Vacation, Part II: Yorkshire

Saturday morning, we drove to Dublin, big roads, no problems.  We dropped off the car, got their shuttle to the airport, and had an uneventful quick flight to Manchester.  Picked up our car there, even smaller than the little Ford Fiesta in Ireland. This one was a Nissan Micro, very cute, very tiny, little bug eyed cutie.  And we proceded to try to find a map of England. The car rental place “didn’t give them out anymore, for it was too costly.”  (You’d think they’d have them for sale!)  None of the stores in the airport had any.  The information center didn’t have any, though they DID have a map of Manchester City, which turned out to be helpful.  We had Google directions to our cottage in Knaresborough, but without a map, if we made a wrong turn, we were fried.  We made a wrong turn.  Took us a while, but with the Manchester map and a little ingenuity, we were able to backtrack, and get back within the Google directions.  We made if finally to our cottage, in the village of Knaresborough, which is a town of some size.  The cottage was built into the side of a hill made of rock (some of it showed through the walls in the hallway).  The only problem is it was on a very busy road, with no shoulder, and no sidewalks, and constant traffic from 6:30 a.m. til 11 p.m., and in both directions the road curved just beyond the cottage, so crossing the road was taking your life in your hands!  We had a parking area down and around the corner, but couldn’t get to it safely, without crossing the road to the other side, walking on the sidewalk on that side down a bit, and then recrossing.  Several times, we started to cross and found ourselves running.  Cars there don’t seem to slow down (or rather, drivers) just because they are in a residential area!  The cottage was on two floors, bedroom and bathroom on first floor, living room, dining room, kitchen on second floor (British fashion, nothing on ground floor, but outside steps to get up to the door.)  The bed was better but the sofa was another “sink in and good luck getting out” model.  Other than that, the hosts had very thoughtfully left us some tea, coffee, milk, cereal, wine, beer, biscuits, and salt and sugar.  The place was very comfortable, despite the fact that when you opened the windows, the traffic noise made it difficult to hear the television or have a conversation.  A couple of evenings, we stayed in after running ourselves ragged all day, so we did watch a bit of British tv, taking comfort in the fact that it was largely as bad as American tv.

Sunday morning, we got up early, and were in York by 8:20 a.m., easily finding a parking space. On Sundays there are no tours at the Minster, so we were able to just walk around in the quire and transepts.  (It was the day of the Bikers’ Service, so the place was surrounded by hundreds of bicycles and the bikers were in the cathedral singing and worshipping.  We were quiet and stayed away from the nave where that was going on.  Then we explored outside the minster.  At 9:15, the bellringers rang changes on the bells until 9:30.  Beautiful!  Majestic!  and LOUD!  No one sleeps late in York on Sunday mornings, that’s for sure!  The service at 10 a.m. was wonderful, organ superb, choir very good, can’t remember the sermon, but I seldom do, so that’s no comment of worth.  Coffee hour followed in the Chapter House which was a round building, remarkable for its time, in that it has no center post holding up the dome, and the carvings on the lintels are incredible.  Most of the statues are gone from the niches, inside and out, thanks to Cromwell and his campaign to free the church of idols.  Boy, between Henry VIII and HIS Cromwell and the dissolution of the monasteries and Oliver and his gang, a lot of destruction of really fine architectural wonders was wrought.  After coffee, we walked the lovely narrow streets around the cathedral/minster (I spent a lot of time asking people what a “minster” was as opposed to a cathedral and a church…got a few different answers.  I think I’ve got it figured out now:  a minster was a center for outreach and evangelisation, which was mostly done by religious orders, hence, minsters are connected with monasteries and religious orders.  They do not have to be cathedrals.  There is a minster nearby that is just a parish church of cathedral proportions…more on that later.)  We stopped at Little Betty’s Cafe, one of several of a chain with a cooking school connected with it.  Here’s a picture of the York Minster:

It is so big it is hard to get a photo of it, without also photographing a block in front of it!

Here is one of my favorite painted tombs inside the minster, some bishop or another, having gone “to sleep,” head propped up.  There are some remarkable painted tomb decorations and some unpainted as well.

After lunch at Little Betty’s, we went back to the cottage, changed out of “Sunday clothes” and went to Knaresborough’s “Medieval Day” at the Castle, which meant walking along the Waterside (here’s a photo of the Waterside with view of the lovely viaduct in Knaresborough):

(Knaresborough is built on a hill, very picturesque, river running through it, lovely walks.), and then climbing about a billion steps to get up to the medieval castle (also destroyed by Oliver and his gang of do-gooders, except for one portion of it, which the townspeople convinced him to save to use as a prison), where there were townsfolks dressed in “medieval” costume (sort of), one woman with three ravens on leashes, several men attempting sword fights on the green, storytellers, minstrels, a very festive town affair, not professionally done, but everyone clearly having fun.  We explored the castle, took a quick look at the museum, and then headed home, stopping on the way at Holy Trinity Church (C of E) which had an exhibition of 50 miniatures from medieval manuscripts rendered in larger form by some artist.  They were interesting, as was the church, and as were the folks welcoming us and others to the exhibit.  We talked a while, walked the rest of the way back to our cottage, JOhn calling Graham on the way to check on arrangements for the next day.  We got back to the cottage and started to make some dinner, and in came Graham and Audrey to visit, make sure they knew where we were, and welcome us to England. (Graham and Audrey were two of a choir from a small church near the Lake District who visited my church 13 years ago.  I had invited them to dinner that day, they came, and we had a splendid time. Graham and Audrey and we had kept up Christmas cards and catch up since then, with their encouraging us to come to England.  So, now we were here, and they were two weeks short of emigrating to Australia where both their daughters and husbands and their grandchildren all lived.  They’d sold their house, were living in a flat, and mostly packed up…so we got there none too soon.  We talked a while, they left, we ate dinner, and headed off to bed, eager to meet the rest of the group the next day.

