Something

Fireworks pop at the tree line, looking from our property. We can see about four different displays from some local lakes. I sit against the fence we had put up to keep the dogs in the yard, away from the road. It is a quiet spot to watch the fireworks. But I get distracted from the different shows by the silent fireflies blinking less predictably than the explosions of the fireworks. Tiny neon lights pepper the six feet above the kale and tomatoes. Sometimes the fireflies pulse together, seemingly in unison with the pops and blasts from the lakes. Other times, they sing their own quiet song, never allowing life to sleep on the farm. Something is always happening here. Everything rests at times, but something is always happening here.

Ken Griffey Jr.

The Fourth of July has long been one of my favorite holidays. I guess I never even considered it a holiday like Thanksgiving and Christmas. There’s a different feel to it. It’s lively and exciting, but it passes like a warm breeze over a Wisconsin lake. I got to thinking about the day and realized that, pretty much every year, the holiday means something new to me.

When I was young, it usually meant bratwursts and hamburgers after the Stone Bank parade. Sometimes people would gather at the farmhouse and hang out around the creaky deck while someone grilled the meat. The buns would be stacked up in a wicker basket lined with the red and white plaid cloth, the same way Mom demands that we display the vegetables at market. I must confess; it does have a rural charm to it.

It would sometimes warrant the hassle of putting up the lunky volleyball net that we could never get straight. No one would touch the net after we set it up for fear that it would collapse. People jumped in the pool and played with the foam noodles, splashing each other and hollering. Something tells me we were pushing the limits of the recommended 30-minmute digestion period after filling our guts with sausages.

Throughout high school, my focus became a more serious contemplation of patriotism and what it meant to be a citizen. I admit that I questioned and waivered for seven or eight years. I suppose I’m happy about that because I’m more confident in my decision now to pursue my goals in this country, in this state, in this county, town, and chunk of land.

But this Fourth of July was different. I woke early and took care of the chickens, a morning routine with which I love to start my day. A light fog slumped just above our land. The dew on the clover soaked my toes and my feet felt slimy. The chickens charged out of the coop and made their morning lap around me and the yard, then settled into their ground-pecking routine.

Then on to a hearty breakfast that has to contain Kale because we drastically underestimated the production of a single kale plant and we couldn’t give enough away to keep up with it. All morning, the three of us harvested produce for our Thursday CSA shares. We could have done some of it the previous day, but it’s rewarding to hand off an overflowing share of produce that was harvested and assembled fewer than two hours ago. There’s a certain amount of pride that we as farmers can take in that.

I felt an urge to do the delivery alone. Not sure why. But I loaded the coolers in the back of the truck and waited in an empty field in Stone Bank for our members to pick up their produce. People slowly filed in and were amazed at how much produce they were getting. I told them to get used to it because there’s no shortage at peak season. I sat in the back of the truck with my feet propped up on the bumper and read Coop by Michael Perry. He has become a favorite author who writes about his life in Wisconsin, a few hours northwest of here. The book is about moving to a new home, raising kids, and starting a small farm. He just bought pigs. Lucky.

At any rate, no matter what book I’m reading by Perry, I seem to discover countless parallels to my own life, although this book seems to be pretty directly related, only the kids I’m raising are feathered and peck at my toes. Although I see how our lives share similarities, today I found myself relating more to his daughter, a young and excited girl who is being raised with wholesome values in a rural lifestyle. She’s learning about chickens and stacking wood, the importance of relationships and why farmers don’t name their pigs. It reminded me a good bit of my running around in the barn as a kid, playing on haystacks and raking an acre’s worth of lawn. She spends her free time staring at frogs and asking questions. If she had corn fields to play in, like my brothers and I did, I’m sure she would have been making forts and getting lost in the rows, too. It’s fun to read a father’s perspective on it, deciding when to stop his daughter from doing something ridiculous or to let it go. Maybe it’s for the book’s story, but it sure does seem like he lets a lot happen on its own. The chapter I just finished explained how he walked away from his daughter while she played in a mud pit in her undies. I might have done that once or twice, too.

I looked around and realized I was spending my Independence Day alone on a tailgate in a mown field under the canopy of a box elder tree, hoping people remember to pick up their produce from me. But then I realized that the first baseball games I ever played were on that field. 20 or so years ago, I was taking my best hack at a ball set up on a tee, and often times missing. I walked around to check it all out. Only the chain link back stop was left and the box elder had taken over the “dugout” and third base. No pitcher’s mound, no bases, no benches anymore. Just a lawn maintained by the Tyme Out center. I stood in front of the back stop and took to the batter’s position with a high back elbow, then swung my imaginary bat in slow motion, sending the imaginary childhood baseball to the stars. How bizarre that my life had literally gone around the globe, even to some places I was sure I’d call home for good, and now here I was, back at the field where I learned how to strike out in tee ball, in a town that doesn’t even make it into a gazetteer. That box elder might have miles and miles of roots, but they all lead back to the same trunk. I suppose that seems more understandable now.

My CSA drop-off session finished up with about an hour of a radio program that played a full Willie Nelson concert in which he played all my favorites like “Me and Paul,” “My Own Peculiar Way,” and “City of New Orleans.” He even played a few old-timey gospel tunes that he jazzed up with that signature bluesy effortlessness. He’s got a way about him that reminds me I’m still a kid.

Heading home via the long way, I concluded that this had been one of the best Fourth of Julys of my life.  I just hope the Harley bikers didn’t see me running the non-existant bases, doing my best Ken Griffey Jr. Even if they did, I’m sure some of them understood.

