About two weeks ago, Basil (the Cat) was rattling away excitedly near the front door (and our piles of shoes). I moved shoes away and her away to discover that she was beating on a tiny little snake. She was positively whaling on the the little thing, and those of you who have cats can imagine… cat’s can swat several times a second with their paws when they get upset.
I got her in my arms and handed the wriggling mass of fury to Bekah, while I tried to capture the snake. It escaped under the battery compartment, not to be seen again… we thought. Basil camped out most of the night in the area, looking to finish the job. We hoped that she would have scared it back outside at least.
Last week, it came back. We came into our house, and Basil was pouncing around the shoes near the door again. This time, she got the snake into her little mouth and went trotting across the house with it, dropping it under the table. I suppose that she had been playing with it.
I got her away enough to grab the little snake behind the head, and I took it outside and across the pasture to the forest there and released it. It didn’t seem too healthy, but at least it wasn’t in the house.
End of The Story of Snake Number One.
The Story of Snake Number Two:
Well, three really.
On Sunday morning we went down into the Catskills to visit some friends (thanks, friends!). We returned last night, pretty much went right to bed. This morning, Bekah made a little exasperated sound and said “oh, there’s a bitten-in-half snake in a pile of puke and blood all over the floor”.
Yep. Pretty nasty. This was about 2-ft long, somewhat chewed up, and of course, on our nice new hand-made Mexican wool rug. Cats just can’t puke or make messes on the tile or hardwood floor — it’s gotta be on the rug.
Bekah cleaned up the floor and I took the rug out to wash with some of the collected rainwater. Yuck.
Sure, it’s a pretty badass thing for a house-cat to do, but I mean, that’s nasty!
I’m reading this book about “alternative houses” and it talks about the house as a skin between us and nature. I think our skin is a bit too thin.
Posted August 19, 2008 by Matt Categories:farm Tags:catchup
Sorry to my legions of fans for the long hiatus. I was afraid that this might happen. I’m good at starting things, not-so-good at keeping them going.
See, when I was posting a lot, a few things hadn’t happened yet: I hadn’t really moved into my office and started “working” and we still spent lots of time down at/near the farm-house using their wi-fi. The former meant that I had more time just being around to think about and execute posts. The latter meant that I could actually do so.
Both of those things have changed, so somehow “blogging” just falls to the bottom of the triage list every day.
We’ve settled into a pattern; on Sunday and Monday (Bekah’s weekend) we do our errands, have a meal to two “out”, catch-up with dishes, and usually work some in the garden. I work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then Friday I help out on the farm. On Saturday, Bekah goes to Market, I follow soon after, do some shopping, then go to work again for the rest of the day. Then the process starts over.
When I’m at work, I try to not procrastinate, and to actually work. I am not so successful at this, but I think I’m getting better (the internet is so darn distracting). But it’s meant that I haven’t set time to ‘blog’ (sheesh, I still am uncomfortable using that word as a verb).
Things are good. I really like living the way that we are. I feel good about participating a little bit on the farm. Among other things, I’ve helped load hay onto the hay elevator, which is the closest thing to real work I’ve done in a while (I even got callouses!) I helped to herd some pigs. I watched other pigs being castrated. And some chickens be ‘processed’ (didn’t have to help on those projects, thanks). It’s all great — I’ll treasure these experiences forever, I expect. Sometimes in the actual doing of the things, I’m a bit crabby… but I knew that would happen. I’m not a very patient person, and repetitive rote tasks tend to drive me a little nuts. I’m hoping that these small doses help me to grow beyond this limitation.
We’ve had some visitors… it’s always interesting to see your own life through someone else’s lenses… you can see more clearly, at least for a little while. I really like this area. I even like coming in to work; I just wish I could be in both places at once. And I wish that my family and friends were closer by… we’re pretty isolated out here, and though I love being so alone and close with Bekah, I miss all of you.
I even went to NYC for a few days… some work and Slow Food business. It was great, but I didn’t discover that I had missed the city so much. Folks, sure, but the character known as The City… not really. (Though, I discovered I missed certain elements of sophistication… quality of food, that sort of thing.)
There are challenges, of course. I’ll write about some of the bigger ones some day… but they’re all abstract and chronic… not acute, or even relevant to my day-to-day.
In short: I like it here. On the whole, I’m happy. We’re happy. Things are good. Life is rich, full of Strawberries and Shitakes.
Thanks for keeping track; I’ll try and be better about keeping up.
Posted June 10, 2008 by Matt Categories:farm Tags:hot, photos
And not in a good way.
