Summer is flying past. Ramlings have been sold. Fields to mow, sorting to be done. All in due time—as I figure out how to do it. In the meantime, look! Gorgeousness.
Purple-headed sneezeweed (Helenium flexuosum)
Blue vervain (Verbena hastata)
Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)
Venus’ Looking Glass (Triodanis perfoliata)
Goldenseal (Hydrastatis canadensis)
And for our bonus fauna, the gloriously patterned, super swanky Hypercompe scribonia:
Giant Leopard Moth
While I gather my thoughts (and time) to write about the sharp learning curve of sheep herding and grass farming, I thought I would share with you some of the native treasures blooming on the farm this summer. I’m so excited to see all the wildflowers, both native and naturalized, gracing this land. Please enjoy!
Rudbeckia (probably) missouriensis: Black-eyed Susan
Ruellia humilis: Hairy Wild Petunia
Asclepias tuberosa: Butterfly Weed
Arisaema dracontium: The Green Dragon
Achillea millefolium: Yarrow
Dianthus armeria: Deptford Pink
And now, after all that flora, here is some bonus fauna!
A dragonfly that’s as big as my hand! I believe this odonata is known as a common sanddragon. I don’t think there is anything common about him.
She looks demure now. This is right before she jumped for my face.
Mantis is mantis, after all.
A bit of big-for-me news: Today was my first day on the farm as a full-time farmer. Farmhand. Person who gets to look at sheep all day. On Thursday, after I clocked out from my last day at my former for realz job, I wrote the following to some friends:
“I’ve punched my last timecard. As of 4:09 pm today, I am officially a full-time farmer. This next chapter will be written in the language of the land: ancient mountains worn down into hard hills, the blush of broom sedge in snow, the soft hand of sheep’s wool, and the scent of elderflowers after it rains. This next chapter will be written with calloused hands and a calm heart. And with many, many thanks to the spirits.”
Those words echoed in my head all day today. They were true when I wrote them, as the brave words of the earnest and hopeful often are. And after cutting exactly 600 sections of wire for a fencing project today, my hands were most definitely calloused—but my heart was anything but calm. It beat in my chest soft and unsure like a baby bird. Yet also light, despite the weight of the task we’ve taken on. That surprised me. Although now as I contemplate this feeling, I think that must be the blessing of knowing that you are doing the right thing–even when you don’t know what you’re doing.
When you are certain of the direction, but uncertain of the path, the only way to go is forward. And if you never find the path, you at least had a very interesting walk, right?
This is the approach I took today. When it seemed to much, I held that baby bird up in my hands and showed it the view and said, This isn’t going anywhere. It has been here for a billion years without you. It will be here for a billion more without you. Be here now, and make it count. Work slowly, slowly. There is time to figure this all out. So the day went, with me figuring things out slowly, slowly; and slowly, slowly my heart began to calm, to take in the view, and to beat steady and true. And a little bit wilder than before.
Now that my days are governed by things other than punching in clocks, look for more about life on the farm and also about dyeing, as the dyepots are soon to be brought out of storage. That is all for now. You will soon have your fill of fence-building and compost-making and sheep-herding and tractor-repairing and garden-planting and yarn-dyeing. Ah, who are we kidding? There is never enough yarn dyeing.
I’ve been waiting years for this day. And now, here we are. Boots on, sleeves up. Woot!
Below follow the resolutions I made for 2016. I don’t want to make any new ones without first revisiting last year’s to see what of this list I did or did not accomplish. A review, if you will, of imperfection and humanness, good intentions and fickle will. Let’s take a peek and reflect, shall we?
Even though 2016 was a year that was in many respects quite tragic, it also brought many, many good things. We talk about a year as though it was an entity that acted upon us, instead of us acting within it–a measure of time that holds our deeds, good and bad. I have no resolutions for 2017. For me, they end up being To Do lists anyway. Instead, I simply want to remember that while I may not control everything around me, my circumstances or the actions of others, I am always in control of my actions and my attitude–the two things that count. So no matter what I might accomplish this next year, may I always reflect with honesty, discern with wisdom, act with integrity, and above all, respond with lovingkindness and good cheer. Because at the end of it all, it will be the love and kindness and good cheer that will be remembered. Not cleaning the basement.
Happy 2017 to you all! May this year bring you many blessings–good company, good food, good health, and grand adventures!
d
I can’t remember exactly when I started collecting yarn for the beast. Around 2006, I think. Ten years ago. A friend loaned me her copy of Cheryl Oberle’s Folk Shawls after she knit a few gorgeous shawls from it. I thumbed through the book, drooling at the beautiful, complicated stitches and delicious+scrummy yarn. And I kept on thumbing through.
