Grandpa's Haymow (The Secret Place)

 We appreciate what we have after we no longer have it

 

I unhook the latch on the door and climb over the ancient
threshold of the haymow erected when grandpa was little.
The wind moans and groans through the cracks in the boards
and the door swings and bangs on its rusted hinge.
The smell of hay baled in summer and stacked for winter
from floor to rafters to a peekaboo window
the fun of seeing without being seen. But there—

A cache of eggs in a bowl of straw.

Brown and warm, chocolate and tan

Hens who like to sit, murmur, and coo

Beneath a watertight roof safe and secure.

Puffed-up doves preen in the rafters.

One flies overhead, east to west, the length of day.

Temperatures drop, wind rifts through the cracks

The sound of eaves dripping,

November come calling.

But the mow stays dry, a refuge from the farm on the farm.

I write in here. If I were a bird I’d nest in here.

If I were an owl, I’d sleep in here. 

If I were a architect I construct this here.

But they don't make barns like this anymore.

The resident cat from a long line of felines is on patrol.

When dad had dairy there were many of them.

Does she have a batch of newborns curled in a ball

In grandpa’s hay mow? 

A melodic song from high in the rafters

Stirs the hair on my arm.

No common sparrow this trilling song. Doves don’t mind

Our looking at them but somewhere up there—

Where no light can shine, nor eye can see

Perches an uncommon bird warbling a song.

My breath freezes in frame like a cat on the prowl

But this diminutive bird

Compelled to sing of the day 

Remains hidden from me.

 

For dVerse, a poem about a building that was more than a building to me.

 

No Bullshit. Just Books. And Farming......

 Because it seems the only writing I have time for in the summer is my farm newsletter, I feel compelled to share part of one here. My blog needs entries and followers and more attention then I can properly give it.  But first, an important caveat, meet my publisher.  UNSOLICITED PRESS.   "No bullshit. Just books." For all you poets out there, they publish a good deal of poetry. And, of course, cutting edge fiction.

Now, for the dirt.

                                                               Sister

                                            Earlier Tomatoes

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. The rain in the Thumb falls mainly elsewhere. Sister swears there was a sprinkle in the night, a mist, a dewdrop, a splattering of wind, a phantom in the night on a whoosh of vapor.

 

I woke to a full moon, the light shining on the plastic of the high tunnel stretched taut across the braces. The air is still and the crickets chirp. I step outside to test the air, the dampness on the wide walk, a trace of rain in the night. The moon rides high in the sky, a beacon over the Earth, and a car passes swiftly on the road. The eastern sky is bright with the new day, yet still the moon outshines it, high above the highest tree that banks the creek bed. The rain gauge measure three-tenths of an inch. We've been extremely dry so count the tenths as a blessing.

 

Thus begins the day—coffee time, writing time—till the rooster crows, the cat jumps on the windowsill demanding breakfast, and the corgi thumps up the stairs, all thirty pounds of him, wanting outside. He likes to chase the chickens, but with the new poultry fence installed none are getting out, and his fun has been stymied.

This week our CSA contains our second planting of cabbage. We planted more lettuce and hid it from the rabbits. The summer has wearied us with his weirdness. In checking last year’s garden log, I pulled all the winter squash between Sept. 1^st and the 8^th. Here we are, as I write this, on September 12, 2022 and none appear ready. I thump the watermelons with my knuckles waiting for the hollow drum sound, I turn the acorns in search of the telltale ground spots. I wonder what imp stole my eggplant for surely there had to have been more. We pull onions to dry and wonder why they are small. We pray the peppers will turn red before frost. Our major successes have been our beets, chard, tomatoes, and garlic. What garlic is left must be saved for replanting, and we need speak no further on the tomato bounty.

For those of you who don't know (or care?) the tomato harvest has been phenomenal. Heirlooms can be finicky, but this summer's heat has agreed with them. Even the Costoluto, the Italian heirloom that craves Mediterranean heat, has been happy here in the Great Lakes Basin. 

Now, back to writing before I have to pick up the hoe.

Over and out and hoping for comments. I insist, some day I'm going to be famous. 😃📖📖

Prose Before Hoes

I have a new hoe. 

