Category: barn

Rising Up From the Darkness

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My father taught me how to eat breakfast
those mornings when it was my turn to help
him milk the cows. I loved rising up from

the darkness and coming quietly down
the stairs while the others were still sleeping.
I’d take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon

from the drawer, and slip into the pantry
where he was already eating spoonfuls
of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries

from our own strawberry fields forever.
Didn’t talk much—except to mention how
good the strawberries tasted or the way

those clouds hung over the hay barn roof.
Simple—that’s how we started up the day.
~Joyce Sutphen, “Breakfast” from First Words, Red Dragonfly.

By the time I was four years old, my family owned several Guernsey and Jersey dairy cows my father milked by hand twice a day. My mother pasteurized the milk on our wood stove and we grew up drinking the best milk on earth, as well as enjoying home-made butter and ice cream.

One of my fondest early memories is getting up early with my dad, before he needed to be at school teaching FFA agriculture students (Future Farmers of America). I would eat breakfast with him and then walk out into the foggy fall mornings with our dog to bring in the cows for milking. He would boost me up on top of a very bony-backed chestnut and white patchwork cow while he washed her udder and set to work milking.

I would sometimes sing songs from up there on my perch and my dad would whistle since he didn’t sing.

I can still hear the rhythmic sound of the milk squirting into the stainless steel bucket – the high-pitched metallic whoosh initially and then a more gurgling low wet sound as the bucket filled up. I can see my dad’s capped forehead resting against the flank of the cow as he leaned into the muscular work of squeezing the udder teats, each in turn. I can hear the cow’s chewing her breakfast of alfalfa and grain as I balanced on her prominent spine feeling her smooth hair over her ribs. The barn cats circulated around us, mewing, attracted by the warm milky fragrance in the air.

Those were preciously simple starts to the day for me and my father, whose thoughts he didn’t articulate nor I could ever quite discern. But I did know I wasn’t only his daughter on mornings like that – I was one of his future farmers of America he dedicated his life to teaching.

Dad, even without you saying much, those were mornings when my every sense was awakened. I’ve never forgotten that- the best start to the day.

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Things to Be Done

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There are many things to be done today
and it’s a lovely day to do them in

Each thing a joy to do
and a joy to have done

I can tell because of the calm I feel
when I think about doing them

I can almost hear them say to me
Thank you for doing us

And when evening comes
I’ll remove my shoes and place them on the floor

And think how good they look
sitting?… standing?… there

Not doing anything
~ Ron Padgett “Inaction of Shoes” from Collected Poems.

Every day after work he’d sit in his armchair
with its antimacassar and its plush burgundy velour
and she’d kneel on the floor to unfasten the laces,
loosen the tongues, and lift out his feet.
When I was ten I stayed for a week
and did it for her. He thought I did it 
for him.
~Andrea Hollander Budy “My Grandmother Taking Off My Grandfather’s Shoes” from When She Named Fire

I did not grow up in a household that took time off.  Time was redeemed by work, and work was noble and honorable and proved we had a right to exist.

Vacation road trips were rare and almost always associated with my father’s work.  When he came home from his desk job in town, he would immediately change into his farm clothes and put in several hours of work outside, summer or winter, rain or shine, light or dark.

My mother did not work in town while we were children, but worked throughout her day inside and outside the house doing what farm wives and mothers need to do: growing, hoeing, harvesting, preserving, washing, cleaning, sewing, and most of all, being there for us.

As kids, we had our share of chores that were simply part of our day as our work was never done on a farm. When we turned ten, we began working for others: babysitting, weeding, barn and house cleaning, berry picking.  I figure I put in over 60 years of gainful employment – there were times I worked four part-time jobs at once because that was what I could put together to keep things together.

I know I’ve missed out on much of life being a “nose to the grindstone” person.

Now retired, I try a different way to redeem my time: to notice, to record, to observe, to appreciate beauty that still exists in the midst of chaos and cataclysm..

Life isn’t all about non-stop labor, yet we get on with our work because work is about showing up when and where we are needed.

