Art and bellies full

Food makes sense to me. Our desire for it, our pleasure derived from it. The feeling of satisfaction when we feel connected to its creation. It makes sense that food full of nutrition or energy tastes good to us, and food that has gone bad or is bland is either harmful or contains little benefit. It even makes sense that some food itself has evolved or been evolved by us to show us its flavours: brightly coloured fruit shows us it is full of sugars, the pulp encasing the seed that the plant wants us to carry away. It makes sense to me that when we are well fed we are happy; that the quality of our lives improves with the quality of our cuisine and that growing our own food can enhance our enjoyment of life even further.

I can extend this theory to other elements of our lives. To our community which sustains and supports us, to our homes and tools and equipment; neccessity and simplicity; utility and beauty; the skill of our hands come into contact with the raw materials from our backyard...

I can understand music. The rhythms which mimic the beating hearts of our mothers; the syncroncity which only humans possess; the reminisence of the cries of war and the cries of grief or happiness. And finally the perfect mathematical harmony that creates pleasing resonances within our ear drums, and the hearts that become one heart when the voices become one voice.

I can understand theatre, literature and storytelling. They are there to teach us, to warn us and to ask us what we might do if we found ourselves in such a situation. They ask us to reflect, to improve our relationship to the world, and thus they enhance our ability to survive. Or at base, a story might communicate what tasks we have done, so that our neighbour knows that it is done, and the knowledge of the work gets passed from one person to two people, and thus two lives become one and the work is shared...

But what of art? The music of the eye? It serves no strict evolutionary purpose... nor do we need it for survival. It has no rhythm, the harmonies of the frequency of light cannot account for it when we are constantly receiving such a full spectrum of light. I could understand it as a discipline for training the eye, but that is an academic subject which holds no bearing on need. I could understand it as a method of representation and communication, but it so often does neither of those things.

So I return to the basics. I return to brightly coloured fruit. The colour tells us that it will taste good and is full of nutrition and energy. Our eyes, our minds and the fruit have evolved together so that this can be the case. So we know that by consuming the brightly coloured fruit we will derive pleasure and health and the quality of our lives will be improved. Beauty is thus equatable with health, pleasure and life, and ugliness and decay points to disease and death.

And art*? If we enjoy art because it is beautiful... it quite simply put, makes life taste better. If art is the celebration of beauty, it will guide us towards health, happiness and life. If we are deprived of beauty, we will feel ill because our minds will panic, afraid that we have entered an environment of death and disease.

Thus art is the affirmation of life... it is a symptom of health and when a culture produces good art, it means that that culture is thriving; bellies full, happy and healthy.

What purpose art serves doesn't stop there... but this satisfies my question of our basic human relationship to it... before philosophy, culture and identity... before subject and before politics. Art makes life taste better.

*I more or less put conceptual art under the category of philosophy and art that addresses and communicates ideas or dark matters under storytelling.

Portrait of an artist as a young farmer

I'm beginning my artist's apprenticeship, working under Wesley Bates, a wood engraver, painter & private press in Clifford--a short drive from my farm and a shorter drive to Caitlin's where I was this past season.

Wesley moved here a number of years ago, enamored by farming and the country and finding this building in town, a shop front downstairs for his workshop and gallery, and with ample living space upstairs. The price was something even a professional artist could afford. In his time here he has been an advocate of culture in the country, and bringing the city gaze up north to find that the city is not the only place where art can thrive. A self-declared armchair farmer, he is *tickled* to see the young city-turned-farmers like Caitlin and Tarrah moving up here and deciding that this is where they want to live and farm. There are also murmurs of more artists buying buildings up here every day... the first early steps before culture, commerce and community can move in and create booming neighbourhoods.

But we still have work to do. The quality of the majority of the artwork could use a boost (Wesley and his daughter and ex-wife exceptionally excepted). We could use some sort of an art school or space for classes and life-drawing sessions. I personally need to re-examine the importance of the arts in community. Not as a justification, but to renew its purpose specifically within this part of the world.

