Today has been a day of the beginning of the reconnecting...coming out of my farmer hole and getting phone calls and a farm visit from a bunch of friends I haven't talked to in ages and ages. Yay! It was great to get all these folks randomly calling just because...and it isn't even my birthday. Keep calling me :)
It is a good thing I got lots of love through the phone, because I have a fierce heartache from seeing off Maya and Brinca (mama and baby alpaca). They are off to California so mama can get knocked up. As my friend B put it, "that's a long way for a piece of tail". I feel like there is a chance I may never see them again...you never know, someone might fork over the $50k to buy them both while they are out there.
I'm also working with taking risks and using the "love" word more and more with people that I genuinely have love for.
4 eggs today.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Sunday, June 18, 2006
resonance
do you ever read something and say "yes!" someone else has put into words what my heart has been feeling and I have been inadequate at saying. well, that just happened to me. so I'm going to steal from someone else and put it down here.
"I'm aware though that this is the last hurrah before I really do go do adult things....people will be relying on me. It's awful, really, to be relied on. Responsibility. All that. ... But part of me is really craving grandiosity and foolishness. Secretly: I'm not well-trained for foolishness--for listening to my absurd hopes and desires and taking them seriously enough to creatively figure out how they could be realized. This has been haunting me lately. Foolishness is very important. I forget that I am young. That perhaps it's more important (than) the suburban, midwestern middle-class practicality of longterm investment and planning-for-comfort that I was raised on." (thanks, nb!)
Wow...this yearning to be foolish has been driving me for months now. I became awake last spring in a red, red room with a deep fire in me to be foolish...to say, wait, I'm not 80! I am still young, and I still have a body that can dance, and I have passion and creativity and fun and silliness. For so much of my life I've played the role of the responsible one, and it is so hard for me to let go. People are always surprised to find out my true age...they always think I'm older because of how I act, because of my ability to be practical and responsible and in charge and in control. In college, when I still thought I was going to be a medical doctor, I pushed away someone very dear to me because being around them I was playful and silly and acted my age...that was too threatening to my practical self, so I told them they were too immature for me, and stopped responding to their emails.
For the last year, I've been on a pendulum swing back and forth between wanting to act with total foolishness and reckless abandon and wanting to maintain my 80-year-old, stodgy, practical self. Most days I am able to find the balance, the middle path, but occasionally I want to just chuck it all and start over with my life or push away all the playful, silly stuff (and people). Finding the middle path is not always easy. Maybe it is all just my saturn return.
"I'm aware though that this is the last hurrah before I really do go do adult things....people will be relying on me. It's awful, really, to be relied on. Responsibility. All that. ... But part of me is really craving grandiosity and foolishness. Secretly: I'm not well-trained for foolishness--for listening to my absurd hopes and desires and taking them seriously enough to creatively figure out how they could be realized. This has been haunting me lately. Foolishness is very important. I forget that I am young. That perhaps it's more important (than) the suburban, midwestern middle-class practicality of longterm investment and planning-for-comfort that I was raised on." (thanks, nb!)
Wow...this yearning to be foolish has been driving me for months now. I became awake last spring in a red, red room with a deep fire in me to be foolish...to say, wait, I'm not 80! I am still young, and I still have a body that can dance, and I have passion and creativity and fun and silliness. For so much of my life I've played the role of the responsible one, and it is so hard for me to let go. People are always surprised to find out my true age...they always think I'm older because of how I act, because of my ability to be practical and responsible and in charge and in control. In college, when I still thought I was going to be a medical doctor, I pushed away someone very dear to me because being around them I was playful and silly and acted my age...that was too threatening to my practical self, so I told them they were too immature for me, and stopped responding to their emails.
For the last year, I've been on a pendulum swing back and forth between wanting to act with total foolishness and reckless abandon and wanting to maintain my 80-year-old, stodgy, practical self. Most days I am able to find the balance, the middle path, but occasionally I want to just chuck it all and start over with my life or push away all the playful, silly stuff (and people). Finding the middle path is not always easy. Maybe it is all just my saturn return.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
the brother-in-law cometh
Michael's younger brother is coming to visit. He was originally scheduled to arrive today, but missed his flight and will be arriving tomorrow instead. It should be interesting to have him around for a week and a half.
