The famous New Yorker Magazine essayist and columnist E.B. White, whose writing inspired my Farm Journal, wrote that living on a farm in the 1940s was like having a long list of dirty and small chores that would never be finished.
He published a maintenance list regularly to explain his life on a Maine farm to the city people who knew little about it. I feel White is a kindred spirit. I’m trying to do the same thing.
My maintenance report for the New Year is pretty good, although clouds are on the horizon. We all have maintenance issues, but a farm is its own world with needs and maintenance that never seem simple and only occasionally get fixed.
White wasn’t complaining, he said; he was explaining. Me too.
He got a lot of mail telling him he had a perfect life, and like me, he was often accused of being nasty. I get those ideal life messages from time to time.
White warned over and over again not to take the advice of strangers. In his time, it was letters. In my time, texts, e-mails, and blog posts. But the warning is still applicable. Anyone who writes on social media in the open is a target, good and bad.
On my worst days, I fell like a digital toilet bowl.
Our maintenance issues are all out in the open; we have advisers from all over the world. My writing hero, Henry David Thoreau, wrote alone from a pond. He never heard, saw, or accepted advice. His world was different from White’s and mine.
Our farm chore list depends on the weather and time of year. And, of course, the money we have in the bank. Most farmers do their repairs to save money; they are much more skilled than me. Even Maria has some limits to what she can do.
The carpenters and handypersons don’t take outside work in the winter as a general rule; they all have lucrative building and home-building jobs that pay well and occupy them for weeks. It’s always hard to get reliable plumbers and electricians; good, handy people are precious. We have two of them we can call.
Like White, I don’t care for unwanted advice, but like him, most people don’t care what I want. “Remember,” he wrote to his annoyed readers,”there is one of me and 10,000 of you.” In the Facebook era, he could add a few billion people to that.
I’ve come to understand that advising and correcting strangers is a healing therapy for people who feel small, ignored, or broken in some other way. There is a noble instinct to help, which still lives in raucous and divided America.
For most of my life, people minded their own business, and I was not reachable; in the new world, people’s business is everybody’s, and anyone with a computer or iPhone can reach me. I’ll never get used to it, but I can accept it or whine about it for the rest of my life. I choose to accept it.
Being open draws advice, period. That’s the story. And there is good reason to laugh about it, at them and me.
Our weekend crisis was our kitchen stove, which suddenly bellowed clouds of awful-smelling odors that suggested a mouse or rat was trapped in the stove and burned to death. We’ve opened the back and found insulation all over the bottom and rat fecal droppings. We were stunned and pondered who to call. We usually end up with Mike Conklin, the master of everything.
Our traps and baits weren’t working. I thought we might need a new stove (arrggggh.) We still might, but Mike came right over and said the kitchen stove was okay. Rodents were hanging out at night, getting inside in ways we couldn’t find, and eating the insulation at the side of the furnace.
The smell, he said, was almost certainly urine from the rodent trespassers.
I wrote about the stove, and I’m afraid the advice about the smell was too gross to pass along here. And as is often the case, it was not helpful.
Mike says we don’t need a new stove (whew). He suggested we move the stove away from the wall and surround it with fresh mice traps. It’s a good idea; we’ll try it tonight. He says people all over the town are fending off mice and rat invasions due to all the rain.
There is more good chore news.
Our compost toilet is working beautifully, without odor or difficulty. The advice smelled a bit.
“Once you’re using it,” wrote Jeff this weekend, “you’ll figure out that there are times that pee and excessive liquid (diarrhea) get into the moss. That’s when it’s going to be a sticky situation…Get yourself two-wheeled trash cans. One for storing the peat moss, one for the used peat moss.”
How do I politely tell Jeff I don’t want to hear about his diarrhea or bowel movements and that I don’t wish ever to talk or write about my toilet experiences? Being open has boundaries and limits.
Blessedly, we have none of poor Jeff’s problems and don’t consider it our business. I have the feeling he is the one who needs some advice. I have none to give him in return.
Now, sleep maintenance. The cannabis maintenance issue is going well. Our toilet is a convenience and an engineering wonder.
A score of people also pleaded with me for advice on getting the right cannabis. I’m not qualified to do that, so I must say no. How come everyone in the world gives advice but me?
Other chores have to be pushed off into the Spring and beyond.
There are broken windows in the house and slate tiles on the roof – some get broken every winter from sliding snow; there is rotting wood on the barn sills. The sheep gnaw on the barn when they can’t graze. We have holes in the barn to repair and replace and new gates to build.
When the first snow hit, Dan Rogers was scheduled to do the rotting barn sills. We’ll see him in the Spring. Chewed-up gates in the Pole Barn need fixing. We need more gravel in the Pole Barn. Insulation that needs replacement in the attic. We need a tractor to come and haul the new mountain of manure away. We need a stronger way to heat Maria’s studio in the winter.
Bud has been digging out of the dog area in pursuit of Amish horses and mice; we are laying stones down all over the dog area, running to stop him. We may need a new fence there. The dog run needs maintenance. We might need a new dog (only kidding.)
And in two weeks, I will begin work on my second dental implant. In May, a new septic system. I need maintenance more than ever. I have six doctors who care for me.
I love the variety of chores on the farm. And I’m finally beginning to smile and laugh at the advice. It is pretty original and different from any other advice I’m used to receiving. My theory is that some bad genes die off in old age.
As to my maintenance, I will see my retina eye specialist for my bi-annual eye check (I’ve had laser surgery twice) on Wednesday. I’ve declined to go and see an endocrinologist for my diabetes. I’ve got enough specialists to see, and I don’t wish, at age 76, to spend any more time taking tests than are necessary, seeing more doctors, piling up more co-pays, getting new medicines.
My decision to be open with my life has always been fascinating, surprising, controversial, and educating. Perfect for me.
I don’t regret it, not for a moment. In the end, it helped me be a better me.
I learn a lot from these maintenance messages and a lot about advice online: be careful, I want my advice to come from people trained to give it and wish to be paid for it. I’ve also learned a lot about me, namely to take the pole out of my ass and accept life as it is.
Sometimes the advice is helpful, sometimes not. I admit that the wrong advice stands out. Maintenance in the country and online differs from any other maintenance I can recall.
Life is like that. I never know when something will pop up or blow up and do me good. The farm is organic, alive, and constantly changing. The farm is needier and more helpless than a six-month-old baby. I can almost hear it crying for attention.
I live in a new world with changes, ideas, and tools for health and happiness. I intend to keep growing to catch up with it rather than cling to the old ways, as older people tend to do. I have never been a follower of the old ways.
I am learning to live in this world, just as E.B. White did. I’ve tried anger and complaint; now I’m going for humor and empathy. Change is the fuel of life, I think. So are privacy, identity, and authenticity.