Graham and Audrey picked us up at 8:40 the next morning and we took off for the Lake District, a couple of hours away, stopping for coffee in Kirkby Lonsdale and to see the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, a really beautiful church in that town with Norman columns of stone, incized with diamond shaped lines, and many other interesting features.  Then, we continued on and met the “ladies” for lunch in the tea shop of the Diocese of Carlyle’s retreat and conference center, a gracious manor house and grounds fit for, if not a king, at least a bishop!  The house is one which was in Wordsworth’s family at one point.  The gardens are lovely, the house spacious and gracious (they’ve spent a good deal restoring a lot of it. )  It is used for conferences, retreats, and has a bunkhouse where interns from around the world come for the summers to work and learn and enjoy the charms of the Lake District.  We went on to some lovely gardens and then for a ride in a tourboat on Lake Windemere, then dinner (tea?) at a lakeside restaurant, all in all, a splendid day and wonderful opportunity to catch up with Gloria, May, Jill, Pat, as well as Graham and Audrey.  Here is a photo taken by John (so he’s not in it) at the Rydal House:

Tuesday morning we were up early to walk the city walls of York, on our way to Cottingham, near Hull, to visit with the aunt of friends from N.J., Mike and Angela.  I had met their Auntie Eve some 25 years ago, when she was visiting the States with Mike’s mother, having been brave enough to serve them tea, forewarned by Angela that the tea had best be strong, and made properly!  They very graciously drank it; no idea if it measured up or not, but it was too strong for me to enjoy, for sure!  Anyway, off we toddled, then got lost in York, then I realized I had left Eve’s phone number back in the cottage…and we needed to call her to find out where she lived exactly.  Reception the night before at the cottage had been poor, so I agreed to call her when we got to Cottingham.  So, in a panic, and not thinking real clearly, I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call Angela; no problem”, and I blithely dialed Angela’s number in N.J.  John was just as dense.  I thought she sounded a little strange when she picked up but she gave me Eve’s phone number and address, asked me how we were enjoying ourselves, and then when I hung up, it finally dawned on us both at the same time: it was 8:30 a.m. in Yorkshire, which meant 3:30 a.m.in N.J.  Boy, was I embarrassed!  But I sure wasn’t going to call back to apologize then!  We found Eve’s flat, and headed out to Beverley for lunch and to see the Beverley Minster, which Angela had recommended. The impression she had given me was that it was a nice little church.  NOT!  Nearing the village of Beverley, 10 miles from Cottingham, the minster rose up and dominated the village much as Yorkminster did York.  It was huge, though not quite as huge as Yorkminster.  When it was built, Beverley had been a city of some note.  Now, it was a small town, rural.  So Beverley was a village church with a vicar.  No cathedral.  It had been associated with St. John, a medieval saint who began a monastery in the area, and the minster grew out of that community of faith.  It didn’t appear to have as much damage done to it by Ollie and the boys, but clearly had some.  Later additions included some more modern statuary in some of the niches.  It has about 70 sculptures of men and women singing and playing instruments on the capitals on top of the columns, and along the walls of the nave.  Another beautiful church.  It was moving to me to see all the ruins, but to see buildings 800 years old STILL in use and actively used was really amazing.  Here’s a photo of John and Eve, on their way out of the Beverley Minster:

I think Eve would have spent the whole day showing us other sites and sights in the area, but she had mentioned her constant pain in her knees from having fallen several months ago, had new bruises on her arm from having fallen last week, and had been doing a lot of sitting in places in the minster, so we felt it better to take her home, and go home to take a nap ourselves.  Monday had been a long day!

Wednesday was Dale Day…started out early again, driving east, onto more rural roads through Nidderdale to Coverdale with a stop at Pateley Bridge, a charming town on the side of a hill in the Dales. (By the way, by this time, we’d seen a lot of signs with names of towns, and I observed that I had two favorites: Giggleswick and Blubberhouses.)  The roads in the Dales were narrow, with many impatient drivers tail gaiting, and John was getting more and more uncomfortable, and also unwilling to slow down (for it inconvenienced the nuts behind us!) or seemingly, to pull off to get good photos, so when we got to Wensleydale, we turned toward Leyburn and didn’t make the big loop around Wensleydale and Swaledale.  Instead, we headed east and north to the Wensleydale Sheep Shop on the farm of one of the two owners of the shop, along with their Wensleydale sheep.   I stocked up on rovings and yarn, and then Ruth took me out to see the sheep.  Here’s a photo of a couple of them.

Ruth explained that their sheep aren’t perhaps the best Wensleydales, with coats not quite as long as some. Another breeder came into the shop, and we struck up a conversation as well.  Her sheep, recently shorn, had staples of 11-1/2 inches or more.  We talked about American Wensleydales, which have been bred by AI-ing Wensleydale semen on Lincoln ewes.  Both these breeders felt that wasn’t appropriate.  The original cross was a bluefaced leicester ram (fine fleece) and Teeswater mugg ewes. (There are still Teeswater sheep, but no more Teeswater mugg sheep, which are somehow different.)  They didn’t think using a Lincoln, which generally has more coarse wool would yield Wensleydales like the British Wensleydales, which I found interesting.  I had always heard that Wensleydales were fairly fine fleece, and that Lincolns weren’t, so I wondered about the methodology of the American breeders.  I’m not sure what other British Wensleydale breeders would say or their sheep breeders association for the breed, but it was interesting to hear my doubts confirmed.  After our visit, we had lunch at a local pub and went to Middleham, favorite castle of Richard III, which was special because I’m a Richard III fan.  I bought two books about him.  John felt somehow emotionally connected to this ruin, as he hadn’t at others we’d visited.  I read the books while in England, one a little crazy, about seances and reaching Richard through a medium and asking him what happened.  The other was not easy to read; the author’s writing style was not particularly good.  But I plowed through to find nothing particularly new.

