"All Shall Be Well Again, I Know"

It snowed out. So we snowshoe around the pastures and follow fox prints through the garden. “Ah, a fresh and tasty looking chicken,” the fox whispers to himself. It is late at night and no one is afoot. He has plenty of time to snoop out this chicken standing in the middle of the garden. What a dumb chicken! He thinks. He can smell it, too. A fresh meal in this fox-deep snow? What a gift. He pays tribute to Orion climbing over the treeline and pounces on this unlucky hen.

The fox is stymied as he bumps into the hardened shape a chicken makes, but lacking the taste. Alas, this chicken is but a garden statue. Foiled again, sly fox! The stone chicken face stares endlessly to the east, waiting for the sun to melt out her chicks (also statues). Beneath the snow, the grass and forbs remain green. They root deeply into the black, rich soil, still soft down below. The peppermint leaves in the raised beds hang on for dear life. “You can still make me into tea!” they cry. “We cannot be killed!” The carrots hide in their bed – cozy and sweet – they’ve been ready to harvest all fall, but a certain farmer likes to push his luck. The fox knows this farmer. He watches him from the treeline at dusk sometimes. The farmer has a couple big fox-like critters with him. He has giant silly-looking feet and they walk over the snow effortlessly. The fox rescinds to the woods and watches for Orion’s arrival in the sky. When there is Orion, there isn’t a farmer. And so he waits.

The farmer – me – adjusts his silly feet – his snowshoes – and bounds across the snow with the dogs – those fox-like creatures – to see how the firewood pile on the logging road looks. It’s covered in snow. He should have known better. There is a big pile of old metal roofing behind the barn, so now we must drag it across the snow to cover the wood piles. And by we, we mean me. The dogs take pleasure in getting in my way. I grab a twelve foot by six foot piece of aluminum roofing and drag it through the snow. This would have been easier with a pickup truck a week ago, but here we are. I look behind and see two sets of wild dog tracks, the occasional explosion of snow where one dog pounced the other, a straight, somber line of snowshoe tracks, and the contrail of metal roofing cutting straight though it all.

We hike down Wilder Lane, the path connecting the northern pasture to the logging road. It’s named after my dog, Wilder, but also it’s a play on his namesake, author and political thinker Rose Wilder Lane, the untamed pioneer daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder and Pip plop into the snow repeatedly to bite snow out of their paws. Wilder is so squeaky white and clean from a recent groom that I can’t help but admire him. “You little bar of soap,” I tease, while his loving blue eyes glow up at me, bright bright bright in the snow. Pip lurks in the shadows of the trees, waiting for me to start moving again. His eyes are as dark as the hemlocks. He has a mountain named after him – a rock on the south side of the property which will someday have a cabin built upon it, looking out to Whiteface. Mount Pipkin. I will write there in my later years, those novels and children’s stories lurking in the periphery of my dreams. For now, I drag this piece of roofing to the woods; the dusk follows us boldly. Suddenly Wilder is pink as the sunset; he is lavender-scented soap. I take my gloves off to pet him before we hike back.

We repeat the task of dragging roofing through the snow five more times, in order to cover the firewood entirely. By the time we finish, it is nearly dark. My shoulders are sore. The snow in my boots is frozen around my ankles, a ring of ice. I stopped caring a few rounds ago. Being a farmer means being miserable and liking it. The rewards are greater than the pains. Amazing food and hot showers. Dead sleep and dog cuddles.

Farm chores are best accompanied with mirth, merriment, song, laughter. It is the season for such things – y’know, Christmas – so ‘tis it! Rose Wilder Lane’s fellow South Dakotan, author L. Frank Baum wrote some of the early mythology of the contemporary Santa Claus, and it is this mythology I choose to believe. According to Baum, Claus lived in the Laughing Valley – a place not unlike my little farm, I dare note – and this bit of verse came to him upon his first visit, of a favorite flower of mine, the daffodils:

Blooming fairly, growing rarely,

Never flowerets were so gay!

Perfume breathing, joy bequeathing,

As our colors we display.

Sometimes there are themes in our lives, and we must pay attention to these themes. And for me, lately, it’s been daffodils. This is curious considering it just snowed for the first time. It’s a long way ‘til spring. For me, Christmas is a sacred, quiet time. I brought in a white pine tree, strung it with lights, hung a few boughs in the windows with a few favorite ornaments. One Christmas morning a few years ago, Wilder and I explored the farm and found a sleepy fox den. Since then, Christmas has been for cozy and quiet, contemplation and gratitude, play and rest. Wilder will get a new chewy toy, Pip will get a new frisbee, I will eat a day-old pastry from Cup & Crumb, and I will sing Christmas carols to the chickens in the barn and offer them some freshly-harvested microgreens. I will give my little farm the biggest hug.

