This is the part in the book about the divorced mother of two trying to reinvent her life in rural New England by farming/beekeeping/animal husbandry (I've read them all) where the mom encounters one too many obstacles, has a big fit and then, despite being months in arrears on her phone and electric bills, somehow finds the money for too much beer and a $300 pair of reading glasses (you know who you are).
I'm not that mom. She's probably a whole lot more fun for most people to read about, because she is spectacular in naivete, guts, failure and redemption. Me, not so much. I haven't sprung for fancy specs or anything like that, but the tears of rage have been real enough in this past couple of weeks of dropped seedlings, spectacular bruises, freak frosts, damp-off, raccoons and the EZ-Up tent that isn't. "What is your first flower going to be?" I have been queried by several well-meaning supporters. Well, it's dandelions or garlic mustard, I haven't decided. Whichever is blooming next week when I have my first market.
Frost arrived in the early part of the week. I had covered (with help of the Patient Spouse) the few tender things like the pet coleus and the enormous rose geranium now trellised up the pergola. We covered the cold frames, and with only a possibility of frost, this seemed sufficient given the cold those frames have weathered so far. I didn't even check next morning until 10:00, when the P.S. came out to ask how everything had made it through the night. The second frame, covered in corrugated sheets of Palram (therefore not tight around the edges) and set directly on the ground was fine. The hotbed looked like someone had capriciously poured boiling water here and there, blackening about 90 percent of the zinnias (my backbone cut flower) just starting to recover from an earlier trauma, and most of the second planting of peppers.
That night, anticipating a relaxing evening watching a movie, I thought to myself, "I wonder how those chicks are?" We had put them in the big chicken house a few days before, and hadn't let them out in their fenced yard yet. The house has a little portcullis door on a pulley, which we always shut at night after the flock has come in and roosted. Even though the house was shut tight, I decided to go out and make sure all was well.
The first thing I saw was a raccoon hanging from the inside wire wall. Beneath him, two of our six chicks lay, disemboweled and mostly eaten. The chicken door was tightly closed. The remaining chicks huddled in the far corner in terrified silence. I screamed for the Patient Spouse, scooped chicks into my arms and deposited them in our mudroom, then ran outside to join him in battle. Raccoons are fierce when cornered. They also have very, very thick hides. After at least a ten-minute stabbing fight on the part of the Patient Spouse (during which I was stationed at the now-open portcullis with a shovel to bash and bury however much raccoon made it past him), the coon made a break through a tiny hole in a windowpane, breaking out the glass and escaping under the chicken house, through the garden and over the fence. We pursued as far as the edge of the woods. Now we only have four chicks.
The tent is called an EZ-Up, but the instructions call for two people to help each other with the set-up process. The Patient Spouse bought it to use himself a summer ago, and didn't, so I was glad not only to have this required shelter for market, but to make the purchase of it then, worthwhile after all. He wanted very much to help me figure out the setup, but I will be alone for the three markets I've signed on for, so I'll have to be able to do it myself. I asked him to stand by and provide moral support. Having set it up himself, he decided on a fast overview of the instructions, followed by me struggling in much the manner of Snoopy in the original Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Except that my words came out as the actual thing, not like @**!#. "EZ-Hernia" seemed like a better title for the thing, but we/I managed to bring it listing and moaning to its feet with about the same grace and speed as a tired camel. I leaned against one frail metal leg and tried not to weep. I thought of tents on Amazon, tents in the outdoor living department at Target, tents everywhere that were a little shorter, a little smaller, surely a little more EZ. Then I thought about Ma from Little House who would never have let an EZ-Up stand between herself and westward progress, and I announced that I would now be taking the tent down—alone—and then putting it back up—alone—until I could do it EZly.
So here I am. The Farm has survived another week. I can set that tent from flat to shelter in about two minutes, alone, @**!#. The Patient Spouse has wired a brick to the portcullis in really quite an elegant way, and the chicks fell asleep in my arms the night of their trauma such that I now feel bonded to them and vice-versa, which is delightful. I'm off to Andrews for green zinnias, having replanted all the others. (The peppers were mostly Wenk's Hots and I wasn't really depending on them.) Every challenge can be met, one way or another, and it still feels like the Farm is abundant, when I think of what it has given me so far in joy, insight, and development of inner and outer resolve—and life lessons that reach beyond me, as well. Zinnias or no zinnias, these (actually very minor) trials have shown me that I have so much! As my older daughter put it, "That's what I need in my life, Mom: A man willing to stab a raccoon for me."
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