Outbreak

Outbreak

Overview

In this month’s column, I’d like to discuss a serious medical issue. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people suffer from this grim condition. It’s not going away, hopefully catching, seldom malignant, and often inconvenient. My significant other and I both suffer from this disorder, and its brought us closer together, as we have started to spare others the awesome devastation brought on by our outbreaks.

Simply put, we are word whores.

Symptoms that indicate word whores, or double dubs, include texting each other obscure words, such as cariad, plinthite, bouncebackability, toposequence, slickensides, or revanche; using “big words” in conversation; asking each other’s favorite words; and reading books that don’t include Stephanie Plum, Bella or Jacob.

Diagnosis and Tests

You know you suffer from double dubs when you find yourself looking up words you don’t know in the dictionary. You also may own a thesaurus or have one bookmarked on your web browser. People may tell you that “normal people don’t talk that way,” or a quizzical look, cocked head, and blank stare may occur following a conversation at the bar over beers. Due to your love of words you may be ostracized by friends and loved ones, given strange looks when speaking in public places, and take to reading the dictionary alone in the bathroom at 3am, especially during serious outbreaks of double dub.

Treatment and Care

There is no cure for word whores. Usually this disease is present in young children and persists into adulthood. Symptoms may alleviate with age, may wax and wane as life progresses, but as of this writing no cure has been discovered by medical professionals.

Home Remedies

Alleviation of symptoms through home remedies is so far the most effective option. Alternatives for lessening the indications this disease include reading Jane Austen, George Eliot, Salmon Rushdie, or books on quantum theory. Herbal teas, namely ones with complicated names, have been shown to ease the anxiety that comes from the public ridicule and snubbing by family members. Also the reading French cookbooks and learning the proper pronunciation of Steak Provencal has been shown, in some unofficial studies, to reduce symptoms in some sufferers.

Other treatment methods include implementing a multivitamin and yoga routine to help control spontaneous outbreaks of verbosity. A diet consisting mainly of vegetables and fruits, with grass-fed meats, free-range brown eggs, and whole grains, with plenty of water and teas, also aids in controlling symptoms. The most important thing is to stop word whore symptoms before they start. Curb your tongue at parties and keep a varied and balanced diet of words, from science, classics, and popular books. Above all, no matter what, do not read while walking. Traffic accidents involving double dub suffers have been reported nearly eight times the national average, especially in front of libraries and post offices.

Finding Help

The important thing to remember, fellow double dubs, you are not alone. Reach out to the greater word whore community. Really, we are everywhere. Reading the Wall Street Journal, stuck in book stores, even custodians cleaning toilets and hiding in the men’s stalls with yesterday’s newspaper and Soy Bean Journal. This is not a disease you have to suffer in silence. It’s time we no longer live in shame. While there is no cure for being a word whore, the best treatment options include voracious reading, attending spelling bees if you have children, and taking a pillow and lavender tea with you and the dictionary to the bathtub at 3am.

---

Axie Barclay, is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth inalternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

Positive, Negative, and Ground

Positive, Negative, and Ground

Hope for the worst, prepare for the best… wait, that’s not right. Well, you get the idea.

In my experience, no one is as pessimistic and simultaneously optimistic as a farmer. Ask one. If the sun is shining, it’s too hot. If it’s raining, it’s too wet and all the crops will drown. Or maybe it’s just a Midwest thing, I don’t know. At the same time, these same people in overalls with Eeyore complexes have to be some of the most optimistic people around. We plant seeds every year in hopes they will grow. We breed livestock in expectation of profit. Either we’re secretly optimists or else have the worst gambling addiction in history, relying on Mother Nature for our good fortune instead of Lady Luck.

Regardless of being an optimist or a pessimist, negative thinking traps are just that: traps. While it’s been important for humans in the past to focus on the bad in order to learn from their mistakes and survive, in more recent times it causes more harm than good. Negative thinking makes you more than just a bore at the neighborhood barbeque; it affects your physical and mental health, making for increased anxiety, depression, irritability, and stress. The physical effects of negativity includes less ability to resist disease, poor self-image and eating disorders, a general malaise, obesity, heart disease, decreased life span, and just being an all-around bummer to hang out with.
By positive thinking, I’m not talking about Polyanna-esque insane cheerleader cheerfulness, but actual practical optimism. The glass is only half full if the glass is actually half full, telling yourself the glass is half full when it’s broken and shattered against the wall really doesn’t do anybody any good. Especially if that anybody is walking around the house barefoot. Being positive and being practical go hand in hand. Instead of thinking of all the negative outcomes, such as the weather is too hot/ cool/ volatile and the garden won’t do worth a darn and the canning will all go to crap due to the humidity, think about how maybe the tomatoes didn’t do so well, but the cayenne peppers kicked butt and you won’t have to dry peppers for at least two years. This is what I like to call practical thinking. It doesn’t focus on the negatives (“My tomatoes suck! I’m a horrible gardener!”) and is optimistic rather than illogically cheerful (“Those are some nice hot peppers… how many peppers can Peter Piper pick?”).