And we are always needed, by someone, somewhere, somehow. That’s the reason why we’re here.

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All That is Entangled

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I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
-Wendell Berry “To My Mother”

During barn chores, it did seem odd that one of our Haflinger geldings stood facing the back wall as I opened his stall door to give him his hay. For a moment I wondered if there was a problem with his appetite as he usually would dive right into his hay immediately.  A closer look told me the problem was with his hind end, not his front end: his heavy white tail was wrapped snugly around a J hook hanging on the stall wall that is meant to hold his water bucket. Instead now he was hooked instead of the bucket — and he was stuck. 

He had apparently been itching his butt back and forth, round and round on the handy hook and managed to wrap his tail into such tight knots on the hook that he was literally tethered to the wall. He was very calm about the whole thing – perhaps a little embarrassed.

He turned his head to glance at me, looking pitiful. How long he’d been standing there like that through the night was anyone’s guess. 

I bet he no longer was itchy.

I started to work at untying the tail knots to free him and found them wound so tight that loosening them required significant cooperation from my 1200 pound buddy. Unfortunately, any time I managed to almost unloop a knot over the hook end, he would pull forward, snugging it even tighter. 

Out of desperation I pulled out the scissors I keep in my barn jacket pocket. I cut one knot hoping that would be sufficient. Then I cut through another knot. Still not enough. I cut a third big knot and thank God Almighty, he was free at last. 

He sauntered over to his hay now with a chunk of his tail in my hand and a big gap in what was still left hanging on him. It may take a year to grow that missing hair back out. But hey, it is only hair and at least someone kind and caring came along with a set of shears to release him painlessly from his captivity. 

We aren’t all so lucky.

I know what it is like to get tangled up in things I should probably give wide berth. I have a tendency, like my horse, to butt in where I best not be and then become so bound I can’t get loose again. It can take forever to free myself,  sometimes painfully leaving parts of my hide behind.

So when I inevitably get tied up in knots again, I hope someone will come along to save me. Better yet, I hope someone might warn me away from the things that hook me before I foolishly back right into them. I’ve got to loosen up and quit pulling the knots tighter.

It’s best to always have a forgiving detangler handy. You never know when you might need one.

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Whatever the Sky Might Bring

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When it snows, he stands
at the back door or wanders
around the house to each
window in turn and
watches the weather
like a lover. O farm boy,
I waited years
for you to look at me
that way. Now we’re old
enough to stop waiting
for random looks or touches
or words, so I find myself
watching you watching
the weather, and we wait
together to discover
whatever the sky might bring.
~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”

My farm boy does still look at me that way,
wondering if today will bring
frost,
damaging hail,
a wind storm,
a blizzard,

maybe fog or mist,
or soft lazy snowflakes,
a scorcher,
or a deluge.

I reassure him as best I can,
because he knows me so well
in our many years together:

today, like most other days
will be partly cloudy with a snow shower or two
and occasional sun breaks.

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A Flurry of Owls

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Each night, an owl cries out from the redwoods. He calls, and I call back. I call, and he answers. We share the same bright moon, the same shadows, and the same fate. The possibility of discussion is limitless;  we have no secrets. This morning I discovered an owl pellet by the front door—a wad of fur, and a jumble of femurs and little ribs—oracle bones, easy to decipher.
~Gary Young [Each night, an owl cries out from the redwoods.]

Once again a child asks me suddenly What is a poem?,
And once again I find myself riffing freely and happily
Without the slightest scholarly expertise or knowledge;
But I am entranced by how poems can hint and suggest
And point toward things deeper than words. A poem is
An owl feather, I say. It’s not the owl—but it intimates
Owlness, see what I mean? You imagine the owl, owls,
Silent flight, razors for fingers, a wriggle of mouse tail
Slurped up right quick like the last strand of angel hair,
A startle of moonlight, a fox watching from the thicket,
All that from a feather. It’s like an owl is in the feather.
A poem is a small thing with all manner of bigger in it.
Poor poems only have a writer in them, but better ones
Have way more in them than the writer knew or knows
About. This poem, for example, amazingly has owls in
It—who knew we’d see a flurry of owls this afternoon?
~Brian Doyle, “A Flurry of Owls”

Once in awhile I walk into our big hay barn to retrieve a few barn owl feathers and owl pellets.

