Leaving the Farm

The only problem with summer vacation is that it happens during the summer. Here on the farm, summer's an awful busy time. Wonderfully busy, that is. Plants are finally growing and need constant watering and weeding. Harvesting has begun - scapes, garlic, berries, cherries, beans... Time to start prepping for winter vegetable planting.

Tomorrow we go away for 5 days of hike-in camping at Forbidden Plateau. Once we're there it will be paradise, but for now I question the wisdom of having to rush through and arrange so much just to leave this paradise. In addition to the usual packing and planning and finishing work stuff mayhem (including patching rat holes in the tent -the joys of storing things on a farm), here's some of the farm tasks we have to arrange these days:

- someone to do the chickens: 3 sets of chickens need food water and freedom each morning, and precisely at dusk to be locked back in safe for the night
- buy enough chicken feed
- someone to water the garden: turn on 3 timers each morning or night, and set up sprinklers in 4 different patches not yet set up with drip tape
- cut the grass paths throughout the garden so they don't overgrow the rows
- dehydrate 5 days of food (sarah started on beef jerky, beans, rice, granola, snack bars... two days ago)
- harvest and process fava beans
- harvest and hang to dry the final row of garlic (25 dozen)
- move the water trough and electric fence so the cows are on fresh grass so they don't try to escape to greener pastures
- set out a fresh batch of garlic at the roadside farm stand
- set up climbing trellises for the beans to grow up onto

At the same time, construction of the cabin bedroom extension has reached another critical point. Today we have to finish "chinking" - filling in all cracks and gaps in the clay/woodshaving walls so that they can dry while we're gone. And order straw, sand and burlap so that when we return we can start the first layer of mud plaster inside and out.

Plus a community soccer game. And oh ya, mom's coming for an overnight, so we gotta make the place look nice for grandma. (Mom, if you're reading this, it actually always looks perfect, not just when you come :) Luckily, that means that at least for a while today the boys will get some parenting instead of just frantic us trying to squeeze a final 2 weeks of Things-To-Do into 24 hours.

When our 10th anniversary came by in early August, we waited until November to have our romantic B&B getaway. Now 2 years later we have our systems and our support network arranged a bit tighter so we can squeeze in a bit o' fun, but at the same time the farm is running deeper in our blood. I am very much looking forward to this annual camping adventure with good friends, but at the same time there's something unsettling and Wrong about leaving the farm when there's work to be done (said in the voice of Almanzo's Pa).

I even love Macaulay Culkin

Actually I don't. I think he's annoying, a lousy over-produced child-actor, and at least on-screen quite a snot. So why did I cry when his character died?

Short answer - because I'm a dad. My wife's posting tonight describes it better than I can. Both of us posted yesterday about how we stepped up to stop a drunk driver - which required leaving our kids to witness the scary scene alone - to which one Mothering Magazine reader commented:

“Yeah, you did have a choice. You could have called the police. Clearly you could have gotten security if they got there so quickly What on earth were you thinking? This was terrible modeling for your children! To me this is the anti-mama bear, you chose to act in a way that traumatized your children!"

Sarah has already, as always, posted a beautiful response about universal maternal love. Being her loving husband, I always have a bit more to say, so here it is:

1. I'm amused that no-one wrote the response to me. Is it societally OK for Dad to abandon the wee ones to play superhero, but not mom? Would she chastise Arnold for leaving his kindergarten class to go stop the bad guys in Kindergarten Cop?

2. The "call the police and stay out of it" response is a pretty normal cop out (forgive the pun). Kinda like Grandma telling me to move home from Africa, get a real job and send money to Peace Corps to go do that development stuff (um, grandma, Peace Corps are just college grads just like me - someone else's grandkids.) This was a rare opportunity where there was no doubt about the need for intervention, no significant danger to taking action, and direct and immediate action was the only option - by the time we'd spoken to the 911 operator that driver would have already been on the road and we would have all just been praying that the police would catch her in time.

Yes the police are thankfully there for our protection, and in a more dangerous situation perhaps would have been the only option. But we Canadians especially have become so dependent on the police, the government, the experts, care homes, even the non-profit community, that it's become too easy to abdicate our civic duties. We teach and model for our children to "do the right thing," and sometimes that means doing it ourselves, not calling in someone else's parents or grandkids to take care of it for us.

3. That care-for-the-world heart-expansion that comes with parenting, which Sarah paints so beautifully, isn't just for moms. I hated Home Alone, and especially that child brat star, every time I saw it (video selections are limited at the African pastor's house where I lived then). Then years later, while we were pregnant with our first child in Texas, I suffered through another horrible Macaulay Culkin waste-of-2-hours-movie - My Girl. But when he died at the end of the movie I started crying. A child had just died, and I was a parent (to be) of a child, and John Donne's bell tolled and GONG!!! I was a parent. Part of the universal community of moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles who care for and about the children of our world, and that love and care is so powerful that it gushes over the feeble white-picket boundaries of our little nuclear families.