About a week ago, okay, 10 days, we had to put row-cover over our garden to protect our plants from 3 nights of frost. We had to build fires in the house to keep warm On Friday, it was in the upper 90’s. And Saturday, and Sunday, and Monday, and Today.
Tell me that ain’t climate change.
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. Things are settling almost into routine, which means that the days are shooting by. I’ve spent a lot of time working in town, which is ok, but I missed the birth of a calf because I was working on some stupid little sh*t. I kindof resent that, but what can you do.
I updated the side bar over there —-> to include a link to my photos; sometimes I’ll put up photos without comment here, so you may want to check those out.
I’ll post again later today; I feel a rant coming on.
It’s another Saturday, another market day. A whole week since my last post. Today I’ll work some more on my office, check out a moving sale for scavenge-able goods, and probably do our laundry.
We hosted Bekah’s Dad on Sunday and Monday. We took him to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, which is pretty super cool. It was a very nice day, too. We got very luck on the weekend with weather.
I was supposed to move into my office on Tuesday, but was delayed ’till Thursday by some repairs and painting. So, I spent one afternoon following Bekah and Michael around as Michael gave Bekah some horse lessons.
I did some more wiring, too, and rigged up a way to suspend the speakers and stereo set up from the bottom of the loft. Now Nathan will have to watch his head (he’s TALL) but both Bekah and I will be ok. Basil, too. In the mornings I worked, to the extent that I was able to without the internet. I’m experimenting with ways to trick the farmhouse’s wifi signal into reaching our spot… some promising leads, but no success yet.
By popular demand, here’s some more piggies. This time, they’re like 1 foot long, and so cute. Notice the flash-mob and group-pausing behavior:
I’ve had a little more time to just sit, look, listen, and even smell. I’ve noticed that every single hour is beautiful… even the rainy times. Then, there’s fog and a lovely foresty smell. Even the cows (which are now trying to come into the gate — shouldn’t have fed them that fresh-cut grass) don’t smell bad.
I had to make the tough call NOT to go down to the city this weekend to host the Foraging Event I organized. It feels bad to set it up, organize it, and then not show up, but I just can’t make it work. Too much stuff to do on Sunday and Monday. Thanks to my buddy Sunil for covering for me (Sunil, come up and visit and let me buy you an Ithaca beer!)
On Saturday, I went into town with Nathan. Nathan is a young man who works with Michael (the Farmer) at Cornell. He is staying at Kingbird over the summer, and knows a lot about farming and this kind of life in general. On the drive in, we talked about scythes and scythe sharpening, among other things. This dude knows a lot about things of which I know nothing. Which is useful. Nathan has his own scythe, handle made in Maine for his height and reach length, blade made in Austria. He sharpens it by hammering it into a fine edge, which he says is so sharp that it bends with a touch. This is how he mows the lawn. Pretty cool. Makes knowing how to work computers feel pretty silly.
We went to the Ithaca Farmers’ Market, where Kingbird has its Saturday stand. I’ve been several times, but never with a close connection to one of the vendors. It’s an excellent market, and for me, that’s saying something, having spent so much time in Madison and NYC, both hosts of excellent markets.
I hung out for a while, had lunch, bought some stuff, visited with Bekah and Karma, and the couple other farmers that I already know. Kingbird has a really nice stand; some well-designed shelves fill it mostly, but with ample work space behind the “bar” for the folks working the stand to, well, work. Right now, it’s mostly full of bedding plants for sale; probably a hundred of kinds of herbs, including about 10 kinds of lavender alone. My mom would love it.
Nathan and I had some other errands to accomplish, so we left before the market closed. I dragged him to TWO hardware stores, where he helped me pick out farming boots and wood-splitting equipment. I got some other hardware for some shelf making and wiring and stuff like that.
Splitting Wood:
When we returned, Nathan was nice enough to give me a (refresher?) course in splitting wood. Most of our logs are rotten, so it was hard to test, but I think I got it. I can’t remember whether I’ve done this before or not, but I’m pretty sure that I can do it now without hurting myself or others <knock /> <knock />. Now the challenge will be to locate, identify, segment, and haul some logs that I can split. Or I suppose that we can just buy some wood, but that seems like cheating somehow. Plus, then I wouldn’t get to use these new tools. Didn’t you know that this whole thing was just an excuse to buy more tools?
