Ducklettes on parade, or

OK, there’s nothing cuter than brand spanking new ducklettes toodling along behind their moms, or taking their first bath.  We are such proud moms. What can I say.

 

Forty days and forty nights

More rain.

We must be at, oh, about day fifteen now.  And at least ten more days are predicted. Who knows what might come after that; even professional weather forecasters know better than to guess too far out. God, of course, did better: apparently that forty-days-and-forty-nights thing was right on.

I was wide awake for this morning’s 3:00 am storm—soothing, even with thunder that caused Simon to jump in his sleep. (Obviously he is not a dog much bothered by big noises.) Terrific lightning flashes and thunder, from distant mini-burps to great crashing explosions, accented the downpour.  I loved it.

So, just in case it’s not raining where you are, play the following clip. Close your eyes and enjoy —

 

The Prince’s Rainforest Project

OK, this is not only entertaining, it’s extremely important.  Have fun and do a good turn for our rainforests.

 

Spring beauty

Yoshinogawa (tree peony, also called Yoshino River)

I really don’t like peonies very much.

They grew in my family’s decorative gardens, and if a child was foolish enough to play near them, she’d find herself swatting at voracious, truly large black ants.

I blame the  peonies.

Blossoms appear  in mid-spring and are gone … in mid-spring. Short lives. Once they’ve passed on, we are left with gangly and unsightly (to my eyes) greens.

The blooms never seem to last long inside either, and of course they are accompanied by ants when they do come in. Eeeuw.

Now I’m faced with these darlings again, just outside the kitchen door. (I confess that I’ve taken to calling them “Pee-on-me’s”, encouraging Simon to behave accordingly.)

Several days ago, Bill arrived in the kitchen with the lovely blossom here.  Apparently St. Aidan’s (Bill and Suzanne’s house across the road from us) has a tree peony in the back yard. I’ve never seen it, never even knew there was such a thing.

I don’t know if giant black ants are up for the long trek to peonies five feet off the ground, but none arrived with this one and that’s a good sign.

So, okay. Tree peonies: good (possibly).  Regular ground peonies?

C’mere, Simon.

 

Rainy joys

It has been raining for several days, with quite a few more predicted. I took advantage by sitting for awhile in the greenhouse, listening to the “laughter on the roof”.

What a delight.

 

Our healthy shamba

"This photo of our neighbor's shamba may not look like much to you, but it literally means life to us." —Dianne Smith

I just spent about 45 minutes reading a blog from our friend Dianne Smith, who is a nurse ministering to beautiful Kenyans at a mission hospital in Maseno. She has provided many pictures, each worth more than the proverbial thousand words.

I was struck by the similarities of Kenyan life to our own life here on the farm—and by the vast differences between them. A family garden (shamba), when seed is available, sprouts nearby the home.  So does ours.  Beans and corn are staples in Kenya; so they are for us. Rain (”laughter on the roof” in Kenya) plays an important role in a successful garden. We know the value of a good rain at the proper time, too. But I don’t hear it laughing on a corrugated tin roof. My loss.

If it doesn’t rain enough for us in Brewster, we hook up the hoses and draw directly from our well.  So far our local water table has stayed consistently high, even with periodic dry spells.  In Kenya, however, deforestation and global warming have taken a deadly toll. If the rains are delayed, or don’t come at all, the crops are too late or fail entirely.

If we decided to eat our dried beans and corn during the winter rather than save them for seed (which we have never done, but could if we wanted to) we would send money to seed suppliers who would happily send us more the following spring.   Near Dianne’s hospital, consuming all the beans and corn on hand became necessary last year to save the lives of the children.  And there are no seed suppliers who can provide replacements, though this is really not too much of a problem—there is not enough money to send them anyway.

We have the luxury of trying new crops each year (thanks to those seed suppliers, again); Dianne’s neighbors don’t.  We can “suffer” a crop loss with almost no consequence to our lives and health; a crop loss means starvation to many people, and all around the globe, not just in Maseno.

You know, I forget so easily that we—and I mean us sisters here at Bluestone Farm—live in a lap of luxury created and sustained by the power of our nation to take unfairly from other peoples and from resources beyond our homeland.  We benefit from cheap abundance made available by the suffering of others. We take way too much for granted.

April 29 in the Bluestone garden

The piper is about to arrive, collecting by re-balancing the global economic and natural resource teeter-totters.  I have to wonder if we, in our near oblivion to the real cost of our society, will survive the rapid top-to-bottom drop headed our way.

