Sylvia's Farm (29 page)

I've adopted, once again after long disuse, a routine in which to do housework that allows for frequent excursions to lambs, now in no fewer than four places in three buildings, sheep in only two places, as well as cow, chickens, goats, et cetera. In fact the routine interrupts itself, but on such a regular basis that it hurries me along, rushing madly to beat the clock.

The carriage house lambs are doing well. I sat with them yesterday, for a while, in the afternoon, braiding tassels to attach to the violet I-am-to-stay necklaces that they so proudly wear. The better to remember and use their names. They prefer to be closer to eye level with me, I've noticed. Sheep as well as lambs. Some came to be petted who never raise up their faces to me when I am outside of their pen. I took a bag of yarn and some scissors and sat down in the middle of them. The black ram lambs, who are now Spencer and Thurgood Churchill (Randolph didn't make the cut), are in there also. As well as a fine, very fine, East Friesian cross ram lamb who is for sale as breeding stock. It would be so nice to make ribbons for the black twin lambs as well, but that feels as if I'm going a bit over the top.

Mrs. Hudson has been in my thoughts a great deal of late. The housekeeper of Sherlock Holmes. I'm having the most wonderful time with the series of Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes books written by Laurie King. “Mrs. Hudson, I'm home,” shouts Holmes. The smell of beeswax furniture polish and freshly baked scones, Mary will observe, indicates he was expected.

The scones are what are getting to me. And the memory of the kind of hot baths I've been, on the occasion of having thawed pipes, able to indulge in my huge claw-foot tub, the kind that Russell also indulges in. And so I tried to bake scones on the top of my new wood stove. The first batch was a moderate success. I used the bottom of a quiche pan,
well floured, directly on the griddle. I cut wedges of a round of buttermilk scone dough, firmly laced with some prunes which had been marinated in red wine, opened the damper, first mistake, and put on three very nice triangles of dough under a nicely rounded copper pot I bought a long time ago in France. The bottoms of the scones entertained the idea of burning. They scorched. Slightly. I turned them over onto the floured quiche pan bottom and cooked them a trifle too long again. However, and there is a very big however here, the steam that rose from them when I split them, the texture, and the aroma were absolutely perfect! Now, I don't know if Mrs. Hudson baked hers inside of the range or on its top. Neither Mrs. nor Mr. Holmes divulged that secret. And I don't know how she brought them from the kitchen to the table, keeping the insides hot enough to steam upon splitting them and thereby melting the butter. Herein lies their ability to enchant. But I do know that these, at least these without the bit of crust that Samantha, dog extraordinaire, was given, were worth the single-word paragraph written by Mary Russell at the onset of
Justice Hall
: “Scones.”

I've come close to the beeswaxed furniture look that Mrs. Hudson so lovingly achieved with a commercial product called Future. It makes the five wooden doors in my kitchen and the cupboard gleam with the soft shine that my living room furniture used to have when I could buy beeswax-and-turpentine furniture polish in London. Now that I have neighbors with bees I may try to blend the mix myself. Spring cleaning.

Spring shall be here in a matter of days. The sheep that became stranded in the snow this morning was looking for something green on which to nibble. She is very old. Has lived here for a very long time and considered it a reasonable occupation to head on out to find a bit of grass. I got her back, half lifting, half dragging, to a runoff which divides my pastures, through the mud and onto a bit of very
water-covered but semisolid earth. There she found the only green plants, about half an inch high, on which to nibble. The sheep are getting the greenest hay I've fed out this year. It is so very nice that I'm back to feeding it in feeders to reduce waste. Nonetheless, they seem to want fresh green pasture instead.

This day the air positively gleams. The sky is Connecticut blue. It is crystal clear. The outdoor thermometer indicates that a long-overdue January thaw is upon us. In March. Change has come slowly upon me. Sometimes I have had to force change. Demand it. Immediately. Usually during times of disaster. I read once that people in concentration camps had a better chance of survival when they didn't think about what had been left behind. I wonder what then happened upon escape or release. I used that piece of information, on occasion, to guide me through the heartbreak and despair that have often accompanied my effort to build this farm and become, myself, a farmer. Now change is before me once again. And while I make no demands upon myself to adjust to my escape and release from the burdens of banks and mortgages, those changes are happening slowly, quietly, gently, of their own accord.

