Team Pride

Kevin took this picture of our neighbor's draft horses. A clear, blue Finger Lakes sky; a proud team at the end of their work day. Perfection. 

Leading the Team

For months now, I have been telling my neighbor Elam that I wanted to help him bale hay, thinking the experience of back-breaking, sweaty work would do my soul some good. While he is always more than happy to laugh at me, he obviously gave the request some serious thought.  As I watched his youngest brother Levi drive a team of 4 draft horses past the house with the baler and two wagons trailing behind (one of which was carrying his young son), Elam knocked on the kitchen door.

We're baling straw tonight, he says. Just a few times around the field, that's all. Want to help? This is your chance to drive the horses, feel the power of the team as they make their way around the field. Kevin can take pictures, and you can show all your friends at work! 

DRIVE THE HORSES? I've never even been on a horse. You would really let me to that? Oh, no. Not tonight, I hear myself say. We have guests. I've got dishes to do. I need a few days notice to prepare for this. 

After a few minutes of cajoling, he leaves to continue his work without me, not wanting to force me into it. Kevin looks at me. He's disappointed too. I tell him the truth: I'm too scared. But he assures me it will all be fine. It will be fun! What an opportunity! This is your chance, Michele! Go for it! 

So I do. Donning my blue overalls (I mean, what DID I buy those for anyway?) and a long sleeve shirt, I trek out to the back field just as he's getting ready to start. After about two seconds of instructions and a snappy "giddup" we're off, with little Elam Junior on my lap, and Kevin documenting every second of it. A friend of ours remarked that Elam must really trust me. I've been thinking about that trust and his self-reliance, confidence, and spirit of community. How can any society survive without those things?

The ride was bumpy, but what a rush! I did it.  Elam helped with the turns. Little Elam Junior sat quitely. Levi stacked the bales. Kevin ran along by my side and took pictures. I was leading the team and no one got hurt.

Hay Fever!

The smell of hay is the scent of summer. For the past couple of weeks, we've seen an epidemic of hay fever.  Anyone who keeps livestock (or grows alfalfa for people who keep livestock) is baling hay, loading hay, and transporting hay. Alfalfa is agricultural perfection. It is raised and baled on the farm, fed on the farm, and spread as manure on the farm.

Watching the weather (make hay while the sun shines!) becomes an obsession because one good rainfall, at the wrong time in the process, can destroy the crop. Rain is a blessing and a curse. Timing is everything. There's so many acres to cut and only so much time to cut it before the first rain drop falls. The sky darkens. The clouds threaten, and still they cut. They windrow. They bale. They sweat. They plow in the dark, headlights (if they have them) illuminating the clouds of chaff, methodically and deliberately until the last bale is loaded onto the wagons. The filled wagons dot the landscape in every direction. 

A conventional baler throws the tied bales into slat-sided wagon with a powerful thrust machine called a kicker (or maybe that's a thrower?) and are piled up every which way. The bales in the Amish steel-wheeled wagons (which are flat and open-sided) are stacked neatly then pulled to the barn by a team of draft horses, creating a rumble that you first feel, then hear. As our neighbor's team quickly turns the sharp corner into his driveway, I've never seen him lose one bale. One of these days I'm going to help make hay, and Elam's offered to let me lead the horses--they know what to do, he says. Can you imagine me out there in the blazing sun driving the team? I've never even been ON a horse!

During this month's hay-making season, we have cows grazing in the field next to us. At night, by starlight, you can't always see them but you can hear them crunching on the grass, the young bull wailing in the night for no one's apparent pleasure but his own.  Perhaps he has hay fever too.

You Just Never Know

Pure joy for a mother of three is having a whole bowl of fresh strawberries to herself:  Not the unwanted, mushy leftovers she usually gets, but the juicy, sweet ones served just for her with a dollop of whipped cream and with fresh flowers on the table. 