Thursday morning, up early again, and off again, this time to the NOrth Yorkshire Moors and Whitby.  The moors were wonderful: rough and raw and a place where I imagined folks bent with nature, not defied it.  We just drove through on the way to Whitby, which was disappointing: a big tourist seaside resort sort of place, crawling with tourists, difficult to navigate.  We went up to the hill, where the ruins of the monastery were.  There is almost nothing left of Hilda’s monastery, one of those early medieval monasteries which had men and women in it and a woman in charge, one of my heroes, St. Hilda of Whitby.  Apparently, the Danes had obliterated it in 800 or so.  But after the Norman invasion, some guy was so moved by visiting the ruins of the site, that he vowed to start a monastery and rebuild, which he did: the hill became the site of a Benedictine monastery (men only), and the ruins suggest a very gracious and large, cathedral-like “chapel”.  The ruins were bombed in WWI, and there’s not much left of them.  Of interest also, was a huge fenced in area just outside the monastery grounds, divided by bits of this kind of fence, bits of that, into small gardens…must be community gardens for the people of Whitby.  One had a small camper in it; several had chairs and canopies, all had veggies growing.  Most had locks.

We left Whitby and retraced our steps through the moors, this time, detouring off the main road onto a road pointing to the town of Goathland, complete with signs to watch out for sheep in the road.  The village was small, a few houses, a few farms, a pub/inn, a couple of shops and a curious garage to repair cars with an additional sign on it saying funeral services.  We ate in the pub, which had photos all over the walls referring to something called “Heartbeat”, which we couldn’t figure out. Later, John walked down to see the train station, where the steam train that goes through the moors was “docked” and I tooled around, stopping at the strange garage, complete with car up on a lift, and tons of postcards. I finally realized that that town was the setting for some tv series called Heartbeat and the postcards  were all stars of the show.  I also realized that people fence in their yards to keep the sheep OUT of their gardens. The people are fenced in, not the sheep.  Here’s a photo of a couple of sheep out on the moor:

We had our best meal so far at that pub in Goathland: a big “bread bowl” made from yorkshire pudding, filled with lamb for me, beef for him, about 5 different kinds of vegetables, two kinds of potatoes and onion gravy.  We hadn’t had many vegetables with meals while in England.  They didn’t seem to serve them with pub food, anyway. Thursday night we ate peanut butter sandwiches and watched tv. While flicking through the stations, lo and behold, we came upon an episode of “Heartbeat” and saw the pub and the garage and the village.  So, I’m guessing the signage on the garage was for the series, not reality.

Friday, back to York: John to the minster for tours, me shopping to find the Shambles, and poking around the farmers’ market in the city, and looking for salt and pepper shakers requested by friend, Carol…not an easy thing to find.  (They had to say England!) Finally gave up and found a pair that said York. Back to Knaresborough for lunch, and found a nice restaurant, Hannah’s, which served a dish similar to the one we’d had in Goatsland, so we were happy.  Their strawberry cheesecake was not as good as mine, but was reasonable.

Saturday morning we had to get up at 3, got everything packed, the cottage straightened, and were off by 4, on our long, all day, three flight trip home. (Manchester to Dublin; Dublin to Shannon; Shannon to Boston)  Then the Dartmouth Coach to New London, met by Sue and Tom with our car, the drive home, picking up Lizzie who was very glad to see me and hasn’t left my side since.

One lingering question: what makes a cottage as opposed to a house.  I asked Audrey and the ladies: it apparently is not to do with size.  They all said, “You just know.”  So I guess it will remain a mystery. …Mystery is good.

It was a great two weeks, which we’ll spend much time revisiting and reviewing through our photos and the books we bought at each site.  But it’s good to be home in Vermont…and now, off to the grain store for turkey grain for the poults which came yesterday, more pig grain, and chick grain…back to reality…

Back home again…a most lovely trip!

We arrived back home around 8:30 p.m. Saturday night, after being up for the previous 24 hours, having had to get up at 3 a.m. British time, to leave at 4 a.m. for the airport to return the car and be ready for the 8 a.m. flight from Manchester to Dublin, and thence, to Shannon, and then, finally, to Boston.  It was a long day…but we’re almost recovered, and back to Vermont time!

We left on Friday, June 12, flew all night and landed at Shannon at 6 a.m., got our rental car and began our adventure of driving on the other side of the road.  We weren’t due at our cottage in Terryglass until 3 p.m. and it’s traditionally a 2 hour trip, but John wanted to go on backroads, HE THOUGHT, while learning to drive on the left.  So, I charted out some back roads.  The driving on the left wasn’t the major problem with driving in Ireland, however!  It was the very narrow roads, with barely enough room for two tiny micro cars to pass each other (most of the time, some not quite so wide) and no shoulders, and bushes on the sides, thinly disguising massive 4′ high stone walls, which don’t “give” when you crash into them the way bushes do, and poor visibility because of the bushes sticking out into the roads, and curves like crazy.  It was a challenge, and remained so for most of our travels, though some of the main roads were wider, with marked lanes (2) and even sometimes a bit of shoulder!  We stopped in Ninagh, visited two churches, both St. Mary’s, one RC, one C of I, and a local medieval prison which became a nunnery, with an interesting tour by a local volunteer.  I found it interesting that they replaced the hanging post for public hangings with a statue of Mary.  Then, we stocked up on some groceries, and headed through Borrisokane to  Terryglass, stopped at the pub for lunch, and then headed for our cottage, met Niall, our host/landlord for the week, and settled in for a short nap, before Ann arrived.  Ann was our HomeAtFirst contact in Ireland, and a sheer delight–warm, interesting and interested in us, with suggestions for driving (pay no attention to the car behind you, only the one coming toward you!)  in Ireland: good advice, but John was concerned about the one behind him, who was always on our tail and speeding!  (I decided that one of the most popular national sports in both Ireland and England was tail-gaiting.)  Sunday morning we headed to the local C of I church, and then to Killaloe-Ballina, where there was a farmers’ market…here’s a photo of our cottage, followed by one of Killaloe from Ballina (twin towns at the base of Loch Derg, a widening of the River Shannon, surrounded by many charming little towns, Terryglass being one of them. (Winner of the “Tidy Towns” competition two years!)

Our cottage and two additional ones to the right of ours, were created out of an old granary and barn at the back of an organic farm owned by Niall.

This view of Killaloe includes on the left, the 12th Century Cathedral of the Diocese of Killaloe and Limerick, companion diocese to NH.