While this February was the worst I have ever known, and the damage to the farm nearly catastrophic, the damage to me was slight. I had what I needed to live through it. Without being battered. Plenty of books to read in the middle of the night when worry and fear awoke me. Some nice chocolate and crystallized ginger occasionally to add to the pleasure. And the absolute freedom occasioned by my mortgage being paid in full. No disaster was compounded by the threat of losing my home. I become gradually, gently, slowly removed from the brutality that this life has sometimes occasioned. The lambs who survived this winter are so very beautiful. And we shall start anew.

T
HERE ARE
days so filled with abundance and goodwill and joy that are in so rare a combination that they are to be treasured. Yesterday was such a day. I've been wanting to build a cart in which to haul manure from my barn for quite some time. In this instance, quite some time means a few years. The cart of my dreams was described in a book called
Farm Conveniences and How to Make Them
, published by O. Judd in 1900 and Lyons Press about one hundred years later. The author, who does not seem to be identified, said it took him several years to work out the principles behind the construction of the cart. It needed balance, strength, and maneuverability. However, upon publication of the nineteenth-century version of written plans, small type, no diagrams, one picture, he believed he had achieved the perfect design. I suspect he was right. I shall, this summer, find out.

The wheels of the cart are to be four feet in diameter. The axle is fixed under the upper side bar, an unusual placement. Presumably this helps the cart to be balanced. The cart itself is eight feet long; therefore only two feet of cart stick out on either side of the wheels. The handles accommodate the length of a set of movable extenders, modifying the design, making them proportionally shorter. As I do not want the extenders, it shall be I who shall have to determine their length. I may take a great risk and change the design to accommodate shorter handles. I've been eyeing a particularly fine set of long handles in Tractor Supply. They are varnished. Long. A
chestnut brown. They may become the cart handles of choice. Some other designs I've seen for similar carts include bottom slats that pull out so the manure falls out as it is drawn across the fields. That requires the services of a very well-trained donkey, however, to draw the cart as I pull out the slats. I've failed, to date, to use Nunzio to advantage. So the first cart I am planning to build is to be one pushed by hand.

Nonetheless, the very first hurdle has been to find an axle and wheels. Whenever I am being driven around the countryside, I look for wheels. They are not hard to find but they are hard to come by. There would seem to be many, rusted or painted, leaning as decoration around gateposts or on lawns. As tempting as the thought is to drive up to someone's house to offer to buy the wheels, there never seems to be an accompanying axle. Axles are not in my realm of understanding as yet. I haven't looked at any closely enough to understand how friction doesn't bind them to whatever they are carrying; nonetheless, the ideal combination for me is a set of wheels and the very same axle by which the wheels are accustomed to be borne. Therefore, upon visiting a shepherd in Norwich to buy some Horned Dorset sheep, where I spied in a field some wheels that seemed to be hooked up to an axle, my first question was, “How much would you take for them?” His reply was, “I don't know.” I knew how much I had to spend. He didn't know how much he wanted. I left, a Horned Dorset ram and ewe in tow, leaving the wheels and axle behind.

A very short time later we spoke again on the phone, agreeing on a price. The price was reasonable both for him and to me. And so, yesterday, Ernest Westcott came in his blue pickup and off we went. The countryside is so beautiful this time of year. We rode for miles over the curving hills of Delaware and Otsego counties, apple trees in bloom and lilacs waiting for one more warm day to release their fragrance.

Before we arrived, Frank Tiffany had pulled the hay rake out of his junk pile. The assembly was exactly what I wanted. However, it needed to be dismantled to be put in the truck to transport home. This was utterly beyond me. Ernest and Frank dismantled the wheels from the rusty axle. Easily. A surprise. Frank said, “It was an all-day job, which took a few minutes.”