I also need to find a way to bring good art up here. I suppose it will start with bringing good artists up to my farm, and seeing what happens.

Aldergrove Farm

Aldergrove Farm. That's my farm.

My family and I bought our farm. 75 acres in Grey County, just outside Mount Forest in Ontario. A two-hour drive from Toronto.

Rolling hills, a maple grove and two forested areas with a creek running through. Roughly 45 acres of pasture rolling in and out between the woods.

I am unbelievably excited and terrified. Maybe not even as terrified as I should be, but I've got no choice. And even if I had a choice, I would still choose this over anything.

...

Our offer was accepted the morning I left for Halifax. It had competition from another offer, a better offer. But the story goes that the owner, 83 years old and born in that house, adopted a daughter who passed away when she was ten. He still tears up thinking about her. And luck would have it that I reminded him of her, so he wanted it to go to me. But we had to meet the better offer.

Back and forth on the phone with the agent, the owner tearing up the background and my mother and I poised to drive to the train station while madly putting our brains together to figure the money. Yes. Yes we can meet the offer.

Still shaking we get in the car and I'm at the train station. I recognize someone from behind, my ex. Who I haven't seen since we were together... living together. "Matt... I just bought a farm." "Glynis. I'm going to Mongolia. Today..." He saw his new girlfriend off who was getting on the same train as me (who I didn't know about) as I got my ticket, and then we caught up, still in the daze of the story of the daughter, buying the farm and running into one of the most important people in my life who I hadn't seen in over half a year, and who I wouldn't see again for at least nine months.

I got on the 30-hour train... and the credits must have rolled. I'm now waiting for the next movie to begin...

...


My apprenticeship begins on Friday and I'll be close to my farm. We take possession a week into the new year and by spring I'll have dogs, chicks and ducks, an acre ploughed and a sunroom full of seedlings.

FARMING

One season at a farm... and not even a whole season... and I'm planning to run a market garden, CSA and young farmer's collective next year and break into the Toronto scene. Next year... when I will be tied up building yurts in Nova Scotia until the end of May. I have no land, no farm, no tools or implements. I plan to live in my yurt... the yurt I haven't started building. Part of me is almost embarassed at throwing myself into it after one broken season.

But I realized that growing vegetables isn't the only thing involved in starting a garden. In fact, I think it's pretty easy to grow vegetables. The hard part is knowing what to do with them once they've grown. The mad dash to sell and distribute the ripening vegetables that will go bad within days. Harvesting and marketing... it is all business and planning. So starting small projects and enterprises, organizing, advertising, networking, planning... all this is needed. And This is where I have experience and This is why I feel confident about it.

Whenever I get overwhelmed or get cold feet, I try to think what else I would do. There is nothing. All I know how to do is farm. I think that's all I ever knew how to do I just didn't have the farm to farm on, so how could I have known.

Oh I'm also writing a book on homesteading this winter, designing it, printing it and binding it... as well as two more issues of the Driftwood Quarterly. Life is busy.

Time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea...

Frustrated with my future and with lard.

The McQuail's and Tarrah have both given me about 25lb of pork fatback. The fat of the pig between the skin and the muscle. Last time I rendered pork fat, I rendered the flare; the lovely flakey stuff from around the kidneys that's makes leaf lard... first rate lard that is revered in for making pastries. It is so flakey that is rips around and when you blend it in the food processor it turns to a pulp. Then there are virtually no cracklings (left over bits) after rendering. All that is left is a little of the membrane that you couldn't peel off. The lard is almost scentless and cools white. It takes maybe less than an hour of work all together.

But the fatback is chewy, and determined to stay attached to the skin. You need the sharpest knife you can find, which I can't find, and the skin is offputting since it is still often covered with stubble from the Birkshire pig's black hair. The odor is strong and unpleasant. We got off work early yesterday so I sat and sliced the McQuail's fat for an hour and a half. I had barely gotten through one sixth of the fat and half of the fat was still attached to the skin after wrestling with each piece. It blended into a pink lumpy pulp and the fat is over half cracklings. An hour and a half of cutting produced about two cups of second rate lard. If I paid myself it would cost at least $10 for a 250ml jar, which it is not worth.

