Yep, it's me still alive, still grubbing around in the dirt...

...still choosing what lives and what dies.  Farming is hard, and dirty, and mostly thankless, but it has it's own satisfactions.  It also has costs.  I sent my pigs off to the knacker-man yesterday, and I've been somewhat maudlin since, two nights ago, I tricked them into the horse trailer so that I could haul them off.  Don't get me wrong, on the one had I'm relieved, filled with satisfaction, and happy that I'm no longer going to have to feed them twice a day, every day(how all of you folks who've bred managed to care for your children not knowing that one day in a month or two you'd finally get a chance to relax is beyond me).

WSU owns the farm.  Not sure what that means for me, one way or the other.  Part of the reason I've not been blogging regularly is that I didn't really know what to say about my situation, until we've worked out the details.  Everytime I see or talk to anyone they, quite understandably, want to know what's going on, and I don't have a good answer, or even a bad one.  Part of me is just fine with the situation, and the other part(the more rational part, I suppose), is frustrated as hell.  I can think of a dozen things I'd like to do with my time, and I get to do many of them.  It's not as though I'm miserable, far from it.  I have great friends, peers, and mentors, often times those people overlap significantly. 

Just got called away to phone farm...which is not quite so satisfying as across the fence farming, but, it is, after all, the twenty-first century.  Four commas in that sentence; I think I have a problem.  Most of my on-farm time these days is spent doing one of two things, moving hay, and moving mulch.  I like both of these jobs rather a lot.  I'm not doing either on a big commercial scale, so I can sort of do it on my own schedule.  I don't have to hurry.  I like this about my life above almost all else.  Things move at a very human pace.

I have a very handsome devil of a ram, in with my two ewes, and a wether(castrated male) coming to the farm in the next week.  Hopefully all that means, that in the spring, there will be beautiful lambs to take care of, and much fleece to shear and sell.  I've just started learning to spin, which I can tell already is never going to take knitting's place as my handcraft of choice, but seems like something I should be able to do, if I'm going to own wool sheep.

The ducks are happily wandering around the orchard, and coming back to their enclosure each morning when I feed them.  Each time I wonder if perhaps I should clips their wings, but I err on the side of complacency, and tell myself that they'll be best off if they're able to fly in the event of predators.  Monday before Thanksgiving, I went to Spring Rain and killed turkeys with John, and after we finished that, we killed the last of my male ducks, which leaves me with not much to do aside from feeding the ladies, and the three boys who were spared in the hopes of having many clutches of baby ducks to rear next year.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the pigs are, even as I type at Malco's Buxton meats, in Sandy Oregon, waiting for slaughter day, tomorrow.  John brought the pigs down for me, since he had to make a trip with his lambs.  I should have pork to sell in the near future, and bacon to eat for the first time, since I was in DC with Jason this winter.  It's a weird life I live.  I don't eat much that doesn't come from my immediate area.  Notable exceptions being fancy cheese, and sometimes flour.  I very occasionally buy out of season produce, but usually it's only because I've planned a fancy dinner, and we don't ever really get the summer produce here, like you do elsewhere, and so I don't feel as bad buying it. 

A few weeks ago we drove(with a ferry's help) across the sound, and through the 'burbs, north of Seattle, to go to a brew pub for John's day.   It was funny, there was traffic, and sprawl, and despite all the shit-talking that filled the car, I'll freely admit it did make me just the tiniest bit nostalgic for north Georgia, which is an odd feeling.  This past Monday, me and some friends, went into Seattle for a square dance in Ballard.  It was quite a journey just to go dancing, but that made it more fun in some ways.  I still feel some days, like I'm missing out on an important part of the human experience by living in the country, having never spent any real time living in a city, but I'm not about to pack my bags and move to Portland(any idea how hard it is to get a full grown ram into a suitcase?) anytime in the near future.

I haven't done nearly as much writing as I used to, this year, and every time I do sit down, and put some words on the page I recall how important it is for me to do so, since it's often the only time I can actually say the things that constantly churn through my mind while I'm doing chores in the drizzle.  It's been a long warm fall, and even now that winter has started in earnest we've still had only a few hard frosts out at the farm, which is more than I can say for all my friends who live on the mainland, in valleys which have been that cold for two months.

I know some of you are lamenting the lack of pictures, and I promise I'll come back in the next week or so, and give you all some visual satisfaction.

I think I've run out of things to say.  I love you all, and although I haven't yet decided, after talking to you all recently, I find myself missing you all an awful lot.  I'm still not sure that I'll be able to leave and come and visit at all this winter, but I'm trying to find a job, and if I manage to, and can save some money, we'll see if I can't find someone to watch the farm for me while I come and visit.