I had planned to do both my weekly grocery and feed mill shopping yesterday, as well. There could not possibly be room enough in the pickup for everything. I decided that we'd take the wheels and leave the axle and a back door that Frank had leaning against a building waiting in hopes of someone falling in love with it before it rotted (I did and bought it) for another time.

We loaded up the wheels onto the pickup and started the circuitous journey home. I was very happy. We managed to get all seven hundred pounds of grain on the truck and enough groceries to feed my family this weekend. We then headed on home.

When I arrived, I found a long, thin package on the front porch window seat. Inside was a plethora of treasures. A very long time ago, a tenant had left behind, they usually leave one treasure, the perfect garden trowel. Wooden handled. Finely balanced, nice in the hand. Eventually the handle fell off, and I was heartbroken. I still kept the handleless trowel, thinking that someday I might find a new one for it. The first thing I unwrapped from the box was a replica of that trowel. New. With years of service before it. I can now transplant some of the many volunteers, seedlings blown in from the perennial garden, in my lawn to more appropriate settings. There are enough for several new gardens.

Next was an engineer's compass. I've wanted one forever. It is designed to hang on a belt, and although it points to magnetic north, it was accompanied by instructions on how to correct it to designate true north. It has always seemed wiser to explore the woods
immediately beyond my hilltop with a compass to hand. Now I have one.

In a circular metal box were some exquisite little brass page pointers, paper thin, in the shape of an arrow to use to mark things in books. Or, rather, to indicate where in a book something is. How often have I tried to mark pages with tiny scraps of paper only to find they have fallen out.

I rarely have the opportunity to indulge in the more civilized accoutrements of life. Suddenly the acquisition of these delicate, pretty bronze metal arrows made me feel like a rich woman wrapped in abundance. Last but not least, wrapped in beige paper, was a long metal tube. Its color was a metallic tomato red. It was unadorned except for a metal loop on one end. Enclosed was something I've wanted for a very long time. The bucksaw had arrived. At last. Rare have the feelings of abundance, freedom, and independence been so intertwined. The book points. The compass. The trowel. The bucksaw. And the set of wheels. I felt as if I had all in one instant everything I need. Particularly since I found someone to commit to working here eight hours in the vegetable garden to get the ground prepared for seeding. Amazing how little it takes for me to be happy.

I took the bucksaw into the living room where I hung it, still in its tube handle, itself a piece of sculpture, on the door frame next to and complementing perfectly my ancient Liberty chintz curtains, liberally decorated with carnations, one of which matched perfectly the tomato red of the bucksaw's handle. That shall never be misplaced.

Ernest and I off-loaded the wheels and leaned them against my carriage house. I'm certain the weekenders driving by shall think I have put them there for decoration. They certainly are a decoration to my mind. And may in fact be a temporary decoration for my carriage house. I put the compass and its very interesting instructions on the desk in my studio for further examination and, when the
groceries were put away, I took the page points upstairs to my window seat and picked up a newly favorite book of Chinese mountain poetry. I've so wanted to mark the pages to be able easily to find the poems I like the best. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to put those points to use.

It has been so very many years since I've had the luxury of even beginning to entertain the idea of having what is needed here to make things manageable. Only in the very beginning of buying this property and way before I ever began to farm did I have the money to provide myself with any of them. Lists were made and prioritized. Duly noted in daybooks or in blue ink on long sheets of foolscap paper. They have gradually been diminished as accomplished. But only in the beginning was that wondrous thing called wherewithal to buy the small things that can make a job manageable rather than a chore. Only now, in very tiny increments, are a few of those things possible. And perhaps a very large thing shall manifest as well. A manure cart.

I was reading a poem about animal husbandry the other day, a poem written about five hundred years ago. It described spreading muck on the pastures. The Lord's Great Profets, it called it. There is only one way life here can be made both possible and manageable. And that is when joy is evident and manifest. And so I shall, when the cart is finished being built, paint on its side, “The Lord's Great Profets.” And as I wheel it across the pasture, pulling it off the long-awaited cart with a newly purchased muck rake, I, too, shall experience the joy of having “The Lord's Great Profets” in such manifest abundance.