We drove back to Terryglass around the lake, stopping at some ruins of an Abbey and an old manor house.

Monday we went to the Rock of Cashel, which you can see for miles, sitting on top of a hill.  On the rock are monastic ruins, a church, a cathedral, and several gravesites.  It is amazing, with a panoramic view of the area. Here’s a photo of the Rock approaching it from the town:

From Cashel, we went to Adair, where there is a row of restored cottages with thatch roofs, a tourist trap of sorts, but the shops were nice. John went to explore ruins while I shopped.

On Tuesday, we went to Clonmacnoise, a huge ruin of several churches and a cathedral in a large monastic community begun by St. Ciaran.  One of the churches has been restored and is in use by the C of I.  The others are crumbling.  The massive crosses that stood around the grounds have been removed and placed indoors to preserve them, with replicas put outside.  Even with the place in ruins, I could imagine the grandeur of the place and the holiness.

On Wednesday, we got up early and drove to Doolin, taking the ferry across to Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, with a plan of staying there and leaving early Thursday morning to go to Inishmere, the middle island, spending the day there, and leaving for the mainland on the last ferry of the day Thursday.  When we got to Kilmurvey House, a wonderful old mansion/bed and breakfast/inn we’d been at last time, Treasa greeted us with abject apologies, for she had inadvertantly rented our room to folks who were staying an extra night, and all apologies, over and over, she hoped we’d be satisfied with a substitute room, one big enough to hold a party for 30 people!  A new room, must be their best, in a new wing.  We were satisfied.  It got colder and colder, and the wind stronger and stronger all day.  We shopped a bit, tried to reach Mrs. O’Flaherty, a woman I’d bought some yarn from on the last trip, but alas, she wasn’t home.  All night the wind roared.  The next morning, we needed heavy sweaters and windbreakers to walk in the area.  Got back to the inn to find that there would be only one ferry leaving for the mainland at 11:30, and then, they were suspending all ferries for the rest of the day as the sea was rough.  So, off we went to the ferry.  It WAS rough.  But the boat seemed sturdily and capably built and the captain seemed to know what he was doing, so I knitted a sock on the trip back. Not a single person was sea-sick. (I have a theory borne out over the years, that terrified people don’t get seasick!  All three other crossings people were throwing up, but not this one! )  Waves crashed over the bow all the way.  The boat lurched up and over waves, which sprayed over the boat. The breakers at the Doolin dock were 10 feet high.  It was an interesting ride.  Here’s a photo of the ferry leaving again for the island after we disembarked.  It wasn’t safe to dock at Doolin because of the way the swells crashed into the dock.

Ah, but I forgot our delightful entertainment on Wednesday night: three local brothers, aged 10, 12, and 15, came to sing and dance and play for us. The 10 year old played banjo and tap danced; the 12 year old played fiddle (totally self-taught) and did Irish step dancing; the 15 year old played accordian and guitar.  All three sang solos.  They sang and danced and played for an hour and a half, all very good.

Here’s a photo of them:

Here the youngest boy does some of his tapping, while his brother waits his turn to do his step dancing.  They were so good.

Thursday, after disembarking from the ferry, we were met by Bert, a fellow who has been involved in the dialogue/companion diocese relationship from Killaloe/Limerick, for lunch; then went to his home in Ennis for tea, then drove home.  Friday we mostly did wash, sat around reading, went to the pub for lunch, and generally, rested up, for on Saturday morning, we were to drive to Dublin airport, turn in our car, and depart for Manchester airport, and our Yorkshire cottage in Knaresborough.

In general, we ate lunch out and dinners in.  I tended to have soup and brown bread.  Irish vegetable soups, served in almost every pub, are delicious…all pureed, all different, all tasty, except one, which was too heavily herbed, so that I couldn’t even taste the cauliflower purported to be in it.  And the bread was invariably Irish brown bread, of which I’m very, very fond.  We did eat dinner out with Ann on Tuesday night at the pub, which was also good.

More tomorrow on the English half of our vacation.

All ready to go…

The house is clean.  The pastures are mown, the fences are in place.  The sheep are happy. The pigs have their long=term feeders and waterers installed.  The grain is all bought and in the containers.  The bags are packed.  Farm sitters arrive tomorrow; and we leave for Logan Airport, via the Dartmouth Coach…and at 7 p.m., we take off for Shannon Airport, on good ol’ reliable Aer Lingus, and from there, to car rental place, and the big adventure of driving on the other side of the road, to Terryglass, in County Tipperary.  Driving through Limerick ought to be fun…I’m glad John will be doing the driving.  We will tour around for a few days; then, on Wednesday, take the Doolin Ferry to Inis Mor, spend the day and night there, hopefully visiting Mrs. O’Flaherty and getting more yarn from her, staying overnight at Kilmurvey House, then on to the middle island the next morning, to walk it for a few hours, returning to Doolin by 5, to meet Bert and Catherine, native Irish folk who belong to the “companion diocese” to ours (NH).  We’ll have some dinner with them, then back to our little Rose Cottage for the rest of the week.  Saturday morning, we drive to Dublin, drop off the car, fly to Manchester, pick up a car, and drive to our cottage in Knaresborough.  We’ve set up days with some friends from the Lake District, Graham and Audrey, and their church friends, all of whom visited here several years ago, came to my church, and came for dinner to the farm.  Also with Auntie Eve, Mike and Angela’s aunt, from York…with plans to visit the Sheepshop, and get some Wensleydale yarn, and also see some Wensleydale sheep.  Bags are packed and sitting in the living room.  Carry-ons still upstairs for final additions in the a.m.  We are both excited.  I won’t be bringing my computer along with everything else we need to bring, so I’ll take notes and photos and post when we get back.  The farm is in good hands.  Lizzie is going to her “godparents”, Dottie and Sonny.  We’ll miss the peonies: they are about to burst into bloom, but we caught the lovely onandaga viburnum and some of the iris and a few of the lupines…the price you have to pay, the choices you make.

Have a great two weeks…be back before you know it, probably pining for home after a week or so, as usual…For wherever we go, we both seem to love the scenery, and think it almost as beautiful as Vermont, our home.