I crashed pretty hard after my long, long farmer Jennie week. I fell asleep on the couch last night around 8pm, moved to the bed at 9pm, and woke up at 7am. I can't remember the last time I slept 11 hours!
We have finally chosen a name for the baby, "Amcharo". The word "amchara" came jumping out at me from a page in "the barn at the end of the world". "Amchara" is a Gaelic word for the beloved soul-comrade celebrated in ancient Celtic culture; the reflection of ones truest spirit. since it seemed feminine, we changed the "a" at the end to an "o". The "ch" is prounounced like a "k" so pronounced Am-KARO
Tonight we are going to have a silly, mellow night of eating a frozen pizza and popcorn and watching "March of the Penguins".
I crashed pretty hard after my long, long farmer Jennie week. I fell asleep on the couch last night around 8pm, moved to the bed at 9pm, and woke up at 7am. I can't remember the last time I slept 11 hours!
We have finally chosen a name for the baby, "Amcharo". The word "amchara" came jumping out at me from a page in "the barn at the end of the world". "Amchara" is a Gaelic word for the beloved soul-comrade celebrated in ancient Celtic culture; the reflection of ones truest spirit. since it seemed feminine, we changed the "a" at the end to an "o". The "ch" is prounounced like a "k" so pronounced Am-KARO
Tonight we are going to have a silly, mellow night of eating a frozen pizza and popcorn and watching "March of the Penguins".
Friday, June 16, 2006
one month countdown
wow, what a crazy week. yesterday and today I was up in Estes Park volunteering for the fleece show. I was there yesterday from 8am-7pm and today from 7am until 5pm, on my feet the whole time. (did ya notice yestrerday's blog was at 6am?) It was really amazing to see all the fleeces (161 total) and to be with the judge as she went through them all. When I came home yesterday, I was just bouncing and had a hard time going to sleep. I learned so much about what to look for and what is good and what is not good. Super cool.
Getting up at 5:15am wasn't really all that bad, and it RAINED! Hooray for moisture :) My main job today was as the scribe for the judge, so I really got to be her right-hand girl. Next time, I'm bringing up my good calculator...I hate using the dinky ones that you have to really punch to get the numbers to register.
I'm really glad I volunteered, and I'd like to do it again next year. Maybe next time I'll even have some fleeces entered in the show.
But now I'm home, and starting to crash...and only one month until my b'day when I'll be 29.
Getting up at 5:15am wasn't really all that bad, and it RAINED! Hooray for moisture :) My main job today was as the scribe for the judge, so I really got to be her right-hand girl. Next time, I'm bringing up my good calculator...I hate using the dinky ones that you have to really punch to get the numbers to register.
I'm really glad I volunteered, and I'd like to do it again next year. Maybe next time I'll even have some fleeces entered in the show.
But now I'm home, and starting to crash...and only one month until my b'day when I'll be 29.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
flooding and curling
so remember how we irrigated on Tuesday, and how Michael was in charge of the water from dark until 7am...well I had a really interesting day yesterday.
Michael had a big day at work, so we tag-teamed again, and I was supposed to stay home in the morning to wait for our vet to come check out the new baby. When he left at 7:30, I went and fed the animals. When I came back into the house 5 minutes later I heard a panicked voice on the answering machine saying "6 inches of water in my barn, and I can't even open the barn doors to get my animals out, could you check your dams and please call me...". shit. so I called up the neighbor who was supposed to take the water over at 9am and said "take it, take it now!" and called the neighbor who's brand new barn we had flooded to say that I'd check on the dams and see what I could do.