Readers and writers tend toward Dickensian moodiness when it comes to literature. (“This is the best book ever!” to “This is the worst piece of trash this f*&%ing writer ever produced!”) Where farmers can be pessimistic optimists, bibliophiles are more bipolar in their leanings, a book being either good, bad, or “eh” (shrug), which, granted, is the kiss of death. Both groups can benefit from positive thinking, by first recognizing negative thinking, such as filtering all thoughts so they are negative (“It’s raining so the crops will fail.”), personalizing bad things and blaming yourself (“I bought a book I already have, I’m such an idiot. No more browsing for me. I’m strictly Oprah’s picks from now on. I can’t be trusted with a sandwich, let alone choosing a novel.”) Polarizing, where you see all things as black or white, you have to be perfect or you’re a failure. And, my personal favorite, catastrophizing. This little gem of negative thinking is characterized by always assuming the worst. The crops will fail, get eaten by locusts, the cow will have two-headed dead twins, the combine will break down and the parts store will be closed, and dinner will burn. At the same time. On a Sunday. Before a major holiday. And the power will go out with your in-laws staying with you. When your wife announces she’s having twins. NOW!

While your wife going into labor unexpectedly might send you to the fridge for a cold beer, the odds of the rest occurring simultaneously are pretty slim. You might as well start making a list of all the unlikely good things that could happen as well. You might win the lottery while making love to a supermodel and your agent calls with a book deal that makes the Harry Potter franchise look like peanuts. Each scenario is equally unlikely. Check your thinking, that you’re not too pessimistic or overly optimistic, several times throughout the day. Find your trouble spots, pitfalls in your thinking, and work on improving those areas you want to change to more positive outlooks. Be open to humor and live an active, healthy lifestyle. Be positive and surround yourself with people who are positive. Be nice to yourself. You wouldn’t tell a friend who was down that they’re a bad person, so don’t reiterate that to yourself. Be the friend to yourself that you would have others be to you. And lastly, be grateful. The universe doesn’t have to give you good things. So be grateful for the good things, big or small, and set aside some time each day to appreciate the good things in your life. This attitude of gratitude may sound corny, but your old grandma was right when she said what goes around comes around. What you put out there, comes right back to you. If you’re mean, you’ll get meanness. If you’re grateful, you’ll get gratitude. Be appreciative and be mindful.

To develop a more positive mindset, instead of turning to anti-depressants or mood-altering substances like alcohol or illegal drugs, try this exercise. Dr. Martin Seligman, the so-called father of Positive Psychology, suggests finding three blessings, or three good things, in your day, every day, and writing them down as well as reflecting on them. It helps change your mindset from one focusing on all the negatives to one that admires the positives. For more information on positive thinking and positive psychology, or the three blessings in general, try

o http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/positive-thinking/SR00009/NSECTIONGROUP=2
o http://www.carolinemiller.com/info/Three_Blessings.pdf
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT2vKMyIQwc

And, last but not least on this soapbox jumble, to really find the positive and ditch the negative thinking, tune out the haters. If you feel driven and positive about the choices you’re making and are getting positive results and are happy in those choices, don’t let anyone tell you that you’re wrong, that your partner is wrong for you, that your job choices are wrong or that your life choices leave a bit to be desired. Don’t let your boss tell you that you’re a disappointment to him. If you know in the core and heart of you that you’re doing the right thing, with the right person, or following the right career path, whether it’s seeking a career in a circus or milking goats, do it. It’s your life, and no one can tell you that you’re doing it wrong unless you let them.

 

---

Axie Barclay, is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

5.16.12: Words from the Root Cellar – Readiness

Readiness

            How do you know when you’re ready? And how do you separate what you’ll never be ready for (reading James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake or Tolstoy’s War and Peace comes to mind) versus things you may be ready for but not know it? (Offspring anyone?) Readiness isn’t just about being present and eager and… well, ready. It’s also about being prepared, being in a state of mind that’s quick and willing to respond, but also as ready to help others as yourself. It’s a maturity, achieving a certain level of knowledge, either as a child or as an adult, and readiness changes as you do.

When you think about it, readiness is a big part of life. It’s important to know when you’re ready, or not ready, for the situations life throws at you. But how do you know if you’re ready? To get married, go to war, have a child, read Anna Karenina, fall in love, buy a house, buy a candy bar? What are the parameters for such major decisions?

The answer, as far as I can tell, is you guess.

When Dad and I plant the garden every spring, we don’t know the plants won’t get frosted or blasted by heat. We don’t know this year’s fall calves won’t suffer through worse weather than they would being born in the spring. We don’t know with absolute 100% certainty that the next batch of canned tomatoes won’t kill us all with botulism. I don’t know that I’ll enjoy the next book I review. But by gathering information, looking at the facts, figuring out what worked or didn’t work in the past, making big decisions gets easier. Unfortunately, sometimes, after all that effort, readiness remains elusive and the last resort readiness tool remains: yarn and hope.

