The pursuit of Truth and Beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” Albert Einstein

Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, here I am a day late…but I am determined not to let another week slip by! While I adore, and choose to live by, Positive Affirmations, the Disappointing Affirmations are hitting the mark: #1. “The best way to cope with your problems is to add new problems to distract yourself from the old ones.” This is working pretty well for me at the moment, since my car won’t pass inspection and I can rarely locate the keys to it anyway. So let’s focus on why the lambs are acting skinny and depressed. Worms, you say? Deadly worms? WHAT?! #2. “You are exactly where you are supposed to be. Because you make terrible decisions.” Maybe planting zucchini next to tomatoes wasn’t my best idea. 3. “Why do something right away when you can wait until it gives you a panic attack?”

Welcome to August. We’ve got about half an hour left of summer here in Vermont. Folks are starting to ask where their jackets (needing new zippers) are. They’ve been hanging at the back of the rack behind wedding gowns and bridesmaid dresses since June. The jackets, that is, not the customers. The customers are free to roam around and chat about how damn rainy it is, how difficult it is to go anywhere on Route 30 these days, and how hard the hay farmers are struggling to get their crops harvested. (Ok, maybe that last one is led by me…) Many clients are still suffering the effects of severe flooding. Some, with typical aplomb, announce that they had to clear out their cellar or storage unit and throw everything away but they feel better now, lighter—the stuff didn’t bring them joy anyway, that’s why it was in the cellar. Neighbors have taken in neighbors and I have fixed a bit of clothing here and there, free of charge, so that it could be donated to the needy. For the most part, people are resigned or cheery. The level of community spirit in Vermont is everything one dreams it is. I am grateful every day to live here.

Our little Bell Haven, being on a steep hill, wasn’t affected by any of the initial flooding. But the groundwater levels are now so high that there is standing water in the garage and barn every time it rains and the driveway looks like a river bed. It’s been so humid in the house, mold is growing on the upholstered furniture in the little back parlor I call “the Cozy Room.” I’ve had to move the sheep to the other side of the barn so that they could get out of the puddles in their pen. The rain has kept the grass growing long past its normal cycle and the grown up sheep are dangerously fat. Nonetheless, they continue to eat with the lawn-mower-esque speed of a middle-aged woman who’s gotten into a steaming plate of local sweet corn on the cob with Amish butter.

The garden is a jungle of oversized everything. Things I never planted—rogue seeds from the compost pile—have flourished and are now producing vast quantities of things that colonize the counters in the kitchen. Recently I hauled in several baseball bat-sized zucchini for processing. For dinner, I carved one into a boat and stuffed it with all sort of yumminess—roasted cherry tomatoes from the garden, onions, peppers, mushrooms, olives, artichoke hearts…the works. I smothered it with cheese and baked it for as long as it needed to be baked. I forgot to set the timer, of course, so when it smelled “ready” I took it out. It looked like the cover of a magazine. It was gorgeous. But LOOKS, as we know, are NOT everything. One must penetrate the surface of Beauty to learn the Truth. Sorry Keats, anyone who tasted my zucchini supper must beg to differ with the assertion that “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” That’s Garbage, Keats, garbage. Sometimes one must bite the zucchini to know.

The first bite was awful. The second one was worse. It was fascinatingly BAD and bitter. I was mystified. Nothing was burned. The filling had tasted amazing before I scooped it into the boat and sent it sailing gently into the oven. What could make it SO BITTER?

It turns out that nuclear waste, radioactive gas, and the smell of the dressing room after someone who cannot digest dairy has been in there aren’t the only things toxic. Unbeknownst to me, there is a thing called “Toxic Squash Syndrome” (look it up! It’s real!) and my zucchini plants have it. According to the experts on the internet, my plants are “stressed” and are producing excess levels of a chemical called cucurbitacin. It’s poisonous. Ingesting it can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pain.

I seize my phone displaying this information and march out to the squash patch. “Are you kidding me?” I yell at the beautiful zucchini plant that is so large, it has consumed an entire hillside. “You don’t look stressed! You look gorgeous. You are taking up all the room and spreading out everywhere. I’ve never seen a more healthy looking plant!”

“Shush!” whispers my delicate inner being who hates conflict. “You’re hurting it’s feelings! No wonder it’s stressed, poor thing.”

