Good Thing There Was No Traffic!

On my way to the Lake Cheston upper parking lot, I cruised by the farm, noticing a whole lot of birds in the big double-tree (one of them's a flowering tree of some kind) across from the baseball field. In another ten yards, I screeched to a halt, backed up, drove into Old Farm road to turn around, raced back by the tree, stopped the car, looked again, then drove into Cobb Lane like a madwoman, pulled into the grass, and leapt out, leaving the car running.

Cedar Waxwings! Lots of them!

Craning my neck, I looked upwards and started snapping. Soon, I noticed a retired professor (who was walking the dogs) stop on the sidewalk across the street. "Cedar Waxwings!" I shouted. "I saw them when I was passing and turned right around." "You knew what they were from you car?" "Not at first, but when I got to the road up to the hoophouses, I realized what they were." "There sure are a lot of them," he said and walked on.

I stopped counting at 42. Some flew off, many stayed, others returned. Too high for a really sharp photo, but not too high to miss and never too high to enjoy.

Blue Tarps

I first encountered them in photographs of Katrina's aftermath, then on houses atop Sand Mountain after the April 27, 2014 tornadoes, and now across the openings of old sheds/wooden garages and around the farm in Sewanee.

A symbol of suffering and destruction, they cheer me here -- flapping, snapping in wind; shadowing in strong sunlight; fraying from weathering and age. Today, one hoop house tarp clapped and ruffled, clapped and ruffled, clapped and ruffled, in a curiously moving rhythm.

And I was happy.

Of bugs

there is happily no end.

Walking with J's Gracie

while my friend heals heals me.

Gracie is all senses -- she marks and sniffs and watches, swims and shakes and admires.

Gracie likes me and trusts me -- she waits at the door for my arrival and jumps on me eagerly, she looks at me while she walks, she holds no anger, and she doesn't sense mine.

Gracie is kind -- she pauses when I have to go downhill on the wet stepping stones more slowly than she and when I have to stop to retie a shoe lace. She even lets me take an occasional cell phone snap.

Gracie likes the lake and Abbo's Alley as much as I do -- the goats and chickens, the ducks and water, the paths and views, shadows and light, the greenhouses and their magic, the creek and bridges, the crocus and fallen trees with their fungus.

We walk each morning at 9, and for an hour or more I think only of Gracie and the pleasure of walking with her.

I am grateful for her company.

I wish I knew the story

of the graffiti on the old farm building, especially this almost day-of-the-dead man pointing to the ominous message.

Nothing's censored out there these days -- the goats and the chickens and the bees and the flowers all do their thing, sometimes even under a blue sky.

Gray Sky vs Blue Sky

At the University Farm today, the manager and I chatted about the abundant spinach and chard, the new method of keeping plants warm under covers in extreme cold, a possible student research project in the physics of the plants' warmth under those covers, the squirming larvae due to arrive at the beginning of the semester, and the advantages of photographing plants under gray sky. These advantages can easily be seen.

Their colors do indeed pop.

Even the old dairy building in which the culled deer are refrigerated before butchering and much of the farm's equipment are stored has a certain beauty under our typical winter sky. 

The red bittersweet, ochred wood, fading graffiti do indeed pop.

But.

In a contest of one versus the other, I'd take a strong blue sky and shadows any day.

Even today.

A Dusting of Snow

white sky 
monochrome landscape

but at least

University Farm
hoophouses offer

colorful relief

another kind
of nourishment

Headed for a Temperature Plummet Tonight

But, as Carolyn (the University Farm manager), assured me when I commented on the healthy greens in one of the hoophouses, "Everything will be fine." 

I believe her. I have watched her and her students make miracles out at Lake Cheston. Today was no exception. 

Even the sun cooperated.

16 degrees forecast for tonight. I hope my fingers make it tomorrow as I plan to visit again.

The University Farm: Seasonal Charnel House

After parking, I watched two men get out of a truck and, while a third stayed behind the wheel, walk to the farm building's center back door, where they unlocked it and disappeared inside.

I minded my own business, wandered into the new hoophouse, ambled through, headed up the side of the larger hoophouse, then around it, all the time taking photos. 

When I noticed the dessicated butterflies, beetles, flies, bees stacked inside the interior folds of plastic, and, taken aback, thought of northern European still lifes of dead rabbits and birds and stacked fish on groaning boards, awaiting preparation and consumption, those reminders of fleeting time and death awaiting us all -- at that very moment, I heard a voice.

Looking to my right, I saw two of the men dragging a whitetail deer carcass (field-dressed and knife-slit-belly facing me) toward that very same door, swing it up the steps, go inside briefly, then come out, lock the door, and get in the truck. The third pocketed his smart phone, joined them, and they drove away.

Culling season in Sewanee, the season of darkness.

Believe Me

I long for the lengthened sense of seasonal time in childhood. But I can't, so I plan to make the most of the primary color days before winter gray sets in.

A Little Rain

fell today, off and on, slowly.

But not enough to amount to much (0.67 inches).

We need more.

Much more.

The fellow who maintains Sky Castle weather station posted this today on Facebook: "Week of July 18th had more 90º+ days (5) than the previous 3 years combined in Sewanee. 2 consecutive summers, 2013 and 2014, Sewanee did not reach 90º. 2015 had four 90º+ days. 2016 so far has had TEN 90º+ days. Thurs. July 21st was the hottest day in at least 4 yrs (94.8º). Sewanee Sky Castle weather station."

I have been thinking about the heat and drought on my walks and every time I look at my own yard and the woods behind.

The folks at the farm have been working hard to keep the crops going and the animals growing. Carolyn should know, since she's the Farm Manager.

She and her rotating crews (folks in the school years, folks in the summer, including 16 VISTA Americorps members for a time earlier with the University-led summer meal program for children on the mountain) work no matter the weather. During the school year and in breaks, she teaches students about farming and works alongside them, with their products benefiting a wider community.

Her enthusiasm and smile infectious. Her work, important.

Kids!

The kids at the University Farm are so popular that they and their mothers have been moved close to Breakfield Road. (They are, of course and thankfully, shielded from intruding hands by an electrified fence.)

I, for one, am happy about that.

As the internet has exploded with goat pictures and videos, these creatures have reached star levels.

It's easy to see why.

Weathering

The former dairy building/sculpture studio now serves the renewed University farm, but the wood has not been renewed, a choice I welcome. Boards wear well what's left of their blue paint, peeling and revealing faded cornsilk yellow. Chips, striated and buckled, lift and flake like the tree bark stripped at a saw mill so long ago.

The pigs just across the lane fatten in the pen, the goats across the street stand on hind legs to strip leaves from vines along the fence, Claire's horses in their neighboring pasture pull at grass and stamp and steam on now-cool mornings -- and time moves and time stands still in paint's slow peel.