Happy New Year!
Once
again, this letter comes at the beginning of the year rather than the end. It’s a wonder that it is even getting
written, for though the bustle of Christmas is over, the seed catalogs are
already calling to me with promises of an unblemished harvest.
This
year has been one like no other, with the biggest challenge coming not in the
form of an old house or a new baby, but as a deployment for Lance to
Afghanistan. (My wish for a combat free
2014 made in last year’s holiday letter obviously did not come true.) Many of
you know that Lance joined the Navy reserves a couple of years ago, and in
mid-August, he was called to leave the hills of east Tennessee to serve in the
sands of Kandahar as an interventional radiologist at the NATO base there. Unlike Hawkeye Pierce, he does not have to
live in a tent (but neither can he brew his own moonshine.) Overall, he is safe
and sound and doing good work for the soldiers—and in some cases, the bomb
squad dogs—on the front lines. He will
return to us about the time corn is ready to plant (that’s April for you
non-farming folks).
Though
I cannot say I welcomed this challenge, I was reminded by a good friend that
this is a very historical situation: man goes to war and leaves wife to run the
farm. (And I DO consider myself a living historian.) The “Yankees” did not come
after Lance left, but Murphy and his law moved in for an extended stay. The woodstove sprung a leak underground, the
horses broke through the fence and into the feed room, our trusted farm hand
and friend Jose’ died of lung cancer, and damp air from the crawlspace infused
the house with so much mildew that Thomas and I had to move in with Mamaw for
the holidays (and we’re still here while we wait for the Master Dry folks to
fix the problem this month.) Perhaps I
should wield a fist and a radish at Murphy.
It worked for Scarlet O’Hara.
While
there is certainly enough to keep me (and several clones of me) busy as a
single farmer and mother, I still continue to play in the symphony and
volunteer at Exchange Place, where my Junior Apprentices make me proud and
hopeful. And for a real treat, I head to
Old Salem for serious history lessons. When
I visited in December, we had a baking marathon and made Moravian sugar cake,
ginger cakes, sugar biscuits, and two apple pies in one day.
Often
bewitched by Murphy, Thomas remains a study in perpetual motion with his
favorite activity being interrupting my train of thought. His newest collections are keys, watches, and
rings. Anything bright and shiny catches
his eye. (I think he is part dwarf). He is also enamored with Willa Wonka and
his chocolate factory and is often hard at work inventing his own confectionery
machines in Mamaw’s basement. He
certainly misses his daddy, and he sleeps with me every night to “protect” me.
For
the most part, the animals have had a healthy year, though they are getting
older, and except for a hawk that is particularly fond of roosters, there has
been no sign of predators lurking about.
I am hiring a master fencer to extend the goat lot further into the
woods, giving the little brutes more brush to munch on and more “mountain” to
roam. They’ll have it cleared off in a
week, I’m sure. And finally, we have a
new addition to our menagerie. Two days before Christmas, a black (mostly) Lab puppy
showed up in our driveway, with ribs protruding from her belly and no tags or
collar. It seemed fated: maybe she was a stowaway on Santa’s sleigh or a gift
borne by a Wise (Wo)Man. She eagerly
joined our family, though Thomas and the cats are still skeptical about sharing
attention. I named her “Marley” (after Jacob, not Bob)—and may she forever bark
at all the stingy Ebeneezer Scrooges who visit the farm (as well as Murphy and
his minions!)
Now, to the seed catalogs and the hopes that
Marley doesn’t dig up my tomatoes this summer!
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