Better Days

It’s almost as if she wills the rain with her finger-plucking crooning under the spotlight at the Roadrunner in Brighton. Australian rock star Courtney Barnett sings, “What’s inside that cloudy little head? / C’mon won’t you stretch it out? / Afraid they’ll really see ya / And figure out what you’re all about….. Outside, it’s raining, precipitating / I know you’re aching for better days….”

The first song of her encore, the crowd sings along to the chorus with a mellow melancholy vibe before she lights us up with her heavy, wild, insane hit “Pedestrian at Best.” I can hear those dudes yelling the lyrics before she even stomps the distortion pedal. “Give me all your money / And I’ll make some origami for you, honey….”

As we drive the midnight hours back through the strange, tangled roads of Boston to the quiet lakes of New Hampshire, the first splashes of rain beckon us home along freshly paved stretches of Route 93. We wake to the grayest of days, the perfectly imperfect day for that perfectly imperfect song by the perfectly imperfect rock star from down undahhh. The alarm wakes me at 8 am, far too late for me to be asleep. I had fed the chickens a bonus meal in their coop at 2 am to buy a little time, but the work must be done. The birds tap their wings and show me their little chicken watches. The dogs also must be fed, or they will wilt into balls of tired fluff. I fry some eggs and bacon. Eggs for all! Bacon for me! I scarf a slice of leftover rhubarb pie, as well. The dogs watch longingly. I read on the couch. The rain falls and falls and falls. I am felled like a tree into the pastures of sleep. Green, green, grass grows over me….

I wake up to Pip barking, Graham Greene novel plots falling apart in my dreams, and I see the sun wanting to break free – but that rain still falls harsh on the other side of the window. The garden beds – filled with freshly planted kale and lettuce – they risk washing out. I peek out to the chickens – Floppy Head’s butt sticking out of the nesting box and Goober the Guinea Hen safely ensconced on the roost in the window – no one is outside in the torrential springtime apocalypse.

The birds will be out on pasture soon, but these days I am still keeping them in a pen off the coop. I move their portable fencing every few weeks to get them some fresh greens – while also tossing fresh kitchen scraps and greens from the garden. I recently caught a mouse that was stealing dog treats from a loose bag. That was a heavy mouse, which I waved by its tail while dancing across the dining room toward the front door. Thwack! I plop the chicken snack into the run. By dusk, there is no more mouse. Only eggs. A few birds have figured out how to hop off a certain rock and fly out to the green. I’m quite okay with this. I often back into the driveway after work while half a dozen birds celebrate my return, risking their lives to dance under the tires of my blindside. They gladly run under the fence as I lift it to let them back in.

But Goober the Guinea Hen – she’s something else. She escapes with the rest of them and stares at me, half-hidden in grass, her pasty butt-ugly wild-bird face poking out in distress.

She looks like a little kid drew a chicken and gave it the crayon-treatment. Her polka dot feathers don’t blend in at all – she doesn’t fit in at all. And that’s why she’s beautiful. She’s a wild beastie – yet she’s bonded to the flock. She tries to get back into the fencing rather than follow her calling to the trees. I lift a piece of fencing and try to chase her into it, but she flies over both corners of fencing, ignoring the hole she could have easily walked through. She remains untamed and I return to my herding-dog ways. I run big loops around her to chase her back to the pen. I bark and howl and chase. And I think, where the hell is my .22? Goober soup would be good right about now….

I get the Goob into the coop and close it up for the night. I toss some fresh bedding and check on eggs and she squeaks in full panic-mode. Meanwhile, the chickens are chill. They don’t mind my presence. Speaking of soup, the bird I butchered last week currently simmers with kale, onion, garlic, potatoes, and herbs – the hens can sense it. Goober refuses to acquiesce. Like an Irish folk tale, she’d escape the pot and dance her way down the road. I take a certain delight at the thought of Goober and the good folk plotting and dreaming and scheming. I'd welcome the magic.

I think a lot of how Goober would be a great asset if I still had a social media account. I could film myself chasing her around for the laughs of the scrollers. I could make quips, put on clever music. Zoom in on her frenzied look from afar. Maybe I’d go viral. People make careers out of critters like Goober. Real farmers butcher birds like Goober. I’m somewhere in between. Every 45 second video you watch on Instagram takes an hour to create. It becomes slavery. These days, that’s an hour I could be napping on the couch after reading a Graham Greene novel, exhausted after a late-night concert in Boston, while my dogs crawl on top of and lick my face. Likes. Licks. I prefer licks.

