diseased

Last saturday leaving L and E in charge of of the maison djeribi operation at knockvicar N and I went to the funeral of a good guy, 54-year old organic farmer Ted Mole, who succumbed to a brain tumour. Upset and weather-beaten but in rather cool outfits, including an amazing papier mâché mask, we went to a local haloween party packed with pretty sick children and parents. So a couple of days later we started coming down with this, perhaps not the dodgy fashionable flu but a nasty one all the same.

No baking this week, I am afraid, I am not going to try and broadcast those little germs any more than is necessary. In old library books here it says : “Borrowers must report to the Local Librarian all cases of infectious diseases occurring in their houses while library books are in their possession.” Nowadays, however, with over-the-counter all-symptons-suppressants super drugs and a ruling system than only values functioning active human beings, what can you expect ?

 

action

Last week was the first week of baking after a long and delightful holiday in brittany while all animals, plants and walls were looked after adroitly by LMS. How lucky.

Last friday was too hot in the kitchen for sourdough despite my freshly hung blinds and the resulting bread was a little flat as I hurried off to the train on saturday with N to Dublin to an artists book fair leaving the rest of the family to bring freshly baked goods to market, new cakes, flatter bread. This friday I won’t have to worry about packing books and rushing to Dublin and the weather is given rather wet I am told, I just need a little more breeze but
I know all will be well and I am greatly looking forward to take my weekly stand and talk to the good people who will come to knockvicar this saturday. I do love this job I invented for myself.

 

return to post

Home late last saturday having driven home through the fog after dinner, home from a week at annaghmakerrig (the Tyrone Guthrie Centre) where I was more than contented to just write, draw, collect a lot of branches for a work in progress, collect conkers because I can, eat well (too much), sleep very badly (brain not switching off), take the rowing boat out onto the lake, enjoy fellow inmates. Good to find my children again although I never ever feel they are far from me. Difficult to get back into the farming chores agenda, to become again that person that rarely sits down when I’ve let that other me out of the bag. The added seasonal bonus of daily stove lighting, fuel in ash out, and occasional extra of sudden leaking pipe (“white waste”, what can you expect ?) under kitchen sink. For a few days I am a little distracted. I have barely had time to unpack and I am even wondering if there is not another life for me. Funnily I realize I have arrived completely home one early morning walking to the goats in torrential wet and windy rain, and I feel pure joy at doing my job.

List of small jobs : not enough space here. List of big jobs : build a shed for the donkey, extend the wood shed, dig up potatoes and jerusalem artichokes and cover ground, prepare beds for next spring, negotiate more time with myself to sit and write or make things, art. I will Yes.

 

protest song : a work in progress

 

I like odd numbers particularly

This morning, as I started milking goat number two, Biscotte, I thought I’d count how many times I needed to press the udders until I had emptied them. I am milking one udder at a time because one hand has to hold the awkward vessel I am currently using which makes the counting exercise easier. (I can milk with both hands, I am proud to add, which means that the loss of one arm would not stop me.) This morning I needed to press 373 times for almost 1.5 litres of milk, I could press harder and thus reduce the number but I like to go at it gently, I empathize greatly with my goats, especially in the instance of production and extraction of milk as I too have produced milk for my children. I am not necessarily a neurotic counter but I often like counting—sometimes as relic of a childish comforting thing but also, as this morning, in the name of science. I now know roughly how many times I have to press udders every morning for my milk and I feel cleverer for it. Milkers must have interesting muscle development in their hands, I wonder what other use they can be put to. I also brushed the donkey, Alaska, to try and get his dreadlocks away but I was not counting the strokes.

Today I am experimenting with a Hungarian farm cheese recipe Lazslo (thank you) gave me last saturday. Leave raw milk to sour at room temperature. Remove sour cream and heat to near boiling point until good curds form. Drain and salt lightly. So the souring is happening as I write. How many hours, days, curds, salt grains ? The drained whey is great for cleaning linoleum and slate floors, and also the hens love it.

 

work

I was on bus in the north of England in the middle of the night, we were pulling into a coach station around which a little newly built concentration of office blocks had just sprouted. These were illuminated ; how much electricity is wasted in this world to show to the passing noctambulists the desolated interiors of lifeless workspaces. I reflected that man builds lifeless work places and days there are made tolerable by the things that are not remunerated and not encouraged, chatting, flirting, gossiping, dreaming, wasting time, pilfering office supplies. Life happens despite our constructs, thankfully, in the interstices. With nature we make better living spaces. I have worked in offices, it was a formative experience, my memories are of the people that I was thrown in with.