The Best of it

 

The harsh glare of the supervisors

I'm often unsure of how much of myself to share in this space. Is this a marketing vehicle for a company, a carefully curated personal brand, or an authentic snapshot of a given place and time in my life so far? I'm never really sure, and whenever I try to make it one thing or the other something else inevitably creeps in. Perhaps I should just quit trying to force this to be something that it's not, and simply let it live, as it is, where it's at. Sometimes that might be telling you about the awesome thing that I have coming up that I want you to be a part of. Other times it might be about my evolution as a writer, director, or whatever else in the world of all things theatre that I'm working on. And sometimes it might just be an authentic snapshot. I think tonight's post is one of those times. 

Baby goats baby goating

This has been a tough month. We're spending a lot of time in the barn right now, and it's been a difficult kidding season. Last night was one of the worst nights I've had as a farmer - what started out as a picture-perfect day turned into an evening of back-breaking labour, ruined dinner plans, and being forced to make one awful decision after another, with nothing to show for it by bedtime but a bunch of dead kids and a really big vet bill. 

And as I mentioned in my last post, it's cold. Bitterly cold. Cold enough to have consequences. The barn door is frozen shut, stuck behind a mountain of ice - we can barely push it open enough to squeeze in, and the only way to keep it even partially open is to bash the ice away every day with a heavy steel bar, it too thoroughly coated in ice. Water bowls are frozen, lines are breaking, so we're watering goats by pail, which is annoying but something we're used to. But now the cows have broken their bowl too, and filling a water trough one pail at a time for five cattle is interesting - if they want to, they can drink it down faster than you can fill it up. Chores take a lot longer than they need to. 

Snow makes things harder as well. The snowblower we found last summer and were so looking forward to using this winter has been a dud. It won't start, and when it does start it won't blow snow. I thought I'd try to fix it, but when I went to put my battery charger on it I found that some critter had gnawed through the cables, rendering the charger useless. So now I'm forced to watch helplessly as the snowplough dumps an ever-greater, ever-harder amount of snow at the end of the lane, and wait until the landlord has time to get over here with a real snowblower and clear things out. 

On top of that our truck died, years before we were hoping to replace it, and since the vehicle that we truly want doesn't exist, we had to settle for something much bigger, dirtier, and more expensive than we've ever had before. I do admit that the back-up camera is a nice feature, but I'm not sure it makes up for the enraged vitriol of some guy in Kitchener screaming me out as I made my way down the road for the first time in something that is, for me, like driving a limousine down a Go-Kart track. Imagine your first memory of driving in your new vehicle hearing these words, filled with all the rage and violence you can muster:

"Learn to drive, you *&!%ing $#@^!"

Okay, so maybe I had that coming, and maybe I shouldn't be so affected by it, but that's the thing. I am. I can still hear his raged words screaming in my ears, just like I can still see the goat corpses falling off my pitchfork. I get ear worms stuck in my head for days - you know what it's like to have the music video of Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer playing over and over in your head while your hands are stinging from trying to put the hay down in a hay mow that's -30 degrees and before the sun comes up? I don't even like that song, or Peter Gabriel, or any of the supposedly cutting-edge effects used to make that video.  

My writing has been abysmal so far this year, just at the moment when I thought it had finally arrived. The work-life balance that I was looking forward to hasn't really materialized yet. My shop, even with a brand-new heater, is still far too cold for fine woodworking, or even unboxing my new lighting and sound gear for the summer shows, so the place where I usually go to find some balance isn't available to me. Even the zipper on my coat - my coat - has broken, so I can't even have the luxury of a comfortable walk from the parking lot to the theatre!

I know that my complaints are quotidian, or at least may seem so to some. Of course, there are bigger problems in this world - just turn on the news, or if you don't want to do that, just look around - there's plenty of sadness and suffering in almost everyone's lives, much of it hiding just under a veneer of etiquette, decorum or, as I recall from another random sad memory that lives rent-free in my head "it's none of our business." 

I don't know when this cold weather will end, when this round of kidding will end, when automakers will finally build a truck that is actually good for this world, or when I will go out and find myself a new coat. But I do know something. As I was driving home in my new truck, the leather-lunged road-ragers' words still echoing in my head, I decided that I was going to make the best of it. No, the truck isn't perfect, and the experience of buying it will be forever tainted by that angry (perhaps justifiably, I will confess) young man, and I know that I am making things worse for the planet every time I turn the key. Fine. I know that. I will sit with that. I will accept all that, and a lot more. And then I will get in my massive, polluting truck, be forced to relive the bad memory of buying it, and use it to get to my destination safely, efficiently, and comfortably. I will make the best of it. 

Last night won't be the last time the vet comes out to our farm, and it won't be the last time we lose baby goats. But after we went to bed last night we got up this morning, went out to the barn, and did the chores, slower than usual because of all the frozen water bowls, but nonetheless were greeted just the same by four cats, five cows, a dozen chickens, and many, many goats, of all ages and states of health, who are alive and thriving because of us, because we do what we do. We are not the greatest farmers to have ever lived, but we are not the worst either. We are taking what we are given, and we are making the best of it. 

And that's all we really can do. Make the best of it. In a world where there's so much darkness, so much hatred, so few reasons to smile, the only possible course of action is to make the best of it. Just as I know that sooner or later the cold will end I also know that sooner or later the darkness and hatred will recede. But until then, I'm going to make the best of it.   

However large or small they may seem to others my troubles are weighing on me, that much is clear. It makes it harder to think, harder to concentrate, harder to plan.