As a newish knitter, I chose patterns based solely on what I thought I was capable of doing, not on what truly called to me. I was afraid to take off my training wheels. And so I chose the one pattern that I thought I could actually do–the ruana: a large rectangle knit entirely of the simplest stitch a knitter can make with two hands. With the exception of the cleverly constructed neck (which was knit last, giving me time to build up to it), this is what we call a ‘mindless knit’. That is not said pejoratively. A mindless knit is a good thing–something that can be done without counting rows or stitches; something that can be picked up and put down without fear of jacking it up. In many ways, for many knitters, it is the perfect kind of knit–one that allows the stresses of the day to fall away in the rhythmic click-click of the needles, the pull and release of yarn across fingers. But in this moment, I was not thinking of those things. I was only thinking of what I could- and mostly of what I could not-do. Thus, this was a project born out of fear and denial: the unfortunate (and unnecessary) fear of crafting over my head, and the utter denial of my heart’s desire to do more. I was stubbornly unwilling to leave the bosom of my beloved garter stitch. And so I cast on (and cast on and cast on), and began a four year journey of…
What? Fortitude, mostly. It’s a lot of garter stitch. 280 stitches per row. 472 rows. That’s 132,160 stitches just on the body. Add maybe another thousand or so for the neck. At times, it felt like a million more than that. It was the neverending story. But as far as stories go, it was a lovely one to listen to and to create. Warm, soft, lustrous, and colourful. It was these qualities that kept me coming back to the knitting. It was so enjoyable. I stopped seeing garter stitch as ‘basic’, and started to experience it for what it truly is–foundational. And the ruana, safe and constant, gave me space to think.
In this thinking, I figured out why I had actually chosen this project. Stitch by stitch, I began to examine my fear, which I realized was born out of belief in an identity of noncraftiness–which itself was all tangled up with life-long rejection from others for not being girlie enough. As I sat with that fear (and also that rejection), stitch by stitch, I realized that I was capable of doing this crafty thing that I loved in my own non-traditional, not-super-girlie way. And so as my hands knit the ruana, my mind tinked the old identity, the old judgement, until it could be reconstructed into something true. Some of this was very conscious. Some of this was very subconscious. But I knit and knit and knit through it. Somewhere in there, I started working on new projects. Complicated projects which required new skills. I leveled up a few times. But I came back to the ruana. To peace, and space, and the story she told. 
And like the best stories, the ones that are unhurried, that take time to pause and call attention as they turn and unfold and build, the ruana demanded patience and rewarded with depth. Demanded reflection and rewarded with insight. She holds a story. Each stitch a word, each row a phrase flowing into the next; the wool providing both characters and setting, my hands the action. My own story knit into it whole cloth.
Then she was finished. And I sewed shells and bells onto her fringe, so she can sing her story, too.
One of the joys of this project was playing with so many different, glorious skeins of yarn. I loved choosing at random (which is never really random) and seeing how each colour blended into the next. Each skein had its own personality, and I’ll say this: you have to listen to your yarn. It will tell you who it wants to sit next to, if it wants to stand out or blend in.
I used eight different colours and slightly varying weights. I have them listed with pictures on my Ravelry project page. It is a near indescribable pleasure to work with fantastic yarn. I prefer stuff with character–natural colours, handspun, and natural fibers. And I don’t mind picking out the odd piece of straw here or there. The difference comes down to working with something alive or something dead. That’s what it feels like to me. Here’s what is in the ruana of truth:
My non-knitting friends get a real kick out of my yarnie fangirling. Like the time we were sitting around the table at a dinner party, telling our best celebrity stories, and I regaled them with the time I waited on Casey and Jessica Forbes at a wedding brunch. You know? Casey and Jess… the founders of Ravelry. Oh, come on! Ravelry. The knitting website… Blank stares and then drinks shooting out of noses, people. That is the entertainment I bring to the table.
Not all knitting carries a story of chaos and transformation and changing of masks the way the ruana does. But it can. Everything has a story, and anything can be a catalyst for change if that is how you choose to see it. And that is magical. People always think that magic is supposed to change the outer world. It does. By changing you, by changing the inner world. May all your crafting be magical. 
As always, tinks on me!
