Greenstorm's Journal

Oh goodness, where even to start. Yesterday I disappeared into the garden. I'm sure I did things but I don't remember what I did, other than in the late evening as the sun was setting I planted saskatoons in front of the spruce hedge. They seem to grow well even under spruce, and even though they were planted into the crevices in a matt of thick roots I have hope that, if I water them, they'll do as well as the other saskatoons I planted there. Once those bushes are well rooted the spruce can eventually come down.

The US bombed Iran yesterday. I was going to say "started a war" but we have a lot of weasel words to avoid that term these days. Someone or other in some gov or other was like "this could be viewed as an act of war" and I just... y'think?

I hda a bit of an online chat with a friend, brushed dogs lots, I'm sure I did other things. I rested as needed but the biometrics on my watch are telling me I'm overdoing it. Still, I made it through a shower and clean hair (I wore sunscreen, which means a full scrubdown every evening or my skin falls off) and... oh, I ran seeper hose irrigation and watered things that way.

We're under a smoke advisory here and the purpleair site (we pretty much have to use private business sites to know air quality unless we're right in a big city, because of course wildfire smoke is primarily in big cities) says that both my town and the town next door have bad air quality. Having said that, it doesn't seem that bad here? I probably should get a monitor, more money to replace yet another function that I consider the gov should do. It just doesn't smell like smoke... though I guess I have been choking a lot more than normal, but that also happens when I overextend myself and my swallow muscles get lazy. Anyhow, it's felt like my place has been in a little oasis of clean air so I've had the windows open and been outside without a mask.

This morning I woke early, turned on the fan to pull cool morning air in, and went back to bed to sleep in and to listen to an agatha christie audiobook. I'm having an experience I haven't had before -- the absolute freedom and joy of having an accessibility device, in this case the audiobook version of my old friends. Honestly even holding up a book takes something out of me, apart from the weird reading thing after my accident AND the weird vision thing. I can read a book I don't even like, or think "I'm not sure I enjoy this" because I don't need to fully minmax every letter in every word. I can lie in bed and read like I used to, comfortably, freely. It's life changing, or maybe life restoring?

I'd been going device-lite during solstice so I missed a text from the tree company; they showed up with chips, I rushed downstairs and put Avallu in, got delightful woodchips, the dogs were exceptionally well-behaved, it was very good. I carried a purring Siri around for awhile out there.

Then I came in and learned my brother's wife had their kid. It might have been yesterday? I hadn't checked that communication channel for a bit. Looks like it's a boy, and there are pictures of my mom and other brother there with the kid (but not my antivax brother in the picture, I've been really worried about that with measles being a big thing now and obviously covid is still around). I need to call Mom and get the details. Between Mom and my sister-in-law's (?that's such a weird thought) huge family with lots of her own sisters and parents and aunties I'm sure they're being well cared-for.

So, big 24 hours, and much better than expected given world events. I now have an abundance of chips to do paths as well as mulch. I need to get my hardy kiwis in the ground because the cats are eating them. I'd like to trellis the tomatoes at some point -- oh yes, I mulched some of them! and plant oaks and graft apples. The first flower clusters on the tomatoes are showing up, 3 weeks after the plants went in the ground more-or-less.

I have tattooed on my side the "to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven" passage -- it goes on for quite awhile, ending "and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God" on my upper thigh. I put it there because I need reminding.

It's summer solstice in the year 2025. I'm alive. The days have swelled and swelled until they burst the barrier between light and dark and sunlight bleeds over the horizon even when it's supposed to be night. I live further north than I had ever thought I would. My garden here, where I've lived longer than anywhere else in my adult life, is rewarding my attention this year. I don't have much attention to give, these days, but the form and amount seems to suit Threshold, this land I've partnered with. Living with this land is like having bones supporting my essential self.

