Blogging is a strange art. To publish or not to publish? Who will be reading this and should i care? Who’d have thought that blogging about calves and gardens would create such dilemmas. And yet… here I am… having not blogged in an age, worrying about this and that. I love this form, this opportunity to tell stories, to draw people into my world. i love the respite from the intensity of other forms of writing i indulge in (i use the word "indulge" after some deliberation..). The purity of reportage, the simplicity of just making a chronicle of the days. I know it brings people joy, and is useful. To tell people how to make butter, or to kill a duck, or to make a trellis out of bamboo and string - these are things that people want to know about, and maybe they find answers here, as i do in other people’s blogs, when i google "stiff back legs calf" or some such thing!

But here I am, struggling with, not writer’s block, but with feeling unable to write here about things which are integral to the farm and its wholeness. Much has happened and that happening, and being unable to write about that happening, has created an erasure, a period of non-reportage, a forgotten moment in the backyard.

 Simply put. Calves have come and gone. Milk has been off and on and off. Rosie grieved mournfully over the loss of Rabbit, who we sold. It’s a terrible sound, and tuned into some sad frequency in my own heart and mind and the resonation was often too much, so that we left the house alot to escape her grief. Little Joe, the rescue calf died. We had to take his breath in the end, he was so weak and would not recover. Gardens struggle and chickens hatch. Many people came and went over Christmas and New Year. We had 45 people camping here and there were performances on the back verandah, so much love, and so much fascination.

The Likely Dairylad has gone back to the city. Today I am in the farmhouse alone, and it’s very big and empty and quiet.

i wrote this in the early hours, when i couldn’t sleep in the bigness of the house

oh! the day!

wraiths hang in the sky
like sad rags

the cows are silent, listening

i live on light,
barely snack on sleep

the day wraps around the farmhouse
like a christo

- my island home -

the sea is green
and i cannot walk on water

there is far too much air in here
for me to breathe alone

………………………….

This in an unusual kind of post for this blog. I am just stepping back out into the yard, blinking in the sun and acknowledging change. I will try to fill in the holes as the dust settles. The chronicle of the days will return to normal programming. I have missed the bigbackyard.

Love love and love

Ms. V