Tag: Farm Life

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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The Edge of Dark and Cold

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This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.
~Robert Frost from “Good-bye and Keep Cold”

The winter orchard looks cold and silent yet I know plenty is happening beneath the sod.

There isn’t much to be done this time of year until the pruning hook comes out. Ideally, now is the time the trees should be shaped and shorn.

Pruning is one of those tasks that is immensely satisfying–after it’s done – way after. Several years after in some cases. In the case of our fruit trees, which all have an average age of 90 years or more, it is a matter of prune or lose them forever. We set to work, trying to gently retrain wild and chaotic apple, cherry, plum, and pear trees, but our consistency was lacking. The trees remained on the wild side, defying us, and several have toppled over in windstorms due to their weakened frame.

We hired additional help, hoping to get ahead of the new growth, but our helper had the “chain saw” approach to pruning and literally scalped several trees into dormancy before we saw what was happening and stopped the savaging.

Instead, the process of retraining a wild tree is slow, meticulous, thoughtful, and expectant. We must study the tree, the setting, know the fruit it is supposed to bear, and begin making decisions before making cuts. The dead stuff goes first–that’s easy. It’s not useful, it’s taking up space, it’s outta here. It’s the removal of viable branches that takes courage. Like thinning healthy vegetable plants in a garden, I can almost hear the plant utter a little scream as we choose it to be the next one to go. Gardening is not for the faint of heart. So ideally, we choose to trim about a third of the superfluous branches, rather than taking them all at once. In three years, we have the hoped-for tree, bearing fruit that is larger, healthier and hardier.

Then we’re in maintenance mode. That takes patience, vision, dedication, and love. That’s the ideal world.

The reality is we skip years of pruning work, sometimes several years in a row. Or we make a really dumb error and prune in a way that is counter productive, and it takes several years for the tree to recover. Or, in the case of the scalping, those trees took years to ever bear fruit again–standing embarrassed and naked among their peers.

Then there is the clean up process after pruning–if it was just lopping off stuff, I’d be out there doing it right now, but the process of picking up all those discarded branches off the ground, carrying them to a brush pile and burning them takes much more time and effort. That’s where kids come in very handy.

Our three children tolerated our shaping, trimming and pruning for years, grew tall and strong and ready to meet the world, to give it all they’ve got. In our hopes and dreams for them, there were times we  probably pruned a bit in haste, or sometimes neglected to prune enough, but even so, they’re all bearing great fruit, now grown up with few “scars” to show for our mistakes. 

I’m still pruned regularly by the Master Gardener, often painfully. Sometimes I see the pruning hook coming, knowing the dead branches that I’ve needlessly hung onto must go, and sometimes it comes as a complete surprise, cutting me at my most vulnerable spots. Some years I bear better fruit than other years. Some years, it seems, hardly any at all. I can be cold and dormant, unfruitful and at times desolate.

Yet, I’m still rooted, still fed when hungry and watered when thirsty, and still, amazingly enough, loved. I’ll continue to hang on to the root that chose to feed me and hold me fast through the windstorms of life. Even when my trunk is leaning, my branches broken, my fruit withered, I will know that God’s love sustains me, no matter what.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 
John 15: 1-2

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Retell Its Loveliness

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The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   
began remembering all down her thick length,   
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing
beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
~Galway Kinnell “Saint Francis and the Sow”

None of us trust our own loveliness;
we who are concerned with a blemish
or an unusual shape of toe or nose.

Yet we are made as we are
as an image of our Maker.

If we consider the purpose for which we’re created,
then we are just as we should be –
blessed with exact shape and size and spirit
with which we serve and bring joy to others.

Our loveliness must be retold
so we believe it thoroughly –
as a bud is all about blossoming,
a mother pours her love into the empty,
a father leads and guides the lost.

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Best of Barnstorming: Summer/Fall 2024

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And a few favorite AI images created for my Barnstorming posts – I like to see whether computers are understanding, through an artistic interpretation, what I’m trying to say.

