Why Farm?

I asked for this small notebook “system” for my birthday thinking it would help me organize my life—a cute little package of a thing with four small journals held inside by elastic, so that there could be a separate journal for horses, weaving, weaving classes, and stray thoughts. I’ll be honest, I don’t know where it is right now, though I know it’s not lost.

But I tried to lose it three times within a week of receiving it as a gift from Dan. It came back to me each time because folks on the farm opened it, read “Why Horses?” written on the front page and immediately knew who it belonged to. It’s a phrase my staff and I say to each other every time there’s trouble with the horses—a turn in that’s total mayhem, pasture lines being taken down by a flood a week after we got them all up after the last flood, a horse dying unexpectedly of colic that wouldn’t resolve. We shake our heads or we laugh (if it wasn’t a death because there’s no laughing then or for weeks after about much of anything) or we throw our hands up in the air like farmers have been doing since time immemorial and we say, “Why horses?”

Horses are literally so much work—their care, baling hay, managing pastures, always trying to stay one step ahead of their predilection for homocide or suicide to bubble wrap their world so they and their owners are safe. I felt like I had to take over the horse barns when I did. It’s a long story. It was take them over or shut them down. There’s so much I love about those animals and their owners and the work, but in hindsight, I might have made the wrong choice of the two available to me.

What, Amy, though does this have to do with willow? This is a weaving willow site and blog, durn it! Focus!

Right.

Because, today, after a hard few weeks, I want to broaden “why horses” to “why farm”. And I think I mean “farm” as both a verb and a noun. Like why would anyone sign up to be a farmer? Ever? But also, personally and specifically, “Why, farm, are you doing this to us?” And the farm includes willows, so maybe this is willow adjacent?

Let’s go over the last few weeks.

Turn in—when we bring the dopey horses in after night turn out to stand under their fans and eat hay and nap through the hot of the day—has been, kindly, a shit show for a week or so now. Ill-behaved horses, some of them mine, trying to sneak into every stall other than their own. They block aisle ways so other horses can’t get home. They refuse their own stall and need to be pulled in with a lead rope. They’re ornery. All of them. When they should be fat and happy and exhausted and compliant after grazing on grass for 16 hours straight.

Equipment difficulties have been coming on one after another and another again and it’s hard to do our work without even one of those vehicles or tractor attachments. Today, while my father and my uncle stood out in the hot sun trying to replace two pulleys and a very long rubix cube of a belt on our largest tractor, I was off on an innocuous trip to get shavings for the barn when our Dodge dump truck shuddered twice and then the 4 wheel drive transmission (this is a guess right now) blew apart like someone had tossed a grenade under us. Hours later, a kindly tow truck guy named Tim dragged me back to the farm for the bargain price of $662.00. And I’m not being sarcastic. Watching him work in the heat next to the highway with dummies driving far too fast was a study in bravery I will be in awe of for quite some time.

I taught a class with Abby in willow weaving. It didn’t go well. My students were amazing and kind and I had a good time. I think they had a good time too? But nobody left with a finished product and that left me feeling like a failure for days.

It’s been hades hot, as well. So every disagreement, every failure, every misstep gets multiplied emotionally by every one involved. Kate, my barn manager, accused baling twine of rage baiting her today. I’m not inclined to disagree with her. That baling twine was being a right dick.

There’s also the state of the world hanging over all of us adding additional tension we all carry around. The guy most farmers voted for here (#notallfarmers) in the States has been decidedly bad for farmers in almost every way. That’s a hard pill to swallow, for those who voted for him and those of us who didn’t. Watching small farms die and get sold has been a tragedy we as a nation won’t soon recover from.

But, more directly, hanging over us in our local community is a fellow farmer we love and respect who had his leg pulled into an auger. He survived and through the grapevine, we hear doctor’s are cautiously optimistic about him getting to keep that leg. But when I tell you that that is the sort of accident that keeps any and all farmers up at night as we try our hardest not to envision the shock and horror and pain of that kind of injury and what it means for our future livelihood and quality of life—again, and again, and again—know that that is a huge understatement.

The underest of statements I can imagine being under.

Just to get back to the willow for a second, though. The willow is doing great.

For how long, though? Spotted Lantern Flies are here. They have killed two oak trees and are fast working on killing all of our grape vines. Willow feels like their natural next target. So, that the willow is doing well right now, feels temporary or ephemeral. . . At the very least, not to be counted on.

So, why farm?

Today I can’t honestly tell you. Today, farming feels like the worst life choice I could have ever made. Today. Today and the recent days preceding today were just the worst.

But I have a new boarder and her daughter bringing a new-to-them five year old gelding to the farm on Friday. They’re so excited. And they narrowly avoided getting a much older boy from the worst kind of dishonest horse trader. This young boy was well-loved and treated kindly and sold by honest people to honest buyers who will love him going forward. That’s all just the loveliest news.

And this heat is going to break. In a month and a half it will be September. The days will cool and hay baling will be behind us and we’ll likely be going out for rides on the trails we’ve struggled to keep in good shape. Maybe we’ll even be going on rides a few times a week, on horses or mules that love us for their care and our companionship, regardless of what asshat’s they were at turn in back in July.

My staff—willow and horse boarding—are the most amazing group of women who I adore. They’re funny and hardworking and funny. They make coming here to the farm worth it. . .even on the hottest or coldest days.

Whispering Beard—the most amazing and loving and relaxing blue grass music festival in the world—will roll up on the farm, bringing with it old and new friends to listen to music with and stare at the stars with late night.

Good things. So very many good things abound here at Carriage House Farm and Lost Bridge Beverage Company and Willow Run Stables and 65willows: Excellent communities, Beautiful land, Wildlife that is a pleasure to observe but also to support with smart farming practices and leaving enough of the land wild. Horses, mule, humans, beavers, Great Blue Herons, fox, coyotes, deer, turkeys, wee kingfishers and my brothers, the barn and cliff swallows. They all mean so much to me.

And that’s why farm.

Today, all of that feels very far away. But it’s there.

So, I’ll be clocking back in tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. But it’s hard.

It’s so very very hard.