The farm just got its winter wood supply in shape. Of course this involved heavy machinery and heavier expertise. But they started getting wood ready in March for next winter. Winter is pretty serious business up here. I’m feeling like the … what was it — cricket? — who fiddled all summer and then had no firewood in winter. Or something.
I also felt good about getting the boots. They’re called “Muck” boots, both in name and in brand. They seem to universally regarded as the right tool for the job of tromping around on a farm. It feels cool to wear them, though slightly silly, and I’m just a poser. Well, I’m not posing much, but I’m no farmer. Though now at least, I can help out a bit without ruining whatever shoes I happen to be wearing.
And the final touch to the day: I took a shower. It was a gorgeous, sunny day… the kind of early summer day where the sky seems almost dark blue. It was enough sun to give us a pretty decent reservoir of near-body-temperature water in the tank. So I showered. It was a little… brisk, but I was clean, and that was something.
On Friday morning, I puttered around, working on the house some more. I was testing my hope that I could run some of our electronic gizmos right from the battery power. But while I was hauling speakers up to the house from the car, I saw Bekah, Karma, Rosie and about 4 dogs walking through “our” pasture. They were on their way to forage for Mushrooms.
I put down what I was doing, grabbed a hat and camera, and caught up.
Karma is apparently a trained mycologist, and she delights in finding edible fungi in the forest to sell at Saturday market. Little Rosie seems to be a pretty trained mycologist, too:
It was wonderful being in the forest. The smells, colors, sounds… not like the forests I know from Wisconsin, but familiar still. These are more boggy; Bekah thinks it’s because they were not too long ago logged. The trees are a mix of pretty young and some old, but the old are remains of “wind rows” put in by some previous generations of farmers. The forests that I know have been “forest” for much longer. And, I think that the land is less swampy. There are even ruins of old farm buildings. A dairy we think, or maybe a sugar-house.
Amazing thing, though: no mosquitos. Even with about 2 weeks of on-and-off rain, even with shady, brambly forest, even with standing water and muck abound, there were no mosquitos. This, I cannot compute.
After lunch, Bekah went back to work, and so did I (ahem. not). I did hook up my cheesy little $30 portable music amplifier, which I had been using in NYC with a power adapter when my neat old tube amp stopped working. This thing is designed to be battery-powered, but can run off of a wall-wart, too. Audio nerds seem to think that this little thing has sound quality rivaling multi-thousand dollar equipment. Of course, they take all the cheap plastic parts out and replace them with hand-wrapped silver coils and junk like that. I have the “old school” original parts in mine.
*BUT* the cool thing is that this little guy expects a wall-wart that makes 12V DC. Guess what our solar system makes?
So we now have a solar stereo (that sounds like a french new-wave band: Stéreo et Solár) that seems to be so efficient that the power controller doesn’t even register its draw. This with my best speakers, no less.
Which has me thinking about how to get our music libraries (which are all on hard-disc) back into the picture, solar-like, too. Hmmm…
I dig this free energy thing. You know, when the man says “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” that’s true. But the same man says “there’s no such thing as free,” and that’s false. The sun is free, for everyone and everything. Nobody can own it yet, sell it yet, or turn it off. Yet. And it’s the source of simply *everything* on this planet. All warmth, all life, all food, all matter, all energy, all wealth and all economic activity… everything. And there’s more than enough of it to go around, if we could use it wisely. No wonder we used to worship the sun.
Posted May 23, 2008 by Matt Categories:farm Tags:cows
Oh, and we have new neighbors. Someone moved in between us and the nice pigs. There goes the neighborhood. They keep trying to get in through our gate, too:
These cows romp. They were so psyched by their new pasture that they tore around for an afternoon. I’ve never seen cows play, nor run around, really. Pretty cool.
So I just met my nice Landlady and signed a lease. Everything is so ideal that I’m wondering if I’ll find out next week that there’s a toddlers’ self-expression drum-therapy workshop upstairs or something:
It’s CHEAP
It has a window
It’s in a nice old building
It happens to be on the one 4-block-long pedestrian-only street in Ithaca
The owner herself is who I write my check to (not “Midling Management Properties, Inc.”)
The former tenant wants to give me her fridge, AC, and furniture
The former tenant is a philanthropist, so I’ve got good mojo going in.
It’s CHEAP
So, I’ve got myself room #8, and I can move in on Tuesday.
I spent a good part of the rest of this last week working on the house. The house has a name: “Panjawasi” which is the name of a neighborhood in Bolivia. The creator of the house does his research there.