Hoes are essential tools for the organic gardener, from the standard (grandma hoe) to stirrup hoes, collinear hoes, trapezoid hoes and hand hoes, all in different sizes for tackling different weeds. Then, reigning above the affordable, there's the almighty Glaser Wheel Hoe, a 12" oscillating hoe that has always been priced out of my reach. I secretly covet it as I browse early spring catalogs and think golly wouldn't that be sweet?  Did you even know there were so many hoes? 

But even in spring when the garlic sprigs have burst through the soil, promising summer, the pen pulls at my heart.  My take on this popular meme (Prose Before Hoes) often paired with Shakespeare's likeness on shirts and mugs, is literal.  All this cute little saying means to the writers amoungst us who deal in dirt is that instead of toiling in the garden, working up a sweat, we'd prefer to bury ourselves in writing. If we struggling poets and writers/gardeners didn't put our prose before hoes how would we ever have time to write masterpieces and assemble chapbooks? 

I suppose if I devoted more time to seedlings and markets of a different sort, I could  spring for a Glaser Hoe. But then I'd have to enlist more help and reward them accordingly and, oh well, you see the dilemma of a small time gardener who secretly wants to dabble in words the day long and live frugally.

Happy Planting-a-Tree-Earth Day, but other than the 22nd, I'm going to try to keep my prose before my hoe!!

Over and out to the dirt I go.

Chores

The wind waters my eyes as I carry a 5-gallon bucket of water from the hydrant to the molting chickens. I plug in a heat lamp at the back of the coop so the eggs don't freeze.They aren't laying as they should but still need to be tended, fed, bedded and watered. The temperature is dropping and chickens can't be without water, even when they're molting.

Snowflakes drift down from the overhung sky. The wind rises. I set the basket of eggs on a board in front of the bins where we store feed and containers at night so they don't draw rats-a measly four eggs from a flock of fifty- open the lids and eye the feed I have left for the week. Yesterday, I pulled dead pepper plants and some mustard and fennel gone to seed out of the hoophouse and threw it into these hungry chickens. Today, it was a jar of dill pickles that failed to pickle and a delicata squash with a soft spot. They like squash. The pickles lie untouched, along with the sprig of dill and the clove of garlic. Finicky.

I step off the board and it seesaws, tipping the basket over. The eggs roll out and one breaks on the hard ground. I scoop it up and put it in the cat's dish He eats good too.  Who says farming is hard?

The Winter Warrior

The sun burns a path through the morning fog

to capture the transient russets and golds along the road

that wither and waste with winter’s approach as a lone tractor creeps

across a field on a final till fore the ground is left

to settle and sleep and recover.

The old man on the tractor across the way

feels each bump and dip through his booted feet up to his hips,

he knows the clay and the sandy hill and the stubborn drain

of the muddy low. The lay of the land is choreographed

in the analytic brain of our winter warrior

who refuses to go south with the rest of his friends.

This is where I’m from, from how far I’ve come

to come back to the quiet of October russets

where the birds hover and hide in the dry rustle of the corn.

They swoop across the land in flocks

for they need their kind come winter.

For now they rest in the standing corn

as the tractor crawls across the field with a man at the wheel—

an old tractor that needs a firm hand on the wheel,

the swollen knuckles of the winter warrior.

Mesclun Mix and Pterodactyls

"The Organic Writer" has been woefully neglected.

With spring, garden planning, seeding, and prepping always takes precedence over blogging, but before I knew it, near three months had elapsed without paying a visit.

Oh! The frozen lake! Shudder. Time to move those pictures down the page. Today a picture of our pond in spring:

From end to end, a good place to cool off in the heat of summer after bailing hay or weeding rows of beets and chard and garlic....

It isn't all idyllic around here. I've been dodging pterodactyls, planting onions, chasing chickens, and weeding the rhubarb and the asparagus, the first tips of which are emerging. Spring has been slow arriving but the tulips are opening and grass will soon need to be cut. And it won't be long before we'll be jumping off that dock.

Yesterday, as I watered our seedlings and salad mix inside the greenhouse a large winged shadow suddenly flapped around the outside of the doomed roof, up and over, flap, flap, across and over, trying to find a way in. From inside it looked huge, like a pterodactyl brushing against the plastic, looking for entry. The plastic amplifies everything. If it is sprinkling outside, it sounds like a steady rain inside. If it’s a steady rain outside, it sounds like a downpour inside. I darted outside to see what the shadow was, but only a common crow flew off towards the chicken coop, and I went back inside. Crows can’t cart off a chicken like a hawk will. 

