What Can I Expect In 2017?

What Can I Expect In 2017?

Tom wants to hurt me, suddenly.   He was always throwing his substantial weight around.  Now he is throwing it at me.  Tom is my male turkey.  He is big.  Really big.  Even when he is not puffed up.  I’m used to him shadowing me when I enter his domain. 50X15 of internal fencing meant to contain and protect my eight waterfowl and turkeys (now numbering 2).  I’m not used to him charging me when I turn my back.  I was used to my billy goat nudging me and always kept a close eye, and sometimes a thick stick in hand when I dealt with the Boer goats.  A new paradigm.  An evolution.  A potential hazard.  Why am I surprised?

It’s my nature to be surprised when relationships change.  It’s to my shock when my purview collides with a new reality.  It’s my demoralization when my handling of new circumstances with familiar methods fails to yield familiar results.  I certainly resist preparing myself for the challenges of new people, places and things.  I am a mark for every grifter, whiner, or malignant narcissist who leans on my country gate.  These occurrences empty my pockets.  They strain my sympathies.  They mar my humanity.  I don’t want to abandon mankind and become a hermit.  I do want to better prepare for those who will surely be leaning on my gate in 2017.

The flood in May at Sawmyl Synders Farm changed a lot of things, not all for the worse.  For details of the deluge, see prior blogs.  On the down side, my plans for future expansion of farm endeavors are permanently canceled.  On the up side, I’m not completely giving up, but rather adopting plan B, which I still haven’t fully fleshed out.  As for the up side, my eyes were opened to many things.  I need to have a lifelong pursuit that is not challenged by the vagaries of weather, people, or health.  What might that be?  Do tell.  Next up side, I realize there are people in my life who are more important than flood prone property and death dependent livestock.  My bundles of joy:  wife, children, grandchildren.  Always have a life to live separate from them but never think of living your life without them.  My wife is retiring.  My children are building.  My g-kids are awakening.

Another up side awakened in me when that flood tried to drown my spirit.  The Church.  Christian Church.  St. Issidores.  The new spirituality entered me like a lamb and has since been my challenging lion.  The only people who came out in the night in my water-logged hour of need were those genuine believers at a church who called me family before I knew that I was.  Now, I say challenging my lion because I stepped into the church with no doors with my eyes closed to distrust, open to mutuality and accepting of appropriate difference.  The eye opening occurrences have stunned me.  I know that I am naive for my years.  I know I should have put on my big boy pants before entering the unknown-to-me land of mission.  What did I discover?  Desperate people do desperate things.  Tribal behavior remains when tribes merge.  The young act young, that’s their only fault.  My discoveries demand that I change.  Reality can be patient but it is also indifferent to persistent myopia.

Three things stand in the way of 2017 becoming a better year than 2016.  The first resists any form of control but respects preparation, resilience, and reverence.  The weather.  She is not God but she has his ear and she should have ours.  A rain slick and rubber boots is nice.  Even if the deluge is belly button high.  With boots full of water and a slick soaked on the inside it’s still nice to know – you were prepared.  If the water didn’t carry you away, you can be sure of three things.  The rain will stop.  You are alive to start rebuilding.  Nobody knows the trouble you’ve seen (so don’t pay any attention to their bromides and bloviation).

The second thing that stands in the way of a better year is something you can’t control but you can influence.  People.  Again there are three things to incorporate into influencing people.  No.  Say no.  When what they want is not what you want – say no.  Next, boundaries.  Money?  How much do you want to give or spend versus how much the charity case will try for (as much as you have?).  Accommodation?  Every tribe has their nomenclature and ritual but when in Rome – act appropriately.  Harsh reproach won’t work on just about anyone out of diapers.  Example and suggestion might but sometimes a cause has to be lost in order for the possibility of other higher causes to be successful.  Finally, choices.  When individuals render themselves of no useful purpose, then your purpose for them is no use.  Let go so that another opportunity with another person may be allowed in.

The last thing that stands in the way of a better tomorrow is the thing that yields to control, influence, preparation, resilience, and reverence.  You.  Or me in this case.  My year will be better if my health and welfare get high priority.  Take care of my heath and wealth.  Build on the ruin of real failure and rejoice in discovery of goodness in near misses and great good fortune.  Take every opportunity to gain from the things that happen and don’t, that frighten and inspire.  Treasure all you have.  Avoid turning great bounty into sour grapes.  Stay true to your evolving beliefs and deny false prophets from entering in to what has proven to be true to you your entire life.  Being positive isn’t always the answer but having both binocular forward vision and a rear view mirror perspective adds to your chances.  What am I getting at?  Yes, go high but don’t forget your lows.  What is still the biggest mystery?  Who is always the hardest to convince?  Why is everything that is so important so hard?  Where can all the answers be found?  When will change stop?  When will hope begin?

