FOR THE LOVE OF DOG.
"I'm a little worried about Wendell," I told Hannah when she woke up, "I'm sure he's fine, but he's not back yet."And that was the first time I ever lied to my wife, because to be honest, I wasn't sure he was fine. I had awoken to the sound of a dog or coyote fight at some late hour, and hadn't heard Wendell since. If he was hurt, he'd probably limped into the woods to hide. If he was dead... well, I didn't want to think about that, even if it was all I could think about.Death is a part of life I've come to terms with and, through farming, even grown to admire. But I was realizing death was not a part of love I was able to process, or even willing to accept. In life, death replenishes. As Baudelaire said, death renders unto nature a hundred times what it takes from it. Death does not do the same for love. Life blossoms from death. Love blossoms from life.For as many times as I've been frustrated with Wendell, annoyed, embarrassed or even hurt by him, I found myself unable, in any fashion, to deal with the idea of his death. I made myself ill thinking about it—thinking about life without my dog, my buddy, my goof. I was not comforted by the fertility his giant body would be lending to the earth, I was haunted by the thought of not seeing him every morning, sleepy-eyed, sleepy bear. I am human and thus blessed and cursed with compassion. Compassion is what made me care for Wendell in the first place, to fall in love with him, but it was also the thing that had me so nervous that morning, pacing around the house with my eyes welling up, a grown man praying his grown puppy was okay."I'm going to go look for him," I finally mumbled, then walked swiftly out of the house and down the driveway, mentally preparing myself for what I might find. But when I got to the road, I looked over and saw a soaking wet Wendell, unharmed, exhausted from his night of work and play, happy and alive as could be, coming home for breakfast.And as he walked by me I could feel my affection for him growing. He'd scared me half to death, and it made me love him twice as much—such is the math of love, I suppose.- Jesse.
WENDELL WEDNESDAY.
Love this spotted tongue.*Does anyone know - is this normal for a Great Pyrenees? Or does it mean he is mixed with something?*
COWABUNGA.
Sometimes, you have to get creative around these parts. Case in point: harrow surfing!
The harrow wasn't proving to be a good tool for cleaning up the soil, with Eric having to make several passes both ways down each row to have any effect. So, Jesse reverted back to his old skateboarding ways and hopped aboard, and the extra weight was all it took! Now the butternut squash patch (one of Bugtussle's most important crops) is planted and mulched. Sometimes you don't need a bigger or better tool or machine, you just need to think outside of the box, work with what you have, and maybe even have a little fun in the process.- Hannah.
LONG-TERM INVESTING.
It feels a bit silly to be writing about retirement when we just started our farm, but perpetually worrying about a retirement fund is something my father instilled in me at a young age (which I assure you was a rather mind-boggling concept to a fifteen year old). It would be nice now, though, to start setting a little money aside for when we finally do decide to "settle down". But we barely have money to spend at the moment, let alone save. What little extra money we get goes into the house and into the farm (and into a meager vacation fund––see you in November, somewhere really close!). At this point, a retirement fund seems a long way off.The other day, however, Hannah and I went into Lafayette, TN (locally pronounced: Le-FAY-it) to buy a peach tree. While at the nursery, we acquired two more blueberry bushes (totaling eight now) and a bunch of perennial herbs. It was a sixty dollar hit, but it felt like, at a time when we don't have money to stuff into the bank, we were still making an investment in our future.All of those plants have the potential to earn us hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in their lifetimes. And if managed, cultivated and propagated correctly, most perennial plants we invest in now will have the potential to stick around until our retirement and beyond, fathering (or mothering, respectfully) many more trees, plants or bushes. Sure, we'll have to do some maintenance to keep them going even when we retire, but isn't gardening something people do when they retire anyway?Perhaps this has been on my mind lately as we've been hearing on NPR about how inflation is causing savings accounts to shrink––savings accounts once being a place people were led to believe they could safely save his or her money. If we don't have money to save, we decidedly don't have money to lose to inflation. Investing in trees and herbs and plants––more or less immune to inflation––that we ourselves will manage, is a type of savings that obviously fits our lifestyle, but that we have supreme confidence in. If nothing else, nature has proved to be a reliable area for growth, and not a bad place to invest.- Jesse.