In the meantime I’m sending a little cash Dianne’s way. I suspect she knows how to use it better than I do.

 

Food for thought from TED.com

These are busy days on the farm (cold weather notwithstanding), so here’s a little something to get the mental juices flowing today:

 

What are we made of?

When an e-mail arrived with “SHE’s HERE!!” as the subject line, I assumed another grandchild had arrived.

Maybe that’s why I was so shocked when I opened it and read through the 24-point type that accompanied several pictures:

Here SHE is, the USS New York, made from the World Trade Center!  …  [The ship's bow section] was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center.

It is the fifth in a new class of warship — designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft.

… The ship’s motto? Never Forget.

US warship built from 9/11 "scrap"

My initial reaction arose from that place in me between gut and heart where the memories of the smell and the taste and the images of those first weeks following September 11 refuse to fade. In that same vault a grief too deep for words lives on in technicolor anguish.

No one needs to tell me not to forget, because I can’t.

I cannot forget the faces of those who kissed their loved ones good-bye that morning and never saw them again; of babies who could not understand “mommy isn’t coming home” and sobbing daddies who could not explain; of the haunted, exhausted look of rescue workers who spent months rescuing so little.

I cannot banish the scene that has haunted my nights:  airline passengers, flying through a classic October (in my dream it is always October, not September) morning, desperately calling home. I cannot erase the image of a blossoming cloud of smoke — the first symptom of a building, filled with human beings, falling to its death.

It was days before I could grasp what happened that morning, and I still shudder when I hear a plane passing low overhead, or when I have to walk through New York’s skyscraper canyons on a clear fall day.

In a bizarre way those of us in New York and Washington DC and Pennsylvania had an advantage in being so near to our tragedies. Like sitting vigil with the body of a loved one who has just died, the immediacy of our senses kept a path toward healing open inside us. The rest of you have had to do your grieving long distance, which presents a unique kind of suffering.

The steelworkers who worked on this warship, and the military personnel who observed its construction, have their memories, too:

When it was poured into the molds on Sept 9, 2003, “those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,” recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there.  “It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.”

Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand … “the hair on my neck stood up.  It had a big meaning to it for all of us,” he said.

So what are we to do with our collective heartache? What choices can we make, right now, for our future together? Some of us will follow well-worn paths:

“They knocked us down. They can’t keep us down. We’re going to be back.” [Junior Chavers]

Others will blaze trails on journeys that gather us together in thriving local communities, sharing skills, wisdom, ideas, talents and dreams, working side by side to create something entirely new.

As horrific as 9/11 was, it is not the only misery we have suffered in our history.  And there will be more — collective and individual tragedies to tear us apart even as we live on.  I think it’s no longer the speculation of a few that all of us riding this little planet twirling through space are in a time of transition, one that possibly foreshadows a life-shattering transformation. It is human to be apprehensive.

I understand it may be difficult to imagine working toward a common goal beside someone we may fear; identifying the terrorist in each other is trepidatious work, and our historical inclination has been to shoot first and ask questions over the body.  But fighting each other hasn’t proven to be the whizbang strategy we once thought it was.

Maybe it’s time to think about “never forget” in a new way — something like “never forget we are all (non-humans, too) faces of the richly diverse Divine, none better or worse than another and each precious, valuable and necessary.”

What if we actually adopted a radical new way to live together, working with instead of against each other?  Might we discover that cooperation trumps competition, that working together may benefit every one on Earth?

We could even sift through the ashes of our sadnesses, adding the emotional energies generated there to our skills and dreams, creating tools that build a fulfilling, just, sustainable future rather than tools intended to kill.  Given our lack of success with the war thing and the speed with which we are rumbling along a track of self-destruction, this is at least worth a try. Our children deserve that much from us.

The warship message ended with a familiar pass-it-on e-mail plea: “Please keep this going so everyone can see what we are made of in this country!”

Well?  What are we in this country made of?

 

Elizabeth’s new home

You faithful readers of Elizabeth Ayres will notice that the page tab for Elizabeth’s essays is no longer appearing above. Don’t worry! She has a new web presence here at wordpress, and her essays will continue to be listed and linked at the left.

Now you can also leave comments for her, easily search for specific essays and find all the links you used to see here. Do visit her new blog — she even has a video clip you’re sure to enjoy!

