Control

No matter how many times life tries to teach me the same lesson, I can not let go of my need to feel in control.

Have I picked the wrong career in farming? Do you think?

Last night, safely cradling my son in my arms as he slept peacefully, I had nightmare after nightmare involving him injured, hurt, crying, somewhere I couldn’t reach him, some way that had to be my fault. He’s learning to walk right now, hauling himself up on the coffee table and chairs and sofa and anything else that he determines looks reasonable. He falls, and so far has not hurt himself at all. Scared himself, yes, but not hurt, although the thunking noise his dense little body makes when it hits the floor sounds otherwise and makes my heart lurch. I thought I was fine with this. It’s how he will learn. The tip of his head is only two feet from the floor when he’s on his toes. That’s not very far. But clearly, my inner buried self is not at all okay with this. I can’t control his body for him . . .

So what does one do with nightmares? Usually I try to shake myself awake enough to redirect my thoughts. But last night, I didn’t really want to. I’m regularly up at night, spiraling thoughts of seeds and plants and beetles and schedules and boxes and weather and weeds and mowing and accounting and supplies and cats and dogs and ticks and dishes and baby food . . . My brain will dig deep enough for dirt that I’m feeling guilty at 3 am for not hanging the last load of laundry out on the line which I should have done because I’m trying to not use the dryer at least in part to save on propane for which I have a bill due that’s bigger than I expected because I failed to plan and act as I should have. Nightmares of Calvin were almost a diversion.

This particular summer is exceptionally hard for me. In past years, when I’ve seen the fields in need, the weeds getting too big, the mowing too far behind, I’ve simply strapped on the overalls and gone at it. I actually enjoy a lot of it after all. Or I enjoy the aftermath. Nothing feels better than looking at a clean vegetable bed, it’s such a demonstration of (guess what?) control.

For years, the farm was small enough, and I was motivated enough, to do this. I am unable to procrastinate, I do the worst things first, and I don’t usually stop till I’m done. Although I do remember feeling silly one night using the headlights on the little riding lawnmower to see. I kept wishing it had brights . . . But even were the farm still small enough for me to micromanage, I can’t this year. (Can’t is negative language I shouldn’t use according to a recent training class I’ve taken at the off-farm job—uh oh).

But I can’t! Calvin is my priority now, happily, and there is no way to strap him on and do the sorts of things I’m talking about. Believe me, I’ve tried, but he’s getting too big. Not to mention that he’d rather do something else, like walk. So I’ve tried very hard to not look, or to pretend I don’t see. But this does not work if you are like me. So I make suggestions, and they turn into nagging, and then into frantic demands, and then semi-hysterical predictions of doom.

Unfortunately, what I think is urgent and what my husband thinks is urgent are not often the same thing. Funny how it always seems to work out anyway. I know this, but can I let it go? No.

Can I let Calvin go and grow up? I start wondering if I’ll survive this.

Slippery Slope

Why one slippery slope? My husband and I disagree on why it didn't turn into our actual farm name (Middlebury Hills), but Slippery Slope was my first choice as a name for our land, right after we moved in. The reasons should be obvious. I do have a problem after all.

But sticking with the literal interpretation, our drive in those first years was strictly a farm road that climbed the hill and petered out at our back fence line, bypassing the abandoned house entirely. Farm roads are not graded or leveled or usually graveled for that matter. They are often simply ruts. Tractors use farm roads to get into the fields. Tractors do not often get stuck. We did not own a tractor.

We quickly learned that snow in the winter (with no method of plowing) and mud in the spring sometimes meant trekking up the hill on foot, but we were still enamored of such stuff (how rustic!). And I had four-wheel drive. I had not yet been in a car accident, so I would come home from my off-farm job actually excited to shift into four-wheel and gun it up the hill as fast as I could. If I could clear the moderately steep curve from base to barn, I had it made. On occasion, I would try this multiple times.

