Greenstorm's Journal

New Things/The Year Awakens

greenstorm — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 18:11:34 GMT

I have two kinds of hot peppers growing indoors, rescued from my deck at the end of the year: matchbox and black hungarian. As the light has returned and I've increased their water they've started blooming. I did a very impromptu cross-pollination between them yesterday, no anther removal, and will try emasculating some flowers and doing a proper cross next time. If I grow the F1 out this summer, next winter I can have a sea of F2s to play with.

Some of my fancy peppers are coming up, or at least germinating on their paper towels and heat mats and being transferred to pots.

Plus I found the pepper seed store Semillas La Palma, which is a lot of fun. A lot of peppers aren't great in my climate, but when I branch into baccatums and high-elevation ones I can find some. I love the idea of hunting down some and trying them here. I also like heat but not super intense heat, and the fact that there are a ton of "seasoning" or "dulce" peppers in their collection, with no heat, is nice too. I need to winnow down through their offerings to find what works.

The sun is completely returning. The sky was light before I got out of bed this morning. It's been warm during the day a lot, my freezers are plugged back in and I moved the frozen food on my deck into the freezers.

Plus, Black Chunk, who I thought miscarried during the cold, gave me six lovely little piglets. They're born in a warm spell! I locked her in her chosen birthing shed with the piglets and they were all fine this morning. They'll need to be castrated but hey.

In concert with this the cooler at the grocery store broke down and I brought home 40 dairy crates of milk and yoghurt for the pigs. I'm feeding it out roughly four crates a day. There were a couple crates of tiny squeeze bottles of yogurt that will go directly in the garbage, but the pigs will get gallons and gallons of it. It's a great supplement for them right now.

Meanwhile I'm doing the standard juggling to try and figure out where to put my plant shelves with lights, where to put my geese for spring pair-off(wading out to the empty greenhouse involves thigh-deep snow and too many things under the snow to snowblow my way over, ditto one of the a-frames). At some point I'll get to what to plant and where it will go, that will be even more juggling! But it's the fun kind.

Typical

greenstorm — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 17:25:33 GMT

Alright. I'm not used to having a normal experience of something, but I may be having a normal experience of autism, now, as an adult, that many people are more used to having their whole lives.

So a meme went around a bit ago. The text was:

people think taking things literally is just like

-not getting jokes and sarcasm

when in my experience it's more like

-thinking you have to fulfill 100% of the exact requirements for something, when everyone else apparently knows it's actually a bit flexible

-SAYING something with a literal meaning and others interpret it figuratively

-following instructions to a T but not knowing how [you're allowed to] modify them when something goes wrong

-doing EXACTLY what someone asked of you and them getting mad that it wasn't what they meant or actually wanted [this feels very gaslight-y]

-being terrified of people's empty threats or hyperbole without realizing they didn't actually mean it

-[learning] all the connotations of different words so you can use them as precisely as possible, getting frustrated when others are inexact

A lot of this aligns with my experience.

For the longest time my work was pretty unambiguous. I worked hourly or by piecework, I did the thing, I got paid for it. Now I'm in this union environment which is not designed for folks who do either knowledge work or fieldwork, and the way folks deal with it is by being imprecise, by saying there's no flexibility but knowing there is, but knowing there's not too much flexibility. There are a ton of, I don't know if they're empty threats or not, but I suspect they are. And no one can speak plainly about it because when I ask literal questions they're figurative in response.

And none of this is about the actual work product. It's all about "is it ok to start lunch 5 minutes early and end it 5 minutes early" which is such bullshit to be worrying about. I'd rather worry about the fact that wildfire and the biologists have conflicting requirements for how much wood is left on a block and how to reconcile that, but instead I get resentful that I get my teeth into a project and if I take 10 minutes into lunch to complete something I can't just come back after lunch 10 minutes later without using vacation time, but sometimes I can, but we're not supposed to, so don't do it often because we're not supposed to but it's ok to do it a little bit but really we shouldn't do it but sometimes we do. So then PDA kicks in and says that since they don't care whether I'm working well or efficiently, why should I bother? I can sidestep the demand of having to work because my work is useful and often interesting, but having 8 to-the-minute time demands per day is defeating me (start, lunch, two breaks, and end time).

Then I do some spiralling around it because I'm not doing good or prolific work and it feels like a shitty use of my time. So, ok, I'm having poor mental health and I know some things to do about that: some grounding things, journaling, taking time to really root into my life and pay attention. But then more ambiguous rules stuff strikes: if I'm having a truly awful mental health day and can't work, does that count as sick for the purposes of sick leave? When they send out emails a couple times a month telling employees to do all these grounding exercises and whatever to care for their mental health, do they mean on the clock? Probably they mean "don't do it, it's not ok, but it's ok to do sometimes but not very often but it's actually allowed".

Which basically means it's something you're not supposed to talk about, which is isolating.

So, yeah, if autism is a thing where folks don't follow social norms right (among other things) then one of the big ways it presents for me is in interpretation of ambiguity. In a lot of cases I can throw the ambiguity out and society's ok with that: modern gender stuff, for instance, makes less sense to me as an actual thing than older more defined ones, but I can throw out the whole thing and folks are more or less ok with it. Mononormative relationships? Make no sense to me but I just don't do them.

Highly unionized (read: prescribed) work environment where folks socially kind of work around poorly worded rules? Crashing. Burning.

And it's making me think about how autism is supposedly also an issue of emotional regulation. The idea is that autistic folks can't regulate like neurotypical folks and they melt down or shut down a lot. But if you put anyone in a situation where they aren't allowed to know what they're supposed to be doing, what they're supposed to be doing is actually impossible for them, they don't know whether or not there will be punishment in any given second for not doing the thing they don't know what it is and can't do-- and then stop them from doing the mind or body things (stimming) that soothe them. Well. I think you get meltdowns and shutdowns, fight or withdrawal, and all the normal trauma stuff that autistic people evidence to the point where we do not know what autism looks like without comorbid trauma stuff.

So that's my weekend thought. Also some farm stuff but that gets its own post because it's happy.

Where I feel stuck

greenstorm — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 01:15:03 GMT

Social: how do I keep or create community when social media is a problem for me/I like its reminders of folks I know

Time use/work life balance: Assuming 9 hours for sleeping, 2.5 hours for cooking & eating, 8 hours of working, 30 minutes of laundry and toothbrushing, that leaves 4 hours for administrative details, friendship, hobbies, house maintenance, family, etc per day. Then if I'm supposed to get groceries, exercise, do mental health exercises...

Can I keep the farm? It's the thing that I feel matters, and doing farm things is one of the few soothing parts of my life. It's also most of my life. Do I need to give up the farm to have people?

Ok, I've had too many bad days in a row. Highly likely it's where I'm at in my menstrual cycle, but since I don't have gynecologist access I guess we try the other route again.

Made a game plan for some practical stuff with a check-in and assistance person (pig stuff, car stuff).

Verified with my employee line at work that they can't help with this, but am waiting for a callback on someone who can hopefully help me make a list of things to try and help me be accountable to doing them in the 5 sessions I get with we-can't-find-anyone-who-does-trauma-or-gender-or-autism random person (but-we'll-try-to-avoid-someone-who-will-make-it-worse).

Going to run some reality checks with my counselor (is this the right direction?).

Have probably secured funding for at least some of this, not because my government or workplace are competent at mental health but because I have friends with money.

Then:

Speaking to an expert at somatic experiencing therapy to make sure they're not gender and autism hostile (maybe international if I can't super verify someone in Canada), and to a Canadian expert in atypical autism and to make sure she's PDA-competent.