It’s weird how social media affects our lives. One of my hobbies is to visit historical places. I’ve been to Jefferson’s place, Washington’s, the Adams’, etc. People love to take selfies at the crypts of the dead presidents. Why? It’s weird. I’ve watched influencers at the St. Louis Arch and in downtown Gettysburg posing over and over for their social media feeds, to the chagrin of everyone around them. Every nice pose you see on social media irritated a few hundred others.

I took a selfie with my girlfriend, Karley, while we had our pre-planned picnic in my truck, rather than outside on the grass along Lake Winnipesaukee. I didn’t post it on social media, because I don’t one anymore. I sent it to her the morning after, after she left. We’re the only two people who will ever see that pic, probably. It was a terrible pic. We’re half-faced in it. Our food is in tupperware. The steering wheel is in the way. We were en route to the Courtney Barnett concert. But I’ll cherish that dumb selfie for a while. We had spare ribs and sweet potato salad, good rolls and a pickle. I washed my hands on the hood of my truck in the rain so I could manage Storrow Drive without sticky fingers. Someone else would have made that into a short reel for the views. I held her and we danced together while people recorded Barnett rocking out with their cell phones. I’m sure they will watch those poorly-lit, badly-recorded clips at least once more in their life – maybe while they are uploading to social media. And most people who watch will just scroll past. “Neat,” they will say. Swipe.

It’s that concept of swipe that made me realize social media is useless. I swipe, you swipe, we all swipe. No one cares about your.... swipe. Likes aren’t real. I can’t imagine owning a business that relies on likes and clicks. Having to act a certain way to create a certain pattern on some website. I like liking real humans. I have real connections with people in this town. I know real communities of homesteaders and radicals who make things happen. Will I sell less eggs? “Give me all your money / And I’ll make some origami for you, honey….” I love knowing that the real humans who eat my eggs are folks with families, folks with intentional health goals, folks who want to keep their dollars out of the corporate grocery stores. They are fathers, mothers, artists, scholars, retirees, lake people, locals, storytellers, strangers. The strangers who drop some coin into the farm stand cash box are more real than any follower on social media.

The other day I was carrying seedlings down to the garden. If you’ve ever driven by and seen me working in the garden, you’ve probably seen me listening to headphones and bopping to my jams. Oblivious to reality outside of the row I’m working on. Playing air guitar, planting kales, shakin’ my bootie. The guitar solo for the Courtney Barnett song “Great Advice” doesn’t make sense. She’s plays lefty and it feels upside down. As a lefty, I feel some association – we lefties are weird. On this pleasant afternoon, I carry a metal bench down the road to the garden – for summer sitting –  while I hear her sing, “I appreciate your great advice/ but I don’t want to do my hair all nice / I like it this way, I like it this way….” and I dance in the road and wave the bench around as silly as possible. I park the bench where it goes and plant my seedlings. Man, that would have been a great reel, I think. For a moment, I regret deleting my Instagram. Someone, somewhere, is making that exact reel right now, at this exact time. It could've been me.

Collect the eggs. Goober death stares me from the back of the coop and squeaks like a car belt that wants to snap. The dogs chase after me with a loyalty that won’t break. Soaking wet, they eat grass and we watch the arugula and onions come up. If you stare close enough, you can see them grow. It’s raining, it’s precipitating. Our cloudy little heads. Rain soaks through my decade-old waterproof coat. If I’m lucky, the rain will soak into my phone. The green is everywhere. I spy gold and purple and yellow. My internal soundtrack plays. All those Courtney Barnett lyrics. We love the rain, but we’re achin’ for better days. We'd love some sun. And we'd love to get unbearably wild.

Imagine yourself in this moment, real and beautiful and heavy and wet. Now dance for no one but yourself.

[Someone recently told me about the blog, “There’s nothing else like it.” Thanks for reading! This blog is subsidized by sales at the Something Wild Farm stand. If you enjoy reading, please consider supporting your local writer with purchases of eggs, syrup, and hand salves made with herbs and flowers grown on the farm. I’ve got a book or two in me, but we’ll see how that goes….]