The vet came (yay Dr. Tim) and checked out the new baby and got a blood sample to send off to test for the dreaded bvdv. Then I trecked out into the pasture to see what was going on. Oh, yes, there was clearly a problem. There was so much water that it was flowing off the end of our property and making a straight path down the small slope to the neighbor's barn. I checked the dams in a few places, built one new mud dam to hold back some of the water flow from one ditch, and across the property line I created a new pseudo dam/earth wall/new ditch by digging the heavy clay mud. While I was doing this, I could see my neighbor at her barn, and I asked her if I could help her out...
so I went to my neighbor's barn where I learned that we got lucky that we didn't electrocute their horses. There were several inches of standing water in the barn, and in the middle of the barn was a fan that was plugged in (partly submerged). She said that when she did get the barn doors open, she saw that the fan was still on even though it was partly underwater.
So I helped her move her stack of hay bales, the pallets the hay was on, the bags of stall bedding that were soaked, and then worked on getting the water out of the barn by using a push broom to force the water out. After we got the bulk of the water out, she pulled out the hose with the high-pressure nozzle and as she sprayed the stall-mat covered floor to get rid of the layer of silt/mud, I pushed the water along. Let me tell you, the center of their barn was the low spot, so it was like pushing water up from the center of a bowl...you need a lot of momentum to really get it up over the lip.
So their barn got clean, their animals didn't die, and there was only a small amount of damage to the hay and bedding. And I got a new appreciation for Olympic curlers. (my whole back is SO sore today)
I'm heading up to Estes Park to assist the fleece judging for the wool market. I'll be up there all day today and tomorrow...more farm tales to come.
Michael had a big day at work, so we tag-teamed again, and I was supposed to stay home in the morning to wait for our vet to come check out the new baby. When he left at 7:30, I went and fed the animals. When I came back into the house 5 minutes later I heard a panicked voice on the answering machine saying "6 inches of water in my barn, and I can't even open the barn doors to get my animals out, could you check your dams and please call me...". shit. so I called up the neighbor who was supposed to take the water over at 9am and said "take it, take it now!" and called the neighbor who's brand new barn we had flooded to say that I'd check on the dams and see what I could do.
The vet came (yay Dr. Tim) and checked out the new baby and got a blood sample to send off to test for the dreaded bvdv. Then I trecked out into the pasture to see what was going on. Oh, yes, there was clearly a problem. There was so much water that it was flowing off the end of our property and making a straight path down the small slope to the neighbor's barn. I checked the dams in a few places, built one new mud dam to hold back some of the water flow from one ditch, and across the property line I created a new pseudo dam/earth wall/new ditch by digging the heavy clay mud. While I was doing this, I could see my neighbor at her barn, and I asked her if I could help her out...
so I went to my neighbor's barn where I learned that we got lucky that we didn't electrocute their horses. There were several inches of standing water in the barn, and in the middle of the barn was a fan that was plugged in (partly submerged). She said that when she did get the barn doors open, she saw that the fan was still on even though it was partly underwater.
So I helped her move her stack of hay bales, the pallets the hay was on, the bags of stall bedding that were soaked, and then worked on getting the water out of the barn by using a push broom to force the water out. After we got the bulk of the water out, she pulled out the hose with the high-pressure nozzle and as she sprayed the stall-mat covered floor to get rid of the layer of silt/mud, I pushed the water along. Let me tell you, the center of their barn was the low spot, so it was like pushing water up from the center of a bowl...you need a lot of momentum to really get it up over the lip.
So their barn got clean, their animals didn't die, and there was only a small amount of damage to the hay and bedding. And I got a new appreciation for Olympic curlers. (my whole back is SO sore today)
I'm heading up to Estes Park to assist the fleece judging for the wool market. I'll be up there all day today and tomorrow...more farm tales to come.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
farmer...me!
Today I was really Farmer Jennie...it was our day to irrigate our pasture (about 4 acres get irrigated).
We get to flood irrigate about once a year, twice if we're really lucky when there is lots of extra water. This has been a particularly hot, dry year, and our pasture is really suffering because we really haven't had any rain. This time last year our pasture was so lush and fabulous that the grass was up to my chest (seriously). When we cut our pasture last year we got nearly 200 bales of hay. This year, we probably won't cut it at all because is just isn't tall in the places it is growing, and hasn't even come up in large patches of the pasture.
