Driven To Distraction

I am easily distracted.

This feature makes it terribly difficult to draw a straight line through any task on my to do list. Maybe it's because I don't multi-task well. Mostly I just do parallel processing...and my RAM isn't what it used to be.

If I could only focus!

I'm seeing a lot of bad things happening here. Things I don't want to see but I just can't look away.  It's as if I were driving past a series of multiple injury accidents on the freeway.

Anyway, it is usually just because of some distraction or other that I forget to run a load of laundry, or check my cell phone messages or look after one of the many personal chores that are important to me and my family. 

This week my friends in Canada are enjoying the glow of Olympic gold.  I'd guess they are experiencing an odd feeling they don't often indulge north of the border. Pride and joy must be making some folks a little uncomfortable.

My country?  Right now it just seems mad and mean and one beer away from going over the edge. 

Back in the days before all children were under house arrest we rode our bikes to our friends houses after school.  We knew who's mom would drive us all to the beach and give us some change for a snack.  We knew who's dad should be avoided after work.We had a lot of war veterans in my neighborhood.

My country reminds me of that unpredictable dad right now.  Handsome and popular images from it's youth  are history. Wasted opportunity, squandered fortune and traumatic stress has left it sullen, bloated, resentful and mean. Can't even take a hockey loss without kicking the dog and yelling at the neighbors.  My country is angry and potentially violent; sitting alone in the garage listening to Rush Limbaugh and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. 

A teenage girl was found raped and murdered down south of here this week.  She went jogging in the park.  Turns out there are animals living among us who hunt our children.

You know, some people are so angry and afraid that they are contemplating violence. People are afraid because they are constantly being told to be afraid. Domestic attacks on our government employees are already happening. And nobody seems to want to talk about it. A dead security guard in Washington DC, a plane crash into the IRS building in Austin, TX, a census worker found strung up in rural Kentucky.   

Funding for education will be cut again next year in our town.   They're cutting school mental health and school maintenance programs too. Doesn't seem like a good time to cut back on education or mental health to me.

People and businesses I've seen all my life have had enough.  Their store fronts are empty and their houses are for sale. 
   
Anyway. What was I saying? I've become so forgetful. But I am trying hard to concentrate on getting things done.

We've ordered our seeds for the farm, our house here must be packed and prepared to rent, my older son is preparing to graduate from High School and my little one needs help with his homework. My business interests here must be managed, my mother needs me to help her shop for groceries, and my list of chores for the farm is already pages long.

I'm leaving home and I'm coming home.
I'm driving through the end of the world as I know it.          

And darn it! I forget what I'm supposed to be doing!

Updated on Friday, 7:44AM PDT
More of the steady drip drip drip of violence aimed at government authority.  On Thursday,  a California man
opened fire on the main entrance to the Pentagon from the Metro Station.

Pentagon Shooting Suspect Dies

Friday, 6:50 AM ET -- Official: Pentagon shooter was well armed. WASHINGTON (Associated Press) - The well-dressed gunman mortally wounded after firing at and injuring two Pentagon police officers was armed with two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and carried several magazines of ammunition, the chief of the Pentagon police said Friday.
Chief Richard Keevill said the shooter, identified as John Patrick Bedell of Hollister, Calif., spent the last several weeks driving from the West Coast.

2nd Update Friday, 4:08 PM PT - From the AP

HOLLISTER, Calif. — The man who opened fire in front of the Pentagon had a history of mental illness and had become so erratic that his parents reached out to local authorities weeks ago with a warning that he was unstable and might have a gun, authorities said Friday.
It's still unclear why John Patrick Bedell opened fire Thursday at the Pentagon entrance, wounding two police officers before he was fatally shot. The two officers were hospitalized briefly with minor injuries.
Bedell was diagnosed as bipolar, or manic depressive, and had been in and out of treatment programs for years. His psychiatrist, J. Michael Nelson, said Bedell tried to self-medicate with marijuana, inadvertently making his symptoms more pronounced.
"Without the stabilizing medication, the symptoms of his disinhibition, agitation and fearfullness complicated the lack of treatment," Nelson said.
His parents reported him missing Jan. 4, a day after a Texas Highway Patrol officer stopped him for speeding in Texarkana. Bedell told the highway patrolman he was heading to the East Coast, and began acting strangely — sitting on his knees by the side of the highway and turning off his cell phone when it would ring.
Bedell said it was his mother calling, prompting the patrolman to answer the phone and talk briefly with her. Family friend Reb Monaco said Kaye Bedell asked the officer to take him to a mental health facility, but that the son refused.
 

Coming Home From Away

CLICK - HEAR the Podcast from the farm

Lupines along the shore in Sturgeon


Susan Weeding the GIANT rhubarb outside our barn


The boys and their bikes.

Well summer is here. And father's day was a sweet success. The boys gave me their cards and a fine present I'll be using to grill over the pit this summer.

