Since three p.m. today:

I’ve jury-rigged an outdoor pen for my fifteen chickens, fighting to pound t-posts into rock-hard dry ground though I wanted to give up, and my reward was watching young birds safely explore the outdoors and find their way back into the coop at sundown.

I have a story told in cuneiform on my shoulder, written by the claws of a terrified young cockrel who sought shelter on my body when I tried to integrate him with a flock of larger birds.

I’ve cut my loses in the garden, accepted that a week without power and water plus half a month’s vacation neglect during a drought added to hundreds of marauding squash bugs equals a big fat zero for my garden. I ripped out three rows of pumpkins, eggplant, kale, chard, zucchini, beets, and radishes.

I ferried three heaping wheelbarrows full of my former garden to the compost pile, then came back and took my flamethrower to the insect-infested soil.

I dumped another wheelbarrow filled with fly-infested chicken manure on the compost pile. Green, brown, green, brown. I felt the heat rising as I wrenched the wheelbarrow end over end, green briars drawing blood on my legs.

I took six brushloads of hair out of my unkempt dog and learned that painful grooming is more easily tolerated when done by a pen full of young chickens. It’s like t.v. for dogs.

At nine p.m. I came inside to shower, and when I peeled off my sweated bikini top it left dirt outlines on my skin.

Two weeks ago I was in London wandering the Damien Hirst exhibit at the Tate Modern, appropriately grossed out by his maggoty cow head and formaldehyded farm animals. It makes me wonder: If that’s considered art, then what is it that I do?

My five remaining guineas left the farm tonight in a crate in the back of a rusty black Ford pickup. They’re on to a new life as pets of a poultry-loving, 80-some-year-old woman, my coworker’s mother.

Although their departure makes way for new developments, I am sad to see them go. They caused me no end of stress and heartbreak with their ironic mix of idiotic wildness, and yet I already miss them. Watching them travel about the farm in their dapper little flock was entertaining and usually hilarious.

Some people see guineas as hideous dinosaurs, but I think they are extremely beautiful in their dappled coats and with their turquoise heads. I think my favorite part of owning guineas is what most people mention most hating about them—their noise. Their raucous alarm screams always alerted me to strange goings-on, and their standard “buck-wheat” calls, which I could hear even from my bed at night, told me all was well with the farm. And my favorite—their soft and murmury singing when contented—will always be one of my sweetest sounds. Tonight it’s too quiet around the yard and doesn’t quite sound like home.

I was in the house tonight working at the computer when I heard Tuck start barking outside. Lots of barking. Some growling. Very unusual from him. I looked out the window and he was pointed toward the road at the front of the house. I yelled out the window for him to be quiet, thinking he was after some biker or something on the road, even though I trained him to not bark at bikers and he usually doesn’t.

He ran to the porch to check in after my yell, but then shot back into the field, barking. This definitely warranted checking out. I put on my slippers and stepped outside.

There was a huge black vulture perched at the top of a dead tree right between the road and my property line. Tuck raced up and down through the field, barking but respecting his invisible fence. What a good dog to notice this anomaly, this potential threat from the air. Ever since I asked Tuck, many months ago, to help me get a huge flock of vultures out of the big oak–which he understood and did with a look and shake of my head–he’s been super alert to threats from the sky. Even though this vulture didn’t put anything at risk, I don’t mind Tuck’s generalizing as he also applies this vigilance to hawks and eagles that could carry off a chicken.

I knew this could go on forever, so I figured I’d finish up the job Tuck started. I ran down the road in my slippers clapping and jumping around, yelling at this vulture to get lost. If my neighbors needed final proof that I’ve lost it, they got it tonight! But I got proof that my young farmdog is acting just as I hoped he would, and that we can take care of this place together.

Skunked!

At 10:00 p.m. on a Wednesday night, right in the face and all down his chest and front legs. Though scrubbed with dish soap and vinegar for an hour, both of us exhausted, he still smells like burnt balloons. Especially now that it’s raining. The winter woodsmoke smell of my home has been replaced with something just as strong and way less pleasant.

You should have seen his face the morning after when I wouldn’t touch him. Broken hearted. I hold my breath and kiss his head.

On Sunday afternoon I decided to take advantage of the last day of the national parks system’s free entry week. I loaded up the dog and within 20 minutes of leaving the house we were on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains breezing by the ranger station into Shenandoah National Park. Five minutes after that we were in one of the most beautiful forests I’ve seen—and that includes many of the major national parks out West—Glacier, Grand Teton, Olympic, Redwoods—and more.

I think that what made is so beautiful was really lucky timing, though I am sure the park has its beauty in all seasons. On this trip the trees were just barely leafed out, yet the undergrowth was blooming with wildflowers. Tiny streams ran everywhere, including alongside the trail. The scrub hadn’t grown up yet, so I could see straight through the forest all around and it was like being in a magical glade. It was about 65 degrees, and the sun made dappled patterns across the ground. The wide trail was covered in wild grass. It was like hiking on a shag rug.

I am pretty sure this is a wild elderberry. I saw food everywhere I looked, thanks to last year’s herbalism class. Fiddleheads and ramps and nettles. For the first time I understood the appeal of wildcrafting, though I didn’t pick any plants myself, and understood how one could survive on wild foods.