There are things I’ll never be ready for. (Rereading Don Delilo’s Underworld comes to mind.) Knowing your limits is strength in and of itself. In the Delilo situation, by admitting that I might need a different skill set or mindset is the first step to facing upcoming hurtle of his reverse narrative. As far judging readiness to buy a candy bar… I’m probably not ready for the amount of cardio involved afterwards, but at least that’s a little more in the ballpark. As for the challenge of rotational grazing cattle or raising and butchering chickens? Bring it on.

Sometimes we fail. (The Great Garden Project of 2010 comes to mind, where someone lent Dad a three-bottom plow and I had grandiose dreams of integrated raised beds that didn’t exactly pan out, to say it kindly.) Sometimes we fail miserably. (The year we calved in January in Michigan over half the calves died, frozen to the ground during a week of more than twenty degrees below zero.) And sometimes, against the odds, you succeed beyond your wildest dreams. (My last first date ended up pretty miraculous, but will give the final word around December on that.) We work off the information available to us and make decisions from there. While it’s important to be optimistic, it’s equally important to be realistic about your own readiness. Are you ready because you’re fully informed, enthusiastic and motivated, prepared to act decisively and swiftly with facts to back you up? Or are you ready simply because you think you are. It’s important to assess your readiness, and be brutally realistic about it. Better to realize early that you’re unprepared and then get prepared than find out in the middle that you weren’t ready and fail. After all, botulism is a bad way to go.

Few of us probably ever feel ready for the challenges thrown at us. But you can feel more empowered to face challenges through preparation and brutal self-assessment. Whether it’s having kids or growing a pot of spinach in the kitchen window, get informed about what you’re up against and know your strengths as well as your weaknesses. Use failure as a learning opportunity. Don’t calve during a January cold snap without an insulated barn. And remember to have fun and enjoy life; sunsets and butterflies are around for a reason. As long as you do your best, stay optimistic and realistic, live with passion, and can look yourself in the mirror in the morning, you’re as ready as any of us ever are.

---

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, orhttp://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.comwhere she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

4.16.12: Cultivation

Cultivation

 by Axie Barclay

Books, gardens, and relationships all share one thing in common: cultivation. You can throw a seed or plant in the ground, but without a lot of luck, the plant likely won’t thrive. Likewise, you can buy a book, but without some commitment to reading, it’ll work better as a doorstop and object to dust once or twice a year. (What? Like you don’t dust your house with a shopvac? Only me? Crap. Moving on…)

The word cultivation refers not only to tilling and hoeing the soil, but also to culture. Refinement also fits in there somewhere and that kind of polish don’t just happen. Culture takes work, just like a garden, each with their own planting, tilling, weeding and watering needs, as do a multitude of other things in life. Whether you’re cultivating a garden, a book, a relationship, or a better credit score, there’s plenty to learn from the plants. Because, let’s face it, they’ve been at it a lot longer than people have.

1. Sunlight, air, and water. Plants know what they need. Without a goodly amount of these components, and a well-balanced dirt diet, plants might grow, but will likely fail to thrive. People likewise need fresh air and sunlight to thrive. How often have you heard someone saying, “Man, all this being outdoors, it’s really getting to me. If I don’t get this promotion, I’m hightailing it to corporate job.” Yeah not so much. Get outside and breath, enjoy the world around you, take a bottle of water and hit the trails or hike the neighborhood. Nothing is a mood lifter like sunshine, especially if you’re from northern climes where the sun goes away for half of the year. Besides, what works for the dark leafy greens can’t be all bad.
2. Nutrition. Just as feedlot, grain fed, confinement meats don’t offer quality nutrition, neither does superficiality or artifice offer quality nutrition to our relationships. Cultivate honesty, learn open communication, and really listen. Whether it’s a romantic relationship or one with your grandmother, humans are highly social creatures and social media only gets us so far. Think quality not quantity, in meats and in relationships. Would you rather have ten fast food half pounders or one very high quality grass-fed steak? Which one is more satisfying to your mind and body? The same goes for relationships, one good friend is worth two hundred Facebook ones. And with books, branch out once in awhile. No one should live on corndogs alone. Put down your usual genre and try something new, if for no other reason than to remember why you never made it through Finnegan’s Wake.
3. Cultivate patience. It takes a long time for a plant to grow. Reading takes a certain time commitment that takes away from vital biological needs, like The Voice and Survivor. Relationships don’t shoot up overnight either, or, if they do, they still take care. Water daily, fertilize in a timely manner, and get plenty of sunlight. And no, sunlight on a Wii tennis match doesn’t count.
4. Genuinely enjoy the world around you. Ever see an unhappy tomato plant? A crabby cucumber? They may not have higher neural processes, but we can still take note: Enjoy the sunlight, enjoy the rain, and worry less about the chickens scratching at the garden gate, eying the ripe watermelons. None of us get out alive and second chances are more rare than blue roan Shorthorn cattle. Don’t waste time with bad books, and if someone in your life is draining your energy and tearing you down rather than being a friend, think about cultivating them to the curb.

