Life Calling

I've been working on a post about what I want to be when I grow up. It's not ready yet, and may never be, but here's a taste of what I was getting at. When I was a little girl, one of my favorite places to be was at my grandma's house, a small "hobby farm" out in the country. I loved to stand on the fence on the right side of the barn, where my uncle often kept a couple of cows. I would daydream about being a cowgirl, wearing blue jean skirts and plaid shirts with my hair in braids. I would live out in the west, and ride a beautiful bay horse. (Somehow I would overcome either my horse allergy or my fear of allergy shots in the intervening years between finishing grade school and becoming a cowgirl.) I think "farmer" and "cowgirl" were synonymous in my mind, and that was what I wanted to be.

Of course, when we were inside at my grandma's house, my sisters and I spent countless hours playing "school" where we would take turns being the teacher. (Everyone should have at least two siblings who are just about their same age. It makes this kind of game much more fun. There is no bossy know-it-all who can do long division while her sisters are trying to learn how to add.)

Clearly, it is obvious why I became a lawyer from those childhood dreams, right?

Or not. Which is probably why I went back to school to become a teacher. I like teaching. I want to find a job teaching. I liked working in the law firms less than I like looking for jobs, but I'm really not a big fan of this whole job search thing.

Maybe it's because I can't find a full-time job, or because, while I like subbing okay, I would rather be able to make long-term plans for next Thursday without the caveat of, "if a subbing job comes up I'll probably want to reschedule, just so you know." I'm not sure. But what I do know is that I can't stop daydreaming about becoming a farmer.

I've been working on a blog about it for a long time. But while I've been writing my blog, I keep getting distracted by other blogs. Some, I've been reading for longer than I've been composing my "farm envy" blog. I started following Mrs. Q sometime during tax season. She wants to be a farmer too!

Last weekend I discovered Cold Antler Farm. Tonight I clicked on one of her sidebars and found this post. I'm really not alone!

I bought what I thought was a book about dog-love, Izzy and Lenore by Jon Katz. Nope, it's a writer-turned farmer book. (I've been wanting to read his The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, but now I know that would just be asking for trouble.)

I enjoyed Michael Perry's Coop, but it also had the side-effect of making me want a farm.

And then there's Jayber Crow, the Wendell Berry novel I'm reading for one of my book clubs.

Two summers ago, my friend Joyce loaned me Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. I think you can preview it here. The book didn't exactly make me want to run off and join the farming community, but it did make me more aware of what life was like for a farm family during the Depression. I remember turning to Michael while reading the book on the train on our way to his step-sister's wedding, and commenting that, in the 1930s, people knew how to take care of themselves. We have become too reliant on mega corporations to take care of us. It is time to take back control of our lives. To live smaller, slower, and more mindfully.

I don't even want to get into Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which is what caused this whole farm-girl thing to resurface!

Maybe it's not that I'm being followed by pastoral images, it's just that I read too much. If I stopped reading, I wouldn't encounter so many farmer stories. But me not reading is about as likely as . . . well, getting Michael to want to live on a farm.

Fortunately, there are days like Saturday, where taking care of my little garden at my parents' house is enough to set me straight about how much I'd actually like being a farmer.

The Hidden Danger of Reading Other Peoples' Blogs

Yesterday as I was driving home from Madison, where I did some gardening and went to the Art Fair on the Square, I mentally composed a few paragraphs for a new blog post. I often compose in my head while driving. And practice oral arguments. And teach lessons. And they always go so well in my head in my car . . . but when I sit down to write them down, or say them out loud, I forget the perfectly crafted sentences, the mild sarcasm, they witty punch lines. Great writing that I compose mentally never makes it to the page.

Nevertheless, I thought I'd try to get those thoughts down on paper . . . er . . . my computer screen. The moving sentences about the double rainbow, the steam rising up from the county roads, the wriggling black mass in the road that looked like a dead animal but was, on closer inspection, a mother and six baby skunks. I dumped my produce on the kitchen island, took a few pictures of it, and practically ran to my computer.

As I sat down to blog, I realized that my creative juices had entirely stopped flowing. Fortunately I saved myself from utter despair (and boredom) by checking for updates on the (growing list of) blogs I like to read. From there, I started looking at the blogs that the people whose blogs I read read. No, I don't know these people. Well, maybe I do. Maybe I've met them and just didn't know it. Apparently I spent last weekend at the same event (attended by thousands of other people) that a woman whose blog I used to read obsessively (and now occasionally) attended.

As I delved further and further into blogs by people I don't know, I discovered this little gem. If you're going to read it, I highly recommend giving yourself plenty of time. Like two days if you have nothing better to do, and a week if you actually have a life. And start at the bottom. I haven't read the rest of her blog yet, but if it is anything like the story she tells about how she fell in love with her husband, I'm probably going to be hooked for life.

That's all for now, folks. I have more blogs to read.