and I don't know any of the names. Some are very old, some are very new. Some are slow and wobbly, and others stand on their hind legs to eat leaves off of the tree or hair off of your head. They munch grass all day, poop in between, and generally live a very happy life.

Flowers, trees, skunks, butterflies, ground hogs, snakes, raccoons, vegetables, people, deer, old growth forest, creeks, poison ivy, wild berries, they all are here at the Corner. Come and See.

Shepherd's Corner

On the fourth day that we arrived in Columbus, still a little car lagged, slightly limp from the humidity, and brain squishing around from all the change, I had an interview at a place called Shepherd's Corner. I really, really wanted to work there. It is owned by the Dominican Sisters of Peace, most of whom are located in the Mother House near downtown. (I'd never heard that term before, and at first I guffawed just a little as I thought of a "Mother Ship" and little alien nuns all living there. Turns out it is a beautiful brick building with elderly ladies all living there, living fascinatingly devoted lives that hardly anyone ever knows about.) Turns out, a few of these nuns decided to invest in land after WWII. They bought about 100 acres of farmland that now, in 2009, is worth millions of dollars. Surrounding the Corner is nothing but development. But here, where the nuns staked their claim, is an oasis of green, refusing to succumb to concrete, inviting in the wild, and providing a place for people to remember their connection to land, animals, weather, and people. It is a remembering place.

During my interview for the position of "Agricultural Assistant," Eric, the Head Farmer, took me on a tour of this foreign and beautiful place. The Corner is 163 acres of native Ohio restoring itself to original plants, wetlands, prairies, and forest (except for the four or so acres we use to grow vegetables and raise animals--sheep, uno llama named Fernando, 22 or 23 chickens depending on which side you take, and three infirm turkeys that were four infirm turkeys just last week, but more on that later).

Part of my job as Ag Asst. is to keep up the network of trails that connect all the wild life to humans passing through. Miles of trails and a natural labyrinth that is 1/2 a mile in and out, funny enough. Anyway, as we walked I was stunned by GREEN, the sight and smell and sound of green. Crickets and frog, trees swaying every which way. There was absolutely no sight of my native brown and gold hills, no bare patch of ground anywhere, and an interesting looking leaf with funny red spots all over it. I suppose I wanted to impress Eric with how observant I was, so I reached down, put the leaf between my forefinger and thumb, rubbed it around and asked, "What's this? What are the spots?"

"That's poison ivy my friend," Eric said, very calmly. Instant adrenaline, slight panic controlled for the interview's sake, and suppressing a tremble in my voice I said, "Oh! Um, now what do I do?" And that's when I got a little taste of Farmer Eric's wisdom. "Well," he said, very slowly I thought at the time, "whenever nature provides a poison (only humans react to poison ivy, by the way, animals don't even notice it), she also provides an antidote. There's Jewel Weed up here along the trail, rub that on there and it oughta do it." And there was Jewel Weed, and it did mush up nicely, leaving a green and orange tinted smear all over my hands.

The interview went great (despite the poison ivy) and I did get the job. On my way out that day I shook Sister Rose Ann's hand absentmindedly and worried for a week whether or not I had poisoned a nun with my ivy-contaminated hand. 4 hours later, I had no reaction to the ivy, so either I'm immune or that Jewel weed really works. There is a lot to learn about the land out here, a lot of silencing the noise in my head in order to hear the land sing, to hear the harmonies it has with the people who putter around on it 40 hours a week or more. What a way to learn about Ohio--to dive, head first, into her soil, creeks, trees, and wildlife. I feel so very lucky to be able to do so.

All Journeys Start in Pendleton

Today, my husband and I began a journey to Columbus, Ohio. I know so little about the bugs, the winds, the trees and waters there. But a group of people who aim to think deeply about questions that involve people and natural wonders have made for themselves a place to think about these things. We will stay long enough for Adam to earn his PhD, and maybe that will be long enough for me to know the wonderfully small parts of Ohio.

Adam forgot to re-set his tripometer before we left to check how far we will travel, but I said that's OK. We'll set it in Pendleton, all journeys begin there anyway. And it has, with two good friends, a walk, a frisbee, a cat with five toes, thick, pink salmon, and a bottle of wine saved from our wedding.

In the garden today before we left, (a glorious morning with no wind and the chatter of birds and the sunshine that our cat, Pooky, absorbs as he sits facing the East on a wooden stool like a sentinel for all of catdom). The rhubarb is already setting seed (an alien looking pod that produces thousands of wafer thin progeny), the lettuce is beginning, the corn salad ending in little white flowers, the apple tree blossoming, and the garlic standing tall and acquiring brown tips like the first shadow of a beard that maturing boys get so excited about. I only looked, and smelled, and thought about the potential of a bed here, the perfect placement of a weed there, the absence in my bones when we leave...

Leaving a place that worked its way into my britches when I was little and used to play in the back of the wheat truck, a place caked over my arms and dusted in my eyes as I rode in the back of a pick up, breathed into my lungs in the early mornings after the alfalfa is freshly cut, is like opening every pore and feeling a great ache. The beauty of this earth never stands out more clearly than when I leave a place and people that I love. Whether a field of flox, a mountain, a cat, or my parents and grandparents, they all shine like jewels.

This writing is a Lovesome Thing for all who care to follow--an experience of being in the world as Lovingly as possible. Some days that's a lot, other days simply as much as I can mustard. All days it is genuine.