Saturday, December 24, 2016

How much that we do, is in hope of something else?
The moon is full,
Seed heads hang heavy on stalks of grass,
Leaf growth is slow.
It's hot.
August, like march, promises much.

How often are we disappointed?
How often does September come, like April,
with not enough rain,
or to much?

  We tie flies in summer, dreaming of winter fish.

During lambing
in the spring,

We tie flies, dreaming of summer steel head.

  Now in late summer I irrigate fields, in hope of fat fall lambs.

High prices/Lbs. on the hoof, and enough water in the creek to hold us till the rain comes.

In farming, we live in hope.

Prayers have become pertinent,

And we are not far removed from the inconceivable divine.

Monday, May 16, 2016

I won't tell you where I have been,
I will tell you that I was in Western Montana,
when really it was Northern Idaho.
I will tell you that I was in South West Idaho,
When really it was the Southern,
Eastern part of Oregon.
   People have a tendency of destroying what they love.
I will not tell you where I have been...
Only of the places that I have loved.

Thursday, March 31, 2016


Winter now over, fear now subsides. What is done is done. Lambs, some of them, nearly sixty pounds, suckle and “gain,” Some of them even a pound a day. Waterlogged fields and fear of frost, in a matter of days becomes a distant memory.  There were more “singles” born this year than I would have liked, but singles gain well and fatten quickly. Scarce feed last year in September, manifests it’s self in this year’s lambs, only a %170 lamb crop. It is what it is; I’ll have lambs early to market, and spend less in getting them there.

There is something to be said for that.

   Driving past vineyards and cyclists today I railed against a machine that I have no ability to fight against, and I passed my frustration on you. I am sorry that my own short comings, frustration, and anger, will become your frustration with me; were you were to become my wife. It is an idea that terrifies me if I was honest with myself, and horrifies me were I to be honest with you.

   Driving to that farm today, the one for sale on the internet, again were I to be honest, broke my heart. That farm (to my eye) is a place full of a life lived. In my mind, in the way that the house, garden, and barn yard were laid out, was a place where I could see a man walk from the mud room to the shed, harness horses or idle a tractor, and while they ate, or a diesel tractor warmed up, that man would walk down to the cow byre and throw flakes of hay to cattle, and there he would stand, for just a moment before turning toward his work, and think on all of the things that he had done well in the year past, and consider the things that he wished that he might have done better.

   My dear,

                I am a man who already knows what I have done well, and I am a man who at times, wishes I could have done better.  I lament my failures, and (in regard to my farm) am sustained by the things that I have done right. I mean to offer no offence; but I consider my love for you in very much the same way.  I know what I have done well, and at times know that I could have done better.

   I once said that renting a farm was like dating a woman, and that owning a farm (by contract) was in a way like being married to a woman. What little I know about either, I know in my heart that someday I would like to own a farm…. And that soon, I would like to be married to you- 

      With all of my love-

                    Me-