At some point the intensity of spring planting and lambing sighs to a halt and the days grow warm to the point where you take off your long-sleeved shirt and hang it on a fencepost while you weed the lettuce beds. And if you take the time to sit back on your haunches and feel the sweat around your temples, the sun on your back, and the softness of the working soil below, you might, just might, realize it is May. She made it. In the tussle of those chaotic months of mud and birthing, there she was. And when the hoe and the crook are by your front door instead of always in your hand, you feel a sweep of relief and gratitude just to soak in the rays, as though you yourself are planted.
If you make it to May, you are.
It’s the first of May — to me a holiday and the first real day of the growing season. They used to call this Beltane, and some still do. I am among those keeping that old holiday going strong. There’s no Maypole here, but I’ll never forget reading about how maidens hoping for love would wake up on Beltane morning and wash their faces in the grassy dew. Every May 1, I walk out to the grove of forest behind the barn and wash my face with that unbearably green grass’s exhalation of dew. I believe in magic, even the silly superstitious kind, and regardless of its merit it feels nice to have an excuse to stand out in a sunny grove and greet the morning the way the herd of deer on the hillside does — with dew on our nose tips and the love of the grass in our heart.
I digress! It is the first of May, and a new litter of rabbits has been born, out of Meg’s Salad Doe (the gray Chin’s name is Salad) and my Silver Fox, Gotcha. That makes three litters of rabbits! My freezer won’t have room for a fall pig with all these chickens and rabbits. Not a bad problem to have!
I have so much ahead of me in the garden, so much to plan and till and plant. So far only a bed of garlic, peas, and salad greens is popping up. But there will be more, and if I can get a rototiller over here, I will plant a proper farmhouse garden: corn, pumpkin, and potato patches.
These are the seasons to me. Green vegetables mean spring and summer. Corn means August and almost fall. Pumpkins mean pure fall. And potatoes mean winter. I want them all because on a bitter winter’s day potato-onion soup tastes so much better when the potatoes and onions are your own.
Come May it is time to get serious about vegetables. This is when I plant the bulk of the garden. Either I buy started peppers and tomatoes from the greenhouse down the road or I transfer seedlings I started myself. This is when squash and eggplant make room beside the pumpkins and the butternuts. I start a new rotation of kale and salad seeds in the shadier beds to hope for a longer harvest of the dinner side basics. The garden isn’t ordered, but it is alive in vibrant ways no flower bed ever dares to learn. I also make time for sunflowers by the front door, corn in a patch behind the house that gets the southern sun, and basil and mint spilling out of containers by the porch.
I am a gardener on fire, and the spark is that warmth I missed all through the messiness of spring.
It would be fun to grow soup as a community. All of us can plant some potatoes and onions — farm, suburb, or inner-city pots on fire escapes — and can harvest, store, and make soup together in December.
Friends and I are starting to build the frame and roof of a small pole barn for the horses. It’ll be a bigger and more welcoming space for Jasper and perfect for when Merlin leaves the fancy stable and comes home. To save money and time, I plan to leave off the walls, my reasoning being my ponies don’t need an enclosure in the summer heat, just the metal roof of scavenged tin we will rig in case of downpours, hail, or debris. I’ll add sides and more protection as we head into autumn. For now, it’s four posts and a roof.
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a tribe to raise a barn. Big projects like this I cannot do alone. Besides being the most unskilled carpenter in Washington County, I am scared of heights, power saws, and most pointy objects meant for repairing things. Hand me a bow and arrow or a rifle and it makes sense. Hand me a circular saw or a 10-foot ladder and I tuck my tail between my legs. So instead of fighting against the tide I invite, bribe, beg, and barter for the help of people who work wood.
I have now milked Bonita, my large Alpine doe, more than 60 times over the course of 30 days, producing more than 45 gallons of fresh milk! I can no longer imagine buying milk from the store. Just like eggs, veggies (in summer), and most of my meat, milk has wandered from the realm of things I once consumed to things I now produce. This little dairy is chuggin’ along.
The time I spend with Bonita has helped grow our bond in a way you just don’t get from sheep. It requires an attention that’s between meditation and conversation, never one or the other. I let my mind wander a bit, until a back hoof starts to wriggle or there’s a loud fart that reminds me to respond to the animal my head is pressed against as I empty those teats.
And I like what milking is doing for my body. My forearms are the most toned they have ever been — Downward Dog’s got nothing on Descending Udder. It’s made my fiddling easier too since I am using my hand muscles so much more. I feel stronger a month into goat ownership.
So it’s neither delicate nor brash. It is just what it is: imperfect practice toward perfection.
Just like farming.
Merlin and I are a true pair. Both of us a little old-fashioned, doughy, and out of shape. We look like shepherds, not Olympians, but a spring of teamwork will find us both in a better place, a transformed one. I know this because I have no doubt that my pony is magic — the old magic still running through a dreamer’s heart and out past the forests in clear streams. Find a way to tap into it and anything is possible. And this horse, this Merlin, might be a magician of that old sort.