This brought to you by crying my way through another diversity and inclusion workshop at work (they're pretty good! But I'm so intensely triggered by them and scared of the idea of any sort of honesty at work that it's pretty clear it's a trigger attached to a ton of stuff and not a reaction to what's going on at the time, and I can't ground and continue because it was just continuous and I couldn't get out of it) and losing another day to being in a terrible place and honestly being pretty tired of all this and I'll be damned if I give up the farm and let my life diminish into nothing and let this fucking trauma win. Also to having started bleeding, which always helps so much.

Commit

greenstorm — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 17:33:58 GMT

I've renewed my mortgage here. In Canada you have to renew your mortgage every 5 years at whatever the interest rate at the time is, even if it's supposed to be a 20 year mortgage or whatever. I'm not sure why they do that, but they do.

Benefit of living out here where I do: very low cost of land. Issue with living where I do: not much equity, so while housing value everywhere else is doubling and giving people places to put their house-fixing and property-improving debt, I do not have such an option. So I still have this debt, it is still a stress, but I have tenure in my home for another 5 years at the same interest rate as when I got it.

I guess that's part of feeling like I might settle in here. It's part of thinking of making shelving that fits the weird walls and part of considering where my art will go and part of settling plant lights into more sustainable locations (gosh it's hard to put up wall shelves that will hold the weight of plants). It's a feeling of safety-in-myself.

It's also a part of unsafety-with-people. I was listening to my relationship podcast the other day and they interviewed Brian Mahan, a somatic experiencing therapist. They were talking about how the pandemic made everyone unsafe: people on the street, our loved ones who went out to get groceries to care for us, every person has been a threat for a long time, and in turn we are a threat to our loved ones. Community and feeling like we can be ourselves in community is so important to heal shame and be ok with ourselves, to not hide ourselves, and now our communities are dismembered and we have no way of gaining the social safety and validation we need, they said. This aligns with my experience pretty well: I tended to have pockets where parts of myself were ok and the rest of me wasn't, but because I had enough of those pockets for most of me I was ok.

Now I have nowhere to be ok except at home with myself and I have to rebuild community. This is a hard place for me to rebuild community. The covix/vax issue adds another layer on unsafety to people who might potentially not fit. I used to be really optimistic that anywhere I went I could find folks to get along with. Up here there are lots of interesting folks but most people are tied into family systems: busy with kids and singular spouse after work and socializing as that unit if at all, and then either working or free during the time I'm working. Those normative structures really trip me up. Looking for folks who do relationships outside the norm, who have strong interests they get geeky about, who don't conform to gender stuff: that's easy. Folks whose life structure fits with mine enough to be friends? Not so much. And then folks who aren't moving to a small town to get away from covid mandates? Also not so much, though I'd imagine there were folks who want to move to protect themselves from covid too.

But anyhow, I guess finding and building community is what I'm committing to by staying here. And I guess I can't expect someone else to build the community I want, nice as it might be: I need to do it myself.

Creatures

greenstorm — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 22:20:10 GMT

I'm trying to sort out my animal situation.

Animals take a lot of constant work, unlike the garden which requires bursts of seasonal work. To some extent that constant work is important for me since it gets me up and moving every day. To some extent it's a problem, because it makes vacations etc difficult. To a large extent it can be ameliorated with infrastructure where more $ = more freedom. For instance the difference between hauling water from indoors, hauling water from the spigot on the side of the house, short-hosing water from a field standpipe right next to the pig field, and having an heated or geothermal automatic waterer is a tremendous gradient from a ton of daily work to a once-daily stroll. Likewise feed has a work gradient from shoveling off the truck and hauling daily through tractoring to the location and finally tractoring to automatic feeders.

I had hoped to be in a different place with infrastructure finances by now, but between my 2019 job loss and shift and the chimney/roof repairs and the covid/abattoir situation I am not. So it's time to make some decisions.

I love geese. I'm at 28 right now - white chinese, brown chinese, roman, pilgrim, embden, and saddleback. They're low-care except for winter water, and keeping them inside in the cold of winter and then in breeding pens is probably going to make my spring a lot better. When they were free-ranging in spring there were significant poop issues on my driveway. I'm happy to increase my goose population (highest ever was 44 and that's an ok summer number, as would be a slightly higher number). I'd like to add a couple brown chinese females, several classic roman geese (non-poof-headed), maybe one saddleback pair or trio, and eventually either cottom patch or shetland (shetland probably aren't genetically viable anymore and are thus a functionally dead breed, which is sad because I love them). They are almost all rare, they're great lawnmowers, I find them super rewarding. I think it's fair to cap myself at 1-2 males and 3-4 females of any of the breeds that aren't vanishingly rare, with a cap of maybe 3 males and 6 females of roman, saddleback, or shetland (hahahaha, that would be the largest or second-largest shetland flock in north america but I can dream) and only 2 very rare breeds in that case. I'm not concerned about having too many geese, really, except insofar as I have housing for them. They will always be worth the feed bill for me and a bunch of people seem to like the meat so I seem to be able to sell them ok.

Ducks are very hardy, good layers, and ornamental. They're entertaining. They smell weird. They mess up water. In winter they eat a lot, and they're expensive to slaughter. They make a really great size bird for me personally to eat, unlike a goose which is so huge. I'm involved in Anconas, which are a newly created breed, cayugas which are basically living jewels, the snowblower duck line which is excellent farm utility, and pekins which I want to incorporate into the snowblower line for size but hopefully retain some of the great laying/brooding qualities. So I do want to keep ducks, they can hang out with the geese in winter outside of breeding season, but I don't want to overwinter more than two dozen-ish. I can sell ducklings pretty well in spring if I hatch them out, and probably hatching eggs. Selling whole ducks for food is less worth it between abattoir costs and how small they are; adding some size to the line might help.

Chickens make chicken eggs, which I like scrambled or fried or mostly boiled (duck and goose are too rich for me when cooked that way, though I think I could get used to duck soy eggs). They also make chicken, which isn't super replaceable by other meats for a bunch of things. They're good at turning over the litter in ways ducks and geese don't, and they likewise turn the top inch of soil pretty well in a garden while de-bugging and removing weeds. I'm settled mostly into hardy breeds (chanteclers and americaunas) and the longer I keep breeding here the better I'll be. Keeping a couple chickens is great. Keeping a bunch of chickens is a pain, this despite the hatching eggs and chicks selling pretty well. A dozen or eighteen chickens with two to three roosters, replacing about half every year? That sounds about right. I'll keep playing with my chantecler/americauna mix with a bit of whatever will bulk them out a bit.

Dogs keep everyone safe, they stay.

Cats are not completely aligned animals, they catch some vermin which is good but I'm allergic to them which is bad. However, I have these cats and they live here now. I manage them by controlling access to parts of the house and I should probably get a hepa air filter.

All of the above need minimal alteration/infrastructure changes except maybe more goose houses. Now for the difficulties.

