the pause

When I stepped outside to free the chickens (it was before 6, which feels too late for them and too early for me), I was surprised by how steamy the air felt. All day long, you felt the threat of rain.






And that was just so perfect. I needed a break from nonstop work outside.

Breakfast was still on the porch -- a lovely moment before the storms hit...






I knew we wouldn't be battered too hard, but still, I worried about the chickens. They appeared so oblivious to the threat of a dangerous thunder shower. Just before the rains pounded our courtyard, I ran out to hustle them into the garage. Next time, watch the weather patterns! -- I tell them, breathing a sigh of relief as they huddled around my moped.

It's not that we got nothing done. I did plant the beans and a few flowers and we worked on the raspberry fields a tiny bit and, too, we cleaned up the spaces around the writer's shed, pulling out great quantities of weeds and leaving behind only a peony, a lilac bush, a few lilies and a rambler rose.





The writer's what? -- some of you may ask, not knowing that before I agreed to move to the farmette (in 2011), Ed and I felt a compromise was a good idea: I'd come out to the farmette for a few days here and there. And I would spend my hours in a little hut that we built (with help). We called it the writer's shed, because I very much wanted to spend time there working on various writing projects.

Inside, it remains unfinished. For now. Someday we may come back to it. Because you just never know how you may want to position yourself in the future.. Maybe Ed will turn social and we'll take great pleasure in putting up guests who pass through.


And finally, we worked up the courage to confront our own inadequacies. They are so very evident in the new orchard. We planted baby fruit trees two years back. The deer destroyed most of them. The next year, we replanted them and added extras. Ed worked out a fencing system to protect them, but we got busy and only a few trees benefited from the fences. And so once again, the vast majority of trees was destroyed by deer.

We surveyed the damage closely today.

What's the next step? Scale down the orchard. Order just a few replacement trees. Take care of what we plant!

It isn't easy to be a farmetter...

But the rains slackened our pace and allowed us to catch a breath. And the chickens played in weeds and gobbled worms and ticks and sweet fresh leaves of weeds. How perfect is that!