Magic is a fond desire coming true. Whether your Merlin is a vintage tractor, a mortgage, a new baby, anything — it is possible when you believe it is possible. Follow what you love with all you have to offer it, and the world makes a road for you.
I believe in magic because it is good for my soul. It gave me a horse I knew only in storybooks. It gave me a farm. It gave me readers. Someday it’ll give me strong arms and a heartbeat to fall asleep against. I’m certain of that — as much as the black mane I brushed and kissed tonight. I’ll keep the faith and I’ll wait for the man. But I’m riding that pony tomorrow morning and I thank the ground we walk on for that gift.
Garden fever is setting in. It’s mid-May, there’s a gentle rain outside, and my spring-planted crops are coming up in spades. (The Arrowhead lettuce even looks like spades.) With peas, garlic, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, onions, rhubarb, and strawberries planted, this place is in the pink of health!
I hope an electric fence around the top sections, and the raised bed with some small ground fencing, will help with the rabbits and groundhogs — hope being the operative word. (I’ve learned the hard way that it doesn’t take long for those dreams to die.)
But what is vegetable gardening if it isn’t hope? A garden is telling the whole world, “Hey, I’m going to be around a while.” It affirms life in proximity to your own home, and that sure is a beautiful thing. Even with the soil so far caked into the cracks of my hands that I can’t wash it out, it is beautiful.
The ritual of leading Merlin from his stall or paddock into the lesson barn to be cross-tied, groomed, and tacked up has gradually became second nature, a routine we have memorized as if for a school recital. First I brush him and remove all the dried mud from his long mane, feathered feet, and body. I pick up his hooves, inspecting them for wear and other concerns such as cracking or overgrowth. I place his saddle pad and saddle and tighten the girth around his belly. The bridle slides gently into his mouth and over his ears, his forelock cascading over the Celtic knotwork on his brow band. I know how to check for correct fit and adjust things where needed.
These are skills I did not initially possess, and it still amazes me because of how much sense they make now. The more you do it, the less you need to think about it.
Driving home with my new ram has been wonderfully anticlimactic and fantastically boring. For weeks I have been fretting about this particular ride, certain it will be a disaster. I knew I’d have an energetic Border Collie and a ram lamb inches apart, crammed in the cab of a pickup truck for a two-hour transport across three states. I prepared for the worst. Gibson would be howling and clawing at the crate, the ram screaming, truck swerving, me praying as I slid down sketchy mountain roads.
I tried to prepare. I have a car-seat harness for Gibson. I packed a first-aid kit. I planned to stop often. I even started pricing stock trailers on Craigslist.
All that worry has turned out to be for nothing. The ride home is like driving through that Edward Hicks painting, The Peaceable Kingdom. Gibson curls up in the front seat, exhausted from his day of work, sleeping like a babe of Eden. The ram lamb bleats here and there but is generally resigned to his lot as cargo and lies down. (I will soon find out he is “calmly” filling the dog crate with liquid feces.) With my back to the crate, my dog at my side, I am in a blissful state. My truck is chugging through the Green Mountains like a champ, and I am almost home.
The lamb I am driving home is next season’s sire. He is a beautiful boy, a young Blackface ram. He’s the breed I chose from all others to feed and clothe me. New blood, new lambs, new hope, and all of it tangled next to my chest when I carry him in my arms into the truck. Two hearts separated by wool, skin, cloth, and blood.
Picking up the spring lamb that will in time become the fall ram is new for this particular farm, but instantly ritualistic. It is one of those things you do as a new farmer and immediately understand you’re taking part in the first of endless annual occurrences just like it. You are nostalgic in the present moment (which might be the closest to enlightenment this girl will ever get). My first Shearing Day was the same, along with my first apple cider pressing, lambing season, and that first spring hatchery order years ago in Idaho. They are holidays — holy days — you see.
Holy is the proper word, too.
My lessons with Merlin at Riding Right Farm are going well. I’m far from an adept equestrian but the calm words from Andrea and Hollie, my instructors, are setting me up for success with my new partner. Merlin has done all of these moves before, he knows his walk from his trot and canter. I am still nervous to move too fast or venture beyond the indoor and outdoor arenas. There are trails we can take together right beyond the white fences but I still feel like a teenager who stole the keys to her parents’ car. It’s exciting, but I’m not ready for the open road.
I feel safe only when going out with someone else, someone with more experience. If an instructor or Patty wants to invite me for a ride I am so game that it’s hard to keep still in the saddle. But going out alone is a Brave New World and I’m not ready for it yet. I’ll get there, though. I’m certain of it.
Merlin refuses to load into the trailer. Today Patty’s friend Milt comes to teach him how to enter and exit the trailer calmly. It takes three people, a rope around his rump, and a bucket of grain, but we do it. By the end of the lesson, Merlin and I walk onto that trailer without fuss, just a loose lead rope in my hand and a big smile on my face.
My goal is that Merlin become a second vehicle, another way to get across the landscape. I want a horse I can take to a neighbor’s for a visit, or hitch a cart to take into town. Patty still picks us up for our weekly trail rides and field trips, and Merlin and I work through our trials and tribulations one at a time.