Williamston, MI

If the woodchuck hasn’t been dead too long, you can usually carry him by the tail and toss him into some nether region of the woods, there to be ingested by creatures of less discriminating tastes.

The first two I removed from the traps down at the barn were of this grade and quality, though none too perfumed in that dim musty air. Working the traps isn’t difficult, but it does prolong your association with the foul contagion that often hangs about the barn now that there are no horses there and therefore no reason for anyone to make daily inspections. A dead woodchuck will sometimes ripen several days before anyone notices and befoul the barn as efficiently as a live one will pillage the cukes.

The third critter had been delivered of the burden of consciousness for a bit longer than the other two, and when I grabbed what remained of him by the tail my hand slipped off the vermicular cartilage, taking with it a clump of fur. The flies and maggots ignored me utterly, as if they were grateful enough for the kill but could handle things just fine now. I fixed them by scooping up the fragrant decaying lump with a shovel, carrying it off, and heaving it lacrosse-style somewhere where a turkey buzzard would be likely to eye it. Let him fight the maggots and the flies.

I then reset the traps, left the barn open to air out in the early August breeze, and turned my eyes to other tasks: greasing and setting the height on the mower, a newish one that runs off the PTO of a Satoh tractor, purchased to replace an old 9N that was breaking the bank with its impressively consistent unreliability; trying to figure out a way to pull a set of Jacobsen gang mowers behind all that; testing this “new” tractor to see whether it is up to the task (I rather doubt it); checking on the shack in the woods to be sure it is still holding its own against the elements, the animals, and the hunters who once smashed out the sash and used it as a deer blind; hanging what new drapes and shades and screen doors need hanging; fixing the water softener, sawing up felled limbs and trees—the list, as I like to say, is longer than roll of toilet paper.

The annual summer trip to the ten acres on which my wife grew up—“annual” so long as the oil holds out or remains affordable on the current fund of capital and conscience—is never without its honest work and play. The kids go crazy with all the new-old things to do (stomping around in the tree house, going on tractor rides, badgering us to slip into town for ice cream), and the little missus gets to sleep in late—even as I look for more ways to increase and enlarge the waking hours that remain to me, what with time’s winged chariot hurrying near and all. I hold with Poor Richard that there will be sleep enough in the grave.

Making coffee this morning I saw four deer in the pasture. In the foreground, near the bird feeders, a cocky blue jay lusty for the suet scattered two goldfinches, a hummingbird, and a titmouse, and out the front window, even now in the driving rain, three turkey hens are going to try their luck at crossing this rural road. I reckon they’ll be just fine. Not a tom, jack, or car to bother them.

I have been trying for a couple of years now to complete an essay about these ten acres and the girl who groomed her horses here, to consider how the place changes—how in our absence it changes by the ministry of thought, imagination, and memory, and how in our presence it changes by the annual stunts of maintenance and renewal—and to consider what sort of life a family could make in this place when the light in the eyes of this failing American experiment, caught now like some wheezing woodchuck half in and half out of the trap, finally goes out for good.

It’s an exercise in thinking that long ago ought to have become a routine isometric all across this desiccated fly-infested land. But just now there’s a four-year-old who’s pulled himself out of bed and wants his “breffixt”—today a cheese omelet. Someday, if not of volition then of necessity, the eggs and cheese will come from animals raised right here, as the girl was, and wrought by skills recovered from God knows where.

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Tagged as: agrarianism, distributism, environment, family, farming, food, localism, nature, place