Thoughts on relationship via the written word?

I am in the middle of reading a perfectly delightful book called “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” about a young female author, her pursuit of knowledge of the Nazi occupation of Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, during WWII, and the relationships in her life. The entire novel is a series of letters to and from Juliet from her publisher, friend, suitor, and a whole cast of Guernsey Island inhabitants…and you can see the relationships growing in the letters.  It is masterful…But it has caused me to ponder relationships in general that grow or even are exclusively the product of the written word, rather than physical meetings….I think of Baron Von somethingorother and Evelyn Underhill who corresponded for many years, the Baron being spiritual director for Underhill.  I think of women who corresponded with men in the “Old West” and eventually travelled out to meet and marry them…I think of the penpals I had for years as a teenager…and I think of relationships I now have via email with many people, a few of which have deepened into real and true friendships, at least I consider them that, though I’ve never met these people.  Now, ponder…with email exchange, a series of “letters” which ordinarily would take a year to go back and forth between two people a world or a country away, can now happen in one week.  In one week of steady correspondence, one can learn a great deal about another person, or about, at least, how that person chooses to present him/herself.  Is there any more danger of misrepresentation in email than in letters or in person?  I don’t know.  And if the relationship can go through a whole year’s correspondence in a week, is it then possible to fall in love, say, in one week of same?

Okay, this is fascinating me…it is a sort of paradigm shift…relationships forged in a different way, a different time span, a different plane, almost: not complicated by the physical presence or attraction or temptation to jump into bed, that in person relationships encounter…so there might well be some good in them…actually promoting knowing a person better before the sexual encounter?  I give up…

So, now the real question is, is this pondering the result of the whiskey sour I had before dinner, which may well be fogging my mind, or is it just another wandering of the old brain.  Whichever, it doesn’t help me get this room put back together again, so I’d best get at it…there’s so much to do in the next 11 days before we take off for Ireland and England…I still have several boxes of “stuff” sitting on the floor of this room which need sorting and putting away.  I still have the pigs to acclimate to electronetting and get out in the woods. I still have the sheep to corral, worm, and separate the lambs from (that doesn’t sound like good English to me!).  I still have my veggie garden to plant, and the ram pen to seed with zucchini and summer squash, to feed the pigs when we get back. (The piglets have done a marvelous job of tilling said pen, and it’s ready to plant.)  Then there’s packing….

Well, I”m happy to have any thoughts on relationships, email, letters, etc. that anyone wants to contribute to this thread…it will distract me while I do this busy work in my room, this putting away of stuff, one of my least favorite things to do.

The Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Festival was very good.  Sue and I had a great time, and a marvelous gigglefest on the steps up to the second floor of the motel, two old ladies carrying way too many bags, instead of making two trips, worried about disruptive and noisy teens possibly in the next room, and making a huge ruckus ourselves, probably disrupting teens in the next room.

This past weekend was Dottie’s and my yard/perennial sale.  It was also quite successful. I’ve taken the yard sale stuff leftovers to the church for their yard sale in two weeks. (The rule is: once it’s out of this house, it can’t come back in.) And next week I’ll take the plants that are left as well.  For now, they’ll stay here and be watered and such.  Wednesday I will deliver four lambs to their new home.  Thursday is quilting, though I can’t for the life of me remember where…guess I’d best make some calls!

Life is good.

Catching up…

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever “catch up”…I’ve spent time all week putting up pasture fences, trying to find the best way to put them up so the sheep can be transferred easily from one pasture to another.  The pigs are growing, and I need to put up some electronetting in the ram pen where they are, so they can get used to that fencing, before I put them out on pasture.  The chickens are off my garden and in their “chicken village” for the season.

This weekend is the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Festival, in Cummington, Mass.  Sue and I will stay the weekend, rather than drive back and forth the two hours each day.  John is home working on my office/sewing room.  Everything from that room is in boxes strewn all over the house.  The furniture is on the porch.  Hopefully, by the time I get back, it will be ready to put back together again.

Next weekend is Dottie’s and my yard/perennial sale.  I have about 100 perennials to pot and take down to her place, and I have to get the yard sale stuff organized, priced, and transported there as well.  But first, this weekend, south to Mass. with a car full of fleeces, tables, cloths, yarn, and roving.

Joyce stopped by today with a ton and a half (maybe slight exaggeration) of bagged spinach past it’s sell by date, but not it’s use by date, for the animals.  Well, I blanched and froze quite a lot of it for us.  And gave some to Dottie.  The rest the animals will get.

I can’t believe it’s only three weeks til we leave for Ireland and the UK.  The final papers have come, tickets and such; I’ve reserved ferry space for the trip to the Aran Islands, located a yarn shop in Yorkshire that has Wensleydale fleece and yarn, and a promise to take me to see some sheep of that breed.  The cell phone is ordered (in case there is some sort of emergency relative to John’s mother), the Dartmouth coach tickets to Logan are with our passports upstairs.  I’ve started getting clothes ready and packed, one outfit at a time.  Farm sitters will be here Friday just about the time we are scheduled to leave.

And as if there weren’t enough to do, Jamie from some telephone wire installing place is coming back on Tuesday to pull new telephone wires up onto the poles…which means through our ram pasture, so I have to catch up the rams, and lock them in the old goose pen so they don’t bother or attack the guys doing the work.  They aren’t usually aggressive, but I don’t want to take that chance.  So, early Tuesday a.m. they will be enticed with grain into the small enclosure where they’ll stay until the guys are finished, hopefully by noon.

The Onondaga Viburnum, one of my favorites, is in bud.  When it opens, I”ll try to get a photo.  It is very striking.  The Hawthorne’s pink blossoms are half opened, and will be in full bloom by Sunday or Monday.  My garden needs to be planted this week.  And next week, I have some lambs to deliver to a friend who is using them for lawnmowers for the summer, and for eating in the fall.

A busy life for sure…Have a great Memorial Day weekend.

