Things didn't work out this fall like I had planned. Seems when talking about the farm they never do.
The turkeys didn't grow as well as planned. Growth was stunted by illness that went undetected.
The barn where the cattle stayed last year, may be sold, but he isnt' sure, and isn't sure if I'd be evicted if it was. Plus the power bill was more money than he thought and I'd have to spend double to triple what I did last winter to keep them there. So they can't stay. I have to send them to my mom's farm. Which means the horse has to go too. Which means my heart will break and I'll cry when the trailer rattles out of my driveway and I hear his thumping hooves and feel his nervous panicked energy (he doesn't travel well). I know where he's going, I'll know he's coming back, but he doesn't. I'll miss him. I'll miss all of them.
The pastures will be empty...
It panics me a bit, you know. To not have everything work out just right. I plan and plan and plan some more. Then something completely different happens anyway. My rational mind knows it's not a big deal. That any way that it works out is the right way, but another part of me disagrees. It stresses and hurries to right it, when there is nothing to right. When it can't be. When all that is required is patience and trying again next year. I worry that the animals aren't happy, that their feet are too wet, that they're too much of a burden on my husband, that I should be able to take care of things all by myself. What if I can't? That I'm doing this farming thing wrong.
Then a 35 year old lady dies suddenly after finally conceiving a child, and a seven year old girl sees through the door to the next life and teases us with the answer to all our questions. The answers we realize we forgot we had when we were seven. But it's too late, so we sit grieving and mesmerized by our kids and all that we forgot we knew.
I sit at the office working and pretending to be working and trying to make a difference of some kind. Although I have no idea in what way that could be. I'm busy but I don't know with what. I'm on the road and away working. Running. Convincing myself that what I do is important. Others are at home baking cookies and making jelly and harvesting the gardens and raising their children. Because you only get one chance to raise your kids. I panic again and worry that I'm doing this family thing all wrong.
Some days feel like I'm picked up by my ankles and all the change is shook loose from my pockets. Before I can collect it, I look at it lying on the ground and wonder if any of it matters. The small things that I give such weight. When there are so many bigger things.
I want to go home and hug my kids and pat my horse and smell the earth and give my soul to my husband and show him I still cherish his. Leaving all the rest on the ground. Never picking it up again.
But I can't. None of us can.
