Closure: The Last Blog Post

So this is it.  The last post from Pleasant Places Farm.  Done.  Finale.  Closure.

We have sold the place.  Signed papers last week, and are now on borrowed,  correction: rented, time until we close on the new house and get moved.  Inside this house there are boxes everywhere.  Empty ones, taped up and labeled ones,  gaping ones.  Large pieces of furniture are missing, either given away or sold.  We are downsizing, after all.  The house's original carpeting, in a color I would have never chosen, I notice is still in obstinately good shape.  I kept waiting for it wear out so I could justify replacing it, and it just never did.

Outside, the spring season is glorious, and Pleasant Places is as beautiful as she has ever been.  I can not tell whether she is bidding me a fond farewell, or taunting me.  I wake every morning to the dawn chorus of birds.  There is, to me, something almost humorous in the extravagance of all that singing. It makes me smile.  The apple tree is blooming, and the dogwoods, and the iris, or it irises?  After a weekend of soaking rain, the springs have popped up again in  the barnyard.  The sparkle of the water everywhere among the bright green grass has a surreal beauty.  The chickens make their happy, clucky noise.  A tractor putters away in a distant neighbor's garden.  Wild turkeys visit the far end of the pasture.  Apparently, all is right on Pleasant Places Farm.

Two of the hens are setting eggs which should hatch just before we leave.   Most of the chickens are staying here, and so is Pico, the guard dog.  He seems to belong more to the farm than to us, and though I will miss him, when the new owners asked us to leave him, it seemed right.

With or without me, things go on as they should.  I am reminded of a summer day when I sat on the stone wall at the old homestead above the pasture and realized I was just one in probably a very long line of stewards of this piece of land.  I, like the ones before, would move on or pass on, but the land itself would remain. And now that day has come.  Sooner that I expected, but in the proper time, I have no doubt.

I am starting a file for the new owners, writing down things it will be helpful for them to know.  Trying to resist the urge to tell them everything it took ten years to learn about this land.   Enough to be helpful, not enough to rob them of the adventure of discovering things on their own.  They are escaping the city and longing to come here and learn to be more self-reliant.  I feel glad to be handing it over to people I believe will enjoy it as I have.

The move here almost ten years ago was about self-reliance for me as well, about producing our own food, about learning the skills of a past era.  In the last ten years there is very little in the way of food production I haven't tackled, from milking goats to butchering chickens and, of course,  growing all manner of fruits and vegetables.  Ten years ago, there really was no "local food" movement in this area, and if you wanted organic and didn't want to drive two hours, you had to grow it.   So I did. Now, ten years later, I will be able to walk to a weekly farmer's market from my new house. I am looking forward to that.   I am still a believer in local food, and I don't think I will ever regret learning what it takes to produce it.

Neither will I ever quit, of my own volition, being a gardener.  As soon as I knew we were going to move to a house on a town lot, I starting reading about urban homesteading and edible landscapes.  I will have a garden and fruit trees, and probably a couple of city chickens.  And what I have learned to do on a larger scale here, I think I may can do even better on our postage stamp yard.  And there will be the luxury of free time.  I have loved my farm, but she  has demanded much attention.  Ten years of never being long away from her.  Now, if I want go away for two weeks, or four, I can...city chickens notwithstanding.  ( I have family close by to look after them)

So another phase of life awaits us.  We move on to a small house with a small yard (way less than acre, can you believe that?) in an even smaller town than we live now.  But though it may sound like my life is shrinking, I feel it is, in fact, expanding.   We will spend less money in gas and in energy, and less energy  and time in upkeep.  That means more time to travel, to hike, to canoe the nearby lake, perhaps to write.  A new adventure.

  I have sifted through all my possessions in the last few weeks, everything, forcing myself to consider every piece and edit, edit, edit. "If you don't absolutely need it or love it, get rid of it,"  I tell myself repeatedly.  And the more I jettison, the freer I feel, and the clearer my sense of what is truly beautiful and necessary.  How odd, that in order to simplify my life, I must pull a reverse Thoreau and leave the countryside for a town, albeit a very small and rural one.

So  I embrace this change; and yet there will certainly  be dusks when I will miss watching the sunset from this porch, and springs when I will remember the awe of helping a new goat kid into a new, green world , and winters when I wish I could once more see the snow clouds roll over the mountains toward Pleasant Places.

Betwixt and Between

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post.  Seven months.  But I have some pretty good excuses--no, really, I do.

First, starting in early (way-too-early) August, school cranked back up, which meant I went back to work.  This year, that meant back to kicking off our amped-up breakfast program and to preparing my assistant manager to...drumroll, please...take my place.  As of January, I have moved into a more educational role, and I am loving it, but I was definitely feeling in between roles there for several months.

And then there is this.  Sometime between July and now (February 5, to be exact) I slipped over from my forties into my fifties.  Now, mind you, I don't have a lot of angst about this.  Being fifty kind of feels like, I don't know, a relief.   Like it gives me permission to, as Ousier Boudreaux said, "wear a funny hat and  ugly clothes and grow vegetables in the dirt" ...Not that I haven't always done those things.  But anyway, 49 felt like being "on the cusp" of something, a feeling I distinctly do not like.  Now, finally fifty, I can grab my funny hat and AARP card and run (being careful not to fall and break a hip) happily into the last quarter. (Actually, since I plan to live until about 90 and die peacefully while napping in the sun in my garden, I am still a few years away from the last quarter, but I am no good with fractions.)

Shirley Maclaine as Ousier Boudreaux in "Steel Magnolias".  I think she is about 55 in this photo.
I remember when I saw the movie, I did think she was old. Ha!

But the ultimate in being "in between" is this:  we put Pleasant Places on the market back in late September. The market being what it is,  this is more of a "well, let's just see what happens" move.  If it sells, we will move to a down-sized property more centrally located...and I will be fine with that.   The reality is that it does get harder to keep up the acreage and work full time, and we spend a lot of money in gas and vehicle wear and tear just driving to work every day.   If  the house doesn't sell in a year, we will pull up the sign, fold up our fleece as it were, and start figuring out how to make the property less maintenance intensive...and I will be fine with that.

But in the meantime, I am in between...did I mention I dislike being in between?  I am not a cusp-dweller, at least not a comfortable one.   It is as if someone hit the "pause" button.  Yes, I will plant a garden and I may even raise some chickens for the freezer, but nothing long term.  I have to put off  raising the turkeys I had planned because they take too long.  I can't plant any more fruit trees because I don't want to invest in something I may have to leave. I really should find a home for the five remaining goats, just in case.  No new fencing. No big remodeling projects.  Just pause.  For now.