Back to the mesclun mix....

Doesn't it look yummy? Spicy and ass-kicking! Now for the picking. The farmers' market season opens Saturday and it seems the only writing I have time for then is the weekly CSA newsletter. But I hope to post more updates here about things of interest, and I think everyone has an interest in food and how it's grown on an organic farm. 

Oh, and a swim in the pond and a writing session on the dock.

Let's not be strangers!

What Would You Do With A Day Of Solitude?

Alone for the day. They ask, What are you going to do in that quiet house, all alone? What will you do with ALL that time? 

Shall I waste it? Daydream and piddle it away?  Drink, dance, light candles and incense, play music and write? Write and write and write? Time well wasted. A beautiful wasted afternoon. 

But dusk gathers, and I’m a chicken farmer as well as a writer. Eggs are gathered in baskets and await their sorting and boxing, but now I must go outside into the bitter cold one last time to shut the hens in for the night.

In the light of the quarter moon, the greenhouse glistens like a snow globe and each frosted blade of grass across the expanse of lawn is an ice crystal twinkling like fairy dust in the headlights of my pickup. I’m a chicken farmer and winter has arrived at last. The ground is frozen so my boots won’t sink into the mire that surrounded the chicken coops from the rain and slush preceding Christmas. There was no hope of it drying under the gunmetal sky with the low light of the winter solstice. No hope of a terra firma without the air temperature dipping into the twenties and staying there. Staying there.

I’m a chicken farmer and with dusk the chickens are back inside and roosting, and I must shut the coops. Roosting, they are vulnerable to any creature that might chose to invade the coop under cover of night: the coons and the skunks, the mink, fox and ground hogs, all hungry for a tasty chicken on a cold winter’s night, a meal worth the risk of a foray into populated areas. So I must cross the poultry fence in the light of the headlights I aimed to light my way. I traipse across the frozen blades of fairy grass that crunch underfoot like tiny bones to secure the coop, shut out the varmints and protect the sleeping chickens that turn comatose with the setting of the sun. Lively creatures by day, they turn silent and immobile by night, becoming even more defenseless than they naturally are. 

The stars that populate the sky and the moon at half-mast help to light my way and I reach the open door without tripping over the poultry fence or the feeders or the big stick one must carry by day to ward off the rooster with his spurs. The hens are lined up on their roosts like sparrows on a high wire. The white rooster is on the top rung surrounded by his adoring flock. He lifts his head and gives me a baleful look but doesn't budge from his perch. I slam the door shut and wedge a board against it for added protection against the crafty coon with crafty hands that can turn handles and unlatch fences. Sleep settles over the coop buttoned up for the night, and all are safe. I’m no longer a chicken farmer. I’m a writer.

Bold Red Fox, Dead Red Hen

Fox have found our chicken coop and they've been taking them out in broad daylight, one by one. A neighbor alerted us to the dead chicken in their yard and fox in the driveway. Fox on the prowl. The egg count is down and now we know why. We wonder how long it's been going on, From a flock of one hundred, you could lose a few and not realize it. We close up the coop at night once the birds are all inside. They are safe at night. But daytime is killing time. Now we know.

The fox slip through the poultry fence like eels through sea grass. Nothing can stop them except a ten gauge, a keen eye and a steady finger.The loaded gun sits by the back door, though I don't like it there. We guard the poultry fence towards dusk when the chickens are still outside foraging. We watch the field, the woods, the fencerow.

We can't go to town, or down the road to dinner, can't weed the asparagus or trellis the tomatoes. Here they come across the open field, bolder than fox should be. There one goes out of range at a brisk trot with a chicken in its mouth, disappearing into the woods. Feathers on the ground. Carnage in the fencerow. Buzzards overhead, cleaning up after the fox.

We mull the fate of the birds we've raised, nurtured through winter with heat lamps to ward off the frigid wind, and now move around on open pasture, water and pamper for the eggs they give us. They are just now beginning to reach their peak egg production. All the hard work through winter was just beginning to pay off.