---

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

2.13.11: Passion

Passion

By Axie Barclay

I try to live my life where I end up at a point where I have no regrets. So I try to choose the road that I have the most passion on because then you can never really blame yourself for making the wrong choices. You can always say you’re following your passion.
–Darren Aronofsky

Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable. If somebody around you or your family does not understand it, then that’s their problem. But if you do have a passion, an honest passion, just do it.
–Mario Andretti

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.
–Charles Dickens

Just as the month of December is indelibly linked with Santa and snow, February instantly conjurors horrors of roses and one lonely night spent drinking warm champagne alone in an empty bathtub. But, love it or hate it, the sacred Hallmark day of hearts and roses comes every year, and whether you’re waiting for Cupid with a .45 or a glimmer in your eye for that someone special, you can’t change the fact that Valentine’s Day happens every year. But you can change your perspective about it. So the real thing to take away from this Valentine’s Day is that romantic love, for all the attention slathered on it, is not, I repeat, not, the point. Passion is.

Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
–Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The word passion, according to dictionary.com, first came into use between 1125 and 1175 AD. It began as a Middle English word, stemming from the Old French and Medieval Latin passiōn, referring to suffering and submission, specifically Christ and his suffering on the cross. Passion refers to any powerful or compelling emotion, usually with the extremes of love and hate used as examples. The secondary and tertiary meanings begin to refer to passion as amorous, but really, in the primary usage, passion refers to fervor rather than lust, and can just as easily refer to rage as it can to affection.
Likewise, the modern association between Valentine’s Day and the trappings of romantic love is also medieval in origin. Blame Chaucer and the French troubadours, fluting their way through the European courts with their ballads celebrating courtly love. Prior to this, St. Valentine’s Day was a day marking gruesome deaths of early Christian martyrs. Cheery. But thanks to a little old-fashioned commercialism and the chocolate industry, we now have to fend off annoying jewelry ads and partake in half-off all the pink crap post-Valentine’s sales instead of fending off branding irons and being drawn and quartered.
In this age of commercialism it’s easier to loathe the onslaught of hearts and Cupids and repine at being alone on the day, rather than use it in a more positive capacity. If you have someone to share the day with, rather than pout that they gave you yet another box of chocolates instead of the more coveted diamond earrings, use the day to remember what you love about each other, and what brought you together in the first place. How she crinkles her nose, how he kisses your neck, all the stupid little annoying personal couple-y things that are easy to take for granted in the daily grind of busy nothings. (And likewise, if you can’t remember any of these things, it might be time to start doing some reevaluating of a different sort…)

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
–Henry Miller

If your V-Day leanings tend more toward thinking pink is a mental disease and flowers are for phonies, reevaluating your mindset becomes even more important. You get back the energy you put out into the world, and if all is negative, all you get back is negative. Instead, try for passion, and it doesn’t have to be for another person. Rediscover a hobby or an author you haven’t visited in a while. Cancel the date with Netflix and take some time to scrapbook or weave used garden hoses into swans, whatever blows your skirt up. Romantic love is all very well, but you have to have passion for what you do and be good with whom and what you are before anyone else will be interested. You have to validate yourself, rather than depend on someone else to do it for you.

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
–Henri Frederic Amiel

Couple or single on V-Day, an excellent book for all that illustrates being content with yourself is Always Hit on the Wingman… and 9 Other Secret Rules for Getting the Love Life You Want by Glamour magazine’s dating columnist, Jake. While ostensibly having to do with relationships, Jake’s wisdom empowers woman, and men, about becoming better human beings in general, not just for the sake of their dating life. According to Jake, you already have the power to make your dreams reality. What you have to learn is how to use them to follow your passion, be that a relationship or being the best dang toe-accordion player the world has ever seen. My great-grandpa told my dad and my dad told me, no one will ever watch out for you in the world except you. That includes being responsible for your own happiness. And pursuit of happiness is a passion all its own.

Be Powerful.
Be Compelling.
Be Happy.
And, to paraphrase Gandhi, Be the change you want to see in the world.
–Axie Barclay

Endnote:
To my someone special this V-Day: We’re celebrating something very special and very new. It’s a latent force, a spark. Fire for fire. In you, in your eyes, each emerging from a hopeless place, we’ve found a passion, a potential, never expected. A thousand and a hundred score, a hundred and a thousand more.
Happy Valentine’s.

