Morning Fog

After a series of blog decorating disasters, I am now back to the old appearance, outdated links and all. Spring cleaning is not over yet though!

Young sheep, particularly when under the influence of the lushness and abundance of spring pasture, will do odd things. They jump straight up, all four legs like pistons, and run off at full speed in random directions. They stick their head through gaps in fences and find themselves stuck like prisoners in stocks. Even the older ones get in on the action. Some shed years and play like lambs. Some drop dead for no discernible reason, as if they just felt like doing something new. In that same vein, I have decided to adopt their brave spirit of self-destructive irrationality and make some changes to the "look and feel" of this weblog. Please bear with me until the fit passes and I make peace with the new blogger interface. If there are any designers out there who feel pity for an html and CSS challenged lawyer/farmer, drop me a line!

My Town on an April Morning

Two views of Main Street






Royal Avenue



Courthouse

Here is the morning view of the mountains. Yes, that is snow dusting the ridge line of Hogback Mountain. April's sweet showers are falling as flakes in the higher elevations. Tonight the temperature drops into the twenties with high winds driving it down even further. The National Weather Service gives us the following special weather statement: WIND CHILL READINGS ARE EXPECTED TO FALL INTO THE LOWER TEENS ACROSS THE OUTLYING SUBURBS AND MORE RURAL VALLEYS...AND INTO THE SINGLE DIGITS ACROSS THE HIGHER TERRAIN IN THE MOUNTAINS. The sheep are safely tucked into the barn and I am trying to remember where I put the hammer I use to chip the ice off the water troughs.

Morning Clouds 3-31-04

We are now well into Lent as well as Spring, past the halfway point with the Paschal celebration in sight. As usual, I have accomplished less than intended, kept the fast less well than I wanted and live no less comfortably with my many faults than I did before. Still, without the annual discipline, what state might I be in? I don't have any deep thoughts about the season. For that I would recommend a work like Alexander Schmemann's Great Lent. There are great treasures in the services and the disciplines of the Fast. Still, for me it is more like one of our more mundane chores here on the farm, walking the fencelines. Sheep, like my thoughts, tend to wander off from their own pastures with small respect for boundaries or even their own health and safety. We fence them in with posts and fence rails, mesh wire, barbed wire, old stone walls, whatever is available. Some things work better then others. Even the best fence fails sometimes. Tree limbs fall at inconvenient places. Gullies wash out under wire fences leaving escape tunnels for fugitive sheep. Every so often, we need to walk the fencelines, repairing a tear here, removing a fallen tree there, piling rocks or logs to close a gap under the fence. It won't keep the sheep from trying. It won't even keep a few from succeeding in sneaking through. But, with luck and a little grace, it does keep us from waking up and finding the entire flock chewing it's way to town down either side of the blacktop. Likewise, the disciplines of Lent may not have made much of a dent in my own wayward nature, but they do remind me of where the fences are.

We are now a week into Spring, and the only signs so far on our Hillside Farm (besides the flock of disgruntled robins hopping around in last week's snow flurries) are the green spears of new grass in the pasture. The equinox is a time when light and darkness are in balance. Our weather is oscillating between warm and cold, dry and wet, perhaps seeking a balance of it's own, a kind of climatic equipoise.

Gideon Strauss put out a call last week for "Manifestos", those great declarations of principle and purpose that signal some person or group's intent to shake the world. I am, I confess, not a manifesto kind of person. Between a law practice and farm chores, I have enough to keep me busy. If you add in an ongoing effort to absorb 2000 years worth of Orthodox teaching and spiritual life, it leaves me hard pressed to figure out how I can fruitfully meddle with anything I am not directly responsible for. Since I have no crusade of my own to charge off on, here for Mr. Strauss' reading pleasure is a Manifesto from one of my favorite authors:

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

It has been well over a month since my last update. We hover on the verge of spring, warm days see-sawing with cold. Lambing is not quite over. The Hampshires in the purebred part of the flock are still greeting us with surprises in the barn every few mornings. I had intended a gala blog update on Sunday, but discovered that one of our ewes had presented us with not one, not two, but three lambs. Some ewes can raise triplets on their own, but by and large, sheep who can count to three seem to be a rarity. This ewe presents a particular difficulty. Only one of the two teats a sheep comes naturally equipped with is functional on her. With three customers, demand clearly outstrips supply. We left the largest lamb with her and fostered the other two out with a neighbor.