Trilliums

On this short hike I also saw more bear sign than ever in my life, and that includes a few months spent in an Alaskan forest! There were fresh scrapings on trees, and many huge piles of scat in the middle of the trail. I also saw a lot of dead tree stumps that had been torn open as the hungry bears searched for their spring breakfasts.

Needless to say, all the smells were intoxicating to my trail companion!

We ended up hiking basically straight down the mountain and then turned around and slogged back up. Tucker was so cute on the walk up—every time I stopped to rest or take a picture, he’d pause a few steps ahead of me on the trail and turn around and keep an eye on me until I got moving again. With all the bears in the area, I was grateful for his watchful attention. How lovely it would have been to have just kept on walking—in a few more steps we could have picked up the Appalachian Trail and gotten to Maine in time for lobster season!

Let’s pick back up with what’s kept me occupied every weekend for the past month:

I leveled the mulch and topsoil piles.

Just like with the azaleas, I am on a mission to clean up the extraneous piles and anything that gets in the way of easy mowing (all the trees I keep planting notwithstanding). The tarp-covered piles were just as attractive to snakes as they were to a hot dog on an 80+ degree March day. In fact, last fall I found a five-foot snakeskin in this mess.

But really it was the sight of the Katrina chic blue tarp on the latest satellite map shot of the farm that finally embarrassed me into action. Got to have this place looking good, even from the air!

Now, it’s much cleaner! I spread the extra mulch around trees and used the soil to fill in more low spots around the house.

Finally, I dug out the previous owner’s boulder collection and leveled “forsythia ridge.”

April 2009, the first day I saw the property

There was an old stepping stone path from the wellhouse to the big oak tree behind it. At one time I suspect the path traveled to a clothes line, but now it didn’t do much more than beat up the mower blade. My dad popped the stones out with the backhoe and we tipped them in the bucket. Turns out the “little” stone were actually huge. They had just been in place so long that grass had grown over them! They’re nice stones—and waiting in a pile in the woods to be called into service again.

With the boulder collection gone, we knocked down a high spot in this area to greatly improve the levelness of the ground. This ridge was left over from the previous owner’s forsythia installation, which was actually a couple of sad little bushes intermixed with honeysuckle and wild blackberries that were choking out a big old Rose of Sharon. I am not a forsythia fan, so we dug them out and now Rosie has room to breathe and there’s nothing blocking the pasture and mountain view.

Of all the work that I’ve done this spring, cleaning up this particular section has been the most rewarding. When I bought this property, this area—which is in direct view out the kitchen window—was full of junk, including a huge satellite dish stand, a couple of termite-infested rotten whiskey barrels full of dead plants, the remains of a giant stump that no one had bothered to remove, and—oh—a giant electrical pole. Then I added a satellite internet dish. The human junk along with the misplaced bushes and uneven ground pocked with huge rocks always made this little patch feel forsaken. It’s taken three years to remove all of the above and more. Finally having this small area stripped to clean dirt area makes me feel like I am erasing the abuse and neglect heaped upon this property by previous caretaker and replacing their story with mine.

And with all this newly bare dirt to cover, I am off to buy another 50 pound sack of grass seed!

Been waiting for this all week.

Porch sitting begins. It’s officially spring.

And the extra special deliciousness is coming inside after sundown to sit by the hot woodstove. Best of both worlds.

“I love her.” Reminds me of one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons.

Tuck’s in love with a chicken. Iris, to be exact. She’s gone broody again, and this weekend, in between searching for “fertilized eggs” on CraigsList—something I never in a million years thought I’d do—I did everything I could to snap her out of it. With the guineas free ranging and her sister, Lilac, needing the nest box to lay her egg, it was quite an exercise in strategy to keep Iris out of the coop and away from the nest box. After a morning of repeatedly lifting her off of the nest, I gave up and held her in a bucket of cold water up to her wattles. If anyone out there is listening, I want you to know that I want to be remembered like this: dangling an overheated broody hen in a five-gallon bucket while raucous guineas churn about me and a young dog dances thinking this is the best action he’s seen since I dropped the venison sausage on the floor.

After her bath I tossed Iris in a cage and set her near the coop. For the rest of the afternoon Tuck took it upon himself to offer her companionship and perhaps consolation. Each time I came outside he was lying right next to her, calm as could be. I think he’s in love.

A year ago today I met Tuck.

He rode all the way from Ohio to Virginia on my lap.

Picking an eight-week old puppy out of a litter from a breeder I’d never met could be considered a gamble, and I never expected to get so lucky but I really think I did with Tuck. He’s been a forgiving, patient teacher for this first-time puppy raiser. Now that we are through the first year of training (for him and me!) and constant vigilance while establishing the rules and boundaries, I enjoy him more each day. I am also looking forward to seeing where he goes from here.

Now that he weighs about 60 pounds he doesn’t fit on my lap as well, but we still stick pretty close. He’s kept the same thoughtful and serious expression he had as a puppy, but he also smiles a lot too—especially when we’re on adventures.

Happy anniversary, happy boy.

I’ve coached a young dog up and down his first slippery cliff scramble, and in and out of a joyful storm-swollen river. I’ve held a black hen so tight to my chest that our heartbeats blended, and I clipped her winter-overgrown toenails until drops of red blood ran down my fingers. I’ve packed cold clay against quick and detonated a bomb of blackgreen flapping as I released her to her sister, safe.

Even after showering, my hands smell like animal, earth and wild water.

It was a good Saturday.