---

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

1.18.12: Her Infinite Variety

Her Infinite Variety

 by Axie Barclay

Now that the tinsel has come down, the wrapping paper has been put away, and the Santa figurines have been stored away until next year, have you packed up your resolutions along with the champagne glasses? Still taking carrots to work or has the leftover pizza won more times than you care to admit? I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. There’s too much pressure and too many occasions to fail. They’re often too drastic (“I’m going to lose fifteen pounds this week!”) or too vague (“I’m going to read more this year.”) Resolutions might be better viewed as a way to review the priorities for the next year. Do you want to be in this same place or what would you like to change, and what are some small, daily tweaks to your routine that you can do to elicit the change you want to see? But with all the variety out there (just look at the cereal aisle or an online dating website if you don’t believe me), how do you wade through the mess to figure out what books, romantic partners, or foods are worth your time and which aren’t worth a second click of the mouse? And how do you balance what you need versus what you want?

First of all, bookmark Portland Book Review (shameless plug, sorry) and check back frequently to see what our reviewers recommend. We’ve all gotten stuck with books not worth our time and have already done some of the leg (err… eye?) work for you by giving a thumbs up or down on the new books we review. But also use your common sense, if it isn’t a genre you enjoy or a food you like, chances are trying it again won’t improve the acquaintance. If you know you don’t like it already, move along.

Second, to quote the Greeks, “Know Thyself.” It may sound obvious, but if you keep picking up romance novels and you don’t like them, you’re not going to enjoy the book. Just because you’re “supposed” to like something doesn’t mean that you do. Dress up green beans any way you want, I still can’t stand them. Every once in a while I’ll try one, just to check, but it always ends with, “yup, still hairy and tasteless.” Don’t let your book choices be hairy and tasteless, make sure you know what you like and bite into the book with enthusiasm, let the juices run down your chin.

Third, know what you like, but also think and be smart about what you need. As a diagnosed sci-fi/fantasy geek, a diet of pure werewolves and spacemen can get a little… saturated. While some of us may want to live in a purely fictional world, is that kind of brain candy all we need? Or do we need to satisfy other needs as well? The dilemma in finding the balance between what we want and what we need applies all over the place. We want the cupcake, but we need the carrot. Too often the things we want are nutritionally empty, in terms of both food and books. While popular genres may be entertaining, they should be balanced by information, histories, biographies, gardening, anything that actually teaches as opposed to merely entertaining. And if the argument is that biographies are as boring as green beans, learn how to spice them up. Read about a topic you’re fascinated with. Grate the carrots and mix them in with the spaghetti sauce, you won’t even know they’re there.

If you’re like me, your bookshelves are groaning with unread books and a trip to the library results in papery whispers of “just one more, you can renew me if you want.” That seductive whisper becomes chilling when one realizes that they actually won’t live long enough to read every book they’d like to. After all, according to a New York Times article published in 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/books/the-last-word-how-many-books-are-too-many.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm, a new work of fiction is published every thirty minutes in the United States. Obviously no one has time to read every one of these books, although we bibliophiles may want to. The key is to prioritize, balance, and take action. Books and green beans don’t read or cook themselves.

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

 

12.15.11: Holiday Basics

Basics
by Axie Barclay

This statement probably won’t win many supporters, but I just have to say that I don’t like Christmas. Not just the tinsel and stupid songs, but because my grandpa died before Christmas. December 15^th. As his favorite grandchild, I won’t say I miss him the most, but certainly feel the lack of him far more as the years go by. I wonder often what he would say about things, what he would tell me to do. I miss his laugh and his sense of humor. Perhaps that’s why Christmas makes me testy and nostalgic rather than cheery. In that vein, thinking about what the time of year means, and especially in thinking about what my grandpa loved so much about it, seems more productive than focusing on the twelve ways Santa can go have an intimate moment with a hockey ornament.

First, a little bit about the Christmas holidays themselves and what they represent. They don’t just mark a special day to trade bookstore gift cards or nifty reading accessories (bookmark or clip-on bedtime reading light anyone?), but historically represented the last occasion of the year to muster our resources – in the way of food, family, and friends – in anticipation of the long, dark push into spring. It’s a holiday of celebration and renewal, with ancient people at their fires, family and friends gathered close around, for the last feast of the year before the longest night on the equinox, December 21, huddled together waiting and praying for the sun to return. At its heart, that is what Christmas is about, the fire to bring back the sun, the evergreen to mark life, red berries like blood to note the sacrifice that is sometimes necessary in life. While most of us never think of such ties to nature or the cycle of the year, that’s really what holidays represent, Christmas, Easter, May Day, Halloween, all festivals to mark the cycles of the year, helping people live in harmony with the seasons.

As the darkest time of the year approaches, it’s a time to take stock of the year, in what we have lost, but also in what we have gained. This reviewer, for her part, lost the man she thought she’d marry this year due to irreconcilable visions of the future together, as well as in how we saw one another. That loss shouldn’t have happened. You’re not supposed to have to break up with someone you love and who loves you back. But sometimes the cost for what you want is too high and whether that choice is right, wrong, or indifferent, it has to be made. But, on the other hand, the gains returned ten-fold in the form of rekindled friendships and a new-found self-confidence that never would have occurred otherwise. In some cases losses are less about giving up than in realizing something else more important exists. That’s what the holidays should be used to remind us of: what’s truly valuable to and in ourselves. Finding that perfect gift or planning the perfect party doesn’t matter. But knowing, deep down in your guts, what’s most important does.

