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February 2005 I cannot remember the last time I felt this tired. And I don't even know why. The kitchen is warm for the first time in weeks. There is a cup of fresh strong coffee on the table in front of me. And even a cookie or two. It is only 8:00. There has been a pair of willing hands helping here for the past two days. And two more pair finishing the electric in the barn. Lights at last! And another pair helping to move two weeks worth of snow-bound firewood to the cellar. With four people to help, I didn't have to work very hard for the past two days. At least not very hard in my estimation. There is a momentary abundance here. Baleage for the sheep and goats. Still enough hay in the mow and the carriage house, although that is beginning to go. Very nice lambs. And a lot of them. Not enough books to read but more than enough to reread. Enough food in the larder to actually make cooking (were I to cook) interesting. Too much work ahead of me. And too much around me. There is snow. In abundance. Natures fertilizer. And sweaters from the Salvation Army that are warm enough. And sometimes even pretty. And often dirty from bottle lambs and a puppy and the escaping and intruding straw that works its way through the half a dozen layers that I affect when I am cold. There are more than enough cookbooks with recipes from places that know what winter means and what country is. Places like Savoy in the mountains of Southwestern France. And the ingredients from which to make those recipes, if all of my winter potatoes haven't frozen that is. There even is an egg or two a day from the chickens. The goats look good. Two are fat enough to appear to be carrying twins. Or eating themselves silly. One ewe in the barn is carrying so thick a fleece and so big a belly I wouldn't believe the lambs she is nursing are hers had I not watched her freshen. One of my best ewes had twins, a ram and an ewe lamb. Both to keep. The hell of this past week, the week of -20 degree temperatures not even considering the wind chill factor is over. It may re-manifest. It is only a few days from midwinter's day. The hub of winter is about to be crossed. I found my long-lost favorite knife. And the right place to keep it. On the window sill next to my cutting table, so to never, I would hope, lose it again. There are more than enough dishes, just enough socks, nearly enough wood, almost enough corduroys, not enough shoes, as much ironing as I care to do, and more than enough work to keep me involved every minute of every day for quite a long time. And I am so tired. Just tonight. Suddenly so tired. I want to sleep. There is a barn still to be checked. And ten lambs to bottle, and the summer kitchen woodstove to keep going, so it shall be warm enough to move the bottle lambs down there tomorrow. I'm going to town in the morning, I hope, to sit in Sweet Indulgence and write letters and do the kind of paper work I love to do, and whose voice is silent and, therefore, most easy to ignore. I pack my things the night before I go to town these days. Letters to answer and things I need to write. Pens and notebooks, and paper and stamps and good stationary. I even lay out clean clothes of late, like I did when I lived at home, the night before a school day. Where are my shoes? They've been hidden from my puppy. And are now lost to me, or, rather, misplaced by me. Once, in another life, when I bought copper pots, needing to be polished endlessly, with the last money in my pocket, oh just one more, or a set I couldn't resist at a flea market in Paris, Dutch pots, made in Holland. Too thin, but oh so pretty. I used to say I bought lovely things as if I had someone to clean them. Or iron them. Or repair them. Now I keep the nicest lambs in my flock, as if I don't have enough, without the thought that it is only I to take care of them. Lambs and pots and linen tablecloths. All so nice. Rarely truly beautiful, but always oh so lovely. I think that is why I'm so attached to the land here. It isn't beautiful. But it is oh so lovely. Ernest Westcott who has been my right hand for so long in so many different ways, once said to me when I looked in the barn wailing, "I don't know where to begin." "Begin anywhere. Then you'll have that done." Perhaps tonight I'll scrub and wax one of the eight chairs this single person has in her kitchen, and make it gleam and have one thing done. One thing shiny and clean. When my children were babies, I favored sixth floor walk-up apartments. The better to see the sky. There was one, the first one, that had a sort of balcony on the roof from which one could look down into my apartment. The living room walls were pale grey. The woodwork white. And the couch which was a bed with cushions on it was a pale green linen. The window was full of plants. A veritable lace curtain. I used to go up on the balcony sometimes, late at night, and look down to that living room, sometimes neat, the better to realize I wanted to be that person who lived there. I now have a lace curtain on my kitchen window. Newly washed. Frost flowers is the pattern. Knit for me by a friend a long time ago. It is prettier than the frost that decorated that window this week past. What would I have thought, that spring when my son was born, looking down into the pearl grey living room through the lace of green leaves, that I someday would be looking through these windows, so many windows, not that much later. Mine. Mine to wash. And decorate. And sew curtains for. And hang storms onto. What would I have thought? Had I known, I think those days would have been easier for me. But they were rich and abundant enough, I think. I love pretty things. Sometimes I buy sweaters for the goats and end up keeping them. Especially ones someone tossed in a washing machine and felted. A beautiful Fair Isle comes to mind from Scotland. A perfect combination with some butterscotch corduroys I just bought. Five dollars. A day or two ago I bought two goat sweaters that no situation no matter how desperate, could induce me to put on my back. One went on Virginia Baldwin. Magenta. A sometimes favorite color. But no longer for me. The other, a pistachio green color that I learned to appreciate in other climates, other angles of the sun, was to go on Pembroke Witherspoon. But it is so discordant a color on her. Pistachio green isn't it for a black and white goat. And I just read the label. It isn't wool. It goes back to the Salvation Army tomorrow. Life here is straightforward. There are few subtleties. Perhaps none. I appreciate that. I myself am rarely, if ever subtle. On the other hand life here is never simple. It is always complex and very demanding. I do know the order of things which in all cases must be observed or the consequences are, always, immediate and noticeable. Make one thing better. And nothing worse has been the instruction on top of the page in my day book. Often. Not today, however. I helped make the summer kitchen better to receive my little bottle lambs and didn't mop the milk I spilled from mixing their bottles this afternoon. Something better. Something worse. February stands alone, says an old nursery rhyme. It has always been one of my three favorite months. And certainly has most often brought out the creativity in me. I've sometimes devoted it to sewing and decorating the house and cooking lovely things and making dreams manifest into reality. I've loved staying inside, when I did, and going outside, as I now do. I've also been known to burn out in February and make stupid mistakes. Usually sins of omission not doing things that are obvious. The eye sees but the hand does not perform. The message shorts out. It is nine forty nine and eight degrees above zero. Time to go for one last visit to the barn. Sylvia Jorrín Farm Stories Interview Photo Album Bookshop Appearances |