The Lord Giveth, the Lord Taketh Away

Last February, Cookies and Cream, our Flemish Giant Rabbit doe, gave birth to a litter of kittens. We knew she had, because we'd watched her carefully craft her nest for a week-or-so beforehand. When the babies came, we were terribly impressed with what a good mama she was. She protected them with loud thumps of her giant feet, and cuddled gingerly into the nest so that they could nurse. One day, however, the children came to me with great concern. CC's nest had collapsed, and she seemed to be walking mindlessly over where her kittens used to rest. I dug through the hay as deep as I could, but found no trace of the baby rabbits. It seemed as though the entire litter had just disappeared, like it had never been.

I did a quick Google search, and learned a startling reality: sometimes adult rabbits will eat their young. I realized that this winter had been a pretty severe one, and though CC's hutch was in the barn, it wasn't beyond reason to think that she might have devoured her kits for self-preservation, and to protect them from the cold (a kitten-Kevorkian, if you will). However it happened, several lives were lost.

How was I supposed to explain this to the children? How could I have it make sense for them, spiritually, without making them worry that I might have already sized them up for the crock pot? Luckily, I didn't have to explain anything. It just so happened that the concern over the disappearing rabbit kittens was swept away by excitement over newly-expected cat kittens. The same day that CC's babies disappeared, Sweetie Pie, one of our barn cats, came waddling home to us with a belly swollen full of babies, and several lives were gained.

We put CC's modest proposal out of our minds as we watched Sweetie Pie grow wider with little ones. After about four and a half weeks, the children found a little pink kitten covered in blood on the floor of the barn. "We think Sweetie Pie is having her babies!" they cheered, but were quick to realize that the one they'd found hadn't moved; a life had been lost. They laid the underdeveloped little creature in a basket full of hay, and let it be until another animal carried it off. Later that afternoon, we noticed movement under the hay of CC's hutch. Buried down deep by their mama, the baby rabbits had survived, and were ready come to the light and be loved. Six lives were gained.

Sweetie Pie had three babies about two weeks later. She hid them in a nest of hay. Still very much a kitten herself, Sweetie Pie didn't understand how to nurse her babies, so a little white kitten starved to death after a few days. We brought Sweetie Pie and her remaining two into the house with us and trained her to be a mama, and are now rewarded by two of the most precious baby cats we've ever seen.

In the meantime, our last pregnant nanny seemed to be holding onto her babies for an unusually long time. We'd watched her udder drop and grow heavy with milk, while her belly kicked and twitched. When the shape of her belly changed from looking like she'd swallowed a grocery cart to looking like she'd swallowed a canoe, we were on the edge of our seats. Surely it was time! But Annie stayed this way for the next four-or-so weeks. It baffled us. Her belly didn't seem to be twitching any more. She seemed less aware of her load. If it hadn't been for the canoe in her gut, she wouldn't have seemed pregnant at all. We were very worried, and watched her like hawks.

At home we had a baby pygmy goat named Billie*, whom we'd hand-raised from the day he was born. Do you remember when our beloved filly, Milly, was euthanized? It just so happens that the Sunday of Milly's death was also the day of Billie's birth. One life was lost, and one life was gained. Because Billie was bottle raised from birth, he really considered himself a part of our family. All six of us participated in regular feedings, cuddling and play time. He was more expressive in his love than our dogs. We loved him like one of our own.

Shortly after Billie was old enough to leave our garage and sleep in the barn, he began to develop a nasty cough. John found him one afternoon asleep on a lawn chair, covered with flies. Alarmed, John brought the baby goat inside and treated him with electrolytes and sugar. The little goat seemed to recover quickly; he was walking around again and his eyes had recovered their clarity. He still had a slight cough, but seemed to be no worse for ware.

This morning, I called out to him as I usually do when I walked outside to cut some chives for our breakfast. Billie cried back to me with urgency. "Ma!" he was screaming, as if calling my name, "Ma!!" Hearing the desperation in his voice, I rushed into the barn to find him flat on his side under the door of the chicken coop. He was determined in his cry for me, but he couldn't bring himself to rise. I lifted Billie into my arms and cradled him into a basket. John and I tried to get him to take down some juice, but he refused. When he began to fall into seizures, we knew that he was dying.


Billie lingered for a few hours more, but gave up his final breath as I wrote the words of this blog. He died to the sound of my husband consoling me, while I tearfully reassured the baby goat in his final throws. "Don't ever let anybody tell you that was just a goat," John insisted.

It is unusual for me to abandon a piece of my writing before it's completed, but I decided to clear my head with some good, hard farm work. As I made my way out to the barn, there was a sound that made my heart leap. I could have sworn I heard Billie's cry. I heard it again, and was now sure that it was his voice. Then I heard the cry doubled, as if the voice had been split in two. As I peered over the gate of the goat pen, I was amazed to see a very slender Annie laying proudly beside two awake, alive, and completely engaged baby pygmies. I fell to my knees and buried my face in the soft fur of the newborn kid, and let my tears flow openly. One life was lost, and two lives were gained.