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Previous collections of “Best of Barnstorming” photos:

Winter/Spring 2024

Summer/Fall 2023

Winter/Spring 2023

Summer/Fall 2022

Winter/Spring 2022

Summer/Fall 2021

Winter/Spring 2021

Summer/Fall 2020

Winter/Spring 2020

Summer/Fall 2019

Winter/Spring 2019

Summer/Fall 2018

Winter/Spring 2018

Summer/Fall 2017

Winter/Spring 2017

Summer/Fall 2016

Winter/Spring 2016

Summer/Fall 2015

Winter/Spring 2015

Summer/Fall 2014

Winter/Spring 2014

Best of 2013

Seasons on the Farm:

BriarCroft in Summer, in Autumn, in Winter, 
at Year’s End

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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We Are No Longer Alone: Reconciled and Rescued

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…the low is lifted high;
the stars shall bend their voices,
and every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry
in praises of the child
by whose descent among us
the worlds are reconciled.
~Richard Wilbur from “A Christmas Hymn”

Gentlemen, I have lived a long time and am convinced that God governs in the affairs of men.

If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?

I move that prayer imploring the assistance of Heaven be held every morning before we proceed to business.
– Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention of 1787

photo by Josh Scholten

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
– 2 Corinthians 5:20

Come, let us now resolve at last
  To live and love in quiet;
We’ll tie the knot so very fast
  That Time shall ne’er untie it.

The truest joys they seldom prove
  Who free from quarrels live:
‘Tis the most tender part of love
  Each other to forgive.

When least I seem’d concern’d, I took
  No pleasure nor no rest;
And when I feign’d an angry look,
  Alas! I loved you best.

Own but the same to me—you’ll find
  How blest will be our fate.
O to be happy—to be kind—
  Sure never is too late!
~John Sheffield “The Reconciliation”

It did seem odd this morning during my barn chores that our 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; maybe just a little embarrassed.

He turned his head to look at me, appearing a wee bit pitiful. How long he’d been standing there like that through the night was anyone’s guess. I bet he no longer felt 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. 

I know what it is like to get tangled up in things I should 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, or when I fall out of my comfortable, secure nest, I pray 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.

I am humbled in my need.
I am humbled by my helplessness.

So I implore God for His steadfast, reconciling assistance –
as the sparrow on the ground, fallen from the nest,
as the horse bound by his knotted tail to the wall.

I trust God’s protecting, rescuing, forgiving Hand.

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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

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Inside a Drop

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Find a quiet rain.  Then a green spruce tree.  You will notice that nearly every needle has been decorated with a tiny raindrop ornament.  Look closely inside the drop and there you are. In color. Upside down. Raindrops have been collecting snapshots since objects and people were placed, to their surprise, here and there on earth.

…even if we are only on display for a moment in a water drop as it clings to a pine needle, it is expected that we be on our best behavior, hair combed, jacket buttoned, no vulgar language.  Smiling is not necessary, but a pleasant attitude is helpful, and would be, I think, appreciated.
~Tom Hennen from “Outdoor Photos” in Darkness Sticks to Everything

… We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only melioration, is in mutual reverence.

God’s grace comes to us unmerited, the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. 

This is not the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically enough.

And yet, the beautiful persists, and so do eloquence and depth of thought, and they belong to all of us because they are the most pregnant evidence we can have of what is possible in us.
~ Marilynne Robinson from “What Are We Doing Here?”

These past three weeks I’ve been trudging along feeling cranky – each step an effort, each thought a burden, taking every opportunity to grump about myself, the state of the weather, politics, and of course, death and taxes.

It has been raining and gray here most of the past month with raindrops hanging from every branch. I am preserved in the camera eye of the raindrops I pass, if only for an instant – each drip snapping an instagram selfie photo of my upside-down piss-poor attitude.

It wouldn’t hurt me to stop rolling my eyes and cringing at the world. I might even try on a smile in a spirit of grace and forgiveness, even if the events of the day may not call for it. At least those smiles, reflected in the lens of each raindrop, will soak the soil when let go to fall earthward.

Planting smiles drop by drop: this inundating rain is a gift of grace to heal my grumbles – pregnant evidence of the beauty possible if I let it shine forth.

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