Recovering Festaholic

Well, the festival is over for another year…and all the stuff has been packed up, hauled home, and yesterday, hauled back to Sue’s store.  I sold many fleeces and some other things.  It was a reasonably successful day financially on Saturday;  Sunday was not very lucrative.  Mostly Sunday was people out to the fair, not fiberholics…

There were some great fleeces there. Two I was particularly impressed by.  One was a romney, from a sheep belonging to a 4Her, a beautiful silver grey…but I didn’t have $70!  The other was a 3/4 blue face leicester-1/4 cormo fleece, the most incredible thing, like ringlets, long stapled, very clean, priced for doll makers at $156 for 4 lb. and some oz.  I didn’t have $156 either!

The New Hampshire festival is always good because it’s the first big one in New England since fall, which means catching up with people you only see at fairs.  Some had good winters, one had a very sad winter, having to put her parents in a nursing home, losing a daughter to cancer, having to quit her job to nurse her daughter for several months…very sad.

There was the usual assortment of serious fleece people, serious sheep people, bargain hunters, people with no intention of buying anything, but who fingered all the fleece and pulled it apart.  It reminded me of my favorite retailing story…friend, Donna, taking a break from nursing, many years ago, worked in the fabric department of a big store.  Along with the bolts of fabric were two big table of neatly folded pieces of fabric.  Every morning, Donna came in and made sure the fabric was neatly stacked.  ONe morning a woman came in, picked up one length of fabric, held it up, and then dropped it on the floor.  After doing this with about 10 pieces of fabric, Donna was getting a little irritated, as was her co-worker.  After a few more, Donna went over to the woman and said, “Let me help you,” and with her arm, pushed the whole table full of fabric to the floor.  I wish I had been there to see the look on the customer’s face…I laughed and laughed and laughed.  Sometimes I’m tempted to do the same thing when people mess up stuff in my booth with no regard for the work that goes into it or the need to NOT pull apart an entire fleece just for experience, with no intention to buy.

Back home to find my stupid husband had two ticks on him since Friday, and not bothering to put on his glasses to check out his “black fly bites” only asked me on Sunday to check them out…Long story short, he’s on antibiotics, they were deer ticks.  I suggested to him that it was time to visit his eye doc when he couldn’t tell a tick from coagulated blood.  Hopefully, he got the antibiotics in him in time to prevent lyme disease…GRRR!!! Now, of course, he’s a tick-nut…this morning he had a little bump on his face for me to check…an issue perhaps for his dermatologist next week, but not a tick.

I still have not begun digging plants for our annual plant sale, but it has blessedly been put off a week, as Dottie has a wedding on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend…So, we’ll do it the following week. Which is wonderful, since I have the Mass. Sheep festival on Memorial Day weekend each year, and can’t help her on Saturday. This way I can be there the whole two days.  And perhaps, since a nearby town has had a town wide Memorial Day sale the last few years, which has cut down on our traffic, having it the following week would be better anyway.  So, I have another week to dig.

This week I have two major chores: empty my “office” (sewing room?) of everything so John can paint, stain, varnish it in the next week to 10 days, And spread the fertilizer around the pasture…I’ve started emptying the room.  I have 8 boxes of stuff, and have only emptied one cabinet…argh…it’s going to be a major deal, I think.  The fertilizing will wait til later in the week.  While he’s staining and varnishing, I will have to make myself scarce, since that stuff gives me violent headaches and intestinal difficulties.  Allergies are such fun.

We heard from HomeAtFirst yesterday.  They are processing our papers and about to send out our airline tickets, etc.  The farm sitters are all set to come.  We leave June 12th for a week in Tipperary, Ireland and a week after that in Yorkshire.  WE are both looking forward to it; I’ve been planning it for months, with lots of options for each day, depending on how well recovered my knee is, etc.  I still have ferry reservations (waiting for them to get back to me) to make, and he still has Dartmouth Coach tickets to buy to get us to Boston, and I want the house all clean and orderly before the farm sitters arrive.  Lizzie will be staying with neighbors she knows real well; I think that will be better for her.  She knows the farm sitters a little, but…they will have enough to do with the animals and gardens and such.

I had debated bringing my computer and doing a trip travelogue, but I think that’s just one more thing to worry about and a pad and pencil are lighter, so I think I won’t bring the computer.

Time to load up some boxes…have a great week.

It’s that time again: NH Sheep and Wool!

It’s been a busy week: the grass is up but growing slowly, so the sheep need new pastures every two days, which means I’m putting up new fencing every two days.  (The downside of not having permanent fencing!)  I’ve been knitting socks like there’s no tomorrow, so there’ll be samples of all the sock yarns we are bringing to the festival, and so I’ll have something to sell…The raw fleeces have all been weighed and labelled and packed in the car. Photos of the sheep whose fleeces are for sale have been taken and printed, to put with the fleeces.  Business cards have been made.  The truck is packed. (At least the FRONT part, where my stuff goes.  The back still needs sweeping out: that’s where we put the tables and equipment and stuff from Sue’s store.)  I still have some rovings balls to label, grain store and food shopping to do this morning, and finishing one more last sock, one made from some new stuff: wool, bamboo, and silk…

This morning I put the boys on pasture, and transferred the piglets from the winter chicken coop to the ram pen, where they have light and air and lots of dirt and hay to root through in search of fermented corn left unintentionally by the rams all winter.  They will stay there for a couple of weeks, and hopefully ready that area for squash planting.  They will also acclimate to electric fencing, which I’ll put inside the cattle panels next week and power up, so that in a few weeks, when it’s time for pasture, they know that they need to stay within the fence.

So, if you are wanting a really neat fiber experience this weekend, why not meander down to Contoocook, N.H., to the state fairgrounds (right off exit 7 of I-89) and “come to the fair”.  The lamb sausages are great.  There’s always fried dough. (My personal favorite.)  There’ll be sheep galore, border collie demos by David Kenard, who is great with his wonderful dogs.  132 vendors or thereabouts…fleece, washed, raw, processed, yarn, rovings, batts, sheepskins, oh, and those alpacas and llamas, which I am allergic to and stay away from, but which others are really thrilled with…and angora rabbits and angora goats, and …demos, a fleece auction, you name it…there are people who make this their Mother’s Day celebration each year, much more fun than going out to brunch at the La-de-da Inn…If you go, look for me and look for Sue at the Hodge Podge Fibers booth in one of the buildings, whose number I don’t know (rats!), but you can find us in the great booklet you will receive at the gate.  Introduce yourselves.

