the egg divas have arrived!

after some last minute hustlin', a friend and i finished the coop just in time to go get the chicks.
i love the little sounds they make.for lack of a better feeder they're havin' to make do with an old dog bowl tonite....at least their butts tend to hang over the edge. hopefully poop will aim that way too.the welsummers are the bravest so far...the first to emerge from the shelter and check out their new digs.

sunrise, cats and sheep

marcos enjoying the waste fleece.
Pancake guarding her flock.

dia de memorias

memorial day is better thought of as a day to remember all the ones dead from war...all of them.
there are many wars, some more obvious than others.

another one of my favorite poets on the planet is Chrystos. This poem is from the most amazingly kick ass book "Fire Power".


Night Watch Me Closely

I'm invisible turn away ticking
You won't find us in anthologies of american poets
We forgot to sign that treaty
Everybody likes to read the whites writing myths of us
Us telling about us is too hard
Pouting she tells me how she cried &: cried
after reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
I coughed looked away disappeared
certain not to comfort her
These expectations a matter of course
like too tight shoes
Veering coarse my words are spittle
See them evaporate on the sidewalk spµttering
near your sneakers as you patrol reality with a stick
beating back our tears
I sniff the books rolling out in which we're footnotes
walking away into a hollywood sunset
where the west was won
in a stacked poker game of cheats
Hey I'm not screaming since you're not listening
This, our pulse
We are the heart of your lives
your lies
Caretakers of what you presume to own
Laughing I'm a puff of smoke signaling
in some cowbullshit movie
running fast forward
Being Indian is being a surrealist
You won't find us in your local library stoic &: strong
except in volumes of defeat speeches
they call our literature
Millions
of dead
are in my voice
Rerun that through the tape of your mind
Look for them as a matter of keening necessity
Cry Now as you erase these
mean angry words with whitewash
The spirits won't hear
I'm a ghost dancing with hands on fire

shearing begins @ remedy farm!!!

Now, i wish i had it together enough to be able to show the step by step progression of removing the fleece...but in the end i took like 50 photos between 2 sheep and it was all a bit too much to digest. So instead i chose some of the better pics, where you can actually tell where the animal is in the mountain of fiber!
The shearing master is my friend Wendy. She lives down the valley on a large ranch with 30 some sheep plus alpacas and angora goats and shears them all herself. She was very fast...about 40 minutes per animal!
All praise to powerful farmer women.

The process basically starts with seating the sheep and starting with the head. Then the shoulders, then one side of the ribs to the butt, then you flip em' and do the other side of the ribs to the butt, then legs and lastly the gnarly belly wool. The art of it is in knowing how to handle the animal causing the least stress, being swift and sure, not cutting them and also being able to keep the fleece clean and in tact. phew!




In the end the fleeces were about 10 pounds each ! After skirting they were each about 8lbs.They are fairly clean and mat free, i'm pretty happy with them. I"ve certainly got my work cut out for me! A nice big blanket is all of 7 or 8 pounds...so i'll have plenty left over to sell as just yarn...and lupe hasn't even been shorn yet!

lupe and i

embroiled in a lively debate
everyone but lupe was sheared today...she'll get done in the next week.
plenty of photos to share but not tonight...i'm too pooped from all the excitment.
tomorrow!

laughter rushed to me

inspiration
gives a day in full bloom
a spring tapped
blue gem
the deepest hue
of new
blood
all good
things come from inspired acts
like the sun rising tempts me
to inhale
exhale
inhale again breath moves through me
like your tempting laughter rolls
thunder up behind these mountains
up behind your heavy
rolling sea to mountain laughter
a stirring spring
tapped pools
of blue
gems the deepest hue
of new blood.

ya can't shear wet sheep

and it just won't stop raining...we've broken the record for rainfall in may!

i'm also unable to get pictures of their full glory fleeceness....so some soggy sheep photos is all i've got.
the aspens in the background are just just getting their brand new, lime green foliage. the trees above me at 10,000ft are still naked. I love watching the colors climb up the canyon in spring and down the canyon in the fall.



and just for comparison...and for ultra cute points, heres a photo of lupe when i first brought them here last summer. just babies, all belly... like any little one.

Jerry Falwell is dead.

i had my suspicions that he was actually a robot that some evil fundamentalist scientists had concocted in a lab hidden in the center of a big mountain somewhere but ...sad but true...he was an actual human being.
this is the man who called the civil rights movement the" civil wrongs movement" and praised south africas apartheid government. and lets not forget how he famously blamed the 911 attacks on "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians" oh my!
now, i don't believe in the white guy god or in heaven but i can't help but hope he rots in hell.

may his demise take us one step closer to reaching our potential as a species...

cheers!


ps. my sheep shearer has had a cold but its coming...i promise!

pouring rain poetry sharing kind of night

Now, I'm a -gigantic- fan of June Jordan and thanks to kind folk in my life i've just about every book there is out there with her name on it. I haven't even read them all yet...not cover to cover. So i'm hunkered down listing to the hard rain on my tin roof sifting through a book of her love poems....this one really spoke to me...esp. since its considered a love poem.
enjoy.