Of course, if I missed, I faced rather steep peril on my left and rather hard rock on my right. Still, the thrill! An equally perilous descent in the morning involved sideways slipping if you didn't achieve minimum speed. It was always slow going on the county road after that as the tires plonked mud all over the place, smacking into the bottom of the car with remarkable force. We left trails of splatter when we left home.

At first we were dedicated to maintaining this thrilling and picturesque drive. We loved it, even as the thistles encroached upon it over summer. One afternoon I hiked up the hill and discovered all these tracks—huge tire treads, chain marks, giant divots, and a gouging scrape off to one side. Lots of displaced mud. And I was upset! I still thought all the weeds growing there were pretty after all.

At the house, I discovered a Fed Ex package, but it wasn't for a good day or two that I correlated the apparent arrival of a delivery vehicle with the tracks in the driveway. As it turned out, the Fed Ex guy, trying my method of approach, went down the perilous left-hand drop, where he nearly flipped over and was utterly mired until something powerful enough to tow a truck arrived to haul him all the way back up. Something like a tractor.

He told us later it was a lovely place to eat lunch. We have a beautiful view, even from down there . . .

What was my second choice for a farm name? Thistle Hill. Again, isn't it obvious?

The Trouble with Spring

We are farmers. We are many other things as well, but we are farmers. And that basic fact has inescapably changed my view of the world.

For instance, I hate spring. It has its bright moments of course—all the flats of brilliant green tender seedlings popping through soil in the greenhouse, that first whiff of thawing earth in the air, or the rainbow that arcs over the barn as if this one spot is truly magical. The hummingbirds return. But those moments are far outdone by the evil that drives spring weather in Wisconsin and by the steady reveal of winter’s various ravages.

Spring is about loss for me. As the blanketing snow disappears, I see the trees lost to winter’s hungry mice and voles and rabbits, who have been busy girdling trunks, or to antler-rubbing deer, often snapping trunks. I see fewer bulbs in the flower gardens, lost to well-fed moles. I watch our first crops get washed away in downpours. I see a ferocious and vicious stream suddenly grow, sometimes even prettily burbling under our drive for a day or two, before stripping everything in its path the next day in our normally dry valley. I feel wind attacking the cracks and crevices in our old house and barn, hear it squealing as it snatches at anything that isn’t locked down. And I avert my eyes from swirling clouds lest the inevitable funnel decide to show its power just to me. I admire the fox who knows how to keep her new family from hunger even as I mourn the loss of chickens who are too slow, and too reliant on us, to recognize danger. I feel I have failed, am a failure, when I can not protect them, or my plants, or the latest barn cat who is too wild to trust me and too weak to make it without me. When the dogs kill another baby bunny, or my husband dispatches another woodchuck, I mourn their loss even while I recognize the necessity. Spring is hard. And perhaps I do not have the backbone I need to bear such harshness.

But I am nothing if not determined and resolute (or stubborn). So despite what I know spring is doing, I work hard during those months. Thousands of seeds are started, transplanted, tended, coddled. The greenhouse fills. We spend money we don’t have on tanks and tanks of propane. Week-by-week, even day-by-day, plans are concocted for starting more seeds, getting the plants hardened off, getting things out into the fields. My husband is building trellises, plowing, tilling. We restart and replant what washes away, sometimes once, sometimes three times. We spread row cover everywhere, fighting the wind. Hoses snake all over the place because if it’s not raining too hard, it will be dry. Seeds can not be dry. We pray for sun each morning to thaw the ice out.

And eventually, spring gives way to summer. And as a farmer, I start to come into my own. All that work starts to show. The broccoli actually produces enormous blue-green heads. The carrots are startlingly orange after winter’s white and spring’s green. The garlic raises its flower heads in dramatic, tall curls. The daisies fade away and the hot, brilliant zinnias begin their show. The view from my bedroom window shows geometric rows of every shade of green against brown. The lawnmower trims spring’s overblown grass into something neat, something that makes it look as if we have things under control. This is what I like.

I think I may have a problem.