Back in the winter of 2006, at least here in Michigan, the winter had turned pretty dark. The economic collapse hit us first and with the uncertainty and fear, the whole community stank of it. We were out in a cousin’s pole barn, with many others, with a fire and a table spread with food, the older people and the babies, beers in hand; with men over fifty, looking as grizzled and tough-as-nails in their grimy Carhartt’s and winter beards, cooing over the baby to amazing comedic effect. One guy, not the most reflective of men, during a quiet moment, said something that’s stuck with me ever since. It came to the effect of “This is what it’s all about. Good friends and family, food, a good fire. No matter what happens, this is what it all comes down to.”

Now, it may not be that way for everyone, but for this reviewer, those are the basics that life comes down to. It didn’t hit me until tonight that this is the very reason my grandpa loved the holidays so much. Having lived through the Depression he loved sitting and watching everyone eat. When he finished, often he’d sit with his elbows on the table, hands covering a smile as he watched the family joke and banter with one another. He loved seeing us all together and his laugh, like all Barclay laughs, could fill a room. So when I picture my grandpa, I see a robust man who loved to joke and be with his family. It makes Christmas a little less annoying… (but seriously, who buys each other cars for Christmas? The ads are just infuriating).

Books begin with words, plants begin with roots, and family, food, and fire are the basics of life. When all the rest is stripped away, this is what you need to survive. With all the holiday hoopla and stress nowadays, it might be nice to remember that to help put the rest in perspective as we all look into 2012. For this reviewer, 2012 will come with these basics: family, friends, fire, and good food. It’s a way to keep my grandpa’s memory and legacy alive, and a way to stay close to him. Hopefully 2012 will be a good and prosperous year for everyone, if not in cash or worldly goods, then in friendships. Remember to nurture the basics of family and friends through the coldest months of the year the same way you’d nurture words on the page, or roots of a plant. Because, when it’s all said and done, these basics are everything a person has. Love fades and money vanishes and the people who stick with you, pretty or ugly, rich or poor, are the ones who count.

And if the person you’re with doesn’t appreciate a good fire and dirty jokes, it’s their loss.

---

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

11.15.11: Deer Season and Cider Doughnuts

Deer Season and Cider Doughnuts
by Axie Barclay 

Halloween has ended, and as the leaves redden and fall, as the frost settles white and slick on the orange curves of the pumpkins, as the air turns cool and smells like apples and rotting leaves, here in the north, firearm deer season commences. Men, glossy-eyed with erotic fantasies of stalking, killing, and gutting the big buck, flock to the woods, leaving deer-widows rolling their eyes and making shopping plans with their girlfriends. In some rural schools, kids get the day off, since most of them will be in the woods anyway, and a hush of held-breath expectation settles in before those first cracks of gunshots shatter through the misty morning on opening day.

This is what I think of when I think of autumn anyway; alongside the euchre games and aching amounts of beer and whiskey and tall tales about the buck that got away. But I also think of the historical significance of these traditions, hollow as they may be to most people. Fall has always been the traditional time of harvest and hunting. Deer season hails back to the far older tradition of the harvest and is as good a time as any to reflect on the sacredness of the season. Maybe it’s because my birthday falls this time of year, but autumn has always seemed special to me. There’s a reverent quality to the air, as the summer season fades, and winter teases along the senses. It’s a season of frenzied activities as creatures sense the lush prosperity of the growing season withering on the vine, and they begin packing in winter supplies with renewed vigor. As the season cools and the vegetable garden lays bare and picked clean before being tilled under, we remember why we canned peaches, why we pack potatoes and onions in the root cellar, and why we layer meat into the freezer. It’s the last gasp before winter, the final opportunity to fill the larders with those last sources of nutrition that might be the breaking point between survival and starvation. Perhaps not so much anymore, but as people feast on trick or treat candy, turkey, and Christmas cookies, we still show remembrance for these historical traditions of the season.

In the world of words, November marks a word harvest of its own. National Novel Writing Month, affectionately called NaNoWriMo by its promoters and victims alike. In short, 50,000 words in 30 days, 1,667 words per day. The goal is to have the rough draft of a novel, even a bad novel, by the end of the month. Crazy? Yes. But the argument could also be made that in the days of mega-grocery stores and QVC, crazy is sitting out in a deer stand in freezing temperatures waiting for just the right deer to wander by while slowly losing feeling in one’s feet.