They were left behind, waiting for a poem to hide within.

The barn owls stay tucked invisibly in the rafters
until dusk and hunger lures them to the hunt,
swooping outside to capture both moonlight and mice
to be coughed up in pellets of fur and bones.

These feathers, dropped like so many random snowflakes,
carry within them the glint and glow of the moon.

A reminder:
what we leave behind matters,
whether it be feather or fur
or a wee dry skeleton,
a shell of who we once were
yet are no longer.

We leave more than shadow.

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A Collector of Slants of Light

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I like the slants of light; I’m a collector.
That’s a good one, I say…
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

How valuable it is in these short days,
threading through empty maple branches,
the lacy-needled sugar pines.
 
Its glint off sheets of ice tells the story
of Death’s brightness, her bitter cold.
 
We can make do with so little, just the hint
of warmth, the slanted light...
~Molly Fisk, “Winter Sun” from The More Difficult Beauty

There’s a certain Slant of light
On winter afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
of cathedral tunes.
When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows hold their breath —
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death.
~Emily Dickinson

During our northwest winters, there is usually so little sunlight on gray cloudy days that I routinely turn on the two light bulbs in the big hay barn any time I need to fetch hay bales for the horses. This is so I avoid falling into the holes that inevitably develop in the hay stack between bales. Winter murky lighting tends to hide the dark shadows of the leg-swallowing pits among the bales, something that is particularly hazardous when attempting to move a 60 pound hay bale.

Sometimes in mid-winter, when I go to grab hay bales for the horses at sunset, before I flip the light switch, I can see light already blazing in the big barn. The last of the day’s sun rays are at a precise winter slant, streaming through the barn slat openings, ricocheting off the roof timbers onto the bales, casting an almost fiery glow onto the hay. The barn is ignited and ablaze without fire and smoke — the last things one would ever want in a hay barn.

Thanks to occasional late afternoon winter light, I can scramble among the bales without worry.

It seems as I age I have been running into more dark holes. Even when I know where they lie and how deep they are, some days I will manage to step right in anyway. Each time it knocks the breath out of me, makes me cry out, makes me want to quit trying to lift the loads which need carrying. It leaves me fearful to venture where the footing is uncertain.

Then, on the darkest of days, light comes from the most unexpected of places, blazing a trail to help me see where to step, what to avoid, how to navigate the hazards to avoid collapsing on my face. I’m redirected, inspired anew, granted grace, gratefully calmed and comforted amid my fears.

For many Americans, tomorrow represents the dark holes getting even darker. But we know — love, respect, and kindness will eventually reignite again.

The Light always returns so we can climb out of any dark holes that try to swallow us whole.

Yet another slant of Light for our collection…

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~Emily Dickinson

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Come Kneel Beside Them

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Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
~Thomas Hardy “The Oxen”

Says a country legend told every year:
Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see
what the creatures do as that long night tips over.
Down on their knees they will go, the fire
of an old memory whistling through their minds!

So I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold
I creaked back the barn door and peered in.
From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,
and the beasts listened – yet they lay in their stalls like stone.

Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know only of the dissolving Now!

Still they drowsed on –
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind, innocent of history.

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!

As for Bethlehem, that blazing star
still sailed the dark, but only looked for me.
Caught in its light, listening again to its story,
I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled
my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me
the best it could all night.
~Mary Oliver “Christmas Poem” from Goodness and Light

Growing up on my childhood farm,
remembering the magic of Christmas eve night,
I bundled myself up to stay warm
in our barn, to witness an unbelievable sight.

At midnight we knew the animals knelt down,
speaking words we could all understand,
to worship a Child born in Bethlehem town,
in a barn, long ago in a far away land.

They were there that night, to see and to hear,
the blessings that came from the sky.
They patiently stood watch at the manger near,
in a barn, while shepherds and kings stopped by.