Pigs. Oof. I started pigs as tillers for the garden and they're fantastic like that. Like chickens they'll eat anything. Ossabaw pork is unrivaled and can't be bought. Lard for soap is a lot of fun. I really believe in this breed and it's vanishingly rare and getting rarer by the day with the way feed costs are going. They require the most outside inputs in terms of feed and I was going to say butchering help, but that's not entirely true. They require more labour from me for butchering because there's no one who can do them justice, who works on regular pigs. Handling 3' of backfat and a 2" loin eye instead of 7/8" backfat and a 4" loin is just... folks who butcher commercially run on muscle memory for grocery store cuts, and my pigs are nowhere near that even a little. Also castrating them is really, really emotionally difficult; there's a shot in europe you can give boars that essentially functions like castration and I wish that would hurry up and be approved here. Breeding is less controllable: with birds you remove the eggs and you don't get babies, sometimes you even need to put them in an incubator to make babies. With pigs it's super difficult to keep a boar separated from the females when they're in heat, both of them will go through most fencing, and then a boar can't be kept alone so he needs a companion, and she needs a companion, so that's at least four pigs if you're separating the boar. Pigs can be artificially inseminated but Ossabaws can't since there's no frozen semen for them. So anyhow, I really, really want to keep pigs on the landscape but they're a tremendous amount of work. I need to reduce the numbers I have and keep them low. I wish so much there was a vet within a couple hours that would castrate for me and/or that shot would be approved (I just looked this up and Improvest* was I think approved and starting pilot trials in 2010, it was in a 2016 piece of legislation that's now defunct, but I can't find it in modern legislation, gotta look into this more so this is super promising, it reduces boar taint and keeps girls from getting pregnant, this may let me keep pigs! Yay!). I also need to keep extending my fencing if I want to keep pigs and extend my gardens, but I guess that's true anyhow (I'm lookin' at you, deer/moose).

Muscovy ducks are not entirely practical here, but they are lovely. They're sweet animals, they make beautiful sounds, they're beautiful. Their feet will frostbite in ambient conditions in winter so they need to be confined either with electric heat or with deep-bedded compost. They make a completely different meat to other waterfowl, basically a clone for beef, they lay sporadically but prolifically when they lay, and they are good incubators. Locally there is a disease (?) which kills them when they are young and go out on the land, so they need to be kept indoors when young until they're a considerable age. So, these are an optional pet-slash-incubator, and they require an indoor either heated or deep-bedded composting space

Costurnix quail are weird in the practical/impractical scale. They lay like champs, year round, tremendous volumes of eggs by body weight. The eggs are annoying for practical purposes but really great in salad dressings, tartares, etc. A couple in a greenhouse are tremendous helps in reducing pests. They make lovely noises. They take up almost no space. They're fiddly to eat, have short lifespans, and need to be kept in groups with many more females than males so they're not the most practical meat animal. They need to be kept enclosed at all times since they have no sense. Their infrastructure is out of scale with everyone else's so they really need their own setup, though I'm having some success sharing a completely enclosed space with chickens. I'd love to have a couple in each greenhouse all summer, which requires the greenhouse be sealed, but it's hard for me to have animals for the summer and get rid of them over winter. Along with muscovies these are definitely on the luxury list. Unlike muscovies these are one-more-different-thing, since the muscovies can go in with chickens/ducks in a deep bedding situation, but also unlike muscovies they can be set up with significantly easy auto-feeders and auto-waterers.

Ok, those are the animals. Now what increases my capacity?

-Pig immunocastration shot. Look into this.
-Automatic feeders. Easy to make for birds, harder for pigs. Might be worth it to buy one in for pigs. Have to figure out how to keep them from being buried by deep bedding for the birds (deep bedding rises the floor by 2' slowly over the course of the winter). I should make the bird ones anyhow.
-Hand-filled automatic waterers. Easy for chickens or quail. Hard for waterfowl in winter (55-gallon-drum with a hole cut on the side?) but easy in summer, and not really a thing for pigs unless I built a tank that filled their bowl via float valve and somehow couldn't be destroyed.
-More livestock houses. Working on it one at a time.
-More rotational pastures. Working on one or two added per year.
-Standpipe by the barn. $$$. This might happen in the future but won't happen now.
-Tractor. See standpipe issues above.
-Plumbed-in automatic waterer. I should probably actually cost this out but it would make chores into basically floating on air and so I suspect it's nor affordable.

Ok, gonna let that marinate for a bit.

Between

greenstorm — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 16:43:51 GMT

Yesterday we had a "flash freeze" weather warning. I've had snow, cold, and rainfall warnings before but nothing like that. I'd known the weather was going to drop so I hauled out the snowblower in the rain and got most of the heavy snow off the top of the driveway and loaded up the pigs with fresh straw. Sure enough, between 3pm and 9pm it dropped from 3C and lightly rainy to -10C with tiny snow flurries. By 4:00, when I woke up to check the dogs, it was -15.

This kind of weather turns snow into concrete. Earlier this winter it was very cold and the snow was fluffy and weightless and easy to move. When it warmed up the snow was heavy and relatively malleable, at least unless it was compacted. Now the ground is just 3' higher.

It's easier to move around. That's good for me, I can go to the back of the property if I want. It's not great for the animals. Wild animals can come in easily over the snow and eat my birds; my dogs can go over the fences which are now effectively less than 2' if they realize the crust is there and deviate from their paths.

So, when I woke at 4am, I went outside to give the dogs treats. Avallu was curled in the side where the saddleback geese nest and Thea was out under the big straw bale on the driveway. Neither was barking, neither was wandering. My thought is that if they get treats at unpredictable times they'll stick around a little more rather than going to, for instance, investigate the new neighbours or the rival dogs down the way.

It was really beautiful out. With this moon we've had and the crust of frozen rain reflecting back from the snow I could easily read. It's so neat to be out when all the shadows are in different places; the moon goes where the sun never can. It wasn't death-cold or anything so I could sit there in my boots and big jacket and pet Thea and watch the moon for a bit, could take a moment between worlds to breathe. We all came in, I built up the fire and stared at it for awhile, then I went back to sleep. I feel rested now.

I do need to raise the fences some, this involves twinning the posts with probably t posts and hanging snow fencing or whatever is around on them. If there's a visual barrier the dogs won't go through. They also won't go through on the south side of the fence so it's mostly along the road I need to worry about. If they do get out, I can't see the one neighbour making it in for them to harass unless he's on a snowmobile.

Luckily the birds are all nicely tucked away in the goose shed (formerly the woodshed) and the chicken coop etc. I'll step out this morning and check on the new chickens who went without heat last night; I'm trying to wean them off the lamp and it really wasn't that cold.

Cataloguing

greenstorm — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 04:13:51 GMT

400 accessions and counting. Started Sweet Baby Jade tomato seeds. Should start my non-annuum peppers but I need to look up which ones need how many individuals to pollinate.

Breeding peppers

greenstorm — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 19:46:19 GMT

You know what's fun?

Thinking of crossing my matchbox chilis (OSSI pledged) that are growing on my windowsill and are basically my favourite hot pepper plant with C. flexuosum, which is hella cold-tolerant and is also 24n though of course it is an interspecific cross. I wonder if it will work?

I wonder how matchbox and doe hill would do, that should be an easy cross?

Doe hill and flexuosum?

Dammit.

Not Quite Shared Food

greenstorm — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 16:36:42 GMT

I'm part of a group on fb (Indri's vanilla bean group) that does co-op direct buys of vanilla beans in addition to its retail store -- it's extremely fair trade consumption and gets me a luxury good affordably. They're putting out a cookbook, so I'm doing some recipe testing for them.

On my list:
x The Coffee Cake (it's topped with toasted oats, which is nice)
x Panna cotta (this one needed a little more gelatin)
x Egg pie (it's a custard pie with flour as a binder, definitely not a delicate custard so it seems like a pretty robust recipe)
o Custard pie (another iteration, I'm curious to compare them)
o Filipino butter mochi (this is in the oven now, I'm interested)
o Emergency milkshake (milk, cream, vanilla, and ice, sounds great)
o Microwave caramel corn
o Vanilla bean instant pot rice pudding
o Creme brulee
o Semolina pudding

It's more than I can eat (needs to be done in two weeks) but it's a fun project. I also submitted my shockingly good vanilla lemonade (seriously, just add a teaspoon of vanilla to a tall glass of lemonade) and I hope it gets in there.

