This Year

Summery.

Well, the holidays are almost over and it's back to regular life for now. I received many lovely prezzies but one of my favorites is this tablecloth, which I asked my son for. I have no summer tablecloths and I thought this one would fit the bill well.  Only it was so pretty I had to use it right away. So it's July in December here at the homestead. Put on a t-shirt and have some lemonade.

Death of a Princess.

One of the reasons I was looking for cheerful decor was a bit of sadness over the too-early loss of Carrie Fisher.  "Who'll be my role model now that my role model is gone?" sang her ex-husband Paul Simon on a song called "Call Me Al." Indeed. Carrie Fisher was, in fact my role model when I was a teenager and I saw her in "Star Wars." She inspired a generation of girls to be more than just someone's husband or daughter. Be a senator. Be a freaking star pilot. And be a princess, but not the kind of pastel pink, glittered, pouting and preening model we hold up to girls today...once again, sadly. (Feminism is one step forward and a couple back, it seems sometimes.) Perhaps her death will spurn a revival in being more of a kick-ass kind of princess, who wears a dress she doesn't mind getting covered in dung when she hops into the garbage chute to escape The Evil Empire. I hope so, anyway.

Anyway, 2016 certainly seems to have generated a lot of hostility from the world. I know people who are staying up late this year just to watch it die. In many ways, on a personal level, for me it was good. But in others, it was more like that Facebook friend you have no intimate disagreements with but realize from their posts that they have some serious, off the wall cray-cray going on inside their cray-cray craniums. I don't think many would argue that 2016 was a rollercoaster in many ways.

Tide's coming in to wash another year out to sea.

Maybe in some ways I kept 2016's craziness at a distance. But I will miss Carrie Fisher's wit, guts and humor. I'll miss David Bowie's and Prince's music. And I'll miss having a President who did not make me quite so nervous as this incoming one does. We will see. That's all any of us can say at the year's end, and it's no different this year.

Because either way, it's over and we're marching into 2017. Big Ag and I will be at our favorite Italian restaurant -- early -- where we have a standing New Year's Eve reservation. And we'll sleep through midnight like children who didn't manage to stay up late enough. Nothing wrong with Second Childhood if it lets you sleep well. By the time we wake up we'll have at least seven hours of a successful New Year already behind us.

Happy New Year one and all. Hope you are exactly where you want to be at midnight, even if it's just tucked in and dreaming in your own comfortable bed.

Ginger

Stern look from a sweet girl.

The old adage that only the good die young holds true not just for humanity, but sometimes for poultry as well. I lost my beloved hen Ginger this morning from uterine prolapse. We basically found her in bad shape, with a sudden, advanced case of prolapse we were unable to treat. As I carried her onto the lawn and sent Big Ag inside to grab the shotgun, she passed peacefully in my arms, with a prayer and a kiss from me to carry her home to greener pastures.

Ginger was a ticking time bomb, reproductively speaking, and her death is not as much of a shock as one would think. I pretty much guessed it would end either like this -- with a prolapsed uterus from hatching an egg -- or from infection due to a broken egg inside her. 

Ginger was a BIG girl, but her eggs were even bigger -- thin-shelled, duck egg-sized monster eggs which no amount of supplemental calcium could harden up. Due to her oversized eggs, she also occasionally would develop a sore on her bottom from where the sheer weight of those eggs had caused her skin to crack and split, something which I successfully was able to doctor for most of her two-year life.

But if Ginger was a big girl, she was one of those hens who had an even bigger personality -- curious, friendly, and loving interaction with people and being held. She was always the first out of the coop to say hello, and always the first to come running when called, with her big, crazy, velociraptor gait.

There is always life and death on the homestead, and opposite the joy of seeing new life, there is also the sting of losing a beloved animal, a guaranteed producer, and a distinct personality.  

The words I whispered to Ginger this morning are the same prayer I say to all my animals when their time comes, as well as those I sometimes see on my morning drive into town who who were hit by a car the night before and are laying dead by the roadside: 

"Through the gates of Paradise may the angels lead you." 

Whether animal or human, I believe all creatures move on to something better, hopefully with the memory of either being loved and cared for, or of being wild and free. And when our own time comes, I hope we're led by those angels through the gates and into the same peaceful pastures and hillsides. Graze on in those pastures, Ginger, 'till we meet again.

Best Quote Ever

From Morgan Freeman's character in "The Bucket List." it's the mist and the falls analogy again, but a happier one than I have perhaps been focusing on of late. I like this one better than mine, and it's where I choose to place my attention from now on....not on the river sweeping us away from all we know, but rather sweeping us towards home.

"My pastor always says our lives are streams flowing into the same river towards whatever heaven lies in the mist beyond the falls. Find the joy in your life. My dear friend, close your eyes and let the waters take you home."

Late summer in photos

 The lettuce and carrots for fall are coming along nicely. They have a white fabric cover ready to go so they can be shaded at a moment's notice and stay nice and cool on the hotter days.  We're supposed to be 100 degrees on Saturday, if you can believe it.

 Our two Granny Smith apple trees bore their first decent fruit this year!  I'll bet we got about 20 apples in all, not bad considering we planted in 2012.

 But we have also had failure.  I have no idea why this Ollalieberry bush suddenly died on us. This will need to be replaced this fall.

 The west-facing wall of Big Ag's shop has been painted sky blue, to provide heat neutrality. The barn quilt will go on this wall, along with a couple of trellised plants on either side to further keep things cool, temperature-wise.

And we're still getting an abundance of summer goods, including plenty of tomatoes and eggplant (plus a few fall apples thrown in for good measure).