The Farmstead

So apparently some people -- who shall remain nameless -- think I change my mind too much.  I don't change my mind so often that it's debilitating.  I change my mind just as often as it takes for me to figure out if I like or want something.  Isn't that what life is all about?  Trying new things?  Finding oneself and all of that?

Regardless, I've moved into the house I mentioned in my New Year's post.  I have five acres of prairie just below the foothills.  I have a dog.  I have seven adult hens, and just bought ten new chicks a few days old.  I have a large shed with an covered extension that's partially enclosed by a wood fence and a small chicken coop.  I've come to call that little complex "the barn."

There's a lot of wildlife out here.  We regularly see coyotes, rabbits, prairie dogs, hawks, and a pretty wide variety of smaller birds, some of which congregate in great numbers very close to the house and barn.

Most mornings I wake up early, before sunrise.  I started drinking coffee several mornings each week.  Prior to this, I drank coffee about twice a year.  We cook every meal at home now.  Before breakfast I take the dog out, feed and water the chickens, and pretend for a little while that I'm a real rancher.  On a real ranch.

The morning chores, such as they are, are followed with coffee and breakfast of eggs, toast, bacon, butter, preserves, coffee, fresh milk, and apple juice.  All but the coffee came from either our chickens, a local farm, or is something I made with stuff I bought from local farms.  I churned the butter from raw milk from a local dairy.  I made the preserves from fruit I bought last fall at the farmer's market.  You get the idea.

When I'm home, I spend a lot of time looking out over the prairie, though its a bit bleak seeing as it's winter and we're in a drought.  I also spend a lot of time fussing over the chickens and trying to decide which projects I should actually take on, considering I'm just renting for a year or two (hopefully.)

Late this afternoon I ran down to the feed store just before they closed and picked up 7 bales of straw.  I put on my leather work gloves and relished every moment of stacking them neatly in the barn.  I love bales of straw and hay.  I always have.  I love the way they look.  I love the way they smell.  I love the little bits that stick to my clothes.  I love the way it dusts the ground, making a beautiful, soft bedding wherever it's stored.  You can use it as bedding for any barnyard animal.  They make great seats, especially at backyard parties.  You can feed it to most barnyard animals.  It's cheap (usually.)  It's biodegradable.  Stacked, it makes a great wind break or privacy wall.  It's great exercise throwing it around.  What's not to love about baled, dried grasses?

One of my best memories ever of hay bales was one beautiful Colorado afternoon after I had finished doing some work at a horse rescue.  I went into the barn (they had a real, very impressive barn) and I sat down in a perfect seat of hay bales.  Behind me were stacked hundreds more in a huge, rising wall like a fortress.  From my vantage point I could see and hear horses grazing, and beyond them the rolling prairie.  After a few minutes a barn cat appeared from somewhere among the hay bales and kept me company.  It was one of those simple, perfect moments one never forgets.

[sigh]

I tried going back to college.  (Mind you I have a BS, several certificates and have done some graduate work.)  I tried a second BS.  But I hated it.  I just hated being in class with 20 year old kids just starting out.  I hated the idea of tests and cramming.  I hated the idea of starting over at the bottom.  I've already been through all that.  I have a great career and a great employer.  More college, I now know for certain, is not what I want or need in my life.  There's no longer anything that college can offer me that would make me happier or more fulfilled.  You know what makes me happy?  You know what really fulfills me?  It's the stuff I do every moment I have free time.  It's hay bales and horses.  It's gardens and cooking.  It's chickens and goats and dogs.  It's fly fishing a gorgeous Rocky Mountain stream, hunting turkey out on the plains, or elk high in the mountains.  It's sewing curtains and churning butter, making peach preserves and butchering my own meat.  It's building chicken coops and hanging out in the barn. It's marveling at the beauty of the mountains and the vastness of the prairie, and laughing with friends and family gathered around a big table covered with great food.  All of that, that's living.  That's life.  That's what it's all about for me.  Everything else in my life is just a means to try and get more of the good stuff in my life, that's all.  College was a way to get a job, to make money, to be able to afford the life I just described.  What's sad is that work -- and I'm talking about a desk job, not the work involved in running a farm or ranch -- cuts way, way too much into the good stuff.  There's plenty of "work" that's good stuff, and even my desk job certainly has its awesome moments.  But I really feel like my heart belongs close to the earth.  Whether it's hunting or growing a garden or ranching a herd of cattle, my heart longs to be there.  I just need more "life" in my life.

Sometimes I really wish I were Amish.  Sometimes I think I could put up with -- even fake -- the religion, if the trade off meant that I could live in a community where a simple, agricultural life and a supportive community were so highly valued that people actually lived that way.  That's all I want out of life, to live much as people have lived for thousands of years.  Is that so much, really?  I don't need TV or computers, or even electricity.  I need something real and genuine and honest and simple.

I want to get a few goats and a pig.  And we're going to have a big garden come spring.  And I'm thinking about bringing one of my horses here.  I want a vibrant, living community here around me.  Words can't express how much joy the dog has brought me.  The chickens too, and these little baby chicks.  Feeding them, interacting with them, just watching them I can get lost for hours in the connectedness of things.  In one of my favorite books, Animal Vegetable Miracle, the author describes one of her Amish friends who describes his work plowing the fields (with a horse, mind you) and how the whole day to him is just joy as he soaks up the spring sunshine and watches the birds and animals go about their business.  It's a beautiful description of a feeling I know very well but don't get to experience as often as I'd like.

I guess I've rambled enough.  I need to go read something about ranching or homesteading so I can live vicariously.