Category: Haflinger

Lenten Grace — Barnstormed

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(Emily’s note: I’ve been asked how my blog came to be named “Barnstorming” — most assume it is a doctor-farmer’s twist on “brainstorming” which didn’t occur to me until someone mentioned it to me.  Instead, the name has nothing to do with brains, baseball teams, politics or daredevil piloting of small airplanes.  It has everything to do with a storm taking place in our barn at the beginning of Holy Week a few years ago.  This is a repost.)

An unexpected southerly wind hit suddenly late Sunday night, gusting up to 40 miles an hour and slamming the house with drenching rain as we prepared to go to bed. Chores in the barn had been done hours before, but as we had not been expecting a storm, the north/south center aisle doors were still open, and I could hear banging and rattling as they were buffeted in the wind. I quickly dressed to go latch the doors for the night, but the tempest had done its damage. Hay, empty buckets, horse blankets, tack and cat food had blown all over, while the Haflingers stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls. A storm was blowing inside the barn as well as outside it.

It took some time to tidy up the mess after the doors were secured but all was soon made right. The wind continued to bash at the doors, but it no longer could touch anything inside them. The horses relaxed and got back to their evening meal though the noise coming from outside was deafening. I headed back up to the house and slept fitfully listening to the wind blow all night, wondering if the metal barn roof might pull off in a gust, exposing everything within.

Yet in the new daylight this Monday morning, all is calm. The barn is still there, the roof still on, the horses are where they belong and all seems to be as it was before the barnstorming wind. Or so it might appear.

This wind heralds another storm coming this week that hits with such force that I’m knocked off my feet, swept away, and left bruised and breathless. No latches, locks, or barricades are strong enough to protect me from what will come over the next few days.

Yesterday he rode in on a donkey softly, humbly, and wept at what he knew.

Today, he overturns the tables in his fury.

Tomorrow he echoes the destruction that is to happen.

Wednesday, he teaches the people to prepare them, then rests in anticipation.

On Thursday, he kneels, pours water over dusty feet, presides over a simple meal, and then, abandoned,  sweats blood in agonized prayer.

By Friday, all culminates in the perfect storm, transforming everything in its path, leaving nothing untouched.

The silence on Saturday is deafening.

Next Sunday, the Son rises and returns, all is calm, all is well, all set to right.  He calls my name, my heart burns within me at his words and I can never be the same again.

Barnstormed to the depths of my soul. Doors flung open wide, the roof pulled off, everything blown away and now replaced, renewed and reconciled.

May it be done as he has said, again and yet again.

Tangled Up

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IMG_0557

It did seem odd this morning during my barn chores that our six year old Haflinger gelding 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 as soon as I threw it to him.  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 meant to hold his water bucket.  Instead now it held him — and wasn’t letting go.  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 only maybe just a little embarrassed.

He turned his head to look at me, 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 barnjacket 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 young 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 detangler handy.  You never know when you might need one.

Good Enough

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photo by Lea Gibson
photo by Lea Gibson

“and there was once, oh wonderful,
a new horse in the pasture,
a tall, slim being–a neighbor was keeping her there–
and she put her face against my face,
put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets,
against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me,
to see who I was,
a long quiet minute–minutes–
then she stamped her feet and whisked tail
and danced deliciously into the grass away, and came back.
She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough.”
~Mary Oliver from “The Poet Goes to Indiana”

Our farm has had many muzzles over the years–

Pink noses,
gray noses,
nondescript not-sure-what-color noses,
noses that have white stripes, diamonds,  triangles,
or absolutely no marks at all.

Hot breath that exudes warm grassy fragrance
better than any pricey perfume,
lips softer than the most elegant velvet.

Noses that reach out in greeting,
blow,
sniff,
nuzzle,
caress,
push,
search,

to smudge faces and
shower snot.

Because we’re just good enough
to warrant
such a baptism.

Summer Afternoon at BriarCroft

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Tony running in the lower field

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James

fish pond
Front yard light and shadow under the walnut tree
the swing set my dad made when I was little, now perched on our farm

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
~John Lubbock

haybarn
2012 Hay Storage

It will not always be summer; build barns.
~Hesiod

tree house in the walnut tree

front porch
Jose, who owns the front porch
Old buddies Dylan Thomas and Bobbie
Samwise Gamgee at 18 weeks
Thistle making more thistle
Gravenstein windfalls
a few of a million blackberries on the farm
silver plum tree

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.
~ Harper Lee in Too Kill a Mockingbird


‘Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
Thomas More

poplar row

in the filbert grove

Baldwin apple tree

Bartlett pear tree
heavy cone crop

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
~F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby

milking barn window
from the field
old milk barn
barn lane

Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
~William Shakespeare

hydrangea

BriarCroft in Winter