Growing, Training and Feeding

It feels like life crams around you and there's so many decisions to make every day, boring things like house fixing, yard, work, and all these people who need a little bit of tending, and words that need to be made into other longer things, like books that only I can write apparently, and if I'm into writing then the kids look far away to me, and the tv is on more but sometimes I have to write while I'm here, even if being with the kids is really the only part I will miss, ten years from now.

So the only way to make sense of the day is to eat Nutella off the knife and go gather the eggs and be swarmed by the chickens, very popular until I throw out seeds for them and then suddenly not popular, and holding the warm egg and feeling rich because here is a free egg that our chickens made for us in exchange for swarming me every time I go out the door. The chickens are a tiny-eyed gang, unarmed, who know how to enjoy a good basking dirt bath in the sun. And no leftover is too leftover for them. Easily satisfied.

The dog is always padding along right after me. When I feed the horses in the morning, she comes out and sits down directly in their hay that I throw out. She eats a few pieces, but mostly she just sits there surveying while I clean up the poop, and greet the horses, and check on the general barn situation. Travis the sheep always jumps into the barn to see what fresh hay he can sneak, and I always have to grab thick wool and shove his bargeness out the door. He is a huge wool suitcase. His first shearing soon, that should be interesting.

I learned how to trim horse feet, so I'm slowly practicing that on my two renegades, and aside from making Dewey limp for two weeks the first time, I think someday I'll be okay at it.

I think writing is good, it is satisfying and confusing, but having a farm in the city is keeping me connected to the earth, warming my feet by the growing, training and feeding of things. Maybe it's an offshoot of the children, and being so glad I can still guide them as they grow, so I'm all greased up in the growing, training and feeding - I had to expand into the backyard and the barn. Might as well use that talent and see where it leads. Maybe it only really leads to just a balanced heart, but isn't that the most important thing.