My trips to the barn were always too late,
our cows would be chewing, our chickens asleep,
our horses breathing softly, cats climbing the gate,
in our barn, there was never a neigh, moo or peep.

But I knew they had done it, I just missed it again!
They were plainly so calm, well-fed and at peace
in the sweet smelling straw, all snug in their pens,
in a barn, a mystery, once more, took place.

Even now, I still bundle to go out Christmas eve,
in the hope I’ll catch them just once more this time.
Though I’m older and grayer, I still firmly believe
in the barn, a Birth happened amid cobwebs and grime.

Our horses sigh low as they hear me come near,
that tells me the time I hope for is now,
they will drop to their knees without any fear
in our barn, as worship, all living things bow.

I wonder anew at God’s immense trust
for His creatures so sheltered that darkening night –
the mystery of why of all places, His Son must
begin life in a barn: a welcoming most holy and right.
~ “In the Barn” (written Christmas Eve 1999)

I walk to the barn tonight as I do each year,
Counting my blessings, knowing my flaws,
Praying for family and friends so dear,
And for each precious creature with hooves or paws.

Each horse is content and a witness to peace,
And I wish every person could know,
Sadness and worry for a moment can cease,
While patting noses down a stall row.

For once I see the sky is clear
And stars are shining bright
The northeast wind is coming near
And briskly chills this special night.

For weeks stars hid behind a cloud
Of doubt, of fear, of weeping rain,
Explosions at once so horrid and loud
The whole world instantly felt the pain.

Like stars that glow through blackest dark
Good overwhelms bad with barely left trace
All owed to a Child who left His mark
By giving Himself in infinite grace.

(written Christmas Eve 2001)

O magnum mysterium
Et admirabile sacramentum
Ut animalia viderent Dominum natum
Jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
Meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum
Alleluia

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

We Are No Longer Alone: Facing the Unknown

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Usually, after turning out that forgotten barn light, I sit on the edge of the tractor bucket for a few minutes and let my eyes adjust to the night outside. City people always notice the darkness here, but it’s never very dark if you wait till your eyes owl out a little….

I’m always glad to have to walk down to the barn in the night, and I always forget that it makes me glad. I heave on my coat, stomp into my barn boots and trudge down toward the barn light, muttering at myself. But then I sit in the dark, and I remember this gladness, and I walk back up to the gleaming house, listening for the horses.
~Verlyn Klinkenborg from A Light in the Barn

…all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart..
~Luke 2:18-19

Inside the barn the sheep were standing, pushed close to one
another. Some were dozing, some had eyes wide open listening
in the dark. Some had no doubt heard of wolves. They looked
weary with all the burdens they had to carry, like being thought
of as stupid and cowardly, disliked by cowboys for the way they
eat grass about an inch into the dirt, the silly look they have
just after shearing, of being one of the symbols of the Christian
religion. In the darkness of the barn their woolly backs were
full of light gathered on summer pastures. Above them their
white breath was suspended, while far off in the pine woods,
night was deep in silence. The owl and rabbit were wondering,
along with the trees, if the air would soon fill with snowflakes,
but the power that moves through the world and makes our
hair stand on end was keeping the answer to itself.
~Tom Hennen “Sheep in the Winter Night” from Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems.

Yet another school shooting takes hold of my heart and breaks it:
two of our children are school teachers, our grandchildren are students.

there is so much about this world I don’t understand –
the news of each day causes more questions
and a sense of ever deeper despair.

There are times when I feel my hair stand on end,
wondering where it all leads.

Half a lifetime ago, I was far more confident after so many years in school and training; now I am well aware there is much I can never know or understand.

To accept the mystery and power that moves through this world
is an awe-filled load to carry.

All shall be revealed in the fullness of time.
Yet shortening time is gets emptier by the minute.

I want to know why too many are taken from us too young,
why there is persisting darkness and evil causing fear and suffering, why we stumble and fall and fail again and again,
why we don’t trust one another or trust God
when there are simply things that can’t be known or understood yet.