I wear reading glasses now. Normally when I catch sight of myself in a mirror I get stuck, frozen for anywhere from a few minutes to maybe half an hour or so. Maybe for the first time, this morning, I caught sight of myself wearing reading glasses in the reflection of my laptop screen and smiled because I looked like a comfortable silly human. I did not get stuck and I was not indifferent. I had a moment of joy -- that's me, being a silly human, with cheap blue-green plastic reading glasses, watching an Agatha Christie show in bed.

This week I'm going to practice being inside joy like that. So much of my life has been joy thinking about what I will do, how to do it, following through, thinking, thinking. My, call it illness, has reduced both my thinking ability and my doing ability so I'll need to strengthen my other sources of joy to survive.

Many things have been weighing on me recently. Some have been taken off my shoulders by others, but I'm using this long time of light to take another off too: it will be dark again this winter, and I can set my long, slow, multi-year ghosting by Tucker aside to think about in the darker times. I can figure out how to process that dead, painful thing into fertilizer for what comes next at another time. I don't have to think about it now.

When I set this aside and step out the door the immediate embodiment of the long summer days will come meet me, wiggling her tail and chewing a stick. Hard to believe Solly has been here for two years now, and hard to believe she's ever not been here. She's the youngest of us all except for Little Bear. It's nice to have a young one around.

Solstice/solly nee keesa arrived today. I picked her up a two-hour drive away, she'd already been in a truck an hour and a half to get to me. Her people were very nice, and very grateful I think that they found her a good home. She was carsick but put on a good face.

Thea accepted her somewhat nervously, perhaps because it was Way Too Hot and she didn't want to move much. Thea is such a good girl. Avallu DID NOT accept her on first meeting, unsurprisingly, so now I'm doing some rotation/separation so they can get used to each other's scents and stuff.

She's going to be a big girl, she's a little taller than Thea right now but in the super skinny adolescent stage. She's probably as long as Avallu already. When I'm sitting on the ground she's taller than me.

I was definitely contractually obligated to snuggle everyone -- Thea to reassure her she was being so good, Solly because she was in a new scary space and also is a go-out-and-return-to-snuggle snugglebug, Avallu to help him regulate, Whiskey because he got too close to Solly when she was eating and got snarled at, Hazard because everyone else was getting attention...

All in all, not a bad start. Will need to spend lots of time with Avallu and Solly's intros though.

Outside you will die
In minutes, if you're not
Protected by the warmth of other people's hands
Their labour
The works of their lives

Inside you will die
In decades, if you're not
Protected by the warmth of other people's vulnerability
Their kindness
The communities they build and strengthen

Inside and out we will all die
That's why we mark midwinter
With a fire that dances valiantly against the dark
Against the cold
But every spring the fire goes out

A goose honks protest out in the cold

My heart determines to seek lower latitudes

It's raining gently. It's supposed to continue. It's been so dry lately; I'd worried for my corn, pre-soaked and placed into earth that was dust up to two inches down.

The corn grew anyway. It was ready, swollen with life and roots, and it sent its reach downwards where moisture lingered under it. I'd trodden it in well to reconnect the soil with its capillary motion and it came right up through my footprints. Now the sky provides: this morning is a long gentle song of raindrops pinging on my chimney and new solid roof and sighing silently into the receptive soil. If I were on the lake it would sound like silver.

Rain allows me to rest. The sun is like an engine revving and it wants me to go somewhere, do something, feel every thing at once. In the rain I can go out and gently put my hand into the soil and slide a tomato plant in and it feels like no motion at all, like the world just slightly turned and that was the outcome. I can sit and listen and my mind listens too: ebb and flow.

I went out into the rain just now. It always sounds wetter than it is: drops on the roof inside, tiny kisses of mist on the skin outside. That's one reason I like working outdoors: it reminds me it's not as unmanageable as it seems from inside. I planted a little corn and visited with the ones that are up. I should post more about them really. The favas too are really spreading their wings. There is so much light for them here and they don't mind the cool; really they are an excellent plant for this climate.