Very interested to see how some of these turn out. I've never heard of oven-baked mochi before!

Edited to add: the butter mochi is truly delicious and much easier to make than the rolled mochi I'm used to. Plus it's gluten free. Hm.

Normative

greenstorm — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:46:56 GMT

It is making a significant difference to my life to use the lens "is this so hard for normal people?"

Most of my life has been the opposite: I connect on points of similarity, and I dig for them, and whether it's that something is hard or joyful or whatever that is how I align myself. Overlying my root-deep feeling that I'm the only one of my species is this collage of moments where I have some kind of similarities with other folks.

Now I'm letting myself notice the opposite: when I'm the only one in the room struggling or the only one struggling so very hard.

When I'm at a (thankfully online) workshop about diversity, inclusion, and conflict and I'm sitting there hugging my knees and crying and everyone else is giving thumbs ups? When I'm losing tremendous productivity at work because I need to muscle through my PDA around lunch breaks having to be from 12:10 to 12:50 and not being able to move them ten minutes in one direction or the other on any given day to accommodate shifts in workflow or appointments or whatnot? When I lose an evening because the person in the next cubicle at work wore perfume? When I'm short vacation time because I have to use it to deal with loved ones' surgeries, and other folks get special leave because they're married? When I can't easily and freely mention what I did on the weekend because I'm trying to decide whether to out multiple partners?

When I can't talk about a breakup to anyone who's remotely knows what to say or has had a similar experience?

When I have to go looking for similarities in a room and prep it with shared experiences before I can feel free mentioning anything else about my life at all?

When someone reaches out to offer help or even to listen and it leaves me crying because I want it but don't trust that what I say will be believed or taken with care and respect?

In a room of a hundred people, these things mostly don't apply to folks. If I want a room of folks where I'm not completely an outlier I need to make the room; I'll still be an outlier but I may be more comfortable speaking up.

I don't know how to be a good listener to myself about this. After a few moments of compassion I slip into wanting to fix it. I need to do both, and I need others around me who do both.

Sometimes, legitimately, I am the one not getting what I need of many who are.

Bringing order

greenstorm — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:21:40 GMT

So last year I lost a packet of seed I really wanted to plant. It was a problem.

This year I'm cataloguing all my seeds in a spreadsheet-- not carrying them over from previous years when I bought them but doing a full inventory. Then I'm putting them in a cabinet. They don't go in the cabinet until they're catalogued. Theoretically they don't come out again until the packet is empty, and I just pull out the seeds I need to plant very briefly.

The activity itself is pretty fun, cataloguing, and I'm expecting the spreadsheet to be pretty helpful in building my planting timetable for the year.

I've got a couple new things I'm trying that I'm excited about: skirret, for instance, and scorzonera. Plus I'm trying a couple baccatum peppers and some new corns, a bunch of breadseed poppies, and things like that.

Anyhow, looking forward to completing the cataloguing and starting ot build a picture of what my garden will look like this year. It'll be big; it's also a moving target since some of the original garden is perennializing/turning into roses and haskaps.

Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Zero

greenstorm — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:13:32 GMT

It's been hovering at freezing for a couple days now. These warming periods aren't unusual here, I have one just a little warmer recorded in 2019 for instance. This one, though, isn't really dipping above freezing nor below. It's hovering.

The snow gives up dense white fog. Meanwhile the top layer of snow softens, it's juicy when stepped upon but firm enough to hold shapes. Everything is water everywhere, so moist after the long dry cold, and the water is ambiguous: it shades from solid to liquid to vapour without any clear demarcation.

Showing Up

greenstorm — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 01:26:03 GMT

I've been showing up for myself emotionally for a long time; we've had that advice to have self-compassion, to be kind to ourselves, and that is a significant part of my practice. I'm good at it. I've kept this journal for over twenty years; this journal is a significant way I show up for myself.

Lately though, I'm learning to show up for myself in the ways I want someone to show up for me, in the ways I'm not good at, in the messy ways I envy that long-married couples do. I'm learning to struggle for myself in ways I'm not good enough but trying anyhow. I'm learning to fail for myself and try again and get it and be ok or a little below average but still do the thing for myself because I want someone to do the thing for me. I show up in ways I don't love for myself. I'm showing up because showing up to do something hard is service and I am worthy of my own service.

I am worthy of my own service.

And I'm showing up to do it.

It Begins/The Wheel Turns

greenstorm — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 01:01:23 GMT

Today was warm enough to get the snowblower working. One of the issues was that its oil was only good down to -20C, so when I tried to start it at -30C it was basically sludge. There was also a lack of fuel stabilizer and old oil, but I had to run it for a bit to get the oil to pick up all the little metal bits since I hadn't changed the-- well, anyhow. It was warm enough to get the snowblower working.

I expected it to get up to -5C today and to be working on the snowblower, so I woke up and luxuriated in being in bed for awhile. Wood on the fire, find some clothes, and I got outside as it was getting properly light, about 9. It felt different out. The snowblower started prety quickly and while I was running it I took water to the geese, then checked the temperature.

It was 1C. It was above freezing!

Suddenly the snowblower was much more important. When the snow thaws and refreezes it becomes basically impossible to move and I had a lot of snow to move. Luckily with an oil change and enough time to work a new tank of stabilized fuel through it the machine was working. I spent an hour and a half muscling it around, getting it stuck on the pig hill, trying to figure out how to move snowbanks that were twice as tall as the machine. It was lovely and sunny and warm. When I came in for lunch and tea I realized I'd stepped out just to see if I could get it working and hadn't actually put on a shirt under my light jacket before starting work. I could hardly hold the phone because of vibrator-hands.

After a break I went out again, took a video for the youtube site, fed the animals, and got back to work. I widened a path to the back chicken coop -- and incidentally the truck canopy-- that I think the truck can fit back through. I did the driveway outside the gate and may have got two cars'-widths inside the gate. I unburied most of the trailer and the 4runner. The dog paths were impossible to move since they were roughly three feet of snow compacted into six inches. Without chains on the snowblower tires I slipped and had to near-carry in a couple places. Still, I got a lot done. I also managed to shake the snow off the cedars and clear most of the snow off the deck before I realized it was 4:30 and still basically light. In fact the sun is only down now, at 5.

The outside tap got thawed yesterday and I re-dug a path to it. There was actual water beading on the wire fence and the south side of the shed. It was so warm I took my toque and gloves off and never did put on a shirt. The long cold was a very serious hibernation, a hunkering-down and surviving. Today is the beginning of waking up.

I'm not saying it won't get cold again before spring. It will: a crust will form on the snow, the dogs will try and get out on it, I'll need to problem solve, a super cold snap might still happen, the truck may still get stuck in some of this loose weird snow-over-ice. At some point rivulets will start running down the driveway and I'll need to direct them away from the carport. I'll come close to running out of wood and the blanket of snow on the roof will come off and the house might get a little chilly. I need to get several tons of snow off the deck. But. Still.

Spring will come.

Now where can I find some good LED grow lights?

Where does joy come from?

greenstorm — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 18:46:11 GMT

My body is my link to the present.

My mind is the link to the future.

The land links the two.

Let's return to my body for awhile.

I've been eating fairly well lately. It's often so hard for me to eat; the fact that I need to, or that I like something, or especially that I've put love and anticipation into something, trips my PDA. I also have tended to have a scarcity mentality around food, and especially food that (I now realize) is ok for my senses. Plus, I'm sensory-seeking with food: I use it as a "stim", a way to get from my head into my body, a way to stabilize mood, and so I come to feel like I "should" eat food that will make me feel better rather than worse. And of course sometimes I just can't handle some part of the sensory experience of food, or the many steps required for it.