Okay, off to the grain store…have a great weekend, and remember all the women who’ve mothered you (in good ways?) throughout your life this weekend.

Lambing is over!

Every year I look forward to lambing, and after three weeks of checking at 9 p.m. before I go to bed, and not leaving the house for more than two hours at a time, I look forward to lambing’s being over. This year was no exception…In addition, the goatie-girls came back from the neighbor’s, as my knee was feeling well enough that I was feeling guilty about farming them out, so to speak. And, this past Sunday, I was supplying for our priest, so she could get some rest after a grueling Holy Week. Friday, John went to NYS to pick up a friend and head to some antique car show in N.J. That meant I was alone, with still one ewe to lamb, and with having to milk two goats morning and evening.  Not that he could do either of those things, you realize, but he could CALL someone if there was a problem, or if I had to leave and there was a ewe in labor.  Saturday a.m. I got up and out there early, by 5:45, just to see how long the whole routine would take me.  I was back inside in an hour, at 6:45, which meant that if all went as well on Sunday, I could get back in by 6:45, change into priest clothes, and get out of here by 7.  The only tricky part was what if the ewe was in labor Sunday morning and having trouble.  I checked her again at 11 a.m. on Saturday, and with great relief, found she had just had twins.  After penning them up, I got the iodine to dip their cords, and mama, thinking I was a mean person, came over protectively and knocked my hand, the one with the iodine in it, and so I spilled two ounces of iodine all over my hand…no big deal…and my ring.  The ring is now reddish brown gold with reddish brown sapphire and diamonds.  Jewelry cleaner didn’t do much.  Clorox didn’t do much…Tomorrow John will take it to the jewelers to be cleaned properly.  Anyway, the guy who called about buying the goats, who was to come on Sunday, called on Saturday afternoon and asked if he could get them then.  YES!  He came, loaded up Daisy, Rosie, Violet, and baby Petunia (the baby in the car so she wouldn’t get stepped on or fallen on on the way home), and off he went.  He was thrilled.  I think they’ll have a good home.  I miss them, but sure don’t miss milking them…I have found that milking goats is just not my thing.  I don’t like accepting limitations, but there it is.  I’m not a goat milker.  They are in a better place with someone who has milked animals all his life, likes it, and is happy with these goatie-girls.  That meant Sunday morning was a breeze…

However, after standing in high heels for 4-1/2 hours, going up and down steps here and there from nave to altar and back and pulpit and back, my knee was not in a happy mood…and I, not used to the amount of energy it takes to keep a congregation in thrall, anymore, was exhausted, so I went home and took a long nap with a couple of aspirin and a tylenol.  The knee was fine with a bit of rest, and so was I.  John came home, and I announced that the “pig stand” (our name for the ice cream/hamburger/etc. outdoor summer eating mecca around the corner) was open, first day, and so we went out and got hot fudge sundaes, another spring ritual.  All in all, a good weekend…and as a bonus, since I was sleeping downstairs, I figured it was a good time to get rid of Lizzie’s crate and see if she would sleep on her “night-night bed” in the corner.  So, for two nights, she slept there, with me on the couch next to her, and for the last two nights, she’s slept there with us upstairs.  Yahoo!  Another step toward adulthood and civilization for her.

It rained all night and is pretty mucky out there this morning, which means she didn’t get to go out and run up and down in the muck while I fed the animals.   She is not particularly happy about that, but is consoling herself by chasing “chicken” (her rubber dog toy that sort of looks like a chicken) around the house.

I finished Laura’s leopard patterned zebra fish costume (granddaughter is having a play about diversity in first grade: most of the kids are dressed as traditional zebra fish; a few as leopard patterned zebra fish–apparently a real mutation which occurs among same–and they will reject and then accept “someone different from us”.), so today I have to mail it off to her.  So, I’m off to the post office later this morning…and it’s Tuesday, so it’s a spinning group day.

Yesterday, I ear-tagged the last of the jugged lambs and let them out with the flock, took down all the jug panels.  Now, I can bring the box of lambing supplies in the house, order CDT vaccine, and relax until next week, when I have to start to put fencing up, a length or two at a time, given the knee, so that in a couple of weeks, when the grass is six inches tall, the girls can go out on pasture for the summer, another sort of ritual to mark the coming of the warm time and the grass.  Then, the piglets come…life on a farm goes on and on, over and over, new life, death, warm, cold, pasture, shed…life is good.

A Holy Week…waxing theologically, again, beware!

This is indeed a Holy Week…Two Paschal mysteries, two traditions, meld almost to present us with salvific metaphors for all people…In the Hebrew scriptures and celebrated ever since as Passover, the people of God are asked to sacrifice a whole lamb, an intact, unblemished male under a year old (is this “Greek” for a virgin?  Certainly my ram lambs are kept separate from the ewes once they are capable of breeding them…but we don’t speak of virginity as holy for males, only for females, right?  Give me a break!), and to spread the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and lintels, so that the people will be spared, will be passed over, as a plague comes and wipes out all firstborns in the land…and then, those saved people flee slavery and subjugation and journey to a new land, are “re-born” so to speak as a free people in a new place.  And in the Christian tradition, the Jewish scholarly system of midrash, repeating the old metaphors to give them more power,  the Lamb of God is sacrificed, and by his blood, the people are saved.  Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, to Christians way of thinking, though not to Jewish, is the Paschal victim,we even say, each week, in the Mass, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”  And the people are saved, re-born, as it was, into a new life, a life in Christ…Same metaphor, different, but very much the same, anyway, application.  The metaphor is expanded: in the Hebrew scriptures, the people of the book, the people of God, the Apiru, are saved.  In the Christian application, Christ dies and ALL of CREATION is saved, is new, not just the people of the book, not just believers (though there are some who would say you are only saved if you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour…but that defies the entire tradition of salvation being a community event, not a personal one.  It is, in a way, anti-scriptural…for if, for example, you are deaf and blind and in the road, looking west, and a truck comes from the east at a very fast clip and doesn’t see you, and I jump out in the road, unbeknownst to you, and signal the truck to stop, and it does…you are saved, whether you assent to that salvation or not.)  This, I think, is the message of Easter: that it is done, it is finished, as Jesus said on the cross: Creation is born anew, and we celebrate it in the Spring, when creation shouts it out: the peepers peep, the grass greens, the bulbs come up, the snow melts, the cold goes (though it’s hard to tell that today!  Not what I’d call a really pretty morning!  Cold and windy, for sure!), and we know that life is good, that life goes on.