After work today I'll go out again in the rain and hopefully the mud by then -- now it's an inch of mud then an inch of dust below and then moist soil below that -- and plant the rest of the tomatoes, and perhaps the squash. It's late to put these things in; well see how they go.

I've planted two tomato seeds: fat frog and moment, both micros. I believe I'll also plant a sweet cheriette from one of my saved seeds.

I've sprayed for mealybugs and I'm contemplating what I'll replace my broken grow-light with; it has the old florescent tubes, should I replace it with an LED? It's right behind the couch so I want it to look nice. Maybe a couple sunblasters? Then I'll need to buy more for spring transplants though. Either way the peppers I brought in will need more light soon, and I'd like to get a little more going on in here.

It's edging colder and we're finally getting another real snowfall, which is good: I need it to insulate the pig house and the plants. I've given thought to putting some of my haskaps in a cardboard box and filling it with snow out on the deck, since it doesn't seem to be covering them on its own yet.

I'm tired and I just want to sit out with the geese and watch them. They're wary of me since I snagged a bunch of them with nets and took them off, never to return. Fair enough, right?

The new chickens have given me their fourth egg now, super tiny little ones. I should make myself a mini caesar salad or something in celebration. Meanwhile I've left the ducks and geese locked up in the woodshed and so it's only the dogs, the cats, and me trampling the snow outside. That means I can see all the rodent tracks under the chicken coop, which is probably where all my eggs from everyone else have been going. My instinctive solution is to so the swallowed-a-spider-to-catch-a-fly solution and look into rat terriers but I suspect they would not do well with my birds around. Can't hurt to look into it anyhow.

Gloom, snow: definitely the right time to look at seed catalogues and plan out the next year.

Talked to the trauma counselor I got through the work line today. Every counseling thing through the work line is very goal-focused. We're supposed to set our goals. There's the usual stuff about how to ground out of distress.

Thing is, I think there's a more intellectual/philosophical issue going on. I think I'm bumping up against "lacks understanding". Somewhere in the big pause and deep breath of the pandemic I changed. I've always valued kindness. It was one of my favourite things about Kynnin, way back in the beginning of me being able to see and value things in other people. Kindness can be short-term, like softness or gentleness or support in the moment, or it can be long-term like building a secure structure or tearing down a harmful one. In all cases its driven by a feeling of well-wishing, of warmth, of caring, or of love.

I don't always practice kindness. Like everyone, I have wounds and fears that drive me away from it in self-protection sometimes. Like everyone, I thought, it's still an aspiration.

And so for my life I've viewed people as an enormous patterned chaos of striving. If everyone felt safe and supported, I thought, they'd be kind to others; it's their wounds and to some degree the lack of kindness shown to them that drive folks to harm others as they claw their way towards their own security. Through their clawing they may harm others and perpetuate the cycle but it's incidental and thy are all trying to do better. Generally if I can lend folks a real sense of being safe and accepted they will relax into kindness.

I like that worldview, I think it's largely accurate, and... I miss it. I'm not yet sure what's taken its place.

I don't really believe in personal exceptionalism. I don't believe that I am uniquely positioned to see things that others can't; I don't believe I have feelings that others don't.

And between those things I really struggle to see where folks are turning their energy, where they are able to know and understand that beings outside their singular individual selves exist, where they are able to connect with generosity and empathy and understanding the experiences of another. I need to see people doing that in order to believe that humans are ok.

Trying to write this out, it doesn't make sense and I'm exhausted.

Today I started picking sweet cicily seeds, which I candy in sugar syrup and then dehydrate and they are my favourite candy. I need to also pick chive flowers to go in vinegar.

It's supposed to get up to 32C this weekend, I'm not sure what the record high is for this area but I haven't seen that temperature in quite awhile. That used to be the lower end of my comfort zone, it's amazing how northernized I've become. Maye I'll put some more green beans in the ground and see what comes of them. Maybe I'll drive to a beach on one of the lakes and put my feet in the water.