Most of all I need faith that God has my life and your life in His hands. His power moving through our hearts is real and true and trustworthy even if we don’t know all the answers to myriad questions yet.

So like sheep, huddled and frightened, we wait for our Shepherd’s voice to tell us where to go and what comes next.

He leaves the light on for us because, like sheep, like children,
the darkness and the unknown can feel overwhelming.

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This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

Click to Listen: He Will Carry the Weight of the World by The City Choir

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Good Things in Abundance

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There was an entire aspect to my life that I had been blind to — the small, good things that came in abundance.
~Mary Karr from The Art of Memoir

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
~Thornton Wilder, quotes from “Our Town”

The smell of baking bread, smooth floured hands,
butter waiting to be spread with blackberry jam,
and I realize, this is no small thing.
These days spent confined,
I am drawn to life’s ordinary details,
the largeness of all we can do
alongside what we cannot.
The list of allowances far outweighs my complaints.
I am fortunate to have flour and yeast, a source of heat,
not to mention soft butter, the tartness of blackberries
harvested on a cold back road.
A kitchen, a home, two working
hands to stir and knead,
a clear enough head to gather it all.
Even the big toothy knife feels miraculous
as it grabs hold and cracks the crust.
~Ellen Rowland “No Small Thing”

The words from “Our Town” written over 80 years ago still ring true:
our country a Great Depression of the economy then –
now we stagger under a Great Depression of the spirit.

Despite being more connected electronically, we are actually more divisive than ever, many feeling estranged from family, friends, faith.

Some less economically secure,
yet many emotionally bankrupt.

May we be more conscious of our abundance –
our small daily treasures.

God knows we need Him.
He cares for us, even when
we turn our faces away from Him.

I search the soil of this life,
this farm, this faith
to find what still yearns
to grow, to bloom, to fruit,
to be harvested to share with others.

My deep gratitude goes to you
who visit here once in awhile, or daily.
Thank you to those who let me know
the small and the good I share with you
makes a difference.

I’m right here,
alongside you in joint Thanksgiving
to our Creator and Preserver.

Many blessings today and always,
Emily

Let it go my love my truest
Let it sail on silver wings
Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain
But it’s such a fine thing

CHORUS:There’s a gathering of spirits
There’s a festival of friends
And we’ll take up where we left off
When we all meet again

I can’t explain it
I couldn’t if I tried
How the only things we carry
Are the things we hold inside

Like a day in the open
Like the love we won’t forget
Like the laughter that we started
And it hasn’t died down yet

Oh let it go my love my truest
Let it sail on silver wings
Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain
But it’s such a fine thing

Oh yeah now didn’t we
And don’t we make it shine
Aren’t we standing in the center of
Something rare and fine

Some glow like embers
Like a light through colored glass
Some give it all in one great flame

Throwing kisses as they pass

So let it go my love my truest
Let it sail on silver wings
Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain
But it’s such a fine thing

East of eden
But there’s heaven in our midst
And we’re never really all that far
From those we love and miss
Wade out in the water
There’s a glory all around
And the wisest say there’s a thousand ways
To kneel and kiss the ground

Oh let it go my love my truest
Let it sail on silver wings
Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain
But it’s such a fine thing

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Let the Evening Come

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving   
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing   
as a woman takes up her needles   
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   
Let the wind die down. Let the shed   
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   
in the oats, to air in the lung   
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   
be afraid. God does not leave us 
comfortless, so let evening come.
~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”

photo by Josh Scholten

We resist nightfall in our lives. We fear the dark.

I wish I could remain forever sunshiny, vital and irreplaceable, living each moment with the energy I feel with the dawn. But I know that the forward momentum of time inevitably will wind me down to twilight.

I thought of this poem today as many of us struggle with newly elected leadership, uncertain what it means for us short-term and long-term.

We are not alone in our need to catch our breath and be still.
Each of us is created in the image of God, no matter how we disagree. 

So let evening come, as it will – there is no stopping it –
our lungs filled with the breath of God, our Creator.

We will not be left comfortless.

Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be be.
~Robert Frost from “Acceptance”

AI image created for this post
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