I don't know why life comes and goes with such unpredictability, and I don't know how we mortals continue to walk strong despite the awareness of our fragility. But there we go. Ready to love again immediately after loss; ready to laugh again immediately after tears. This is why there is salvation in hardship; this is why there is joy in pain. God has an awesome system working here on earth. We must only pray that we are always working with it!

*"Billie Goat Gruff" was the first born kid of Billy Idol.

It's Freaking COLD Out Here!

I knew when I moved to the mountains that it would be cold. I tried, really tried, to prepare myself for it. Before I knew that I'd become a mountain woman, I spent a good twenty-or-so years of my life getting my blood used to the warm ocean breezes of the east coast. New Jersey rarely would provide more than an aggravating chill and inconvenient slush during the heart of the winter. Following New Jersey, my Miami, Florida residency got me used to Christmas shopping in 80 degree weather; I sang "Jingle Bells" to the hum of my car's blasting air conditioner. But this season, oh this season, is like nothing I've ever felt before.

The season seemed to start out subtle enough. As the weather began to turn, I did not fool myself into thinking I'd be strong enough to take even the slightest whisper of frozen air. I kept ahead of the dropping thermometer by layering clothes. I visited Walgreens and bought myself the ugliest set of long, thermal underwear I could find - in several different colors. Over my underwear went a pair of sweat pants, two pair of jeans, a bib and snow pants. On top, my extravagantly-priced Victoria's Secret knit sweaters, the warmest I owned, were layered in threes over my thermal undershirt, a dance skin, and a thoroughly padded bra. I wore four pairs of socks under rubber work boots, and two pairs of work gloves. My heavy brown Stetson served as a shield to block the wind from my face, while my thick hair hung down to protect my ears. I quickly learned that, especially in the winter, barn clothes can expect to see the laundry no more than once per month.

The layering happened in stages, of course, increasing in fabric as the weather decreased in temperature. But when the true cold set in, when winter really showed us her teeth, I could have worn a suit of baked potatoes and still not have found warmth. The temperature got so cold that I honestly wondered if I would begin to lose appendages. My toes hurt so badly that I thought one bad stub would send them shattering into pieces. My fingers could not get warm - in fits of freezing, I'd often remove my gloves, cover my fingers in the dust of horse treats, and stick my whole hand into the hot mouth of our mare. I was more prepared to feed her a finger than to lose one to the frigid air. My nose, cheek bones, and the tips of my ears felt as though someone were holding blue flame to them, and I couldn't smile for fear my gums would freeze and drop all my teeth. I checked the weather during one such night, and saw that though the temperature was in the high single digits, the wind chill made it "feel like 0." Feel like zero? Like nothing? Like we're so cold that numbness overtakes us and we can't feel a thing? Hardly! This felt more like one of the deeper circles of Hell, and I was desperate to find a Beatrice who would lead me out.

The city girl in me entertained thoughts of abandoning my chores, of pushing them off until the weather became more accommodating. I work hard, I deserve it! It's too cold, I'm entitled! These are the days when you let your dog pee ten feet from your back steps, so that you can hold his leash in the warmth of your doorway. But when you live on a farm, there are so many little lives depending on you, that abandoning chores is not a possibility. Horses need water. Rabbits need feed. Goats need to be milked. There is something divine about the practice of being human on a farm; little lives depend on us for regulation, little tummies depend on us for sustenance, little creatures live and die by our hand. The responsibility of orchestrating a working hobby farm is empowering, but it also requires dedication and sacrifice. When the choice is taken away from us, when "pushing it off" or "waiting it out" is not an option, it is amazing to learn what we are capable of.

I remember reading a story in Daniel Quinn's Tales of Adam, in which Adam, the first man, is teaching his son Able to hunt rabbit. Able shivers and whimpers and complains about the cold. Adam chastises Able, telling him to take off his heavy clothes, because it is the clothes that are making him cold. Sure enough, as Able removes his clothes, he learns that his human body was equipped to take the weather's punishment. Once he quit seeing the cold as his enemy, and saw it instead as an entity to be worked with and through, his shivering ceased. I took that lesson to heart, working through the bitter mountain air not with the thought that it was too cold, but with the acceptance that cold is good. We need the cold to make our farm work. We want the cold to strengthen our resolve.

We came to Emotive Acres in early November, only breaths before the frigid winter would move in. What a time to start a farm! How we had to encourage ourselves to remember that warmer days are ahead! Now that the weather is beginning to break, the snow is turning to water and the water survives the night without freezing, it is as if our steadfast determination is being rewarded. When the Spring comes home again, it will be greeted on Emotive Acres with chickens, and bees, and fish and fruit. But for now, we've learned to love the cold. During chores the other night, I found myself overheating under my layers. I peeled off jackets and sweaters, overalls and gloves. I pushed up my sleeves and wiped sweat from my brow. I checked the weather that night, and saw that the temperature had been recorded at 32 degrees - the temperature I used to call "freezing." We've survived the shortest days and the coldest nights this year would throw at us, and we came out more joyful and productive than when we went in. I will never see cold as the enemy again.