When we left our children "home alone" to watch us struggle with that drunk woman, we weren't abandoning them. We were directly and actively caring for them and for all children. Yes it was a trauma for them, yes I wish it hadn't happened, and yes I wish that the police or security or another onlooker could have been there and allowed at least one of us to stay with the children. But not for a moment, then nor now, have I doubted that we were right in taking action.

How to Stop a Drunk Driver

There's nothing like being bitten and accused of assault to cap off a great day at FolkFest.

It's 10:30 pm, Alpha YaYa's music is still floating across the farm, and we and our tired children are with a group of folkfest leavers waiting for the shuttle. A very drunk, disoriented woman bumbles through us, muttering this and that, then leans against a car still talking to herself. Still we wait.

Then suddenly, somehow, the woman has keys and has managed to open the car door, is getting in, and the crowd all watches and wonders what to do. My brave wife knows - she defies the group bystander effect (the more people present, the less likely anyone will do anything to help) and leans against the door to keep it open as she asks the woman how much she's had to drink.

"Tourist bitch!" the woman shouts, trying to shut the door, trying to push my wife away. I put my sleepy child down on the long grass and move in to help. She's somehow managed to start the car, so I lean across to turn it off while Sarah tries to hold her down. CRUNCH, the woman's teeth bear down into Sarah's bare forearm.

Now I'm 3/4 into the car, holding her down by the shoulders and arms, careful not to get bitten or kicked, all with one arm while trying unsuccessfully to remove the car keys with the other. She's punching and trying to hurt me, swearing, then screaming that I'm assaulting her. I'm summoning my calmest, most compassionate energy to try to communicate that I'm just trying to get the keys to keep her safe, but her ears have drowned in the empty gin bottle on the passenger seat.

I do feel calm. I've done this before. Too many times, trying to get the keys from my dad. Borrowing the truck and not returning it until a binge is over. Convincing the doctor to have his license suspended. Letting the air out of all tires and putting a new steering wheel lock (which still didn't stop him). At least this time I don't have to maintain a relationship with this woman; don't have to weigh the relative importance of possibly damaging a father-son trust with possibly killing an innocent child.

For Sarah, that's the turning point, the motivation to step out of the paralyzed crowd and take action - innocent children. Our own children right with us; other children and families on those streets she was about to swerve onto. Mama Bear on board, and teeth or no teeth that woman isn't going to kill anyone's children on her watch.

At long last security arrives and we can attend to our own terrified, crying children. For days we'll be trying to explain the dangerous effects of alcohol, the importance of citizens stepping up to responsibility, the good fortune that we were never much in danger (unless she'd managed to get it into gear.)

They've just witnessed their first act of true violence - violence against their own parents and, from the drunk woman's perspective, perpetuated by their own parents. I hope it will be seared into their souls not as a moment of violence or fear, but as a necessary act of compassionate force, motivated and tempered by a love for children, for their grandfather, and for a sick woman who for at least one night was kept from harm.

PS - just to be really clear, I didn't show any bravery in supporting my wife and subduing a much-weaker person. It was my wife taking the risk by stepping out of the crowd to initiate the action. Here's what she wrote about it on her MamaRenew blog

Island Folk Fest

Aint nothin' better in this world you know
Than lying in the sun with a radio

Except when that radio is live music on 5 stages, and there's hundreds of other folkie folk friends lazing around in that sun while children dance in front of the stage. And a friend on stage. And other friends selling drums and hats and wares at their booths.

Folk Fest for me is a little about the music, and alot about community. Jhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifust devoting a whole weekend to enjohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifyment, creativity, food, people - it's alot like camping.

I'm talking about the REAL Folk Fest, by the way - Island Folk Fest, just 8 minutes down the road at the base of Mt. Tzouhalem on Providence Farm. Sure, the Vancouver version was big and fun, but this one is ours, has lotsa local talent as well as imported eye-poppers, lotsa friends, and just smaller and more intimate. Part of our moving to the island was a switch in allegiance, and the quality music and magical atmosphere made that easy.

We also get to host musicians - this year, Mojave, a lovely couple from Tofino. We'll be leaving in a few minutes to watch them perform, and in return for providing a bed we get free admission, lunches, a quiet space with snacks and drinks to get us through a long day.

OK, time to put on a flowery skirt and bare feet and summon my inner Janis Joplin (never too far beneath the surface.) See you there?

Boys of Summer

How do a dad and two boys enjoy a summer afternoon on the farm? Throw a baseball around. Take apart the tractor and end up making it worse. Kick the soccer ball around. Dig up the dirt pile covering the future grey-water pit and use it to fill in the holes in the soccer pitch from when 7-year-old Galen learned to use the excavator 2 years ago. Dig some more dirt and build a bike jump in the forest. Take down the last storm window while the boys get their bikes and helmets. Finally buck up that log across the forest path while the boys do more and more daring jumps that'll make their Mama sweat. When the chainsaw gets stuck, use a long strong branch and a stump to make a lever that the boys sit on to raise the log back up.