We've had some ups and downs but that's nothing. Folks, when you leave your every day behind and plant yourself somewhere different you have a chance to see the world with new eyes.

Islanders occupy a particular place in the world and their pride of place makes it clear that if you're from "away" you can never truly be an "islander". But you can be a good neighbor, a friend, an asset to the community and someone that the folks on the road will wave to on the way past. That's good enough for me.

As I drove my tractor through the field the other day, a neighbor waved and beeped his horn on the way by. I took it as a simple note of approval like a friendly wave in town. I was out in the field working my farm and that made this passing islander glad enough to beep his greetings.

We aren't skilled farmers or traditional islanders. But I always hope we're seen as people who love and appreciate this community. We aren't here by birth - we're here by fate. And I think that because we've come here to work a heritage farm in this province people in the neighborhood are willing to give us a chance. That's all I could ever ask.

A friend who moved to Santa Barbara once noted that my children were lucky. Because they were second generation born in Santa Barbara, they would always have the honor of calling themselves Barbarenos - a distinction that goes back to Spanish California. You see we too have a particular pride of place.

My sons are 13th generation Americans. Our ancestors were among the first Europeans to plow fields in colonial Massachusetts and New hampshire. My mother's family walked west to the Kansas prairie behind covered wagons. So what are we doing removing ourselves to Eastern Canada?

We 're no longer English. We're not Spanish. We're not Canadians. But we are free people who have chosen to cast our lot here in the Maritimes. Why? Well, fate is hard to define. But whispers from the past offer a suggestion. Many of the folkways described by my father's father still live here. And my mother's mother actually foretold this place in an incredibly detailed free-hand embroidery of our farm which she gave to my mother as a wedding present in April,1943 - 57 years before we came to the island. So it could be lots of things that brought us here. Or it could just be that we've finally come home from away.

I observed the other day that Hollywood has put an obscene premium on wealth and beauty. But God must love plain people because he surely made an awful lot of us. On PEI, I feel comfortable with God's people. Sure, I'm proud to be a Californian. And I'll gladly trade on the magic of the name. But what makes this place special is that I'm free to be who I am.

When I fall on my face people will laugh. My pride will be hurt a little. But if I'm willing to swallow a bit of my California pride, some smiling islander will offer a hand up and have a laugh with me.

I'm the child of a benign and sunny coast come to a place that strips shiny exteriors to a weather beaten finish. I can only hope that when my shiny paint fades my outsides will harden up. And I hope that my outlook will remain as sunny and warm as the people I know who make this island their particular place of pride and hope.

The Worm Forgives the Plough

This picture is for Katie in Montreal who wrote a kind note to say that I made her miss her island home!


Katie can probably tell you what that picture means better than I. And I expect she could even tell you how it smells. Really! There's something about opening the earth on the island in the early spring. The scent that rises after a long winter rest says, "I'm ready - let's get growing!" It's a mixture of mossy wetness, the final breath of last summer's grasses, the meaty tang of worms at work and just a hint of diesel from our little tractor.

I took my old plow out behind the tractor yesterday and made the sods turn over across the two acre field we started working several years ago now. Island farmers , the real ones in their big rigs, like to see the bright red island soil come up to greet them as they pass over the land. I like the intimacy of the open air atop my little John Deere and I've learned to read the soil as I pass over. I know now that when the sods turn from grass green to the rich color and texture of chocolate cake that I have a healthy field full of life.

A man who encourages low till farming once was asked, "Why do farmers plow?" He said, "Because they like to." He's right. And as eager as we are to reduce the need for tillage and to preserve soil structure, this field is in need of some help to repair my earlier mistakes. And so to get the ground ready for the effort to control weeds and feed the soil for another season, I chose the plow to prepare the ground for the green manure and cover crop that will hold down the soil and feed it until our next experiment.

Katie in Montreal noticed that I'm from the US and wondered how I found my way here. Well Katie, the answer is my wife and her, "kindred spirit", Lucy Maud Montgomery. As a fan of, "Anne of Green Gables" she cam to PEI with her grown daughter and they fell in love with the island. The next year we came back up from California and had the notion that we could find a little place for not too much money. Perhaps a cottage near the shore. We found this farm and after much discussion about how impractical it would be - we bought it.

Neither Susan nor I had any kind real experience that would lend itself to taking on a farm. Susan grew up in Wisconsin, and I fell in love with the country life as a part time hand on a cattle ranch in California. So starting with very little practical know-how, we jumped in. And here we are. Now our plans are to graduate our oldest boy from High School in Santa Barbara and then move our family full time to PEI.

It's an interesting life we've chosen. The challenges are many. We know we're fortunate to have the chance and so we're determined to make the most of it.

Well, that's all I have time for tonight. I have a green house waiting for me to plant full of seedlings and time won't wait. I'll post more as time allows. Till then, best wishes from Dunn Creek Farm, PEI.