Why i became a pacifist
and then
How i became a warrior again:

Because nothing i could do or say
turned out okay
i figured i should just sit
still and chill
except to maybe mumble
‘Baby,Baby:
Stop!’
AND
because turning that other cheek
holding my tongue
refusing to retaliate when the deal
got ugly
And because not throwing whoever calls me bitch
out the goddamn window
And because swallowing my pride
saying i’m sorry when whoever don’t like
one single thing
about me and don’t never take a break from
counting up the 65,899 ways i talk wrong
i act wrong
And because sitting on my fist
neglecting to enumerate every incoherent
rigid/raggedy-ass/disrespectful/killer cold
and self infatuated crime against love
committed by some loud mouth don’t know
nothing about it takes 2 to fuck
and 2 to fuck things up
And because making apologies that nobody give a shit about

and because failing to sing my song

finally
finally

got on my absolute last nerve

I pick up my sword
I lift up my shield
And i stay ready for war
Because now i live ready for a whole lot more

than that




June Jordan (1936-2002)

nothin' in particular

feeling kind of down today...a second wave depression over the reality that my friend and her kids aren't moving here this year.
mopey...whoa is me on my own on the mountain top....so i did some gardening and tried my best to enjoy the gorgeous day. Big storms keep building up in the afternoon...so yummy.

inspired by a friends passionate speech about the glory of dandelion oil...like its great for muscle pains and skin rashes...i gathered flower heads and got my own batch underway. I can't remember the last time i held a handfull of dandelion flowers...so soft...like holding a baby bird.

and yes...that is my llama frida...still here on the farm. The wonderful home i thought i had found for them turned out to be a big scammy fake. long story but i'm glad they didn't go there...ya just can't trust anyone to be who they say they are, it sucks. The rescue folks have resumed their search for a home.
Eva pup is being as brave as she dare be...sniffing llama face is scary business!

dusting off the fools heart

Many aspects of my teenage years were rough...some of the roughest i've had. Sometimes i marvel that i survived when i think of all the drugs i did and stupid circumstances i placed myself in. A few sexual assaults, a couple bad car wrecks, bulemia, beaten up, caught stealing...you name it, i stumbled through it. When i met Aaron we were all of 15 years old. This high school was the millionth school i'd been to. I had just about zero social skills.As an only child that moved around all my life, my survival mechanism was to just get through it, don't even try to engage it. My home life was a mess as my mom had just hooked up with this new guy and was busy having his babies. He was an asshole, alcoholic, abusive...to be avoided, to say the least.

Teenagers have so much to digest, and all those hormones runnin' around. Still very much children but busting at the seams with independence and angst driven desire. just beginning to understand whats wrong and right with the world and what their place is in it.

Aaron was a gift the universe handed my battered cynical young self. He treated me so kindly, something i'd never known. It quickly became that gloriously self absorbed nonstop adrenaline high of first love. No past relationships to have learned anything from, no point of reference, no caution flags for unhealthy boundaries or bad communication or codependancy, no no...just unfettered full on heartbreaking indulgence. Just the disraction one needs to get through.

For the first time ever...someone had my back. someone thought i was...well...someone. For a window of time, it was us vs. the world.we'd skip outta school and head back to his dad's empty place to have clumsy, heated, learning the ropes sex. We'd run through rainy streets and sleep in parks rather than head to our seperate homes. We'd spend countless hours in all night coffee shops...dreaming,doin' whatever...didn't matter.
I soaked this up like rain to parched earth.
He was always warm to my cold frame.
I thought he was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen.This momentum lasted quite a while for our age. We broke up and got back together too many times to count...always with much well rehearsed dramatic impact. The first time we split i stayed sleepless and locked away in my bedroom listening to U2 over and over just crying and crying. I would surely die from grief....since i would never eat or sleep again.

Somewhere along the time line we grew up. That well simply ran dry. But still i keep that precious, naive and lovely lust of youth buried deep against my rib cage....safe from everything thats piled up inside me since. It remains soft and open up against adulthoods hardening logic and weathered wisdom. Its my fools heart, my point of reference, a gift from the universe.




