old dog

 My dog Lily, or as I call her along with every other dog I have ever had, "dog", is getting old.  When I am tied up working in the shop, which is usually not my first choice, she comes with and chooses a comfortable place-not too far from the heater, and out of range of the sparks thrown by the acetylene torch, angle grinder and arc welder, and lies there watching me work.  Tomorrow she may bounce along with me as I walk the pastures and fields looking for first signs of spring life and figuring out how long until the soil will bear the weight of the cattle.  Today she     rests.  She chose a soft pile of floor sweepings to rest on today.

Sometimes she hurts and takes the day off.  So do I.  We understand each other.

She is master of appreciating the explosive flight of the started pheasant.  She cocks her head, better to listen to the increasingly rare sound of the meadowlark.  She pretends, on our walks, to dig up the pocket gophers which have been busy making tunnels.  Sometimes, when she thinks she knows where I am headed, she will lie down in the field and wait for my return.

She is not much of a stock dog, even though she is a shepherd by breeding (Aussie).   She tends to hold her ground as cattle approach to examine her until they are close and then she turns to run, through a gate if I have been dumb enough to leave it down, the whole herd following her.

I love shepherds for their perceptiveness-they know who they belong to-focus and loyalty.  It sobers me to realize that some shepherd dog someday is going to mope and mourn my disappearance from her life.

Lily is in the world and of the world in a way that I like other humans, have trouble  being.  She simply lives out the time allotted to her, fully present at all times.  She does not do art.

Humans do art. It is how we are comfortable in the world that confronts us. Farmers do art, especially diversified small ones.  In this idea I have no great group of fellow travelers for the art I do will never hang in a museum.  But I insist on it.  If no one else, I can count on my dog to agree, if not understand.

Today I mend two posts that the hogs have bent and rusted off.  Though years of experience, I have figured out how to do this spending a minimum of money and in a manner that will not cause someone soon to need to do it over again.  No course of study teaches this very necessary art.

This morning I studied seed catalogs choosing seeds to plant in the bare drowned out places in the pasture and also where the sward was torn up to install drainage a year ago.  I need to consider longevity. palatability, winter hardiness and cost.  In addition, I decided to plant permanent pasture in half of it only, seeding annual grazing in the other half.  This spreads the cost-perennial seeds are expensive-and may  make it possible to get around a difficult season if that is what we get.

When the season opens I will start grazing the herd and the decisions come daily:  How hard to graze, when to move, when to stock more heavily or destock, what the weather will do, can I get more acres to graze for late summer, how far into the fall can I graze and how do I make that happen.  These are decisions that are made daily and cannot be found in a book or from a consultant.  They are based on experience gained by observation, by hearing and smelling and then trying to put the big, impossible to fully understand picture together.  They must be based on judgement-what I know about this farm, and what I can  make happen. 

There are a multitude of similar choices that cropping entails too, but I have pretty much passed that part of the farming on to the next generation.  I hope they will learn too, and that farms are art forms.  They will not get any support in that idea.  I have not.

Part of this is due to the extreme prejudice in our country against anything small or made by work. 

 I wish them well.  They will need to learn from their dogs.