If I ever
Good morning. Still overcast and a bit chilly here, but that hasn’t stopped the new chicks from leaving their safe little coop to explore the world with their rotating squad of moms. Yesterday all of the hatchers figured out the 24” stairs to the outside world, they hopped down to the dirt after their clucking hens and were scratching in the open air in front of forest gods and radar, like it's what they were meant to do. The sun even peaked out a few times. Can't complain about any of that!
I found a snake skin, freshly shedded, among the mulch hay while weeding the kitchen garden. It was perfect and shiny and translucent bronze, almost hidden among the yellowing dry hay. I liked finding it, and knowing that this space I made so intentionally for vegetables was also a place a snake can change in privacy.
Sidenote: a giant diesel truck just roared up my winding mountain road with a tank that read POOL WATER and the apocalypse can't come soon enough. Imagine having the kind of money to have water delivered to your private pool on top of a mountain when there is a clean public river, downhill, five minutes away? If I had that kind of money I'd have: this house paid off, a new stable with a young fell pony, an expanded hawk mews, a repaired farmhouse, and... I think that's it? Repair the fencing system and maybe a permeant deer stand back in the woods, but beyond that?
The rest I would like to give to aspiring female solo farmers. I would love to be able to send them grants in exchange for their letters about why they want to farm, how they NEED that kind of life. I think it would be my greatest joy, to be able to give that to young women starting out trying to find what I got a taste of here? If I ever make it big, like if I ever sell a book again that makes a splash or fall into luck so thick it confuses us all - I want to live like Jimmy Carter and hand out money like Taylor Swift.
A girl can dream, right?
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