I just took a long weekend and I was so happy. I'm so happy here, on the property, in the garden and with the animals. I'm so happy without people.

Something in me is resisting going back so hard. I can hear the gears grinding and shearing. I need to break this self down and rebuild in order to go back but I'm not sure I can break down a self in whom I am so happy.

If I were talking to a friend who explained this whole thing to me I'd tell them to disconnect fully. I'd say, don't go back.

I'm pretty sure not going back isn't an achievable trauma goal.

I haven't been entirely pleased with the way the last year has gone.

I have felt pulled in too many directions, I've felt like my focus is lost, I haven't been paying attention to the things I love, I haven't felt a goal or sense of progress. Those are all valuable to me. I haven't felt like I'm contributing properly to my communities, or like I'm properly in contact with them. I have felt poorly towards the folks I normally feel well-disposed towards and my sense of empathy has suffered.

I've been overwhelmed, alienated, and dissociative.

Not only have I not felt present in my body, or when present in my body I have felt uncomfortable; I have also not felt present in my own mind. Everything I touch has broken, including the tools I need to live and to play.

But.

I've had over a week off work now, more-or-less. I've driven geese to the abattoir and gone back with Tucker to pick them up. My freezers are full of things I've raised or grown; my laundry room still has a couple buckets of potatoes in it, and my pickles and other canned things are lined up beautifully on my shelves. The house is warm right now, I may have sorted a temporary solution for the wood stove, and I'll in all likelihood have wood left over at the end of the year to go into next. I'm nine months in to documenting the property's progress with at-least-weekly videos.

Yesterday Tucker spent all day here. We gave the pigs lots of expired milk given by the grocery store and a couple cheesecakes; they were super happy. Baby, the boar, always rolls in cake when I give them some. The birds all have layer pellets now in addition to their grain. Depression has rolled back, but this weekend anxiety also feels like it left me freer: free to enjoy sex and snuggling and eating delicious things, free to inhabit my own mind and for my body to feel a little less rigid from inside of it.

Dinner last night was a goose breast, fat side scored and seared until 2/3 cup (!) of fat rendered out of it and it was lovely and crispy, brown-fried all over in the fat, and cooked to the rare side of medium rare. That was sliced thin over my purple potatoes mashed with goose fat and a little milk -- the potatoes miraculously held their purple instead of turning grey -- and a bunch of turnip pickles on the side. Everything was grown here, raised here, except for salt, pepper, and a little milk. It was delicious and it also meant a lot to me to be able to do that, and a lot to be able to share it with someone I love. I haven't been feeling proud of myself much lately but I am proud of that.

It was also a relief to assure myself that I like that goose processor, and that I love goose breast cooked that way. The wild goose I've had hasn't been as good; really this was as satisfying as a good steak, with the skin crunch that made it truly amazing. I'd be very sad if I didn't enjoy eating geese; it would mean I'd have to raise fewer of them.

The rest of the goose (breasts removed) is currently confit-ing. The edible part of the goose seems to be about 60% meat and 40% fat; I'm looking forward to exploring what else to do with the fat. Someone suggested making cookies out of them! Apparently her family used to do it that way.

My growing/creating 75% of my own calories project is really fulfilling.

It's also been lovely working with Tucker, sharing the projects of cooking and driving. We're even talking about the relationship well, which is something I always appreciate. I like the sense of always moving forward, of deepening trust and communication and caring ability. It's also really enjoyable to have enough familiarity with someone to work as a team. I like familiarity and domesticity, really.

I've been missing the rabbits a bunch - June and Mella both. I've also missed bathtub goose, the little gosling I rescued who imprinted on me and who didn't make it through the spring. And I've been missing, I don't know, someone to talk about farm setup with, someone with similar drives to me.

So it isn't all bad.

I have a pretty good sense of what I need to do going forward: slow down more, make time to wander around outside and be with the animals (easier as the light returns), reach out and connect with people more directly sometimes and lock my proverbial door sometimes too so I'm not ambiently drenched in the worst parts of humanity by hanging out on the internet generally.

