Taking a Break

to stay within capacity

wood anemone

Dear readers,

Days are so full right now. My hands and hours are filled with kid goats and milky udders and tangled up rolls of electric netting. Spring has come soaring in on sparkling wings and sunbeams. Our first spring on this new-to-us little long-neglected farmstead, and there is so much to do, so little time to do it.

The sap is rising, the woodlands and field borders are thick with sweet, thin-skinned holly, budding apple and tender thorn, and the floor beneath the oaks is strewn with flowers—wood anemone, wood sorrel, celandine, violet, bluebell and woodrush lapping up the spring light. The sap is rising, the pastures are sweet and fragrant, brimming with nettle, buttercup, thistle and dock (all tasty treats to a goat). Tender young forbs and grasses soaking up sweet, spring sunlight before the trees leaf up and shade the pastures out.

After years of living wild on the open hill, learning to loosen my management, learning to let land and herd lead, learning to get go, I find myself now pasturing a tight little herd of dairy goats and their young through daily fence moves across tight little swathes of emerald green, counting the days of fodder each little field will give us, counting the days between rotations, watching the grass grow, keeping the herd and their wildness contained. Yeah. We’ll see how long that lasts. They’re already looking at me, looking at my fences, looking at all the spring forage and freedom outside my fences, looking back at me, and I no longer have the heart to confine them.

Meanwhile, the old, tumbling garden of apple and rose and gooseberry and currant calls for nourishment and care, the sheep and the loft full of their fleeces call for movement, and the old stone buildings of this little farmstead—our home—with their crumbling slate roofs and dry rot call for renovations and the warmth of homemaking.

I’ve been reminded recently to stay within capacity. The capacity of the land. The capacity of these tiny, stone-walled fields of buttercup, couch grass, cocksfoot, bramble and rush. The capacity of our time, strength and resources. The capacity of my own creative energy and output. I’ll write more on that when I come back.

I need to take a break from regular posting on here for a little while, to give my time and energy where it is needed most, outdoors, away from the screen and into the woods, gardens and fields on these glorious spring days. I am not sure how long. A month, maybe two. There will be plenty of days to write again when the late summer lull and its rains come. I will pause paid subscriptions as of today, until I am back. So if you have a monthly or a yearly subscription with me your billing cycle will be paused and you will not be charged for the duration of the break. I do believe paid subscribers will still have access to the archives during that time, but nobody new will be able to take out a paid subscription until I switch it back on.

I hope you all have a wonderful spring, or autumn, depending which side of the world you are reading from. Thank you, as always, for being here, for there are no stories to be read without readers to read them.

Carly

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