So all that aside when Kelsey was here we ate well because making food she liked together was fun and eating together is one of my favourite things. Plus she didn't eat in the mornings, so I could focus my attention on making nice evening meals. Over the holidays I ate well because Tucker was here and there were snacks around; I could always pull something together for us, he helped cook a lot and especially in mornings. I've been carrying that on recently, plus I've had a windfall of some instant meals (freezer & fancy ramen) around the house that I didn't cook, which makes them much easier to eat. Finally I've been allowing myself to eat in "luxury" mode more and more over the last year: if I eat something I'm allowed to spend money to replace it if it's a money thing, if I raised or grew it I cherish it and thank it but don't try and keep some back in case I need it "later". So: I've been drinking milk and having fresh veggies, plus I've had some truly lovely duck & potato dishes and some equally lovely ground pork & rice dishes, all interspersed with something microwaveable or a bowl of cereal (also a luxury).

My body is building muscle, a lot a lot of it on my traps, deltoids, and to some extent my upper arms. I've been running up and down the stairs maybe 20x fewer per day with no visitors, so my legs are resting. Physical work is feeling easier, and to ease that along more I'm going to try and do at least 20 minutes of yoga per day. I can do it during a work-break when I'm working from home; I will do it even when Tucker is visiting since I've cleared a place on the loft balcony.

I'd like to pick up free movement again but I can't, quite. Maybe when I've taken down the sausage table from the livingroom and there's more space there. Meantime I'm trying to listen to music a couple times a week; it helps.

These building blocks of life, food and movement, are fundamental to my happiness. The big picture is overwhelming. I don't know how to sort myself out of this social situation. I can't control what people around me do, which means I can expect them to filter out of my life and maybe filter back in at some other point. I want to cut down on social media consumption but it seems that keeping a phone with me will become more and more necessary for social contact as folks move away. But.

The joy I can give to myself, the care that I can give to myself, the knowledge through action that I am here for my body: that I can work towards, one day at a time, days where it's achieved can be victories and ones where it isn't can receive compassion.

It's still cold but sunlight is returning. The wheel doesn't cease to turn.

Argh

greenstorm — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 19:42:27 GMT

Still -30C out. This weather is just not breaking, it's going on and on and on. I'm still bucketing water from the house for the animals because the outside tap is extra not working. Apparently you can get aneurysms in your fingers from bucketing too much, so I'm being careful to wear gloves etc. So far everyone seems ok: one piglet with a bit of frostnip on one ear (it's swollen, but re-warmed; could also have been crushed) and a little bit of frostbite on some muscovy webs but everyone is walking ok.

I did my adaptive seeds order today; my heritage harvest order was done a couple weeks ago. I also ordered my seed potatoes from Eagle Creek seed potatoes, some true potato seeds from cultivariable, and some odds and ends from here and there. I need to wrap up my trades and my corn. I need to not get more tomato seeds.

I think I'll do a wall calendar with indoor and outdoor planting dates this year. It would be a nice object to look at. I'm a little concerned-- the full moon is June 14th this year. Our last frost is usually June 1stish, give or take, and the full moon is usually the coldest point. So we could have a last frost as late as June 14th this year. I definitely need to plan for that.

Everything has felt overwhelming. I'm back at work but I'm having enormous amounts of trouble with PDA resistance to arbitrary work structures; I need to deal with the university and structured courses and super arbitrary bureaucracy there; I need to handle refinancing on my house (every 5 years in Canada, so I can't dodge it). For all of that I need to be available constantly to receive calls at the convenience of the organizations, I can't really get my teeth sunk into doing anything because I'm always waiting for a back-and-forth, and there are tons of other folks to wait on/that I need things from. Plus just... so much busywork.

I think I'm hitting a point in this burnout where I need help. Specifically I need someone who knows something about PDA and can help me strategize my way through it all because I need to get out the other side. Those people primarily don't exist, when they do exist they seem to be primarily in the UK, and the one set of folks here is well beyond my budget.

I had hoped to reduce my pig herd by now to give me a little space and time away from chores but that didn't happen and now it's just another thing on the pile of multi-step things to do. I had hoped-- bah. I give up.

I'll probably come up with a structured list later and start eating away at it but right now I'm just buckling under the weight of the whole thing. I hate feeling like I'm reacting to things left last minute instead of being proactive.

I'll sit here and feel frustrated for a couple more minutes, then I'll go get myself a nice cup of tea.

Always bothered me

greenstorm — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:11:07 GMT

For some reason folks don't seem to associate planting trees with land tenure. Have some sense, folks: if you want to be buried with a tree growing on you, want ten trees to be planted for every sweatshirt you buy, want your government to plant trees to stop global warming, those trees must all be planted on land that is then dedicated to them for (I imagine you would like) a length of time. Five years? Ten years? Two hundred years? That land was doing something before the trees were planted, what was it? Are they draining wetlands or displacing crops for this? Would trees have been planted there anyhow by someone else? (forestry companies in Canada are legally obligated to replant so anything that promises to replant on that land is a scam). Are poor people being displaced to plant the trees? Will the trees thrive on that piece of land without maintenance like watering? Are the trees intended to all live, they do get very large and usually are planted more densely in the beginning and then some die as they get bigger so the crown of the tree shades the ground. Does planting trees displace wildlife habitat for browsers or animals that need thermal cover like moose? Do you really think this is a good allocation of land, like for instance in land that can support agriculture or housing instead set aside for every dead person, or maybe just for rich dead people?

Bah.

Timely

greenstorm — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 22:58:19 GMT

This was given me this morning:

When the time comes
to love yourself well
it may take you
a good solid year
to stop crying
about all you have
to let go.

Andrea Gibson

Not Even An Announcement

greenstorm — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 19:21:39 GMT

It's time to make this a little more formal.

All my life I've wanted someone to see me, to not necessarily walk beside me every step but to know my story. That's where I kept my eyes when everyone got married, maybe had kids, got divorced, did careers. There's no one left in my life who's been there from the start and will be there until the end except one.

I'd have wished for someone who remembers it all and can put it in context; instead what I got is someone who's supported me every step, who believes in the spirit inside me wholeheartedly, who thinks it's important that I follow my calling and my meaning.

I don't have someone who loves me unconditionally, all the time, and is always able to open her heart to empathize with my pain. I do have someone who's learning to do so, and who sometimes stumbles upon it as the right thing to do, and other times who's able to invite me into that space of love and healing.

There is no one person who will complete me, who I can disappear into for years and never come out, though I've wished there is. Still, I have someone at my back, who speaks for me in community and whose well of interest never runs dry. When things are rough she'll entice me into what I love and I find comfort that way; when my interest leaps away into some new thing she lets me follow my joy and takes care of me as best she can when she's able.

Time and again she's pushed her limits to be there for me; not always, but often, and when everyone else fails she's the one who always comes through.

She can't be everything for me. Our physical intimacy comes and goes, sometimes it's fraught, and it's never as robust and immediate as it is with other people. She doesn't have as much capacity as I'd like, and time and again I've come up against her limits. She forgets to be compassionate in the midst of fixing things and soothing things. Her emotions overwhelm her and sometimes she forgets what to do or how to do it. She's not given to constancy and promises come and go and come again, though she's better at knowing her limits around that now.

Still, here we are, so many years later. She's been writing to me for well over twenty years now, for my entire adult life. She's been supporting me and in these times where everyone else is receding she's the one I trust not to go anywhere. Neither of us minds the ride of NRE, the bit of a break, and we've ridden out my various relationships shockingly well.