The Blackbird and the Strawberry

Observe the girl eating a strawberry. Observe the cattle observing her. They line the electric fence bordering the patch and watch with unblinking eyes. Some become bored with her repetition and chomp on grass, others chew their cuds as the calves scamper to and fro. They follow her progress along the 300-foot row and jostle each other for a view. Their fence runs out. Her row continues. She leaves them behind. 

Her fingers seek the silver dollar-sized berries hidden under the leaves in the center of the plant, heavy with ripeness and replete with moisture, nestled out of sight of the most keen-sighted blackbird. She holds them by the stem and drops them in the box.

The strawberry plant is the perfect camouflage, the perfect fruit. It needs no fungicides or chemicals. It needs no genetic tinkering. She regrets her father's position.

The odor from the animals wafts on the whip of their tails, earthy and fungal, not unpleasant, but memory-laden. The cattle, the grass, fresh cut hay in the air and holding hands in the night. A memory.

The Cocoon

I've been gone so long I can scarce find my way back. I've missed coming around and reading your blogs and participating in Friday Flash Fiction and Magpie Sunday Tales. In case my blog should disappear from lack of interest, I click on it ocassionally to look at the water. But all too quickly, I'm called away to my lettuces and radishes, radicchio and kale, picking asparagus and tending finicky peppers that need this and that and tomatoes that must soon be staked. And then there are the weeds.

I fall into bed at night, earlier and earlier, like the most boring person on earth. In the wee hours of morning I look at my manuscript, portions stacked here and there (cause I'm a hands-on-paper kind of writer), and wonder how long I can persevere in my search for the perfect agent who will love its strengths more than they dislike its problems.

Spring and summer are always like this, no time to write, guilt-ridden at nightfall, but too tired to do anything about it. Achy legs find surcease between the sheets and achy heart burrows into the soft cocoon of blankets and dreams of water, an orderly garden, and a writing life.

But wait....have you ever had Canada geese fly overhead so low you could hear the whoosh whoosh of their wings? I was standing on my front porch admiring the idyllic scene of cattle on grass, when I heard the familiar honking of a resident pair. They flew in just over the power lines with their necks outstretched. I was surprised at the intensity of sound, much like the flapping of a dozen sheets on a clothesline. Geese fly slow and methodical, and the air displaced by their wing span left a tremor in the air. I watched as they disappeared over the tree line, wondering at their destination, wondering what they see from up there.

The Staff Of Life

The wheat has ripened to a golden wave, and the harvest has begun. Wheat is impervious to dry heat. It likes it.  I collect the leavings the harvester missed at the row ends and along the edge of the field, like a gleaner. Nothing should be wasted. The oats are next and then the barley. The grains make beautiful arrangements.

Walking the field at sunset I think of Woody Guthrie and his anthems for this land. I wonder what he would think of the preponderance of gated communities and fences that block the view of our lakeshores, the signs that tell us to keep out and hamper our wanderings. Woody knew that all who wander are not lost. I’m proud that my father always posted signs that said: Hunting Permitted. People were respectful. 

This land is your land

This land is my land

From California to the Blue Ridge Mountains

From the Gulf Stream waters

To the redwood forest,

This land was made for you and me. 

As I was walking along the highway

I saw a sign that said

NO TRESPASSING

But on the back side

It didn’t say nothing

That’s the side for you and me. 

-Woody Guthrie

p.s.
After posting this, I noticed the headline in Poets and Writers: A Lost Novel by Woody Guthrie
Isn't that bizarre??

Grab Hold Of Your Writing Life

To close out May (can you believe it?),  I thought I'd share a great post by Pete Morin on how to write fiction that others will want to read. It doesn't hurt that he ends with a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of my favorite "Beat" poets.


To close out May, I thought you'd like to see a picture of our cattle when they were first put out on pasture this spring, where they're supposed to be. It's a little blurry but can still say a thousand words, no?

And one of our plump hens:

My daughter's Corgi rounding one of them up:

And the solar panels at the farm:

To close out May, I'd like to boast that we've planted 140 tomato plants in two days, all by hand, but I don't have a picture of that. Now that the bulk of the planting is done, I hope June affords me time to research my A list for agents, but how do I show you a picture of that? Maybe this Scribbler Award that Tricia O'Brien, one of my oldest blogging buddies, gave me a long time ago will do.

See you all in June!