Words can't describe the taste of late spring, and the lines at the farm stands attest to our green-starved appetite. In our breakfasts this month, we'll incorporate asparagus, Swiss chard, rhubarb, and strawberries in savory custards or stuffed herb crepes, and the strawberries on their own or baked into a sweet little cake or tart.  But even though we pay extra special attention to our breakfasts, we never know what detail or event will make a traveler's visit memorable. Often it has nothing to do with us or the food.

One morning, our neighbor Mary had the opportunity to meet a guest from Maryland and they were surprised to discover they had a connection through milk.  As it turns out, the company Mary contracts to buy her organic milk is the same company the guest buys at her local market. Both recalled the story to me later, smiling. Saying, but not saying, how small the world is. How satisfying it was to put a face with a product, a family with a bottle of milk. 

We hear stories about waking to the sound of a horse-drawn plow plodding along outside the bedroom window; curious heifers running to the fence, pushing each other and vying for the front spot for a photo op; exhausted parents on a weekday getaway eating breakfast in their pajamas; sitting down at breakfast to find the other guests are your best friends from your post-college years; planning a whole day of wine tours only to plop down on the porch and go nowhere for hours; seeing a barn swallow nestling leave the nest; catching the purple light just before sunset. 

All the planning in the world couldn't make these things happen. As innkeepers, we savor these experiences and aspects of our life. Our house is a comfortable respite for those who are willing to treat themselves to it, and serendipity takes care of the rest. You just never know.

My Best Friend is Amish

Mary, our Amish neighbor, has become one of my best friends. Never in a million years would I have expected this to happen. I attend her children's Christmas program at the one-room school house. She scurries across the field to deliver buttery, right-out-of-the-oven pretzels or home-made bread. We are invited over for dinner. Every October I help her and her extended family wrap hundreds of cakes, pies, cookies, and breads for the Apple Festival booth. She and her daughters helped Kevin by filling helium balloons and fixing up the house for my surprise birthday party, appearing unexpectedly at the door, right when he needed them most, asking "What can we do to help?" We pile in the car or the buggy and go for ice-cream. Her children visit with a wagon full of kittens, invite us to see their baby bunnies or new chicks. When their baby brother was born, they couldn't wait for us to get home from work so they could be the first to tell us! I've taught the little boy to give me "high five."

Through our kitchen window I can see the foot-worn path through the cow pasture between our houses, a narrow, winding tether connecting our lives to theirs. You see, the Amish in this vicinity of Seneca County are of the Old Order, and (for reasons which I won’t begin to explain in this blog) their telephone is in our barn. Twice a day, Mary or her husband treks to the barn to conduct business, connect with family, or to order a driver for traveling distances too far for a horse-drawn buggy. And, if we’re lucky, we get a chance to exchange stories.

A real treat for us is a church Sunday, when buggies fill the roads and you feel the rumbling of steel wheels and clopping of horses hooves. At night, the horses are illuminated by two flashing headlights, and in the winter they steam with sweat and whinny in patchy clouds of iced breath. It’s like a promenade of pearls, each buggy following close behind another up over the hill, down into the dip and past the house.

Every morning I walk the dog past their farm, and I can set my watch by the activity in the milking barn. The chinking of chains against metal, the flat clang of the milk bucket on the concrete floor, the mooing, the steadiness and order of her life, and even the smell of manure are a comfort to me. (no, I cant' believe that either!) The gas lights from her kitchen brighten the driveway, drawing me in.

She gives and expects nothing in return. Her life is centered around her family, her faith, and her farm. She teaches by example. She’s a good neighbor and I am a better neighbor for it. We giggle. We share stories about our families. We respect one another's culture, but laugh at them as well. We talk about food, quilting, canning, farming, organic farming, parenting, marriage, weather, and just about any issue of the day. Never negative, never judgmental, her conversation always ends on a positive note and lifts my spirit. In her modesty, she would be humbled by this post dedicated to her. I am humbled that she calls me her friend.