Work Morning
Dec. 20th, 2021 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormBubbles for bubble tea are cooking on the stove. Behind me the aerogarden that I bought to function as a humidifier/sofaside lamp is casting its light. A cat is playing with a jingly cat toy beside me. The dishwasher is humming along, taking my kitchen towards tidiness. A gloom-grey sky is dimming from bright moonlight to daylight outside. I have just eaten a cheese-and-tomato-and-Worcestershire-sauce sandwich on light sourdough rye from the abattoir trip.
Last night Josh got into Vancouver at 8pm, that's a 15-hour drive, and gave away meat for an hour in a McDonalds parking lot in one of the less-great but extremely transit-and-drivable parts of downtown. Everyone picked up; during meat pickup I took a photo series of removing breasts from a duck, wrote it up, and posted it on fb for folks with cooking instructions for how I do my favourite goose preparation. Today I need to do bacon write-up; honestly making those bacon kits was pretty great.
It feels really good to know my food is out in the world, people are excited about it, it
s going to be eaten with respect and reverence. That is why I do this; it's what makes the work and the sacrifice of lives worthwhile; well, that and continuing the breed.
It feels good to be self-willed for a bit, to just do what I want when I want without observing folks in my house and using that to steer my behaviour.
It's hard to know I'm coming up on the time Tucker will leave. It hasn't been addressed between us, not really, and certainly he hasn't addressed it. While on the one hand there hasn't been a good time to do so, on the other he hasn't reached out to schedule that time, just like when he said he'd like a regular relationship check-in and I agreed that would be good but that he'd need to lead the scheduling he did not do that. He likes the idea of these things in theory--
Here I am, centering his perspective again. I'll allow myself time to do that but the time is not now.
It's hard to know I'll be missing Tucker; it's hard to know I'll be alone up here; it's hard to know I won't have anyone nearby for support (who do I put on emergency contact forms when they ask for someone local?). It's hard to know I'll slip away from people a little more and then be annoyed when I have to mask up, to act human, when they want back into my life periodically. I suspect that's one reason I want a local anchor/daily/domestic person: to be my tie to the human world.
The real cold is starting to set in. Water freezes fast and does difficult things. The pigs have deep straw in their beds, the waterfowl are all locked up in the woodshed (I need to run them out some water) and the chickens are also confined. It's hard to work without gloves. The outdoor water tap has been frozen for days, which surprises me a little; something must be wrong and I need to poke at it. Meantime I've been filling buckets for everyone in the bathtub. The fire is down to a 12-hour cycle; if we get much colder it'll be an 8-hour cycle, which means splitting a lot more wood in the cold. I unplugged the outdoor freezers last night.
Cold is the time of year when infrastructure really matters. Having a frost-free standpipe out by the pigs or chickens would be great. Some sort of water de-icer that they couldn't wreck would also be great. The woodsplitter is great. A good coat and decent gloves and a good toque and good boots? They make everything better (are they infrastructure? I think so. Mobile and consumable infrastructure?).
My routines have been disrupted. Whatever I do now will set into new routines; it's an important space that shapes what comes next. My job now is to center my needs, to do what I need to keep the rhythmic stability of the farm seasons which I love, and to keep gently building on community.
Last night Josh got into Vancouver at 8pm, that's a 15-hour drive, and gave away meat for an hour in a McDonalds parking lot in one of the less-great but extremely transit-and-drivable parts of downtown. Everyone picked up; during meat pickup I took a photo series of removing breasts from a duck, wrote it up, and posted it on fb for folks with cooking instructions for how I do my favourite goose preparation. Today I need to do bacon write-up; honestly making those bacon kits was pretty great.
It feels really good to know my food is out in the world, people are excited about it, it
s going to be eaten with respect and reverence. That is why I do this; it's what makes the work and the sacrifice of lives worthwhile; well, that and continuing the breed.
It feels good to be self-willed for a bit, to just do what I want when I want without observing folks in my house and using that to steer my behaviour.
It's hard to know I'm coming up on the time Tucker will leave. It hasn't been addressed between us, not really, and certainly he hasn't addressed it. While on the one hand there hasn't been a good time to do so, on the other he hasn't reached out to schedule that time, just like when he said he'd like a regular relationship check-in and I agreed that would be good but that he'd need to lead the scheduling he did not do that. He likes the idea of these things in theory--
Here I am, centering his perspective again. I'll allow myself time to do that but the time is not now.
It's hard to know I'll be missing Tucker; it's hard to know I'll be alone up here; it's hard to know I won't have anyone nearby for support (who do I put on emergency contact forms when they ask for someone local?). It's hard to know I'll slip away from people a little more and then be annoyed when I have to mask up, to act human, when they want back into my life periodically. I suspect that's one reason I want a local anchor/daily/domestic person: to be my tie to the human world.
The real cold is starting to set in. Water freezes fast and does difficult things. The pigs have deep straw in their beds, the waterfowl are all locked up in the woodshed (I need to run them out some water) and the chickens are also confined. It's hard to work without gloves. The outdoor water tap has been frozen for days, which surprises me a little; something must be wrong and I need to poke at it. Meantime I've been filling buckets for everyone in the bathtub. The fire is down to a 12-hour cycle; if we get much colder it'll be an 8-hour cycle, which means splitting a lot more wood in the cold. I unplugged the outdoor freezers last night.
Cold is the time of year when infrastructure really matters. Having a frost-free standpipe out by the pigs or chickens would be great. Some sort of water de-icer that they couldn't wreck would also be great. The woodsplitter is great. A good coat and decent gloves and a good toque and good boots? They make everything better (are they infrastructure? I think so. Mobile and consumable infrastructure?).
My routines have been disrupted. Whatever I do now will set into new routines; it's an important space that shapes what comes next. My job now is to center my needs, to do what I need to keep the rhythmic stability of the farm seasons which I love, and to keep gently building on community.
