Practice resurrection.
This is a post from the archives of the “On Butter Hill” Substack newsletter. In an effort to streamline our online presence, I will be reposting our Substack posts here on our blog while gradually dissolving our posts there.
A slow autumnal rhythm has set in on Butter Hill. Chores are minimal. Frost has visited, only briefly. In fact, as I write, a nearly tropical blast is rattling our old farmhouse with highs creeping into the seventies today. Not your average Ohio November.
The holiday buzz is pressing in. I found myself evaluating my calendar for empty weekends before Christmas, of which there are very few. Soon enough, we will be washed away in a sea of busy, blurred into the January oblivion when time comes to a screeching halt once again.
I have been carefully watching our pigs for signs of heat or breeding. One of our girls, our favorite, Helen, is confirmed to be expecting. I have her down to be due late January. Not ideal, but we will tuck in and have heat lamps ready. Perhaps the pellet stove left in our garage was serendipitous. We plan to farrow (birth) pigs in the detached garage this winter, as it is the closest thing we have to a functioning barn. Currently, as time and money allows, we are filling said garage with as much hay as we can. The cows have already appreciated munching on some here and there. Soon it will be their only sustenance until spring grasses.
Late winter will be busy, with the expected arrival of calves from each of our two cows within days of each other, and piglets from, if all goes to plan, all three of our female pigs. I just may put on a spring farm babies event for the townsfolk at this rate! Or perhaps, they can just subscribe to my Substack for the latest and greatest. I plan to document it all here.
Oh, how I will miss these slow fall days when the holiday crazies and subsequent winter crazies and frozen everything set in. Until then, I will savor a slower season, trying to busy my hands with things that need tending and mending, maybe tearing my kitchen apart again with dreams to build it back up, one day. Bake a little. Sleep in. Dream.
I’ll leave you today with a favorite Wendell Berry excerpt of mine. It came to mind today as I worked on a tee shirt design centric to its message.
(PS, check out my Etsy shop if you want to buy one!)
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