Let Me Not Defer

Today is Gramma's birthday. She died several years ago and is buried next to Grampa at the church down the street. Every time I drive into town, I look over at the resting lawn outside the church to see the headstone. On the back of the headstone is a beautiful quote by Stephen Grellet. "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." As much as I remember about Gramma tells me she fully lived this quote.

It's easy to think of this on a quotidian basis and maintain a smiling countenance or a sympathetic mind. And the heart of this idea is that we must take care of life as it is and, whenever we can, help it grow. But there is something else about it that rings heavily when I read it at my grandparents' grave. "I shall pass through this world but once and I shall not pass this way again." I can't help but think of a few instances when the holistic meaning of Gramma's wisdom has presented itself in the past couple weeks.

The other day, Chris and I are working with biochar in the corral. Chris turns to look at the field. "What the hell is that?" A big, but low, black figure lurches across our field, eastward. It is slow and travels with a strenuous gait a couple hundred yards away. The farthest south I've seen a black bear is almost three hours north of here. It couldn't be.

We hear Mom calling for Kali, our big black flat-coated retriever, from the house. Kali is getting a little older, but has the spirit of a puppy. She charges through the corn stubble toward the figure. Her long fur bounces and she responds to none of our calls for her to come back. Chris and I step through the rungs of the corral fence and start our sprint to intercept Kali before the battle ensues. Sure enough, as we close in, we see it's just another black dog, but it carries a big turkey in its long mouth. By this time, Kali, Chris, and I are within a few yards of the dog and Mom is close behind. The dog drops the turkey, looks at us in the way you might think of a dog smiling, but it actually just breathes heavily. We walk to it and it takes off to the neighbor's forest. The turkey is still alive, its head wobbling in the air and blood pooling in the cup of its mouth. Chris and I look at each other. I know I have the knife and the obligation toward life. Unfortunately, after years of use, my knife is too dull to easily slice through the turkey's neck. Mom hands us her utility knife (clicky knife, as she calls it) and we put the ordeal to rest.

We don't do much hunting and the last time we butchered a bird was in grade school when Grampa turned our dozen chickens into soup. So we haul the bird back to the ranch house, call a few hunter friends for advice, but ultimately resort to YouTube for a quick lesson. No matter how much I try to detach myself from the life of a creature in a situation like this, it is impossible. Feeling the heat from meat as we butcher it, I have in mind that this bird, no more than a few minutes ago, was picking beetles out of the ground near our wetland. Its layered display of feathers remind me of its meticulous evolution, its particular purpose, and why Ben Franklin thought the turkey a better choice than the eagle to represent our nation. Knowing we will avoid wasting any of this creature, I feel grateful for the life of this turkey and I consider it a blessing to be unable to detach myself.

About two weeks before the incident with the turkey, we find an issue with one of our chicks. We have a dozen chicks in a big cardboard box under a heatlamp in our office. They're great to have around, chirping all day and part of the night. As chicks do, they scratch through their food, kicking it all over their siblings, then pooping on the dish. Two weeks ago, we find one chick, much smaller than the others, with a large ball of crust on its butt. After some research, we find that "pasty butt" usually happens to the runt of a litter and can kill the chick. We isolate her and dab water on the crust until it becomes soggy and disintegrates. She stays isolated under her own heat lamp until we get her cleaned up and the swelling reduces. The application of a Q-tip with warm water helps with that. She's fragile in our hands. A tiny, breathing creature. She depends on us, an entirely different species, to take care of her, supply her with food, water, heat, shelter. It's a strange thing to hold such a young, delicate being. I don't think I've even held a child this young. I hear that the more you handle a chick, the more attached they get to you. Well, for the next few days, I watch her wandering around, eventually with the other chicks. I can certainly pick her up more easily than the others, but I question who's attached to whom. For a few days, I feel like a concerned father. I'm glad I can't tell her apart from the others anymore.

The rabbits have some action in their lives, too. About a month ago, I bought two breeding rabbits from my friends, Jimmy and Heidi, in Madison. We mated them that same day. A month later, she looks pretty plump and, in the most recent days, she acts a little goofy, lying at the front of the cage when she normally pounds the cage in excitement. She drinks twice as much water now and eats her food more quickly. I supplement her pellets with a few veggie scraps now, which she loves. The straw in her cage is dug into a  nest and, as of yesterday, the nest is lined with chucks of her fur. It's exciting to see her prepare. We all expect to see a litter by morning. I suppose they might share a birthday with Gramma.

All of these experiences with animals, wild, young, domesticated, bring me closer to the quote on the headstone. The dynamics are endless. We can watch life happen in its entirety, but we must accept some characteristics of life to feel it fully. It's not always beautiful in the moment, but the larger picture of it is truly and undeniably the most beautiful experience. We didn't expect to have to end the life of a dying turkey, and I wouldn't haven't chosen to at that moment, but after a few days of reflection, I feel I was a part of a bigger thing, the life of a creature I've never known. To detach myself from that animal's death is to detach myself from the bigger scope of life.

Another characteristic we need to accept is the fact that we all shall pass through this world but once, but that we are passing through it right now. There will never be a better time than now to watch rabbits give birth or to hold a baby chick. The most innocent, unspoiled source of life is the breathing body of a little chick filling my hand and deflating, working to grow another ounce. Whether I'm in the hoophouse encouraging the plants to reach higher, laying the post-harvest debris of plants back on the soil, raising an animal, or putting one to rest, there's a demand from Gramma's headstone for me to appreciate the grittiest and gentlest facets of this life. After all, I only pass through this crazy place but once and there's no time to defer or neglect.