In a break between winter storms, the temperature rose above freezing yesterday for the first time in weeks. The snow and ice in the barnyard melted, turning the ground into a kind of brown soup. I like changes that the seasons and the vagaries of weather bring to our place but I have to confess that having the evening feeding turn into the retreat from Moscow is not one of my favorite things. The temperature dropped back quickly after sunset and the rivulets of water on top of the melting snow flash froze into little beads of ice. Disturbed by my passage, they cascaded down the hill in a shower of tintinnabulation, tiny bells ringing over the refrozen snow.

Each morning, before putting the coat and tie that mark my role as lawyer and public servant, I dress in my hand-me-down Carhart coveralls, pick up a fifty pound feed sack and walk down to the barn. This morning I put the digital camera in a pocket next to the hoof trimmers and baling twine. It's a different crowd than you find in the Courthouse, but some days just as troublesome. This morning was a good one though. A ewe managed her first lamb without help sometime in the night and I found it strong and warm in a corner of the barn. When I was able to get mother and child together, the two of them went into a pen out of the weather for the next couple of days. The sheep pictured below are checking for the last bits of grain before heading out to the field, the llama looking on like a courtroom bailiff. The new arrival was a little camera shy, but one of the older lambs was willing to stop and pose. The ewe whose eartag proclaims her as Number 1 was not interested in modeling, but kept in a corner of the picture in case the small box I was holding turned out to have something to do with food.

Hogback Returns



High winds at dawn, first sun in days.

We keep a close watch on the flock as the weather closes in. The rams are pretty self-sufficient. They have their shed, a round bale for grazing when the grass has gone dormant for the winter, and a daily ration of grain. The ewes and their lambs are more of a challenge. With hoses and outside faucets frozen, we hand carry water to new mothers in pens. Ewes persist in giving birth in the draftiest parts of the barn, or outside in snowdrifts. The weaker of a set of twins in particularly vulnerable in these conditions. The heat lamp is hung in the basement, ready for the next chilled newborn.

Buck Mountain in Snow



Days of light snow and freezing drizzle have converted our vistas to grayscale. Hogback and the ridgeline of Skyline drive vanished Sunday afternoon and haven't been seen since.

Withered by winter
the sound of the wind--
one-color world

Basho

(Trans. Stephen Addis)

I have started a new essay on my much neglected other blog, The Suburban Ascetic. I hope to survey the situation of Orthodoxy in the contemporary global culture, starting with a look backwards to the past. I cannot promise more than a paragraph or two a night (or every other night.) Nonetheless, if you are interested, stop on by.

Cold weather can mean hard times on the farm. Most of our lambs are born at night, in the shelter of the barn. Nonetheless, a sizeable few make a daylight arrival. No problem on mild days; in some ways it is better for them than the barn. On days like these though, it is a risk and a challenge. Our daytime temperatures have been below freezing, with wind-chills hovering near zero. A lamb born healthy can get pneumonia in minutes. A lamb that needs a little extra care may be frozen solid by evening when we check the fields one last time before closing the barn. We lost two lambs last week. One, a weak twin that never thrived after being born outside in a patch of grass not quite covered by snow. The second, I found frozen in the pile of leaves his mother had left him in while she came in for the morning feeding. As I took away the small bodies, both ewes were calling, crying out to their lambs, not understanding where they went, or why they wouldn't come.

A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.

The predicted snow never arrived, but the cold front that was supposed to be carrying it did, bringing single digit night time temperatures with wind-chills that literally take your breath away. I am getting over a bout with some seasonal virus, so took a shepherd's crook with me down to the barn to have something to lean on for a bit until my breath caught up again. I use an oak crook, cheap, heavy and shoulder high. There are better ones on the market, even a few high tech fiberglass and alloy crooks, but none that will stand up to a season with our big hampshire sheep like the old clumsy oak. As I walked, the ground was frozen so hard that the crook rang like a wooden bell as it struck with each step, my own semantron, calling to morning prayer.

More snow predicted for tonight. Today's picture is last week's snowfall, just an inch or so. It was dry and slick, more like cornstarch than frozen water. Down in the barn lot it mixed with bits of dust and soil desicated from sub-zero wind chills. Carrying the feed buckets for the sheep, I kicked up brown and white powder and watched float it in the cold air before settling again.

We are well into lambing. The barn is half full of ewes with their offspring. The intensive care ward is in its usual place under a heat lamp in the basement. This year a friend who lives nearby has taken in a few of the lambs needing bottle feeding. We gave her one to keep, and Susan tells me it is neatly diapered and living in the house. I refrain from comment, grateful for the big heart that takes some of the burden off of us as we try and get through this part of the farm cycle and still hold down off-farm jobs.