My life has changed.
I'm now living on a farm in East Tennessee while my daughter and her husband adjust to having a new baby in the home.
To start with, this has been quite the year for me! Four homes in six months, a new job which became one from which I resigned five months later. Two cities and two states. Two new granddaughters. From watching people walk by from outside my upstairs room to poking my head out the door hearing goats and chickens letting me know that it's time to eat.
I haven't blogged in nearly two months or more. I don't know how anymore. What do you want to read? Where are my passions these days? Am I now truly a granny?
Little Madeline came a little ahead of schedule, four full weeks almost. She was birthed in a patient, let's get in there and get this girl born attitude. Even though she entered the world as a preemie, she was astonishingly healthy. Yet that doesn't mean she didn't have her struggles that caused many a sleepless night for her new mommy and daddy.
I'm here on their farm to try to fill in the gaps, such as cooking, laundry, baby relief, feeding the goats and chickens. Kind of a jack of all trades.
Country life is quite different for me. In ways it brings back memories of my life on a farm some 60 years ago, when our farm was also sustainable, in the days before fertilizers other than manure. Pesticides meant that us kids had to get out in the beans (soy) and pull weeds one by one. Those were the days of farms made from the Homestead Act, 160 square acres, given to farmers in the Midwest who could fence it in. My dad didn't go back that far, but his great great granddad did, and it had been passed down through the daughters, my dad being the only boy in two generations.
Now my brother and my nephews farm more than 2000 acres, changing agriCULTURE into agriBUSINESS.
While on this little farm about 20 miles northeast has only 3 acres, it supports seven goats and eleven chickens, with room left over for some gardening. In these hot days of July, we stay indoors as much as possible. Probably right now the goats are in the shade of the barn and the chickens are taking afternoon naps in the moveable chicken coop.
I haven't milked the goats yet. Call me a chicken without feathers. I don't like the idea of Sassy or Cherry kicking while I tug on their tits, spilling their delicious milk all over me. So my son-in-law still does that, getting up with the birds a few mornings before leaving for work in Knoxville, TN.
Life here moves a little slower. We see one another on a daily basis, but not many others. Little Madeline is now up to about 6 and a half pounds. She now has a few minutes each day to look around and lift her head up. She loves to be sung to and held very close while someone rocks her.
My interest in foraging is coming back, especially for wild mushrooms and local black and raspberries. Lots of rain has been good for the mushrooms and poison ivy (curtailing my hunts somewhat), and bad for the berries.
I become a city girl for a few hours or a day on weekends when there are two here with Madeline. I go into Knoxville or Kingsport or back to Asheville to just see what's going on while I'm off playing farmer. I now remember why I often looked forward to those days of going into town when I was a farmgirl. Although the idea of being self-sufficient and convening with nature are attractive traits to me, I also like the vision of seeing other people, art, hearing the noises of people, their music, their chats in sidewalk cafes, the regular messiness and commotion that goes with city life, where no one can be too private.
What's in store for me now that I have pulled up stakes in Asheville and settled in here across the mountains here in Tennessee?
I'll stay here as long as we can stand each other. When that day comes, I think I'll go visit folks I haven't seen for a long time, like my son on the West Coast and his children, and my family of birth near the farm I grew up on.
When visiting is done, then I'll think seriously about what I want to be when I grow more. Perhaps do lots of gigs such as serving as a doula, officiating at spiritual events in folks' lives or photographing those rich moments for posterity.
The horizon is beckoning. I have no commitments, no axes to grind or seeds to plant. My eyes are open to that horizon which wants to lead me beyond the known into new landscapes ahead.
The past can't be retrieved. The present is a gift. The future is the hope we all need to trudge toward that horizon. May it be one of sunrises for now.