As I wandered through the Duchess County Fairgrounds on a perfect fall day, I couldn’t help but catch a whiff of nostalgia–all the adorable little lambs and goat kids reminded me of my first adventures in livestock. The piles of fleece reminded me of my own–rather startlingly vast–piles of fleece at home. It has all become…normal. But, since I have a day job that has absolutely no connection with any of this, people often ask me how I got here. Here is part of the story…
NOT ALL IGNORANCE IS BLISS
That first summer mowing the lawn had not yet become a chore. This, after all, was my very own lawn. I wanted to know every inch of it. My two city-bred cats, now middle aged, acted like kittens again, pouncing on uppity blades of grass and disciplining the back stairs carpeting with an iron paw.
That summer I looked across my overgrown pastures and pictured neat fencerows behind which alert horses would toss their heads, prick their ears and twitch their tails. I saw the expansion of the pathetic garden space into one that would provide a full year’s bounty. I saw fruit trees from which I would preserve winter treats, and a windmill for self-sufficient power.
I could stand on the back porch of my turn of the century farmhouse and gaze up the long hill at two sizeable, if untended, pastures, and another three acres of woods. Vestiges of the cattle farm were still visible in the old, rusted fence lines that meandered, seemingly at random, through the woods, and here and there were the remains of old outbuildings and disintegrating gates.
One outbuilding, just up the slope from the house, had survived the ravages of time and neglect, but judging from the breadth and vigor of the vines that nearly covered it, would not survive much longer without care. It was a tractor shed with attached corn-crib, open at both ends, or it should have been. It was not as old as the house, but perhaps not much younger. Its steel frame was rusting through, roof planks were rotting, and the once red paint was tired and mostly flaking away.
Well, I thought, if I’m going to have animals, I’ll need a place to put them, and I might as well start with what I’ve got. I decided to clear the shed.
Stay tuned for part two…