I did not learn how to drive a tractor when I was growing up on the farm. That omission seems strange to me now, although I must admit that as a kid I was incredibly relieved that it never came up. Driving the tractor was something my brothers did. I used a shovel. I pushed a wheelbarrow. I carried buckets. I didn’t drive the tractors. I was afraid of them. Still am, frankly. What with all the gears and levers and noise and…parts. I mean, really. What the hell is a clevis tongue? Who can even say ‘clevis tongue’ with a straight face?
Now here I am decades later, back on the farm, and it is my turn to drive the tractor. As my dad succinctly put it, I need to know how to do this. No arguing that point. It’s easy to think about things. This is where I must actualize.
Let me introduce you to the Kubota, vehicle of my burgeoning farm skills. Grab a drink, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned so far.
We have a larger tractor, simply called The Big Tractor. It’s a Ford, and it’s blue and has racing stripes like my tattoo. I’m sure that’s a coincidence. He’s almost as old as I am. I do not know how to drive The Big Tractor. Yet. That lesson is looming large around a nearby corner. The Kubota, however, is easy to drive once you get your hand-foot coordination going, and once all of the completely illogical knobs and levers have been thoroughly explained and their accompanying pictographs translated. It’s set up pretty much like any manual transmission: gas (in this case a throttle–both hand lever and foot pedal), brakes (left and right, independent or locked together), gear shift (forward, neutral, reverse), and a clutch. It also has something called a Glide-shift which allows the driver to shift gears (ie, speeds) without engaging the clutch or braking. This is particularly important because the clutch also controls the PTO drive shaft for all the useful things that attach to the back end of the tractor. In this case, the brush hog. Which is also called a bush hog. Potato, tomahto.
A brush hog is used to mow down brush, heavy weeds, and tall grass. It’s pretty impressive what it will chop down. Like my nemesis, the multiflora rose. Die, multiflora, die! When the clutch is engaged, the drive shaft (which runs the mower), stops spinning. The Glide-shift allows the driver to switch gears clutchlessly on the fly while keeping the mower running. Handy.
The project for the day was brush hogging a pasture on the northern end of the property. As you can see below, it is madly grown up with broom sage, a native warm-season grass that, except in its early growth, is not very good forage. Broom sage grows well on poor soils, which is why it is found in lush abundance in southern Missouri–where the soil is nothing but clay and rocks on top of more clay and considerably more rocks. It is a clear indicator that this pasture is in need of nutrients–most likely phosphorus–and also a pH shift. We’ll find out more next month when I start sending in soil samples to the local extension.
This broom sage is very tall. FYI, it should never get this tall. This is what happens when you should have brush hogged two months ago, but roughly 80 other things were further up the master To-Do list. Nothing will eat this grass. It does have other uses. It provides cover for quail (I saw 6 of them) and other wildlife. The sheep LOVE to hide in it. And doesn’t that make finding them fun? They think so.
Once the engine is revved to the correct RPM to run the PTO (there’s a little unmarked arrow on the tachometer to let you know), you can engage the PTO (there’s a knob-thingie with hieroglyphics) and start mowing. Easy. You have to make sure to overlap just a little bit so that you don’t get a stripe of unmown grass between passes–especially since the giant back tires push quite a bit of it down. Then it’s just back and forth around the field. For hours and hours. Mowing down great swaths of tall grass. If you are like me, and you’ve learned to embrace your OCD, this is a rather pleasant job.
Or it is until you hear a bad ruckus (as opposed to the good ruckus that indicates everything’s functioning properly) and look behind you to find the brush hog bumping along, listing badly to one side of the tractor. WTH? So you stop the tractor, engage the dual brake, put everything in neutral, disengage the PTO, throttle-down, drop the front bucket, turn the tractor off. Go investigate… Ah. A bolt is missing. The important kind that holds parts together. In this case, a bolt that holds one whole side of the brush hog on the tractor. So you walk from the very top of the pasture–because that’s where tractors break down–to the barn to find your dad. Because he knows how to fix everything, and you don’t. Well, I don’t. So I got my dad, and he got replacement bolts (which he, of course, had on hand in an old coffee canister on his workbench) and a couple ginormous wrenches that looked like they came from an A-ha video, and we fixed the brush hog.
Below, you can see the kind of bolty-nutty-lock pin situation I’m talking about. It attaches the brush hog to the tractor. This one is the bolt that was still holding the brush hog on the left-side lift arm. 1) Quick-release lock pin which holds the bolt on one side 2) Lift arm ball joint from the tractor 3) Brush hog left-side bar 4) Nut holding the right side of the bolt. What probably happened is that the nut fell off, and the bolt jiggled loose and fell out somewhere in the field. Maybe someday someone will find it and ask themselves what it is and how it got there. I have found many rusted old things on the farm like that, and I wonder these things, too.