Friday Flash 55

THE SILK AND THE TASSEL

They called her into the corn field
and said they just wanted to look at it.
She studied the silk and tassel above her head,
not knowing they were the male and female parts
that together formed the cob.
They whispered against her thighs
and clucked their tongues
and a flock of blackbirds darkened the sky.

If you can write a flash story in exactly 55 words that you want to share, post it and then visit the G-Man who moderates Flash Fiction Friday every Friday.

TGIF

What's Under Your Sink

I would like to share a post from Zev, an activist farmer that could enhance your life and your health, maybe even save it. As Zev shows us, everyone can be an activist. If you think you're too small to make a difference, you've never been bitten by a mosquito.

Hey....I just realized this is my 200th post!

Fitting it should be about something so important, something I would climb on the soapbox for.

Am I supposed to have a contest or a cyber cocktail party or something? No, I think I'll save that for when I reach 200 followers or nail an agent.

Like next year for sure!

Cock And Hen

The chickens murmur and coo while I fill their watering cans.
They cluck appreciation for hand-tossed grain and dart to and fro on spindly legs.
The ebony rooster with a red comb fluffs his feathers against the October sky.
He cocks his head and eyes my approach, runs and hides in the tall grass, like a fledgling.
He’s shy, this flamboyant rooster with the gallant tail feathers.
When he doesn’t think we see, he stands quietly midst his flock, head high.
They peck at his feet and pay homage to his plume.

One hen from another flock,
new to the coop and confused,
escaped under the poultry fence
and nested under the Russian sage beside the house.
I find eggs under the purple foliage.
She likes it there.

Strawberry Fields Forever

I know y'all get tired of me carrying on about organics and genetically engineered crops and Monsanto's herbicides, but a new development is so upsetting I simply have to vent and share it with you. Whole Foods, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farms have all surrendered to Monsanto.

As reported in the Organic Consumer Association's newsletter, "These companies have betrayed their customers and publically stated that they no longer oppose Monsanto's efforts to contaminate our farmland with their genetically engineered alfalfa. Monsanto's GE alfalfa is a perennial crop, guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers . . ."

If you are concerned about our nation's food supply and the decline of the honeybee, which has been directly contributed to the use of GMO's, please read the article and take action. We deserve truth in labeling and I think we all have the right to clean food on the table, if so desired. When asked if they want herbicides and genetically-modified organisms in their dairy products, meat and vegetables, most people say no, but then they don't do anything about it. We need to voice an opinion while there is still time. The only thing that will make a difference is if enough people voice opinion and follow through in the grocery store.

Thank you for reading this through to the end. The only thing more important than what we eat is the air we breathe. Every year we have to put up with Roundup spraying in the field across the road. Every year they come in with their big expensive tractors and tanks of poison and race up and down the field as the toxic brew billows out behind them. The fuckers don't even care which way the wind is blowing. We can be out there picking strawberries and there they are, getting it done.

Thanks for hearing me out. If you care, please pass the word.

What A Weasel Does

A weasel got in one of our chicken pens and killed 14 birds two nights ago. The havoc wrought by a weasel is that of a teenage vampire movie. They bite off the heads and drink the blood. But this isn’t a movie; this is life on the farm. It looks idyllic from afar. Many think we have it made. They haven’t gone outside on a blustery winter morning (when will this wind abate?) to find a slaughter.

Three more were killed last night in similar beheading fashion. The surviving chickens were very happy to see my husband this morning. Chickens are skittish (wouldn’t you be?) but once they got over the initial startle, they hung around his feet like a child under her mother’s skirt. After the cleanup he needed to go to the pharmacy and refill a blood pressure prescription he’d let lapse. This work will kill you in more ways than one.

He buried the beheaded in the compost piles—manure recently hauled out of the barnyard and spread in heaps along the field beyond the chicken area. It serves a dual purpose. One must get rid of the carcasses lest more vermin be attracted to the area, and digging in this frozen ground would probably put him in it.

It’s a devastating loss, and I’m sure it’s as crushing to my husband as agent rejection of my writing is to me, (though he shouldn't take it personally). Our fear is the weasel will be back, him and his buddies. It’s winter and food is scarce. He’ll be back. We have traps but weasels can weasel out of them, just as they can circumvent chicken wire. A friend suggested we put a radio out there. Play a little AC-DC or Alice In Chains. How about a little Marilyn Manson music for the weasel? I’m afraid he'd like it.