So today was our irrigation day. Michael had to go to work because of some crazy busy stuff happening, so I stayed home all day and was totally in charge of the irrigation from 9am until 6pm when Michael returned. I've never done this before myself, eventhough Michael and I have worked together on it the last 2 years.
The way flood irrigation works is this...there are ditches that run the perimiter of the pasture, and in some places ditches that run through the pasture. when it is your turn for the water, you go to the main dam switch and open and close the right dams so that the water flows down the ditch to your propery. Then, at your property you need to set up dams along your ditches to get the water to flow out into the pasture and then throughout the day, you need to move the location of the dams so that you end up flooding the entire area. The idea is pretty simple, but the land is not 100% flat, so you've got to figure out how to trick the water into flowing onto the high spots and how not to flood your neighbor's lawns, and on and on. The dams are big pieces of tarp that are attached to long 2x4 boards that you can set wherever you want along the ditch (there are no pre-set locations).
So today I was the farmer walking around in my knee-high waterproof muckboots with shovel in hand (for shoving the fabric of the tarp-dams into the mud). I would go outside on the hour to move the dams that needed to move and then check the dams that were stationary to make sure they hadn't blown a leak. Each trip out would take 20-30 minutes, then I would come inside, do some work for 30min or so, and then back out...a long, long day.
But I think I was successful, and Michael and I played tag (he's it) after dinner, so now he's on ditch duty throughout the night (we get the water for 24hrs). 4 eggs today.
We get to flood irrigate about once a year, twice if we're really lucky when there is lots of extra water. This has been a particularly hot, dry year, and our pasture is really suffering because we really haven't had any rain. This time last year our pasture was so lush and fabulous that the grass was up to my chest (seriously). When we cut our pasture last year we got nearly 200 bales of hay. This year, we probably won't cut it at all because is just isn't tall in the places it is growing, and hasn't even come up in large patches of the pasture.
So today was our irrigation day. Michael had to go to work because of some crazy busy stuff happening, so I stayed home all day and was totally in charge of the irrigation from 9am until 6pm when Michael returned. I've never done this before myself, eventhough Michael and I have worked together on it the last 2 years.
The way flood irrigation works is this...there are ditches that run the perimiter of the pasture, and in some places ditches that run through the pasture. when it is your turn for the water, you go to the main dam switch and open and close the right dams so that the water flows down the ditch to your propery. Then, at your property you need to set up dams along your ditches to get the water to flow out into the pasture and then throughout the day, you need to move the location of the dams so that you end up flooding the entire area. The idea is pretty simple, but the land is not 100% flat, so you've got to figure out how to trick the water into flowing onto the high spots and how not to flood your neighbor's lawns, and on and on. The dams are big pieces of tarp that are attached to long 2x4 boards that you can set wherever you want along the ditch (there are no pre-set locations).
So today I was the farmer walking around in my knee-high waterproof muckboots with shovel in hand (for shoving the fabric of the tarp-dams into the mud). I would go outside on the hour to move the dams that needed to move and then check the dams that were stationary to make sure they hadn't blown a leak. Each trip out would take 20-30 minutes, then I would come inside, do some work for 30min or so, and then back out...a long, long day.
But I think I was successful, and Michael and I played tag (he's it) after dinner, so now he's on ditch duty throughout the night (we get the water for 24hrs). 4 eggs today.
Monday, June 12, 2006
(Another) New Alpaca Baby!
Today we came home from work to discover that Angel had her baby! The baby boy had been born sometime earlier in the day, and was totally dry and up and walking around when we found him. And he's beige with darker beige/brown spots!
I am just googoo over this new baby. He looks so much like his brother, the alpaca baby that died last year of a bacterial infection when he was 1month old. Throughout the evening I kept checking on him and staring at him...and praying that this little guy will have a long and healthy life. I don't pray often, and thinking about it in this moment, I'm not really sure who I was praying to...maybe just setting the intention...but seeing his face--the same face I was googoo over last year...I just want this baby to live! I've already got some photos of him posted in my myspace photos. If you have suggestions for names, I'll be glad to take ideas!
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