There was an article in the paper this week about some guy who read the bible, and wrote about it: about how cruel and nasty God is.  What he failed to acknowledge is that the bible is some people’s interpretation of the events of their lives, PEOPLE’s interpretation of who God is, and like people everywhere, they are prone to assuming that if something bad happens to their enemies, it is God doing it.  God gets to be the heavy every time.  And if something good happens to them, it is God doing it…despite assurances in the bible that “the rain falls on the good and the bad equally,” which I take to mean that God gives people credit for dealing with their own difficulties and celebrating their own joys, and it is this INDEPENDENCE, and not slavery to a God, that we celebrate.  God has set us free: and we read of that metaphor in the Passover story and in the Easter story…It is the same story…We are free, no longer slaves…we are re-born.  The bears tell the same story: each spring they awake from a deep sleep, and come alive again.  They enact the Passover story and the Easter story…now, comes the real challenge: as Mary Oliver, the poet,  says, “What are you going to do with this one life you have to live.?”  This new, born again, life of freedom?  There’s the real question: how will we all respond to the freedom we have been given? How will we live out our joy, deal with our sorrows, sing and dance in celebration of the new life we have, reflected each year in the seasons, in the stories our ancestors told around campfires, and then wrote down…AND, how does this all play out in the southern hemisphere where it isn’t getting warmer, but colder?  Clearly, these stories originated in the northern hemisphere!  They, like all primitive, cosmological myths, originate in nature’s rhythms, and follow them…hmm…okay, southern hemisphere folks: what say you?

Jeepers, creepers!

We now have some peepers! Gosh oh, gee whiz, surely must be Spring! Last night on the way back from church, on the top of the hill on Gulf Road, first place to hear them, the peepers were out, peeping away. NOW, I know it’s really Spring! The MRI showed some little deterioration/tearing of the meniscus, but not enough to merit surgery or write home about. Doc’s advice: sit on it, as in, do nothing for now, and see if it doesn’t totally heal itself, as it seems to be doing.  Good news, as I was trying to figure out what 6  weeks in the course of the year I could afford to be on crutches.  Hopefully, it will all take care of itself and this will not be a repeating pattern…It is/was not fun.

This morning, I ear tagged the last two penned up lambs and let them with their mamas, out into the paddock with the other sheep. Sheep mothers are like human mothers, with different degrees of “mothering” ranging from smothering to laissez faire.  This morning, one of each.  One mother kept close, made her baby stay right under her nose, didn’t venture any farther than the shed.  The second mother took off, her baby screaming after her, got out to the end of the winter paddock and started screaming for the baby. God forbid she should actually go looking for him.  I carried him out, she let him drink, gave him some advice, and took off again.  That’s been the way of it all morning, except I stopped being the nanny.  It is supposed to shower on and off this morning, looks like it will, and is very damp.  The sun is supposedly appearing again on Monday.  It was here yesterday as well.  We are really getting the April showers this year…almost seems like a monsoon season!  The dirt roads are interesting.  They’ve been regrading one section of our road almost every other day. Last time they put stones down and ground them in with the mud, which hopefully will keep the ruts from forming quite so quickly…

Yesterday, I spent the better part of the day making lasagna: sauce first, with our tomatoes and our sausage which I made and stuffed last September; then late afternoon, building the trays of lasagna with the lasagna noodles, sauce, sausage, and cheeses.  Three are in the freezer, one in the frig, for sometime this weekend. This is such a federal case that I only do it once a year, but try to make several.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday.  We will have dinner with John’s Mom at the nursing home, which we do on all holidays.  The kids can’t make it up, because of work commitments.  So, we’ll have a pretty quiet holiday.  Which makes it easier to mark as a Holy Day, without all the hustle and bustle of preparing meals for guests and entertaining them.

Today, I need to go to the fabric shop and find some leopard print material to make Laura a leopard=patterned zebra fish costume for a class play, dealing with diversity.  I haven’t a clue how I’m going to do this, but it will come to me, I’m sure.

Next Sunday, I’m supplying for Susan, who will be away for a week, recovering from Holy Week (or as most clergy tend to call it, because of the toll it takes on our health and well-being: Hell Week).  Doing all those services and all those sermons, plus entering into the mystery and misery of Holy Week, being down in the pit and then somehow, rising up overnight Saturday night so that we can be resurrected on Sunday, is a difficult journey each year.  Renewing in spirit, for sure, but by the end of the week, all I ever wanted to do was sleep and not hear the world “church” for a week!  So, if I can give her the Sunday after Easter off, by doing the services for her, that is good, and I’ve done a good thing.  Now, I have to come up with a sermon for next week…hm…

Still two more ewes to lamb out, and then lambing is finished.  Some time in the next week, I get the goatie-girls back from the neighbors who so kindly took them while my knee was totally unable to cope with milking them.  I am still planning to sell them, though I haven’t had a lot of bites.  I guess I’ll continue milking them for a little while in the hopes of selling them as milkers.

May first or thereabouts, the sheep go out on pasture, which means between now and then, I have miles of fence to put up. The snow is mostly gone, though a bit still remains on my perennial garden, the last to melt, generally.  The ground is not quite totally thawed yet, but is getting there.  Soon I have to put the chickens on the garden as well, to till it.  Spring IS here, for sure.  It is good to have the knee healing.