 

Greenwalking

As we face into a most uncertain future (though, really, there’s no other kind, is there?), it strikes me that what we’re doing here at Bluestone Farm is walking right up there with green front-runners of all stripe. And that this is one of the things most needed in our current global situation.

Here’s my little list of how we’re participating.

•  Even though we have our own well, we are careful water users:

1. No running water with tooth-brushing
2. Brief (and less frequent) showers
3. Water-saving “hold-offs” at the kitchen faucets, to stop the water flow when you don’t need it
4. Saving shower water to use in first wash, then to flush a toilet (for the non-humanure-ers)
5. Humanure composting
6. Harmless household products
7. Collection of rain water
8. Purchased a water-sipping washer when the old one died

•  Transportation

1. Our old ailing Volvo (a gift) may soon be replaced with a Prius
2. Our old non-ailing, hard-working Nissan continues to bless us with 45 mpg when driven smartly — and we do
3. We save up traveling tasks to make sure that two, three or more errands are run in a single trip
4. Whenever possible, we take the train between home and our NYC convent (I just love the train)

•  Lighting

1. Fluorescent, of course.  Everywhere.
2. And turn ‘em off when ya leave.

•  Energy costs. This one is our biggest challenge. We live in a large 265-year-old house with an oil-fueled steam system.

1. We’ve begun a serious energy audit to help us plan how to get out of this little mess.
2. In the meantime we’ve managed to reduce our oil usage by having a (kindly donated) wood-burning stove installed in our great room fireplace. The fires aren’t quite as romantic to watch, but, oh is that heat nice. And the wood comes from our own property, which helps us take better care of “our” woodlands.
3. When winter comes, we do our best to seal windows, close all the storm windows (though every year I’ve discovered one that escaped my notice), make sure the radiator air valves are working right and set properly.
4. We had a good thermostat installed a few years back, so we can set the temps for day and night (and even days of the week) appropriately.
5. The boiler is gasping its last, so it will soon be replaced with a more fuel-efficient model.
6. We try to use only the amount of electricity we need, turning the copier, computers and other electrical items off when not in use.
7. In the winter we try not to leave doors and windows open or ajar.
8. We purchased an energy-star efficient washer and dryer when they needed to be replaced.  Same with a new freezer.
9. If we can find non-electric tools (kitchen and garden), that’s what we use. We grind our own coffee and cornmeal by hand, for example.

•  Rycycling

1. Recycling is getting a mixed review these days; no one seems to know what really happens to items collected in recycling bins in many places. I know what I’m told, but you can’t prove it by me. Nevertheless, we continue to separate out office paper, corrugated cardboard, glass, plastic (some of it anyway) and metal so they can be collected by a truck that says “Recycling” on the side. One of these days I’ll see if I can check out where that stuff really goes.
2. Recycling is only a stop-gap measure, though; what we really need to do is stop bringing non-usable, unsustainable items into our homes in the first place. It’s a challenge, and not always possible, but we do our best. Whenever we can we take our own food bag (as in bags that will directly hold bulk food items), our own shopping bags, etc. We buy very little “stuff” in general, and what we do buy we try to get in re-usable containers. (Even though our raw milk came in recyclable bottles, for example, we asked our farmer to let us have the milk in re-usable glass bottles. He happily complied!)
3. We try not to purchase or accept as a gift any item that isn’t essential to our lives.
4. We recycle items right here on the farm, too: mostly that would be composting of kitchen scraps, or feeding them to the animals when appropriate. It all goes back to the land, which grows our food, which fuels our bodies …  We also use cardboard to help keep the garden paths weed-free (or close to it).  Any used clothing goes to a drop box or to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Which is where we buy almost all of our clothes, by the way.  A worn-through knee or a ripped shirttail doesn’t warrant that Goodwill trip; we patch and mend, just like my mom used to do. (It’s actually soothing work, and usually buys at least another year of good wear.)

•  FOOD!!!!  This one is the heart of our efforts and joys here. It deserves its very own blog. Or two.

•  Living simply.  Another blog.

And one of the very best things about all this “effort” is that it is not — not hard work, not unpleasant, not difficult to do. Living more sustainably feels good, from our bodies to our souls. We are learning many of the old ways and using them more and more. We are happier, more peaceful and more grounded.

We’ve learned that “being green” isn’t something we do because we think we should or have to — it’s something we do because we want to. And that feels best of all.