Setting the Field on Fire and Other Adventures

Setting the Field on Fire and Other Adventures
After the fire

Today on a still and sunny afternoon, we set our western field on fire. Spring showed her face mid-February and we answered her call with a much-welcome sunkissed, spring cleaning day. Rich lit our old christmas tree ablaze in the designated bonfire zone and we tag-teamed reloading the fire with downed limbs, etc. Taking a break to free Jack's electric car from his "crash" site under the evergreens, I had stepped away for just enough time for a fly-away ember to set fire to a patch of dead, top-growth grass further afield. By the time I rejoined Rich, he was keeping pace with his adrenal glands, in full flight or fight mode, attempting to contain the fire, and stomping out smoldering patches of pasture. Seeing me, he signaled for buckets of water and thus began our two-man fire line. Twenty minutes and two fire extinguishers later, we stepped out the last of the bitty flames in the grass and recollected buckets from around a black, smoky expanse about half the footprint of the farmhouse. On my water runs, I had asked Jack to keep working on his driving as he followed our driveway in its circle around the house. His peanut gallery commentary of "Whoa!", "Two FIRES!", etc escalated in time with the spread of our second fire. I hope we didn't inspire any pyromania in him ;).

Jack rode on while Rich and I wiped the soot off of our boots and fell into a fit of laughter as our blood pressure regulated. Pretty immediately, I wondered aloud what we looked like from a birds-eye view. It made me laugh all the more. Those feathered friends who look down on us from flight or from their perches in the trees, they've kept eye on our toils and occasional triumphs in the field. What peace there was in the dormant winter field, before those humans came out to play their games and make another human mistake. Do birds shake their heads?

It feels so good to laugh with Rich and to share in these follies with him...little mishaps and vestiges of our foray into farming. We used to make more mistakes back in the day, when our horns were greener. On our first farm project, Bird Creek Farm on the coast of Michigan's thumb, we could finally set our ideas and creative licenses free. Our leaps then were bigger than they are now, and we fell harder and more often. Now that we are entering an era of refining our craft, it is so refreshing and enlivening when we are reminded that farming is playing...with the elements, with the sky, with the earth, with the birds. You could say moments like the one we shared yesterday are little sparks which feed our fire.

Adventure abounds on the land. In a way of life that is dictated by wild influences, it's when I step into the more sterile environments that the majority of the world exist within: office buildings, the school room, the 9-5 world, that I remember how alluring the wildness is. Rich and I can't operate by the same systematic schedule and operating mode as the corporate world. Land is only so manageable and in order to manage it well enough to see it thrive while making a living off of it, you must be willing to listen to it and to adapt to its schedule and circumstances. So we watch for the signs and react. Though we chose a day during which there wasn't the slightest breeze, we failed to take notice of the brown grassy tinder which lay yards away, dry as a winter bone. Another lesson, and another hearty laugh.

The wildness cannot be tamed and it creeps in if you leave a door open. That's what we did one evening last week. I left one of the barn doors ajar, a welcome sign to those masked bandits of the night. As the sun was rising, Rich who was deep into removing the old carpeting out of our living room to reveal a gorgeous hardwood floor, stepped into his shop in the heart of the barn to get a tool. As he tells it, he nearly ducked for cover in response to a loud, startled rustling from within the shop. He looked up to see two extra-large raccoons lording over him from their newly discovered nest of woven fencing on our topmost shelf. After a proper stand off, Rich returned to the breakfast table where he collapsed, defeated on a chair across from me. "There are two giant raccoons in the shop now". "Should we play music loudly and see if they just leave?". What is this Guantanamo?! All it took was opening up all the barn doors to send the message that this was not to be their new shelter. They fleed, trailing the fencing behind them. Where are they now? They got the memo much sooner than the band of squirrels who lived in the shop when we moved to the farm. When we kicked them out, they rebelled by chewing through the screen window of our dining room and exploring while we were out in the field. We still haven't replaced that screen...but the squirrels have relented.

Around Christmas we noticed a glaringly orange, long-haired cat wandering around the yard. We're not sure how long he had been making himself comfortable in the barn for, but it became apparent in late January that he and our barn cat Rye girl were roommates. Rye accepts anyone: dog, cat, human, delivery man...Once she even absconded in a deliveryman's truck until he let her go at the end of our driveway to come back to her stomping grounds. Social Rye, who lost her sister late last year, had been governing the barn solo, waiting for us on the sill outside the breakfast window in the mornings. All the sudden this orange character was cozying up with her, sharing her meals with her. He got friendly enough with me to let me pick him up to figure out if we were indeed dealing with a Tomcat. Sure enough, the big boy was as we though: male. As Rye is fixed, the two of them can cohabitate without the chance of a litter being born. Tom watches Rye as she eats her breakfast and I watch him. Rye eats some of her breakfast and then steps aside for him to finish. We are now complicit in this relationship unfolding. Tom even lets the growing puppies play with him and love on him until he eventually has enough and gets to higher ground.

The other day, I walked into the barn headquarters to find a pair of legs sticking out from under one of our tables. Tom had apparently been on the hunt and brought a rabbit back for himself and his lady friend. Less than charmed, I admonished him for bringing his kill into the barn. Rye knows better. I looked on and allowed them their time together before cleaning up the scene. I suppose it was sweet of him if considered through a feline's eyes?

All the living things are trying to make a better life for themselves, just as we are. Last night, Jack and I made our way up the driveway on our way home from gymnastics and a young possum was scuttling in the same direction as us in the beam of our headlights. Jack said, "he just wants a home". Just like the rest of us, rising to the occasion to find our way :).


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