To Cry with a Horse

On Tuesday afternoons, I teach a class that lasts until 2:35. This means that Violette, whose school lets out at 2:15pm, is usually stuck doing homework in the library until I'm able to sift through the stampede of students and make my way out to pick her up. This particular Tuesday afternoon, John was in the city for a business meeting, and took it upon himself to bring our girl home and rescue her from longer hours closed in by educational walls. The two had a ball together; Violette is a Daddy's girl in every sense of the term. Violette is also, however, a prepubescent girl. Anyone who has ever been a prepubescent girl, or who has ever been in the vicinity of a prepubescent girl, understands that the delicate time between eleven and twelve years old hides massive landmines for parents. We never can guess when we'll step on one and cause our sweet little angel to blow up. Call it our own parents' retribution. Violette has always been a well mannered pre-adolescent, to be sure. But as parents, we can tell when the switch goes off, and we're suddenly on her "list." On this Tuesday, in the midst of their farm-play, John offered Violette some deer sausage, a freebie gift he'd gotten from our local meat processor. He didn't, of course, tell Violette that she was eating venison. Not until she asked for another, and a third, and possibly a fourth. Then he dropped the bomb. They'd been eating Bambi's mother.

Violette was horrified. Her demeanor went cold. Her smile disappeared, and volume of her silent treatment was a torment to her poor dad. John was cool about it, recognizing his faux pas, and offering Violette the chance to go inside and shake it off. Violette refused, and threw her energy into mucking out the stalls of her horses. When the stalls were clean, she put her foot down and told her father that she would be fetching the horses today - alone.


And so she did. Violette made her way out into the pasture, where the first face she met was that of our sweet, freckled Appaloosa yearling, Milly. Violette was still wrestling with her anger toward her father and the new hormones that were firing up and exacerbating the bad feelings when she reached out to touch the nose of the filly. Milly stretched toward the girl's hand and flared her nostrils. It was Violette's cue to let down the barricade and wash the emotions out. She cried, she wailed, she yelled, she stomped. Milly watched her, patiently, attentively. Every so often, Milly would nod her head in agreement with the little girl, giving Violette a sense of honest validation. Milly stayed with Violette until her tirade was complete. Then, as they both breathed a heavy sigh, they turned together and walked side-by-side to the barn. Violette was healed, and returned to her joyful, creative self.

The following weekend, my husband found Milly stretched out on the floor of her stall. The poor filly had contracted a tape worm infestation that was ready to claim her life. She'd dropped an enormous amount of weight, and there was no regiment of hay or grain that would replenish the nutrition she had lost. We'd tried so very hard over our three months with her to bring her back to health, but it was impossible to save her. The vet visited her that day, and reluctantly told us that euthanasia was her only option.

I was crushed. I laid my head on her cheek and sobbed until I was out of breath. I cried until my eyes burned and my nose throbbed. I told her how much I loved her. I told her how sorry I was for letting this happen to her. I thanked her, most of all, for saving our daughter.

Then the time came to tell Violette what had happened. The news hit our girl like a punch to the gut. She chose to retreat into the barn and invest her energy into her chores, but the sight of Milly's empty stall registered like an icy hole in her heart. It was freezing outside. We were up to our calves in snow, and the bitter wind chill dropped temperatures well below zero. In spite of the weather, I asked Violette to walk with me, and she did. We made our way out to Sunshine's shelter, a memorial for the horse we'd lost during our first night. The wind whipped at our faces, and bit with fiery teeth into our noses and ears. Violette was unfazed. She had no Milly to vent her feelings to, so she vented them into the wind.

Violette screamed things I never thought I'd hear my daughter say. Her words were dark, they were painful, they were real. The wind caught the words and muted her voice before they could reach beyond our shelter, but I was there to hear. Hearing her cry out made me remember what it is to be an eleven year old girl. It's the first time we encounter the dark side of our psyche. It's the first time we entertain thoughts of death, of devastation, of betrayal and of hatred. It's the first time things seem so dark, so unmanageable, that we consider what this world would be like without us. It's the first time we weigh the severity of our pain against the significance of our life.

Having let it out, and having frozen ourselves into numbness, Violette and I returned to the house - she to her room, I to the kitchen. The purgation she'd endured in Sunshine's shelter left her exhausted, but began her healing. As the family trickled back to the home and settled in, Violette emerged from her room, smiling silently, to give us each a loving hug. Before night fell, she had written a letter to Milly and enclosed it in a box with hay, a horse treat, and an old bridle.

Milly was a wonderful presence on our farm. She was sweet and docile, gentle and unassuming. She will be missed forever. But even in her death, she healed my daughter. And she healed me a little, too. I could finally let the eleven-year-old girl inside of me rest, because my daughter had just vented all of our pain into the wind of Emotive Acres. I was able to put that pain in its place. Violette, unfortunately, sill has many big moments like this to go. I can't be more grateful, however, that so early in her life she learned to cry with a horse.