I designed and built some kitchen shelving, using completely re-purposed wood (a torn-apart futon frame, some lumber from the street trash in NYC, etc.) and put together some other shelving from some of the miscellaneous lumber and shelf-like things that were here before we painted. It’s coming along and starting to feel like home. It’s humble, but very cozy, and we’ve set up the kitchen pretty well, which of course, is the most important thing for me.
I still have a few other projects that I want to get to, but I’m enjoying doing this. I can’t help but think that I’m fixating on these sorts of projects because they’re something that I know, and can handle. Out there is the forest and the garden and the farm and big heavy animals and electric fencing and so on. And of course, my “real life” which has to start to filter back in, a little, too.
I spent a few hours working this week, and went to Ithaca to see some office space. I found what seems to be an ideal fit. It’s right downtown, on a pedestrian-only street, in an old building with a tall creaky staircase. It’s cheap, it’s in a good walking neighborhood, so I think I’ll take it, move in, and see what it’s like having an office again. I look forward to it, actually.
I’m angry about the driving, though. I really don’t like driving. I still can’t get over feeling that it’s dangerous, though obviously everyone around me takes it completely for granted. They get furious if I drive near the speed limit, in the dark, in the rain, and pass me against the double line, too-close, when there are visible cars coming in the other lane.
I guess that sometime in the last 13 years, everyone else got a lot better at driving, or I just got a lot more cranky. I just can’t help feeling like I’m in a metal box going way faster than a human ever could, while other similar boxes swish by 3 feet away at 2x the relative velocity. And that’s just the country roads. Ithaca traffic ain’t bad, but I’m just not used to the rhythms of the roads, intersections, turn lanes, and half-attentive drivers; it stresses me out.
And of course the gas. It seems foolish to be living off-the-grid, but then burning 2 gallons of gas a day. And the way shopping works: I’m used to walking a few blocks, picking things out, walking home. Maybe making an afternoon of it by walking across town. Now, there are traffic lights, merge lanes, frontage roads, parking lots, one-way roads aplenty, PARKING, and that’s before you even get to the shop. I don’t like it, this semi-suburban life. How can a town of 30,000 people have a suburban life? Who thought this was a good idea?
And why does each store have to have its own access road and separate parking lot with berms between? Would it really kill them to cooperate by allowing the street to pass from one parking lot to the next? Is it really more safe for me to have to exit the lot, merge into traffic, get back into the right-turn lane, and enter the very next lot? Please. Corporate mentality at its best: oh no, can’t share a street with the neighbors.
But I’ll be driving to work in Ithaca, it seems. At least I can walk around for lunch and errands while I’m there. I had a nice bowl of soup at a café down the block, and there’s a neat old five-and-dime type place across the “mall” for office supplies and such. It’s also like my beloved State street in Madison (actually, this is “State street” too) with crazy people talking to themselves, Tibetan monks having a literal hunger strike, jugglers, that sort of thing.
But back to the house. Yesterday I read through a “manual” left behind by the house’s creator. It had some troubleshooting information about the hot-water system. We still don’t have hot water. I’m surprisingly ok about the infrequent showers (two so far, since we moved here) but really miss hot water for washing my hands and dishes. The spring water is less than 50° and the cold soaks right into your bones, not to mention it doesn’t clean or rinse worth crap. We’ve started cooking sink water to make it hot enough to wash dishes, but there’s not enough to rinse hot too, so our dishes never really feel clean.
Tonight we met some previous inhabitants of Panjawasi, and they told us that you really needed high summer days and/or several hours of roaring wood fires to get hot water. We’ve had neither. We don’t have enough wood for the latter, and of course the former isn’t up to us.
I guess that soon I’ll need to learn how to chop and split wood.
I’m excited about the electrical system. There’s more than enough power for the way we’re living now. My work computer isn’t here, and we don’t have a tv, vcr, stereo, but we have a little set of portable speakers, a walkman, and some little lights, and for now, that’s enough. I’m learning (remembering?) a little about DC electricity, and it turns out that almost all of the gadgets that make up what we would like to have (wireless internet, music, battery charger) eat DC 12V, which is what the solar panels and batteries make. So we can just hook right in and avoid the noisy inverter, after I get some wire and connectors from town.
It feels “free” somehow… like we’re putting on over on the man, or something… being able to listen to electrical speakers without electricity (well, without “normal” electricity). You should try it. It’s cool. And maybe a little dangerous; I need to read up a little before I get too ambitious.But the house itself is really starting to feel like home. It’s humble, but very cozy, and we’ve set up the kitchen really well, which of course, is the most important thing for me.