Here is the newly replaced bolt/nut/quick-release lock pin. Exciting, isn’t it? It made my day, let me tell you. On a farm, fixed things that work right are fucking fantastic. I am not upset that this broke. These are the lessons I need. And I am very fortunate to be able to learn so much from my dad now. I am constantly in awe of the fact that not only does he know what all this stuff is, but that he knows how to fix all of it. I feel the weight of that knowledge and know that my shoulders are not yet up to holding it. One lesson at a time.
All fixed. Back to brush hogging. I had a moment while on the tractor, about 3 hours in, where I realized that I could happily do this for the rest of my life. Not brush hogging specifically, although I wouldn’t mind that, but rather this whole tending the land thing; having my days measured out not by the clock, but by what needs to be done on that day, in that season. This was a good realization to have, seeing as how it’s kind of what I’m here to do. Affirmation by actualization.
And look at this–my brush hogging skillz? Better than decent. Not only did I miss all the bigass rocks in the section I did, but I (softie that I am) was even able to save this baby goldenrod that really wanted to grow in this spot. Because tending the land means many kinds of actions for all the life there. That’s a lesson I’m learning, too.
Fall flora on the farm.
Feeling nostalgic for my childhood on said farm.
Days when the land and the sun and the wind held all the magic I needed.
Now I try to set aside the running list of things to get done,
and instead walk my old haunts
so that I may bring together the wild heart that beats both here
and in me.
late boneset (eupatorium serotinum)
blue boneset (eupatorium coelestinum)
jewelweed (impatiens capensis)
perilla (perilla frutescens)
fragrant sumac (rhus aromatica)
goldenrod (solidago)
i really need to learn some mushroom id skills (fungus superfunkus)
thistle (either cirsium vulgare or cirsium altissimum)
no idea. plant id book came up nil. and what does that mean for us to see without naming?
Roadtrip to New Mexico. The American West has ridiculously huge skies.
Hot desert down below; cool mountains above. All redolent with the scent of pine, cedar, juniper, and desert sage. These are the Sandia Mountains. Albuquerque lies below.
Petroglyphs carved into volcanic basalt.
Darkling beetles guard the path ass-up. They are also called stink beetles. This is their warning.
On the sandstone bluffs at El Malpais. Ask me about how we got chased by a black bear up here. Yeah. Black bears on bluffs. Big ones. In the desert. Who knew? Not I, said the cat. Very fast runners, black bears.
As far as you can see, below these bluffs, is an ancient lava field. Much is grown over with the resilient plants and trees that are native here–but not all. The black basalt peeks through in many large patches.
See those two tiny dots below? That’s my son and my husband. Notice I am not there. I am safely on terra mas firma trying not to toss my lunch while I watch in horror and admiration–but mostly horror–as they climb the tallest of the sandstone bluffs they could find.
More sandstone. From a reasonable vantage point.
La Ventana Natural Arch. My favorite.
Hiking through the lava fields.
The mountains outside Santa Fe.
Glorious, glorious place. Had to share. As soon as I finish with some plant id-ing, I’ll post photos of the native flora there. So many beautiful blooming flowers. Next time, I hope to see even more of New Mexico. I am thoroughly enchanted.
In Missouri, you can’t count on the weather to tell you what season it is. It might be 65 degrees in December; it might be 35 degrees in May. Strike that. At some point, it will be both of those things. But despite the fact that I never seem to know when to pull my head out of the covers, the earth knows when to stretch. The flora and fauna know when to peek out and then get busy. From one moment to the next there is a shift, the light turns white and crystalline bright, and suddenly you’re late for Spring! Here’s a lovely, quick little visual guide to my cues this time around the wheel…
Lambing season is in full gear–31 and a few still due. No bottle babies this year, which was a major Phew! The garden has had a generous helping of sheepy compost and a tilling or two. And if it ever stops raining on my days off, I’ll plant some seeds… I have so many seeds to plant. So, so many.
Super exciting things are in the works on the farm. And in my life. I don’t want to jinx anything, so we’ll wait to talk about it until the will-be becomes the is. I hope all your springs are pleasingly full of potential and the emergence of glorious creative goodness. And seeds. And if you’re very lucky, lambs. ;)
live happy,
dre
I recently taught a class where I work: how to naturally dye eggs. Fun was had. And it made me long for wool. :D
Have fun celebrating Spring in whatever way floats your boat. I am off to eat delicious Puerto Rican food with my family.
Live happy, dye happy!
Grackle & Sun 