So it seems reasonable to acknowledge this now, to cement it with a symbol. I'm working with a designer on the ring; I'm not sure if I can afford the gold or if I'll have to hope the silver will survive maybe 40 years of wear. There will need to be a ceremony at some point, I've been chewing on that for a couple years but I'm not sure how it'll look. There may be a small private ceremony in the meantime. I don't know that there'll be a single set of vows; perhaps a small book to recall me to the heart of meaning here.

It's too bad monoheteronormativity is such a thing; I think when most people do this they get gifts as well as a dual income or childcare out of it. I won't be getting that. It's still important to do, and to do in the sight of community, though I'm nervous about that.

I don't expect this to change things but I do believe it will help me remember.

Holy days

greenstorm — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 19:15:03 GMT

This was an excellent holiday. It had the things I love over the holidays: cooking, passive entertainment, a slower pace, special foods, family, pretty lights, regrouping for the future, some time outside. Someone even sent me a secret surprise gift (!) though that shook me a little. I took over a whole week off, and I managed that feeling of being outside of time and space.

There was some experimental baking and some less experimental baking: I made chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow pieces in them, next time I'll only sprinkle the marshmallows on top. Tucker made shortbread and reese's pieces cookies. Together we made a golden crispies cereal bar thing. He made challah. I made roast duck and got a shrimp ring and cheezies and pfeffernusse. He made french toast, and my friend sent me jam that I ate on it. I still had plenty of aged eggnog from spring (Islay was the best booze; rum and Canadian whiskey were the least good, adding ceylon cinnamon-infused booze was also good) and some clamato juice and cherry juice and tea and fancy hot chocolate. Lovely.

I was feeling a formulaic show (no real anxiety about people dying or getting hurt because that's not the formula) with folks who had each other's back and a writing team that respected their characters rather than using any of them, even bit parts, as the butt of jokes. I'd managed to forget the first season of Leverage where there's a terrible heteronormative dynamic around drinking and nagging, so watched a bunch of season 2 and 3 with Tucker -- it's one of his favourite shows so there was room for me to analyze it a little bit while watching. I think last time I had a holiday that felt nice like this we watched Gentleman Jack together.

Josh was up here the week before Christmas, and Tucker was here more-or-less the week between Christmas and New Years, with some breaks. I like these long stretches with people where we can dig in to being together; either a couple hours or at least a couple days works for me, but the middle space I can feel the grinding of gears and never quite get settled ("trouble with transitions" says descriptions of autism). I felt close and loved and there was time for some conversation and doing stuff together as well as just being together.

I did end up getting a tree. My beloved fibre-optic tree was thrown out when I left New Westminster back when (I lose so much stuff in moves) and it had been pretty difficult to find a fibre-optic tree since then. I finally found a little one on sale, the greenery isn't as nice as my last one but it has gold glitter and a little urn-thing as well as fitting on a side-table. I really enjoy watching fibre-optic threads shift colours, specifically, and being able to sit on the couch and watch the tree has been excellent. For some reason strands of lights or other colour-changing lights don't do it for me; just the tree.

I'm cementing in my head what will be done this year: a gate cut in the upper field, some variety trials, a bunch of potatoes grown for starch and thus clearing out my laundry room boxes to build a potato cabinet, some fencing, front deck redone, maybe a re-cover of greenhouse, maybe my aspens dropped, and a quote for fixing the shed with the wood foundation and the collapsing root cellar (I will not be able to afford to fix the shed or add on to the house but those are the two options I'll need to consider to make this place really livable for me). There was a potato infection in the maritimes so seed potatoes will be light on the ground this year; I need to order those soon. Aphrodite has also asked me to plant her a rose garden, as she did the summer I started and then stopped living with Josh, so that will be done this year. I guess my first garden will get roses in that imported soil where it's visible from the deck; it already has the one. I don't know whether I'm supposed to make a mandala/maze type shape or what; we will see. The wild roses do grow well here.

We've also finally been getting snow. Cold without the snow feels especially perilous; even with all the snow blowing everywhere and obliterating my hand-shovelled pathways it feels safer to have cold with a blanket of insulation. It's been hovering around -20 +/- 10C, a good temperature for all the snowshovelling I've been doing. It's been good exercise. A big dump of snow last night means I'm going to get someone to come in and plough all the way back to the chicken coop for me since it's between knee and thigh depth now and I am not hauling water and feed back through that in the -37C we have forecast. I have not fixed the snowblower yet, obviously. We'll see where all this goes. I'm wondering what it would cost to get a blade for the truck; it probably isn't cheaper than the snowblower but it's one less engine to maintain, and I bet it would be a hilarious learning curve figuring out where and how to push snow without destroying things or leaving inconvenient piles. We're deep, deep into solid waste territory with water: parkinglots are all full of giant piles waiting to be taken away to snow dumps.

Awhile ago I posted about an illustrated apple encyclopedia on fb, and the other day it arrived at the post office with my name on it. The return address was the address of the PG post office; the shipping label was printed on a computer and correctly made out to my PO box (there isn't street mail delivery here, so just because someone knows my street address doesn't mean they know how to mail something to me). Someone clearly paid attention to me liking it, knew my address, bought it, opened one book to admire it and left the rest in wrapping, then sent them on to me. I'm- it's a very thoughtful gift and I spent a lot of time crying about it because it's a really caring thing to do but I feel so alone up here, I want someone with that kind of attention and caring to have conversations and mutuality with but instead they're secret and I can't talk to them. It's- lotta feelings there.

Meanwhile I can go back to cataloguing my seeds today, carry some water and feed, and slowly pull things out of the way of where I hope the plough can get to. The truck is starting up super well with its new battery-and-battery-blanket (though I haven't checked to see how much electricity that's burning). The dogs got a ham for Christmas and now I need to manage Thea down from guarding Avallu out of the area by the house. The dishwasher is going. My aerogarden has given me dill and I think I'll make borscht or gravlax out of it. I have some korean ground pork and noodle recipes I'm looking forward to. The new year is a continuity from every other year, building and folding on times past, and I am grateful to have it.

Visible

greenstorm — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 20:40:23 GMT

I've been making cleaning progress on my home. I've been making it mine in a way I had not before: instead of letting the inside just be function, I've been making it fit me. This means that, well, Threshold has always felt like the inside of the dryad tree that was my first MU* building project long back. It's all wood inside, it's tall and arched with wooden pillars and columns inside it, the little loft balcony overlooks the inside and the loft bedroom overlooks the outside, just like sitting in branches. The basement is warm and snug and dark and full of food and comfort, like the hollow between tree roots in winter.

When I was young-young, maybe 8 or 10 or 12, I painted the inside of my bedroom and all my furniture with a cave-art motif: sponge and rag painting to make an uneven stone-like surface, then potato prints of cave art figurines (because I still wanted an interior-design, repeat-not-freehand feel rather than an actual cave feel). To some extend I'm picking up on that sort of thing here: hand-crafted walls that fit the theme. I'll only do it if I know I won't sell soon, but.

That would look like doing some hint of bark or woodgrain on the few feature walls and columns in here, maybe with stamps since those are a thing now. It probably will look like leafy/frondy/vine accents. It'll look like getting my actual art and some functional items up on display.

Part of this is the perennial issue of figuring out where all my stuff actually goes. I'm probably going to end up with a bunch more of the clear-storage-bin stacks that folks seem to be using nowadays. Definitely shelving was the first step, and I'm pretty ok there, but the next step is to arrange things on the shelves in a reasonable, findable, and efficient way. It's also to shelve the few closets that I have, and to carefully curate what's in hidden shelves, what's in the carport, and what's on the (many) shelves out in the open. This is a balance between aesthetics and frequency of use.

