The homesteader’s lifestyle is exhilarating, satisfying, exhausting, and sometimes disappointing. To give you a brief snapshot of the urban farm life, we were awakened before sunrise by a bleating goat who was giving birth to the tiniest Nigerian Mini triplet kids. Happily, the birth was unassisted and everyone was healthy and spunky.
We were ecstatic that a first-freshener (first-time mama Phoenix Rose) had produced two doelings and a buckling. The weekend brought several dozen visitors to the farm. Besides friends who were eager to see the babies, I taught two classes and had a string of customers swinging by to pick up various animals. Exhausted but happy, we enjoyed a nice dinner with family and I looked forward to any early bedtime.
Our joy and the promise of sleep was soon extinquished upon finding one of the doelings unresponsive in the rain. Several hours later, after concerted efforts to revive her late into the night, she passed away in my arms; sadly, nothing more to do but go to bed.
A couple of hours of attempted sleep…
Up with the farm…
Teaching more classes…
Plant a tree…
Time with family and farm visitors…
Recovery meeting and celebrating sobriety milestones of those I love…
Another night of attempted sleep…
More farm chores and errands…meetings…teaching…harvesting…cooking…symphony practice…dishes…school activities…
Then, finally a few hours to rest!
The tiny kids and their mama have been moved to a pen right outside my patio door, and I have been watching them and listening as I putter around the kitchen. Just as I settle in on the couch with my lunch, my blanket and my laptop, mama Rose begins to make a ruckus. Peeling myself up off the couch, I spot our buck, Cassanova, wandering the yard…an escapee. Fabulous! A quick photo through the doorway, then on with the shoes and out the door I go to coax him back to the pen. No rest for the weary.
As I write this, Cass’s musky scent is wafting off of my clothing, and a second shower and change of clothes will be in order before I go anywhere today. I can hear him out there trying to work the gate open again.
There are just have a couple of hours left to rest and write, which I will spend counting my many blessings and reminding myself of the purpose of our farm: to inspire, train and support gardeners and urban farmers through sharing our experiences, offering training and classes, and providing resources to the community. These few days of high’s and low’s have provided us with experiences to share with others, as well as more knowledge and understanding from which to draw in our support of other urban farmers.
So, while we lost a beautiful doeling, we have gained an intangible depth to our understanding of what it means to be farmers.