**thanks to aaron for contacting me, inspiring me to write this and giving his permission to be on this blog for all the world to see.

front porch rainbow

its rainbow madness around here once the rains come. ya know, one of these days i really should drag my ass over there and see about this pot of gold business...sure could use one of those.

dance

a friend bought me a ticket to an indigo girls/ richie havens concert. I can’t remember the last time i went to a concert...seriously.
i’m a big fan of richie havens. I’ve choreoghraphed to his work....so i put some on today in anticipation of seeing him live. i enjoy how it makes me move.

and sometimes when i’m lucky and all the pieces fall together just right
i dance
even in this little house
ribs open up to free movement of bones and breath and i could be anywhere...any age
any circumstance its timeless movement i love
how the muscles of my feet respond like old pros they know how to spread and carry me through the sudden shifts of weight.
its healing stuff
magic even its what i know is free.

stay tuned for sheep shearing...very exciting....as well as a tale of youth and that always dramatic first love.

for the birds

I've decided the best course of action is to keep the farm. I'm only gonna consider leaving if something fantastical falls into my lap, heart and brain.
the chickens decided this for me.
Got a call yesterday from this woman on the low end of the valley with a surplus of pullets she's hoping to sell as she has too many. a variety of breeds, many bred for cold climates. I tell her i don't have a coop yet and she says no worries she can hold onto them for a month yet. they are 4 dollars each. I've been looking for a whille now for someone who was willing to raise chicks and sell them to me when they were of age.i'd had no luck and somewhere along the line just kind of gave up and moved on to more pressing matters...like the state of my life.
some kinda bird goddess, pick yr preference, wants me to have these, wants me to re-commit to my fight to survive here...how could i say no?

for all you chicken fanatics out there , heres what i'm getting....columbian wyandotte, delaware, chantacler and welsummer.
I had hoped for orpingtons but she didn't have any since she reckons they are prone to getting bullied by the others.The wellsummers have deep chocolate brown eggs.
they all won't get to laying for sometime yet which is a big bummer so i'm still hoping someone will appear with a couple of grown hens to sell me.
for now i've a coop to build.
I'm a nut but it
sure beats pacing around all weepy and sleepless, trying to figure out staying or going and where and la la la la la.

in other heavily symbolic bird news....theres a new nest built atop a tall oak in front of the house. with my handy binocluars i can see that its almost entirely composed of wool and some thin strips of an old blue tarp that covers my wood pile.

the mess of my brain and happy cinco de mayo!

ahhhhhhhhh....where do i begin to unravel my tangled thoughts. I haven't felt this loopy since back in the days of homelessness. Thats probably because i'm finding myself exploring what it would mean to sell this place, then taking time to find something else where i'm not so isolated and in doing that i risk a period of relative homelessness. Folks like me with environmental illness have a hell of a time renting...its near impossible. New paint, pesticides, dryer vents, carpeting, residual cig smoke, air "fresheners" or chemical cleaners....these are all the commonly found hazards of a rented property.
but wait....thats not what i wanted to write about.
but wait, i don't know what the hell i want to write about.
one minute, i'm staying here come hell or highwater....godammit,I will scrape the bottom of my well scraped emotional barrel and persevere...to hell with my deep ache for a hot bath, a full pantry, a poetry reading, some clothes without holes, and human touch.
the next minute i'm convinced that i just can't do it anymore...this potent isolation/poverty cocktail, so then begins the thoughts of where to go, how to get there and how would it be any different than here? Move home to the finger lakes/ ithaca? disappear into mexico and kiss the empire goodbye?
oh...sigh.

every now and then i catch myself barely touching ground and i have to stop...practice pranayama...breath....and go tend my newest lettuce and leeks in the garden...inspite of the gross contradiction to my flighty thoughts, i need to sit at my wheel and spin as i've only 30 bucks for the month and thinking thinking sure doesn't earn me any cash.

in a few years time this place will have been the longest i've lived in my entire life.When i was born till i was 7 currently holds the title...after that is a blur of perpetual movement.

i've perused the intentional communities directory and in the end found it quite depressing. listing after listing of straight white middle class well meaning folks without a drop of disability access awareness, convinced they are changing the world by creating their own whitey eco utopia...sigh. I'm too jaded and rough around the edges and ginormously queer for all that.

its snowing right now, big fluffy christmas snowflakes, while the sun is also out and the birds are singing.the weather mirrors my contradictory thoughts.
yesterday i watched a herd of elk pass throught the pasture above me. like clockwork every year they come through.
yesterday i also watched the llamas, who will be leaving in a few days, chase a coyote off the property...it was great to watch. I'm gonna miss them for that.and heres my sheeplies stuffing their faces in the feedbox i finally finally slapped together after a winter of wasting far too much hay...its works quite well as they can't stand/poop/piss on the hay 2 minutes after i give it them.

and finally, today is cinco de mayo...celebrating a small victory over the forces of colonization and empirical expansion....viva!!!