43. January Round-Up or “Stupid Eye”

We’re mid-January and already it’s time to sum up a very busy month.

2022 began with planning, reflection on what the farm did in 2021 and can do in the coming months, seed ordering, making restaurant connections, and pledging to plant an additional 122 trees on the property.

It also began with my having surgery to remove a tumor from behind my right eye. I am recovering presently, not permitted to lift anything over three pounds (do you even know how ridiculously light that is?), and so I spend my days reading in front of the fire, scrolling mindlessly through social media, drinking too much coffee, and continuing to put off the paperwork I’m supposed to be completing, as the Hubs and I have decided to start a side business in handy(wo)manning and home renovation.

Above: a fun day waiting at the hospital; me a couple hours out of surgery; me a couple days out…

So, I’ve had to hang up my work gloves and get down to the business of starting (another) business: logos, branding and marketing, emails, web design, phone numbers, business cards, insurance, certifications, and registering as an LLC. Whew!

Now is the winter of my discontent: hanging up the work gloves to heal.

And it’s gray and ridiculously cold, blowing frigid air unimpeded across the farm. The water has to be thawed/broken through/smashed out for fresh more than once a day, and I feel guilty and helpless asking someone else to do it (and also frustrated that no one is noticing and I have to be the one say, “Hey nerds, it’s super cold outside and living things rely on us to survive, which means food and water and shelter, and water freezes in warmer temps. than these, so please, can someone help the poor poultry!” since I’m not allowed to lift anything over three pounds or bend over, you know, regular-type living-in-a-body stuff.)

I also hate ever having to rely on anyone for anything, and friends and family have been so nice, and how can I repay them for all of their kind words and Southwest Chicken Chili drops and care packages and book deliveries?

Long story short: I do not convalesce well.

Tomorrow, I have a follow-up appointment with the surgeon to see how I am healing, and I will tell you: it’s not great. Healing, yes, I am fine, but the results, I think, are not where I should be after a week. Sure, I have a swollen eye and face—that is to be expected—but a dead, floating fish-belly eye that makes the whole world double, my stomach queasy, and vertigo sudden and intense? No thanks. Only chameleons are made to have eyes that do that.

Let’s talk about the farm instead.

2022 will not only bring more new food varieties (and be the Year of the Orchard), but we’ll be planting 122 trees as a goal, a mix of coniferous, deciduous, and fruit and nut-bearing, adding more geese, and getting some more chicks since the eight chicks hatched at the farm in 2021 produced three hens and one roo (the immutable Felix) and we’ll need more than a couple survivors a year to keep this egg and pony show running. Lessons learned: mama hens cannot be trusted to keep baby chicks alive and safe from barn cats, territorial geese, ravenous rats, and other farm pitfalls, like puddles of water. So any new chicks that are hatched will immediately be transferred to the brood box to be grown out, under more supervised conditions.

It’ll be spring before I know it, and seed staring will commence when I can actually see small seeds and pick up big bags of starting soil mix. Blergh. I am frustrated. This is usually one of my favorite times of the year: the possibilities, the planning, the discovery of new things to grow and tend! I feel like it’s slipping through my fingers just as I’m supposed to be ramping up.

Well, I guess I will find out all there is to know tomorrow. Stupid eye.