Stories Inside Stories: Death, Birth, Transitions

I am thinking about changes and transitions-- about the unexpected and even the surprise within the expected. .. Thinking about life on the homestead and about life's bigger picture --about what went down out at Standing Rock this past week and about reversals to human and environmental protections that are jarring and significant. I am thinking about all of you, getting weary, and I'm sending you some love from the homestead. 

miss you Solita. . . 

Here in a week's span we lost a pig-- a friend-- so unexpectedly.  She was a great cuddler. Our friendliest farm buddy. In the early morning, before we realized she was gone, I woke in the dark, startled by a pig outside my window.  Rousing from deep sleep, I wondered why a pig was loose in the early cold.  Seeing nothing,  I drifted back to sleep. Later, finding her still soft body, and definitely no signs of loose pigs,   I guessed she just floated through to say goodbye,  on her way down her road, on her journey.


And yesterday, after being woken in the night by a pacing,  irritated goat-- I looked to the frozen ground- the coldest in Maine's ongoing vacation from winter,  and thought, of course they'll come today. And surely, they did. Shivery, we dried them and quickly cut up little sweaters to keep them cozy. Of course, life-school took over and the babes had no shortage of warm bodies to hold them until they steadied to this new world.

The death and birth within the few days are meaningful,  reflective of the little stories within bigger stories.  We are on a journey, as change makers and creators, as activists and builders-- and we are seeing setbacks; really awful setbacks-- for our clean and free water, for our wild places, for our citizens, for our democracy. 

And yet, the story isn't finished.  We are writing it still, and when it's ended, there's sure to have been struggle and tragedy but also a great uprising of inner strength,  transformation,  and a deepening, widening love that has found its power in its sadnesses. It won't be a story about that one time we took a stand, lost, and gave up. It will be a resilient story; a healing story. We will see to the birth of a new way-- it will come through the stresses of labor and into the cold dark,  but we will be ready,  waiting for ourselves.

Thanks to the Bangor Daily News for capturing the last picture of Solita alive (first photo, of Shawn feeding pigs-- Solita is the black and white Kune Kune)-- it was a nice surprise to see her looking well just last week, and to get that delivered to my inbox via friends yesterday. 

Read the full article here: 

https://bangordailynews.com/2017/02/27/homestead/happytown-road-community-brings-rural-mainers-together/

This little piggy

When we say goodbye

Four months into goodbye and I still cry about it. To take leave of over one hundred souls, many to never see again has been a torturing process. The little farm still lives, to be sure. . . but it is in flux. . . its is a living transition. Its path is mirroring our own. Who are we now? . . .hobos without a farm to ground us to the fertile earth we wither as we bloom. 

Backing up, Nancy Place Farm is right now a place where the garden finishes its season untended, where neighborhood children make jack-o-lanterns of compost pumpkins, where garlic lies in wait hoping someone can be coerced to do its planting for its long winter hibernation. Nancy Place Farm, where its inhabitants have spread over wide distances, most to never return. Nancy Place Farm, where small trees struggle to take root and to become a perennial part of the landscape. Nancy Place Farm. . .who's owners have ventured thousands of miles distance to try on a new hat.

While we venture, we grow-- in leaps and bounds. But we are torn, and as each challenge inevitably makes us stronger, a part of us withers with the landscape we have abandoned. We sure miss you Maine!

Farewell

Is this the end then? Is this how we’ll end it? our once a year meeting is always somewhat volatile—fevered fluctuations in temperatures, angry winds, annoying mud, deep deep snow, unsafe ice, ice so thick that it seems it will never thaw, endless shades of gray depression, bright bright sparkles on sunlit snow, intense rainbows on the water droplets of hanging pine bows. . . always predictable in its unpredictability—January, carving us into the strength to withstand life’s hard knocks and to appreciate the depth of its beauty. Farewell dear January. Please tell February to send back the snow, I’m so desperately not ready for mud season.