Anyhow, little oases of aerogardens and grow lights are starting to spring up. They're driven by my desire to plant things: I will not put seeds in a pot if there's not plenty of room under a grow light for them. So, up the grow lights go, each finding new spots after I robed their shelves from the pantry.

I used to have my plants all crowded up by windows under additional growlights as a supplement; I remember being awed by Josh's little spotlights on each plant, each on a timer, throughout his house when I first visited him. Now I'm putting little oases of light everywhere and his are all up against a window.

It's good. But I do need more places to put plants. Time to figure out how to effectively growlight my hanging plants.

Invisible

greenstorm — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 19:09:55 GMT

We've got the cold. I think it hit -34 in town last night, so likely -37 or so here.

The new-to-me truck won't start, I think it both needs a new battery and the engine heater isn't working. So that's fun.

Yesterday Tucker jumped the truck and I went down to go get feed. It was snowing-- I know better than to go by the forecast rather than the observed weather and that was supposed to be the clear window-- and snow was behaving how it always behaves in deep cold. That is, it turns into a dust storm.

Solidly below -20 snow not only doesn't clump at all, it doesn't stick to surfaces. This means that with good snow tires the roads are great - they're clear, and snow tires will stick to them like summers won't. But. There is a ton of effectively weightless dust along the whole road that's tossed up by passing vehicles and, when it's snowing, by snowploughs. The dust is super reflective so a vehicle can be fifteen feet ahead of you and completely invisible, and because of the way the snow kicks up you can still see a couple feet of clear road and then just an ambiguous haze in which the car is hidden.

That is to say, it was a slow drive down and back. Folks up here don't have a great sense for putting on their lights in these conditions (lights give maybe an extra 6-8' of visibility in a cloud like this). Different folks had different strategies: if you follow a logging truck about four feet behind it, for instance, you can see its lights and you won't go off the road, and it's likely to stop more slowly than you if you catch the brake lights. Or, you can drive real fast into a cloud, slam on your brakes when you see lights a couple feet ahead of you going slowly, hope the person behind you sees your lights in time, and then slow down until there's visibility so you can speed up again and keep repeating the cycle. Of course, when a vehicle comes by going the other direction all visibility is lost for awhile too, including all sense of where the road is, and choices there involve braking and hoping the person behind is also braking, or keeping going and hoping you know where the road is-- if you're following someone's lights and can't see the stretch of road ahead this can be challenging.

I hung way back so I could see a clear full stopping distance of road ahead of me at all times, because I am just like that. Starting back I was behind a snowplough that was being followed by 2-4 cars in front of me (they were never at any point visible to me) and by the halfway mark home I had let maybe 30 vehicles pass including several logging trucks, a UPS van, etc. Note that none of them could pass the plough since the plough blocked visibility in both directions, so the line ahead of me just got longer and longer until the plough pulled over at the midway point and everyone went ahead.

It was a surreal experience in a lot of ways because of how quickly, easily, and completely vehicles disappear. I think one of the invisible vehicles immediately following the snowplough was a logging truck. I know at least 30 vehicles were ahead of me, led by a snowplough. But sometimes when the road did a long lazy curve it just looked a little bit snowy on the road and like there was no one there: something about the way the snow lifts and reflects makes it look more translucent than it actually is.

I got home without incident and with my winter driving caution re-tuned. It really is such a different beast than summer driving. Now I'm offloading the grain -- 2200lbs moved by bucket on top of the daily several hundred pounds of food and water carried by bucket out to animals. I'm moving slow. Cold steals my energy and this is a pretty intensive physical output too.

It'll get done though. One bit at a time.

Deep Winter

greenstorm — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 16:30:13 GMT

The real cold is coming. -30C was forecast this week, and -20ish for the last couple nights, but two nights ago I woke up to -26 and now boxing day night is supposed to be -40. There's a significant difference between -20 and -40 from my perspective, though I think for most people inside it's mostly just all cold.

I'm thinking of rigging some heat lamps for the other chickens and the geese. It's challenging with waterfowl (the other chickens also have the breeding anconas in with them) because chickens are reasonably polite with indoor water but waterfowl are not: they will stand in it and splash it all out, or they will get in, get out, and promptly freeze their feet to the ice that was water they splashed out a second ago. If the water is above freezing it's much, much warmer than the outside air so it's a good place to stand and warm toes from their POV. It just isn't sustainable. So I need to make the heat lamps high enough they won't get splashed or hit by wings, low enough they actually heat something up, and the water needs to be covered enough that no one can get into it. If I have heat lamps over the water, it needs to be covered with something non-flammable and that the birds won't freeze to when it's covered in ice and they try to stand on it. I rig something up every year; I have no idea what this year will look like.

Additionally, moisture from the warm water & the animals' breaths is very dangerous. Because the ambient air is so cold, the moisture condenses on skin and can cause frostbite in temperatures that would otherwise be fine. Chicken combs tend to get this kind of frostbite which is why I keep chanteclers and americaunas: chickens with combs flat to their heads that aren't as vulnerable.

Everyone will get more deep straw as insulation - I am so glad I managed to get two large bales of straw last week, and Josh and I rigged up a rope to a tree so I could drive them off. I'm not worried about running out of straw at all so I can bring everyone fresh everyday if they need.

I'm hoping with all the geese pooping all the time I can get some heating from deep bedding going in the woodshed: it's got a deep mixed layer of straw and manure right now, but not enough manure to really heat it up. It's harder to get good bacterial action going in winter when it's already cold, but their bodies on top of it warm it up some. We'll see: it worked the first year I got muscovies.

This is really hard on equipment too: when water freezes in a bucket it freezes fast and often expands enough to pop the bucket. I've lost several of what I thought were indestructible rubber buckets to these temperatures because the bottom blew out. Plastic gets very brittle and tends to snap. Machines aren't thrilled, though I just got some of the recommended 0W-30 oil for the snowblower when it's below -20C, it came with I think 10W and that's what I've been using. It should help. I think the truck might have the wrong oil on it too, it's showing noticeably higher oil pressure when it's cold, but if I use the plug-in heater it seems ok. Plus, equipment-wise, my tap has been hard-frozen since Josh was here despite the temp warming to where it shouldn't have frozen. I'll try a hairdryer on it but I'm worried I may need to open up that wall. Ugh. I'm not sure how much it would cost to run a frost-free standpipe to the pigpen but that couple thousand dollars might be worth it, or at least it feels like it on days like this.

I met a person at a salve-making workshop the other day who remembers this house when her friend lived here long ago. Apparently, in addition to the wire and water to the back barn, there were also garden standpipes for water. Barn, wire, water everywhere: that infrastructure would have been so precious to me. I wish it hadn't been taken out, and I kind of wonder why it was.

Anyhow, I have some chicken stock to can, and some bones on the deck to turn into pork stock to can, and I'll run that through on the coldest day to boost the house a little.

I'm also giving thought to an air purifier/heater item for the bedroom since I know wood heat tends to be hard on the lungs, cats aren't great for me (though they aren't supposed to be in the bedroom; Whiskey lies there with his paws both just outside the threshold) and my lungs are already pretty trashed from years of housecleaning work and forest fires. Any room without the woodstove in it needs a bit of a boost at -40. Anyhow, it's a thought. I did a sweep of the rooms with baseboard heaters (one kleenex on one in the guest room, one bottlecap on one in the pantry) and I think we're as good as it gets.

Below -25 or so I get pretty tired when I spend a bunch of time outside so I'm revising my accomplishments down a little for this next week. If we're all fed and watered and no one gets frostbite I'll consider it a win.