However you note it, with fake pumpkin garlands and sweet treats out of a plastic bag or skinning deer amidst the rustle of corn stalks, autumn is a lovely season, whether one is lucky enough to be born under the Scorpio sign of the zodiac or not. If you’re so inclined, notice the season with more than gripes about winter. Embrace the change of seasons. If you really get back what you put out into the world, put out positives by noting how picturesque bare trees can look or by enjoying the seasonal change of food. Buy apples from a local orchard and learn to dry them on a food dehydrator or save them for apple crisp over Thanksgiving. Cider, cider doughnuts, and eating fresh apples are all great seasonal treats for the whole family. Plaster on some orange and take a walk in the woods. (And let me know if you find the cave where all the deer hide out playing euchre and drinking beer until the hunters go away. We’re convinced they only send the stupid ones out during the two week gun season to run into cars and get more beer.) If you’re less outdoorsy, don’t have the opportunity, or just like to read in addition to the outdoors, try reading seasonal books. The poem “Apple Picking” by Robert Frost comes immediately to mind. To find more books for your autumn reading list be sure to check back frequently with Portland Book Review for the latest dirt on all your soon-to-be favorite books.

And if you’re very crazy, it’s not too late to join NaNo at www.nanowrimo.org. Whatever you do, take a deep breath and enjoy the season. It only comes once a year.

---

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

10.15.11: What Does Self-Sufficient Mean to You?

What Does Self-Sufficient Mean to You?
By Axie Barclay

Sustainable agriculture differs from traditional agriculture in many respects. One of the fundamentals is continual education, not just from seed and chemical reps, but actual book reading and discussion. Not to say mainstream farmers aren’t educated, but the focus is less on stewardship than on dollars of input per acre. It takes a lot more brainpower to reconcile environmental impact with actual dollars spent and overall human/animal happiness. Anyway, this need for continual education has slowly filled my book shelves with books pertaining to sustainability. I’ve realized the ideas inherent in sustainable agriculture carry over to life as well.

One aspect of sustainable agriculture is self-sufficiency, and this can vary greatly in degree. One of my favorite books, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living, works to define self-sufficiency for the modern world and does a bang-up job of it. Gone is the idyllic image of early morning milking the cow by hand, hand-tilling the garden, and churning your own butter, and in comes canning food bought from local farmers, raised bed gardens, and making your own yogurt (surprisingly easier than one would think). Carrying this idea a bit further, the important thing to remember is that neither sustainable or self-sufficient mean perfection. No farm is an island, especially if your kitchen garden is on top of concrete high-rise. This is self-sufficiency for the world of iPods. It means doing the best with what you have at the time, learning from your mistakes, and having a good time. For instance, if part of your vision for a sustainable lifestyle involves canning, and you hate canning, that’s not very sustainable, is it? Every year when canning comes around, so does the dread. If you don’t look forward to what you do on a daily or yearly basis, this will grind you down until it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning. (Thinking of my stepmom when I write this, but shhh! I don’t think she reads this column.) Whereas if you don’t particularly like the task, but take a different view of it, bring a friend over and watch chick flicks or mix a pitcher of peach margaritas while cutting and canning peaches, it makes an unpleasant task more palatable.
Because, I guess that’s what I’m getting at, sustainability is an attitude. Growing up in an area with lots of farmers, there’s a lot of talk about suffering. “I stayed out until three in the morning, running the combine nonstop until we got all the soybeans in,” is great, but if the farmer is miserable, what’s the point? Suffering for its own sake is rather medieval. Being sustainable is about being able to enjoy what you do, about the animals having a high quality of life, about living a lifestyle that makes you happy now, not about putting happiness off until the 401K kicks in. Being sustainable is about goal-setting and feeling pride and satisfaction in meeting those goals not for the sake of goal-setting, but for the result.

For instance, on our farm, I picture a happily fermenting compost pile, raised garden beds with low-tunnels in the wintertime, an herb garden with beehives nearby, cow-calf pairs harvesting grass as ruminant animals were meant to, chickens clucking away as they chase bugs and run making their meat healthy and strong. I see sharing it with someone who enjoys and shares the vision as much as I do, rather than the naysayers who stick with the Earl Butts, former Secretary of Agriculture, “get big or get out!” scenario. I picture my family taking care of the farm so it can take care of us and eliminate the need for two full-time jobs and three part-time ones to sustain everything. Because really the latter, the reality at present, is the one that’s unsustainable.

So the thing to take away from this ramble on sustainability is: everyone has to decide what is sustainable for them, whether it’s completely off the grid living, or setting time aside to put up food grown by others to supplement a family’s pantry over the winter. Self-sufficiency isn’t the same for everyone, every person has to define it for themselves. Whether it’s food, developing a new habit like writing every day, learning to cook or knit, or a million other things. Life is defined by extremes, but extremes are not sustainable. They deplete resources, environmental, physical, or emotional, and the toll of living in such a way is high. So find your balance: what, where and who makes you happiest, and you may find your level of self-sufficiency and sustainability.

As a classic farmer, my favorite reads are The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, The Rodale Herb Book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living by Jerome D. Balanger, Mini Farming by Brett L. Markham, and various works by Joel Salatin and friends. For the more urban reader, or those who don’t have large acreages at their disposal, Portland Book Review has some great reads reviewed in the Home and Garden section.