I also need to find a way to start volunteering or donating, maybe both. That was part of my life for so long and it's wrong for it to be missing.

Here we are. Solstice.

It's a couple days until the actual night, but I'm in that liminal space now. This is, finally, the dark fertile peace. It's the rest before germination. Everything before was just inputs, ready to be broken down into the new year's growth.

I never sleep well before I load animals. Loading took a couple days (as it should, to be gentlest on them and to stress them least). The big one was the geese: I put their food and water in the doorway to the woodshed lean-to and then went outside a couple times during the day to walk them into the lean-to. Then I closed the lean-to door behind me and shuttled them into the woodshed, a batch at a time. I only got just over half in there, but there were enough of the ones I wanted to send 12 to the abattoir.

That was day 1. They needed to be kept without food for day 2, then in the evening Tucker helped me load them up into crates. The workflow was as follows: I went into the woodshed with a headlamp, the geese flocked away from me and scrambled themselves into a corner, I caught the ones that were going (mixed or mismarked), and carried them one by one into crates while Tucker closed and opened the many doors (including crate and woodshed door) involved.

Choosing is always the hard part for me. Choosing from scared geese late at night, the night before slaughter: that's very hard. And geese are hard because I love them and think they're so beautiful. I mean, I love my pigs and think they look neat with their spots and mohawks, but it's not quite the same.

So then day 3 I drove to Telkwa and back (google says it's 3.5 hours of straight driving to get there. Add a trailer, a bit of slush on the roads, and stopping for gas and I left at 7am and got home just after 5pm). I saw the abattoir for the first time: it had friendly competent-seeming people, it was tidy and looked well-run. It felt like a real neighbourhood place, that is, it was smallish, with maybe 5 people there, and there were geese, rabbits, ducks, and roosters waiting in line. I would not have trusted my little ones anywhere else.

More aside about the abattoir: it's a huge incentive to move to that area. Having folks who are polite, responsive, flexible, take all animals, and do things the old way makes such a difference. I also, while I was unloading, felt acute envy for the folks who worked there. I so miss working with my hands, doing an actual physical job, turning one thing into something else (all creation is just repurposing), being out in the sunshine and open air. I am dead sure that job could not pay my bills but more and more I want it. And, I suppose, less and less do I want to be in charge of a place like that.

So anyhow, I didn't sleep well for several days because loading took several days. I should remember that I can't back the trailer into my driveway at night after a long day (or several days): I tried several times before driving around the block and nosing in. This was Ron's trailer, so it's much more responsive than the double axle I've been driving and it just kept jackknifing. This time I quit before I backed it into the ditch at least.

Today I need to put the trailer somewhere reasonable, likely back it out and back it back in (hello, language) and then on Monday/Tuesday (over close to actual solstice) Tucker and I will drive out in his little car and pick up the processed animals. We'll stay in a hotel overnight, pick up some sushi, and maybe look at some mountains or waterfalls or properties for sale.

I'll make some prosciutto out of the breasts of some of those geese, or some smoked spickgans-style hams. I'll confit some of the bodies and likely can those. Some I will keep whole, and roast over the coming year. None of these have the demanding load on my attention that rounding up animals for either slaughter or sale does: this is mostly rest.

I still have quail and many chickens to process but plan to do that on my own time, it doesn't have a deadline. It's not rest, but it's not looming.

The hard part is done. Now comes putting things in order.

Now and forever is the time to honour and mourn the hard part.

It feels like rest.

Once again I've been putting off writing. The day after I wrote my previous post, Dec 7th, my rabbit Juniper had a seizure and died. I had expected her to be around several more years; she and Mella were one of my only throughlines to the Before Times in Vancouver that was left.

Tomorrow I take many geese and some ducks and a couple piglets to get slaughtered.

Lately I've been feeling desolate and lonely and sad a lot.

Solstice is so close.