Walking the line

greenstorm — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 22:52:34 GMT

I'd been pretty successful at focusing on myself, but now I'm feeling the pressure to stop doing so. The thing is, I'm not sure what it is he wants instead.

For me the purpose of spending time with someone is to learn and know a little more about them; usually what I do is an excuse for conversation, but I can also enjoy problem-solving with someone because that's also a neat way to engage with their mind.

I tend to engage on-- not necessarily big subjects, but ones that are of real interest to my conversational partner, and generally about that interest. That is to say, I'm less interested in a list of activities that someone accomplished, or a recounting of a story of some kind, but more what someone thought about those things. This doesn't have to be explicit but it has to be present.

Tucker has tended to hide his important stuff from me when it comes up, that or important things don't happen to him. It means he doesn't have much to say to me, and increasingly it diminishes my ability to be open with him: years of mostly-unreturned vulnerability mean that getting together what I want to say and saying it to him is somewhere between not safe and just not worth the energy. I think he's trying to change that a little but he's just not-- he can get through maybe ten minutes of that kind of conversation and then if I'm not talking, he definitely doesn't continue. He doesn't show interest by asking follow-up questions, he doesn't tell similar stories in response (which, damn the internet for shaming that conversational mode, it's how I want my conversations to run!) and he is more likely to say "how are you" than give a minute's thought to ask something like "how are you coping with the deep snow" or "how is carrying the water from in the house?" or basically doing any part of making it seem like he knows and sees my life and is interested in it or doing any lifting on the conversation.

And of course there are plenty of big things to talk about, both together-ones (so how do we relate now? how do we conceptualize our relationship going forward, where touch was the primary driving factor and we will not see each other much anymore? is he interested in trying to recover my trust and what would that involve?) to things that formerly mattered about being together and were kind of on the table (what does financial stuff feel like for us? what emotional labour and divisions of emotional labour work in a relationship? do we want to go on vacations with each other?) to individual things (he's moving out on his own and he's bought a condo! he's going to be building/rebuilding a friend circle! he's making maybe some progress in therapy! we both have neurodivergent stuff! I'm either deciding to stay here or not! I've finished a farm course and I'm deciding which direction to move with the farm financially! I did the variety trial and I loved it! I need to shift my plant/animal focus! I need to come up with a social sphere for myself!).

Which is to say, we have plans to spend most of this week off over the holidays together and my feelings about spending time with him border on boredom or dread. I tend to carry our dates: to initiate and steer conversation and to suggest and then initiate and steer activities. I've been burnt out on this lately and increasingly resentful of it as a burden, as the requirement to perform normalcy.

You know, the first couple times we met we walked around the seawall for hours talking. That sort of connection continued for awhile, interwoven with the deeply communicative physical touch we shared. I don't know whether this is the numbness and self-protective annoyance of my grief, whether it's the anhedonia of his depression or masking suppression, whether he's just not that person anymore or maybe it was just his NRE and masking speaking and he never was, whether it's a sort of learned helplessness or conditioned response to rejection on my part, but I cannot reach him anymore. That kind of conversation doesn't seem possible or even desired. The fact that I wanted that kind of communication feels like it's been framed as surveillance, or abusive. Tucker has normalized small-talk and indifference in a way that four decades of interaction with society at large had never managed to do; he brings the social weight of a room of three hundred people all suddenly going silent and turning to look at you disapprovingly when an actual room of three hundred people suddenly going silent and turning to look at me disapprovingly cannot.

I loved him. I loved what was inside. But it's been long enough since he let me in that I don't know if I even remember what that was.

So, um, what do I do in the next week? Popping into and out of this space with him, doing our rituals (weekend brunch that he cooks, watching some shows) means I don't get to do the things I love. It means maybe we can talk about cooking, one of our last safe subjects, and maybe cook together, which I love. It means either we'll get into the big subjects and my week will be saturated with grief and loss or we won't and it'll be distanced, like a silent theatre performance.

I don't think he gets it. I mean, I know he did not have the same kind of connection to me that I had to him, obviously, and I'm not sure what parts of his connection to me were important to him. I don't know if he realizes there's an emotional and commitment step back that I've taken after he bought the condo without telling me; I don't know if that will feel like a loss to him or if it'll be a relief.

Can you tell he could not talk about the relationship? Can you see the big hole where understanding how each other engages should be?

But anyhow, I don't know what to do. I'd like to return to my practice of my whole life being full of days that have meaning to me, that are like individual crafted jewels strung out along the long line of my life. I want to return to that feeling of each day having heft and meaning. I want him to be part of that but I'm not sure if I'm willing to step part my resentment and protective grief and do the work-- and to be fair, he has not reached out to do the work so I don't know why me doing more work should feel like it would make a difference.

So what would him doing this kind of work look like?

It would look like trying to engage me. Like statements followed by questions that lead into conversation, rather than away: "I'd like to do Christmas brunch, is there anything you'd like to make together?"

It would look like leading into the big conversations, and owning the actual work of making them happen: "Some big stuff has happened lately, I'd like to have a conversation about what the relationship should look like going forward. I know I'd mentioned wanting to do things like this and haven't followed up previously; can we plan for 2pm on Saturday? Let's both make sure we've eaten before that and we can sit down with some tea and talk it out."

It would look like leading with vulnerability when asking for vulnerability, to signal a safe space: "I've been feeling both happy and scared about my upcoming move, it's really a lot; do you want to talk about your feelings about it?"

It would look like co-operative planning, taking some of the frontloaded scheduling burden and then being intentional and mutual about it: "Christmas brunch is really important to me, I'd like to have sex this week, and I'd enjoy reading to you and choosing some cookies to make together. Would you like to do any of these/how can I support them happening? What would you like to be sure of doing over the holidays?"

It would not look like: "what do you want to do?" "is there anything you want to do this week?" "so what are we doing this week?" *sitting in silence for half an hour at the outset of a visit* *no communication about which days we'll spend together* or even "do you want to do Friday night?" *no communication about any activities*

Ok, that's pretty good, actually. There's a sense of what I'll spend energy on, and what I won't.

Also any time together should probably be no-phones, at least most of it.

Sunreturn

greenstorm — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 23:14:21 GMT

I've planted two tomato seeds: fat frog and moment, both micros. I believe I'll also plant a sweet cheriette from one of my saved seeds.

I've sprayed for mealybugs and I'm contemplating what I'll replace my broken grow-light with; it has the old florescent tubes, should I replace it with an LED? It's right behind the couch so I want it to look nice. Maybe a couple sunblasters? Then I'll need to buy more for spring transplants though. Either way the peppers I brought in will need more light soon, and I'd like to get a little more going on in here.

It's edging colder and we're finally getting another real snowfall, which is good: I need it to insulate the pig house and the plants. I've given thought to putting some of my haskaps in a cardboard box and filling it with snow out on the deck, since it doesn't seem to be covering them on its own yet.

I'm tired and I just want to sit out with the geese and watch them. They're wary of me since I snagged a bunch of them with nets and took them off, never to return. Fair enough, right?

The new chickens have given me their fourth egg now, super tiny little ones. I should make myself a mini caesar salad or something in celebration. Meanwhile I've left the ducks and geese locked up in the woodshed and so it's only the dogs, the cats, and me trampling the snow outside. That means I can see all the rodent tracks under the chicken coop, which is probably where all my eggs from everyone else have been going. My instinctive solution is to so the swallowed-a-spider-to-catch-a-fly solution and look into rat terriers but I suspect they would not do well with my birds around. Can't hurt to look into it anyhow.

Gloom, snow: definitely the right time to look at seed catalogues and plan out the next year.