…and happy 10th day of Christmas. Not sure I want to deal with 10 Lords a leaping, but there you have it. Life doesn’t always give you what you want to deal with.
I bought a ram! I’m very excited about him. He is living at Fine Fettle Farm til spring, since I have no other rams for him to hang out with here for winter. (and don’t really want to have to dig out TWO pens with the snows…although the snows haven’t made their appearance yet.) He is from Pennsylvania, from Anthony Berger’s farm. Anthony brought him up for Laselll at Fine Fettle two years ago when he came up to get some ewes from me and from her. So, I guess I”m committed to breeding for another two years, anyway! I do miss Isaiah (Unzicker Ike) who has now gone back to Unzicker’s. I hope that Dierks is as kind and gracious a gentleman as Isaiah was.
I subbed on Sunday at our church, as our priest was away recovering from Christmas. It was fun. I do like keeping my hand in occasionally, though in general, I’m very happy to be retired. Unfortunately, I consecrated too much wine (out of practice, and each chalice is different, so it’s hard to gauge how much one needs!) and had to finish off a lot of wine, which meant headache and general malaise for two days, since I”m kind of allergic to wine. But that’s life.
Today, we start the return to normal from Christmas mode, by bringing the big table top back to the basement. I know of no dinners for more than six people in our lives for the next month or so, and if we need it, we can always bring it back up. But it will be nice to have our normal size table back again, which means a little more maneuvering room in the kitchen/great room. Thursday, Twelfth Night, we’ll take down the tree and decorations, and then, we’ll be firmly out of Christmas and into Epiphany and deep winter. I’m not sure what the January thaw will look like later in the month, since we haven’t had the January freeze/snow yet. I have a hunch we’ll be hit hard in March and April, that winter and all seasons have shifted somewhat, coming a bit later than the calendar tells us they should come. Seems to me it was warm into October last year and cold into June. Time will tell. I wonder how long it will take the larger segment of the American public and the government to wake up and smell the coffee: that climate change is real and we must curb our fuel habits and eating habits to save our planet from major catastrophic changes? We really CAN do without kiwis and other things that come from miles away. I’ve read that a lot of the greenhouse gases come from the seeming necessity on the part of America’s eating public, to have a wide variety of food out of season, that has to be trucked in from 2000 miles away. I’ve always suggested we don’t have to be an all or nothing country; if each of us gave up one more thing with each passing month that came from over 100 miles from our home, and slowly continued that practice, until we were mostly eating local, it would go a long way. But, God forbid we should have to do without kiwis and bananas and fish from Seattle! I am not suggesting we have to NEVER eat anything that isn’t local, especially where health is concerned. (How many elderly people should eat a banana a day?) BUT, we can moderate our gluttony for sure. Perhaps there’s something to be said for the philosophy that food is best to eat when it is in season, and in winter, we need to concentrate on eating food that has been and can be preserved naturally; that eating “with nature” so to speak, instead of against nature, might be better for us in the long run? For example, we already know that although it’s a bit tougher, grass fed beef is so much better for our health and so much healthier for the cows than feed lot grain fed sheep, whose pH changes and whose stomachs harbor e coli that in grass fed beef just doesn’t have a chance, since their stomachs are designed to kill it off. I much admire Switzerland, who has designed a program, so that if it’s borders are closed for any reason (war, natural disaster?) they can feed their populace. How? By encouraging the people who live there, when possible, to keep livestock, to have gardens in their back yards instead of lawn chairs and barbecues exclusively, to grow crops instead of lawns. So, one neighbor might keep two goats, one a cow, one a pig, and they can trade meats. John once, having read an article in the paper about disaster planning, suggested we needed to stockpile some meats in our freezer (this was before we had the big freezer, which is now full of meats) and have a plan for what to do if the freezers have no electricity available, and no gas available for the generator. I looked out the window and said, “UH?” For with our sheep and goats and chickens and turkeys, we have meat on the hoof to last a long time which doesn’t require refrigeration or fossil fuels, and half the year, can live on pasture. We have neighbors with cows, and hay fields, and another neighbor who knows how to slaughter…so this neighborhood, at least, is set for any disaster that befalls us. And we all seem to “can” veggies and dry them and store them in the basement when that is the way to store them. I guess we’re a little Switzerland right here in Vermont. I know this is easier for rural people to do than village people or city people, but if everyone raised one little thing…(and they loosened zoning laws to permit goats and chickens and such) even city people could raise windowsill herbs and tomatoes and sprouts, and there’s now a movement for people to have one or two hens as pets in apartments, for eggs…it could work…and in disaster times, we’d have to do what England did during WWII with it’s children: we’d all have to take in city people and live side by side with them to survive and feed each other. That would be more difficult. Sharing isn’t our strong suit in this country!! I guess that’s not fair: people are willing and able and generous when disaster strikes, like the hurricane flooding here in August. Amazing numbers of people donated amazing amounts of food, clothing, and household goods…but not too many opened their homes to the homeless…and with a true disaster that was more than local, that would have to happen, I imagine. Oh, well, I”m rambling again, babbling like a brook. Gotta’ get the day started; lots to do.