Some good ones include:
City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing by Lorraine Johnson

Tips for Container Gardening by the Editors and Contributors of Fine Gardening

Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land by Kurt Timmermeister

The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-less Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden by Ivette Soler

High-Impact, Low Carbon Gardening by Alice Bowe

And many more! (Anyone else hungry? Just saying… )

---

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.

9.15.11: Chicken Butchering and MBAs

Chicken Butchering and MBAs
by Axie Barclay

My boyfriend, ahem ex-boyfriend, and I got into a, ahem, discussion the other day about butchering chickens. We butcher a few on our homestead every year and this year was more of a production than most, so we paid the friends and neighbors who helped us process chickens for eight hours on a Saturday with a couple chickens apiece. My ex argued that paying them in birds cost us money. I argued that if we don’t pay them, we don’t have help. But, he said, if every chicken pays for a bag of feed, you just cut into your bottom line and your profit.

I’ve always thought business was full of ugly words like this, profit margin, bottom line, production assembly, QuickBooks. And even coming gracefully out of his mouth, whispered in my ear like sweet nothings of pillow talk, I still didn’t like them.

“Well,” I said smoothly (I thought), “we could not pay them at all and then no one would show up to help on butcher day. Would that make it better?”

After doing a lot of thinking and tossing and turning at night on this question, I decided that the reason business lingo sounds do dirty is that it’s so divorced from reality. “Profit margin” doesn’t really capture the early mornings Dad spent getting up and feeding our ravenous Cornish Cross roosters or relate the grazing pattern we implemented this year with the cows or communicate just how tired we all were when all that was left of Butcher Day was a freezer full of chicken and a pile of feathers. It certainly doesn’t contain the hard work of and our gratitude toward the community who helped us set up our butcher area, wrangle birds into kill cones, breathe the stink of wet feathers and scalded flesh, and learn how the oil sac comes off best and how one smooth motion of a knife removes a gall bladder and other organs all at once.

The interesting thing about butchering on the farm is that it’s not about death, as some people ask. “Doesn’t it bother you to, ya know, kill things?” Humans have been killing to eat since they stopped eating maggoty carcasses of road kill, around the time of the invention of the spear point. That kill-or-be-killed mentality has diluted only recently and while it’s not anyone’s favorite part of farming or eating, the interesting part is that it’s so social. From deer hunting to chicken butchering, if we’re processing meat, people tend to show up. We work and we laugh and by the end of the night, you know who your friends are. Home butchering has always involved this facet of interaction, entire villages and communities or just families gathering together to ease the workload. My grandmother tells stories about butchering hogs and how the smell of rendering lard made her sick, but at the same time she’ll talk about how she learned so much from my grandpa’s family and wonderful details about the Barclay women and how they used to do things. Its priceless knowledge and I often realize how lucky I am to have it. How many people can peaches with their grandmother anymore and listen to her stories?

Food and stories are so basic, but as food becomes more industrialized, interpersonal interaction reduces, at least as far as I can tell. Sustainable agriculture and local agriculture don’t just benefit the food system, but the cultural part of agriculture. If you nurture a plant or stock or even partially stock your own pantry, even if it’s with food someone else grew, you can still benefit from the culture, trading stories and sharing laughs with people who appreciate the same things in life as you do. The oral tradition gave us some of the most influential stories in human history: Beowulf, The Odyssey, The Illiad, and others. They captured the rules of how to behave for a culture. For instance, if a beautiful woman captures you on her island, make sure you pay her compliments or she’ll turn your crew into pigs. While these are formal stories, other stories, family stories, get passed down much the same way. Their importance, for all of being little stories, is vital to people, helping them see where they came from and how to find their way in the world. Without these stories, which contain a code of behavior that is more immediate than Circe and Grendal, people can struggle, or feel cut adrift. Family, after all, is the longest and biggest story of all.

So, in the end, my ex might be right, giving chickens away might cut into my bottom line.

Ask me at the end of the day if I give a darn.

*Author’s Note: Boyfriend in question was not dismissed for reasons mentioned in this article. Reconciliation actions are in progress. The term “ex” has been retained for comedic purposes for the use of this article only.

 

---

Axie Barclay is a Michigan writer with a cow-habit. Having discovered the joys and potential for growth in alternative agriculture, she quests ever longer and harder for ways to combine farming and writing into a business. When not milking cows, making disgruntled noises at the latest disgusting thing the heeler dogs dredge up, riding horses, or keeping the fence up around her small beef herd, she’s holed up reading an eclectic array of books or tapping out pages. When not working, she enjoys kicking back with her honey, family, and friends at a bonfire with some beers. Chat her up on Twitter and Facebook, /axieb, or http://barclayfarmsandlit.blogspot.com where she delves into literature and agriculture with a relish… and occasionally ketchup. Soon to be homemade.