Then inside for some quick liver burgers and fried potatoes, a long "childhood story" of various mishaps and almost-arrests on my first ever trip to France, a soft sing-along of Sweet Baby James, and a delightful falling asleep with Galen on my shoulder and Zekiah on my chest.

Four chores done, three games played, one impressive scratch each, and only one broken farm implement. We may be a long way from circus camps and roller coasters, but there's no shortage of summer thrills here on the WildSide.

YES!

Today's blog is brought to you the word "Yes." What a great, under-used word. A word and a spirit I try to bring more into my life.

As a parent I try to meet my children with YES more often. "No" is the automatic parental reflex. An innocent "Can I..." and we're already thinking of a reason to deny them. NO to snacks, NO to a quick game of cards, NO to a family outing, NO to second helping of dessert. On my good days I let YES be the automatic response, the default, unless I then think of a compelling reason to say no. YES my boys, I'm here for you, YES we can enjoy life, YES i love you in this positive giving open way, YES.

I want to say YES to my friends' spoken and unspoken needs. YES to my tired wife wanting me to clean. YES to the school committee recruitment, YES to Quaker meeting involvement, YES to the community ready to embrace my involvement. (Of course, Sarah will be the first to tell you I'm a bit too good at this type of Yes; sometimes there's a healthy balance to No also.)

YES to being hopeful about the world, even a Harper-led government and Tea-Party-led US Congress and whoever it is running BC. YES to listening, to honest dialogue, to looking into the heart of those with different opinions and needs and priorities. YES to constructive engagement, YES to solutions.

YES to YES! Magazine, a positive inspiring look at how to make the world better, not at what's wrong with it. Yes to the Canadian Friends Service Committee, YES to Farm Folk City Folk, YES to any organization that brings out the good and builds connection and helps create a world we can all believe in.

YES to Pivot Legal Society, who just put out a YIMBY kit, counterbalancing NIMBY-ism("Not in my backyard") supporting people to say "YES in my back yard."

YES to Chantey Dayal and Chantell Foss and all the artists and poets and dancers who bring creative energy into a hungry world. YES to Dancing Star Birth, which responds to the over-medicalized birth industry not with criticism or judgement, but just with a quiet strength that brings pregnant couples to a place of believing in their own strength and the strength of their incoming baby.

And a big whopping incredulous YES to the founder of Dancing Star Birth, my beautiful wife Sarah, who was brave and crazy enough to say Yes to me 12 years ago and so so many improbable times since (she said Yes to a water buffalo yesterday, more on that soon.) YES to Meg Ryan's fake orgasm - I'll have what she's having. And YES to the country music industry which can unabashedly reduce all this happy drivel to a concise Brad Paisley tune:

She said YES! I said WOW!
She said When? I said How about right now?
Love can't wait, then I asked if she believed in fate
And she said YES.

Blame it on the Rain

It's not the rain that's getting me down; it's the incessant complaining about the rain. The #1 greeting or Facebook status these days is lamenting the "lack of summer."

We celebrated yesterday's morning downpour with a family hottub in the garden, with children ecstatic about this good fishing weather. And how adorable they looked in their slickers and umbrellas heading off to the Duncan Daze parade. No worries about it raining on their parade - they had a great time. No-one got sunburnt or dehydrated, no-one wearied from the heat, no scrambling for that one shady spot along the parade route. Just warm wet happy puppies playing in the summer puddles.

If 2011 isn't the Best Summer Ever, would it really be the weather's fault? Sure there could be more sunbathing days, but my garden would also be thirstier, and I'd have constantly greasy hands from kids' sunblock. Our lemonade bills are down this year, and backyard baseball games last much longer on cloudy days with green grass to lie in.

This cultural obsession with the weather feels like just another externalization, a shedding of personal responsibility for our state of happiness. Our boss, our god, the economy, the government, that Things-To-Do list (like someone else wrote it), our achy back, that counter that needs scrubbing, and of course those damn clouds - all these things jump in our way to achieving true happiness, to doing what we really want to do. "If only X and Y and Z, then I'd have time, then I'd have no stress, then I'd do what I really want. Then I'd be happy."

I'm not looking for the silver lining behind the cloud. I'm looking at that cloud straight-on and appreciating the rain for my fields, the coolness for my house, the shade for my head, the astounding gradations of grey, the lack of crowds at the park, the beautiful eyes of non-sunglassed friends, the puffy aerial variety show. I've looked at clouds from both sides now, and still somehow refuse to allow something 10,000 feet above my head to disturb my Peace. It's mine to create or destroy, and I will not lean on an permeable accumulation of condensed water vapor as an excuse to not live fully.

My glass is half full, dammit, and if it's half-full of rainwater than it's that much sweeter to drink from.