“Why shouldn’t the squash be stressed?” snaps Prudence with satisfaction. “Everything else around here is. And that’s how it should be. Life isn’t meant to be jolly. We should suffer and offer our suffering for the good of others…”

“Wait, aren’t others supposed to suffer too? Why is it just us?” wonders my inner eight-grader who wants to be a lawyer.

Meanwhile, the zucchini looks bitter and defiant.

“Don’t you like all the poo we give you?” asks the Delicate Inner Being with deep compassion in her tone. “Would you prefer sheep poo to cow poo? Is the cow poo too harsh? What do you need? Do you just need someone to talk to? Is it that you don’t like having tomatoes for neighbors? Sometimes neighbors can be a little intrusive…Or were you cross-pollinated badly? Is this about your parents? Would you like to tell me about your mother? Are you from the wrong side of the compost fence? Was life too hard for you as a seedling? Do you form unhealthy attachments?” She is so kind and gentle, exploring all the possibilities around nature vs. nurture and yet never, in all her sweetness, letting the zucchini get a word in edgewise. She’s like that. Never go to her for therapy.

The zucchini reminds me of a gorgeous bride, whose dress fits perfectly, but still has her anxiety level amped up to eleven. In all my days, decades and decades of dining on homegrown zucchini, I have never encountered a bitter one, never mind one so bitter it’s inedible. I learn that eating it can result in swollen organs and severe hair loss. “That’s all we need,” says Prudence, “is to have you running around here with your hair falling out, and a swollen abdomen, producing toxic gas. Wait…you do that already.”

This is just “a weird summer.” That’s all we can say.

In over fifteen years of raising sheep, I’ve never once had a problem with parasites either but now my lambs, the poor lambs, are in big trouble. The continuous warm, wet conditions have fostered the flourishing of a worm called Barber Pole Worm. It’s deadly. All the vets around are seeing a lot of this, this year. The lambs eat the larva off the grass and it passes into their fourth stomach, where it develops into an adult worm that sucks the lifeblood out of them at nearly a cup a day or more until they are so anemic, they go into shock and die. Three of my five lambs show signs of this—one so severely that he’s developed a large edema (pocket of fluid) under his jaw that has the nickname “bottle jaw.” My vet says he’s on the verge of needing a blood transfusion or euthanasia. A blood transfusion is out of the question—mostly because it is a costly horror show and would be traumatic for him and we’d need a donor from my already compromised flock.

We are giving them a combination of Ivermectin, vitamins, and other wormers to kill off the internal worms, but it might be too late. I am in yet another of those interminable “wait and see” bubbles that anyone who has livestock must endure.

Last night, I went into the pen to hold him in the semi-darkness and have “The Chat” I have with all of my animals at one point or another.

“I love you so dearly,” I say, stroking his wooly head.

He sighs and lays his globular chin into the crook of my elbow. He’s weak.

“You get to choose, of course. As long as you are eating and looking like you want to live, I will give you a hundred chances. But if you stop eating and start suffering, I will not let you suffer. I will help you go sweetly and peacefully, and you will be returned to the earth where your grandmother is buried. If you can live, you will be cuddled and cared for to the best of my ability all the rest of your days. Either way, you will be loved, Always. You ARE love. You come from Love and will return to Love.”

He turns his head to look at me with sleepy eyes.

He knows.

I’m just talking to comfort myself in my pre-grief panic.

“You came just to delight me with your capers and your joy. You came to help me fall in love with Life (and now Death) again. I’m grateful for that. Thank you.”

For once, all the sheep are silent. They have nothing to say. They stand calmly, unafraid of the Dark.

I kiss him on his curly head and climb out of the pen again.

Down the aisle, the steers are putting themselves to bed. Otis is curled up as cute and small and cuddly as it is possible for a 1300 lb bullock to be and Gus is standing over him, licking his back methodically. They groom each other frequently as part of their bond. They have each other and we do too. Watching them makes my heart calm.

The endless downpours, discouraging temperatures, the flourishing of parasites, poor air quality, and the waste of produce can do nothing to dim my love of living here. The earth is still a lush paradise. All too soon all this green will turn red, gold, then white. Weather is not a requirement for Joy. Summer is more than just Sunshine.

That is the Truth. And it’s Beautiful.

Keep Mending, Dear Ones! Thank you for doing your Good Work. I love you sew much!

Yours aye,

Nancy