But Christmas is the gateway to the dark, long winter. There’s a reason we’re all a little sad. Daffodils should be the last thing on my mind. But this year they are on the tip of my tongue, they are at my breast as I clutch with hope for their glory. I recently helped my neighbors stack firewood and they graciously tipped me with duck eggs and daffodil bulbs. I walked home and stopped to watch the Bearcamp River swirl around under the bridge, as if it weren’t sure where to go. I thought about those deep green pastures lurking under the recent snow. I watched the frothy, icy water splash and dance – and I realized my pastures never turned brown.

Winter can’t snuff out the spring in me. O, give me a woodstove, give me my book of Wendell Berry poems, give me wintering, but even the Mad Farmer tugs me toward the spring:

the pastures deep in clover and grass,

enough, and more than enough;

I seed trays of broccoli microgreens. I watch baby Bachelor’s Buttons sprout under grow lights. I feed the baby cheeps – born far too late as baby cheeps tend to be born, but we’re a little wild here if you haven’t noticed. I take inventory for the sugaring operation: I need spouts, gaskets, bottles. I think about maple syrup. I think about chickens and lambs. I think about pasture. I think about daffodils. I dig out the snow and finally harvest my carrots. Planted way back in May, they are absolutely perfect and orange and fill a lonely spot in my fridge. I accidentally split a few in the frozen soil while shoveling them out. Rogue carrot scraps sit exposed in the snow, waiting for some clever fox to stumble upon them.

I will plant the daffodil bulbs here.

Another neighbor stops by with a live rooster she no longer wants. Her husband has come to terms with the feathered tyrant by the occasional old man angry boot, but she needs a broom to negotiate with him. I take the box full of bird while she also leaves me a paper plate of lasagna – “in case the chicken is no good,” she jokes with that humble yankee sweetness. My gratitude for neighbors and this community is endless. The rooster is six months old and too feisty for my pullets, so I grab him by his feet and flip him upside down. “You are filled of Life,” I tell him, making eye contact with him in his near-death stupor, “and I will consume your Life. For that I am grateful.” I cut his throat and hold his head back while he bleeds out. Rooster blood falls into snow. It’s okay, buddy, I soothe him into his passing. I look out to Whiteface through the white pines. The dogs eat his feet.

Soon he’s in the slow cooker, the smell of meat and Mexican spices wafting out every crack, crevice, and draft through this old farmhouse – out into the cold, harsh, snow-covered valley below. Somewhere down there a hungry fox lingers, wondering if he’ll eat well tonight. He can smell it, but why can’t he find it? He might settle for some frozen carrots; he may dig into the compost pile. The farmer was here, he knows this, and there are fresh feathers atop this loose snow. What other goods might there be down here? He has all night to find out….

We leave the fox for now –

fox tracks in the snow, the impact

of lightness upon lightness,

unendingly silent.

– and follow Orion, down into town, to the local church for a Christmas concert by the Sandwich Singers. I kneel on the floor in the back of a packed room and let the power of the choir take over. I like to hide in plain sight. I like to be the wild animal on the edge. I feel like the fox looking up to Orion, but I only see the lights on the ceiling. Me, the fox, we feel our wild, gracious God, even if we only see stars. For the last performance of the night, the singers spread around the perimeter of the room. A few women smile politely at me as they stand right next to me with their sheet music. Three singers lead the final song from the stage, while the chorus compliments them from around the room, inviting the entire audience into the fuzzy, festive embrace. The song is “Bells of Norwich,” and they sing:

Ring for the yellow daffodil,

the flower in the snow.

Ring for the yellow daffodil

And tell them what I know.

Ring out, bells of Norwich,

and let the winter come and go.

All shall be well again, I know.

I sneak out during the raucous applause, while the three singers in front hug with the warmth that comes with the satisfaction of hard work coming to fruition. Love and camaraderie. Family and community. Gratitude. I walk down the main street in Center Sandwich and look toward the town Christmas tree, blue and ethereal. I sing to myself over and over, “All shall be well again, I know.”

The daffodils will be here before we know it.

Merry Christmas, friends and neighbors.