2016 at Sawmyl Synders Farm

Every ascent has a descent in its future.  So it goes with Sawmyl Synders Farm.  Selling an average of 30 dozens eggs a week up until May 26th, 2016.  This stream of income included sales of mostly chicken, ample duck, plenty of turkey and sparse goose eggs. Farm expenses helped offset income taxes and eliminated sales tax on farm related spending.  Quickly getting rich…slowly.  In the prior holiday season, I processed two of my young turkeys.  These two standard bronze birds, a nine pound (dressed) hen (we infrared-fried for Thanksgiving) and the jumbo twenty-two pound  Tom (we roasted) for Christmas.  In the garden, our crops included five types of tomatoes, two variety of long string beans, three kinds of potatoes, plus cucumbers, okra, onions, garlic, etc.  The little cabin (shack, some say;) wore a new and a freshly painted, inspired interior, including earthy colors with accented walls.  Our sweaty  endeavors in a far-from-the-crowd setting allowed for satisfaction.  Yes, before us, then, we saw a growing ideal and a peaceful retirement.  After us, came the deluge.

At around 5:30 P.M., I headed out, loaded with farm fresh eggs, headed for Thursday home deliveries.  As I locked tight the front gate, the clouds above let loose.  Before I drove down a mile, the blinding rain drove me back.  Back in the house, in the laundry room, my wet clothes in the dryer, I moved to the easy chair and put on a favorite DVD in my still cable-less house.  Within an hour, a buzzing alarm sounded in the laundry room.  Water rising from the floor into the dryer.  Oh my!  My boots go and I take off.  The near catastrophic Tax Day flood back on April 18th, forced me to move the tractor and trucks up stream.  Now, wading through water already knee high, the new tractor and old pickup awaited my rescue.  They waked their way to the rail fence one-hundred yards away, and nearer the main road out.  I hugged my bewildered livestock guardian dog, Syndee, and put her, for the first time, in my truck cab.  She road shotgun on leather seats, while quite confused, as we drove up to the Nichols Sawmill Road exit, only to find traffic already stopped dead.  No fleeing this disaster.  Seeing a rising fate.

Now rising water up from the once shallow creek far from the house.  Now near.  Cresting fifteen foot banks, flanking the house.  Streaming down from the main road above, surrounding the house all around.  Sitting in my new King Ranch, we waited.  Listen.  The water crunching gravel past tires.  I resisted the urge.  As I watched in the rear-view-mirror, the fast moving muddy rose.  The top of the  duck house sank.   The five foot high waterfowl shelter, two hundred feet away, gasp its last.  I saw my dreams of Sawmyl Synders Farm sink as my ducks and geese rise and revel in their new water wonderland.  No reveling on the other side of my car mirror for me.  Fleeting thoughts of doom, constant thoughts of what next, and no place to go, we existed for two hours in suspension.  No anxiety or boredom, no fear and no hope.  A halt to the rain brought all of these sentiments flowing back – and then some.

A scream can not rage indefinitely, and so it is with storm.  Two hours after it began it stopped.  Our home – flooded.  The propane tank leaking.  Those few goats gone.  More loss than could be counted now.  Less future than could be imagined before.  In the days ahead, I heard more unsolicited opinions than genuine empathy.  Can you imagine?  Such as: It could have been worse (true, I could be dead).  You are lucky you have insurance (false, I paid my annual premiums and FEMA excluded items, limited coverage, and took a deductible).  But my favorite:  I told you so! (not true, a neighbor claimed to have warned me about this 500 year flood after I bought the property.  In any case, friends I expected to help with the disaster never showed up for the crisis part.  However, strangers I barely knew showed up on Memorial day and beyond.  So, it was that season again.  Time to find some new friends.  Time to rebuild.  Time to update my paradigm.

Months have passed.  The fifty laying hens I lost are being replaced.  Only twenty layers remain but with twenty-five pullets in the pen, production looks good for February.  Twenty-five more pullets coming this December, with production due in June 2017.  The ducks and geese survived the high water and relished it.  The turkeys survived but, they will tell you, with less relish.  These birds on higher ground must have wondered “What’s the rumpus!”.  With the goats gone, and nothing to guard, I felt I needed to get another guardian dog for my surviving guardian.  Her name is Sydnee.  Akbash puppy.  Now I have two Turkish livestock guardian dogs with nothing to guard.  Karabash and Akbash.  Black Head and White Head.  Other additions include the dozen meat chickens I raised and processed for the holiday meals in 2016 and the weekend feasts in 2017.  Busy work while still trying to grasp the past and grope for a future.  Believing without seeing becomes a necessity.  Surviving a flood means drowning your sorrows and moving on.  Those witnessing Mother Nature’s devastating potency and cold lack sentiments have a new reality.  But what will it be?

Every descent has an ascent in its future.  I can’t build more field fences and animal building on the rubble of this flood.  Repair the existing and adapt to the reality.  Do not wait for the next flood but have alternatives if it occurs before I die.  Can you dig it?  Yes, my land is higher on the other end where I also have road access.  No, it’s not in my original plans.  But neither was the deluge.  So it’s time to put on my big boy pants, stop feeling sorry for myself, and wade back in Sawmyl Synders Farm in 2017.  A funny thing happened on the way to my retirement