Competing with the moon

This morning the moon and the security light (I think that is what it’s called) were competing for shadows. Each at opposite sides of the farm. That’s how it is at the farm right now everything competing for light. Maybe that light is the sun, the moon, attention, or a bottle. But living is sometimes a competition that only the strong or the ones pliable enough to be tossed around a bit survive. The great thing about waking up at 5 am is I get to experience the play of darkness. It sometimes feels like such a secret world.

While I’ve been gone from the blog, 17 kids were born and are all thankfully healthy and strong although we had a couple that were questionable. All of the Does are doing fine but one of our girls had quadruplets and we were worried but she is doing just fine, as it turned out another Doe, Ruby who had twins suffered from a light case of milk fever and spent yesterday morning getting love and attention from the vet. She’s on the mend.

Along with the welcoming of 17 new lives we’ve also managed to plant a few thousand broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants, 4500 onion plants, several rows of cool weather seeds and the propagation hut is now housing 1000 tomato plants (27 varieties) and baby chard, kale, kohl rabi, pepper and soon eggplant and a few other variety of plants. We started converting the old farm kitchen into a commercial kitchen and that’s been a lot of work, but worth it I’m sure! 

Oh and I got married (in Seattle) It’s funny how I didn’t really think Marriage would change anything. I mean I love this person beyond belief how could a ring and a piece of paper ( a legal document) change anything. But amazingly it does feel different and often I feel the ring on my finger and the greatest Joy comes over me. It’s a reassurance, a profound statement that I and the person I love have made a bond that is almost wordless, meaning the depth of that bond may sometimes go beyond what we can form into words which can do justice to our feelings. So the ring does that for us. It says everything we can’t. It’s silent and powerful, needing no explanation.  So this is a surprise to me and I understand now why getting married has been such an important subject in our culture and society.  Now the debate is who owns marriage. Who has the copy right on marriage? Who is allowed to marry and who is not? 

I have catered countless weddings as a matter of fact I’m catering a wedding reception this Saturday. This couple can marry anywhere they wish, and did.  I will provide the food for their celebration like all the ones before them. I will poor my heart into it like all the receptions I’ve catered before. In spite of the fact that marriage is a privilege that has not been available to me until now, when my home town passed a law making me equal to my family and friends at least in Washington. I’ll take it. Even if it is the skim milk kind at least through the eyes  of legal lenses.

But enough of that right now. Life is all around us screaming for attention. Each moment a flying arrow. Gone so quickly. One day we wake up and realize all the moments we’ve missed all the sunrises and sunsets, all the full moons. opportunities to love our enemy our friends, our family, to say how we feel, to create, to be profoundly compassionate.  To love ourselves so deeply that it spills over into the dear lives of people around us. Not forever but right now, I am here. I am here. I