I find this frustrating because I want to use the fat. There is still hours' worth in the cooler and it has been there a week--cutting it close. Drowning in fat.

Along with the veggies rotting in the feild. I want more time to myself to deal with the amount that is produced. I want an acre of garden, a stream and to put up my yurt and live simply, garden and raise chickens for meat and eggs. Next year, anyhow.

Long Dirty Monday

Last night we feasted by candle light to celebrate Wesley and Caitlin's birthday. We had a big long table, ate cock-aux-vin avec our laying hens; our vegetables, roasted and mashed; Yvonne's apple cider; Juanita's incredible gluten-free baguette, and Wesley recited the Mad Farmer's Liberation Front.

This morning started with a jolt, more or less. A five minute breakfast then out with my coffee. I was preparing for the chicken slaughter. Well... my, our chicken slaughter. A somewhat needless endeavor that Yvonne and I wanted to experience.

I was the more experienced in the matter and thus it was my job to prepare for the events to come. We hung up the state-of-the-art chicken killing cone made from an old plastic sleigh, lent to us by Sean, taped up some plastic and underneath placed a wheel barrow with some straw to catch the blood. We put a garbage bag in a bin to pluck the feathers into and lay a plastic table cloth on the picnic table to do the gutting.

Caitlin had the water on to boil and Jake emerged from his Westphalia which he had drunkenly slept in preceding the festivities last night. It must have been bizarre for him to walk out into the windy, dark morning and see me sitting outside the garage in my complete filthy rain gear, apparently doing nothing. He was, of course, soon informed of the events to come and ended up documenting the process and fetching us bowls of warm water and pots of coffee.

Yvonne and I were nauseous. Caitlin was more or less decidedly Not participating. Jake said he'd do it if we didn't want to. The water was ready. I asked who was going first. "You!" chirped Yvonne.

I grabbed the chicken from the cage and popped it in the cone. I reached in from the hole at the bottom and felt its warm neck and pulled it out. The chicken was totally calm. It didn't even do anything when I dug the blade into its neck until the blood began to pour and its head went limp, then it contracted and the nerves began to fire. There it was. The rest was no mystery, I had done it before.

After the gutting and whatnot, we mucked out the chicken coop in the barn and found far too many baby mice which Yvonne ended up drowning. We then moved about 60 laying hens from the chicken trailer into the barn, except for one that escaped. Banjo, our young lab, ended up killing her. Caitlin was livid. She threw it to the pigs. Then the trailer was mucked out.

Long dirty Monday.

My chicken is currently simmering on the stove with a carrot, parsnip, celeriac, red pepper, onion and six chicken feet.

Wealthy and Broke

A skunk got into the barn. We trapped it and Jill and I took it to the creek in her hitch and with a rope tied to the cage and lowered it into the water.

If we had let it alone it would have eaten the animal's food, probably bred and then there would be more skunks to deal with. If we had let it loose nearby it would have come back. If we had driven it far and let it loose it would have been in an unfamiliar territory and it would have probably been killed by another animal anyway. So it had to be done and Jill did it.

A few days ago we were visiting another farm and I helped a young man lift a deer from the back of his Volkswagan Golf and put it into the freezer next to another, smaller deer. He lived on the farm in a teepee and helped with the livestock in exchange for meals and the land. He kills the animals with a bow and arrow and then tans the hides with brains and sumach.

Sean has also been saving skins. So looking at this beautiful animal, of course I thought to skin it. I don't know much about it, but if they could do it, why not I. And I'd have to start somewhere. And if I didn't it would go to waste anyway. So I had to try.

I read that tying it up in and leaving it in a stream with running water for a day would help remove any scent left over, and I researched where the scent glands were so I could carefully avoid them.

The weather has been grim. Always spitting, windy and dark. I set off at 5 today to fetch the skunk from the running creek. It was still where I had tied it but the creek had risen a foot and it was harder to reach and untie my knot. The water was running more rapidly, and when I grabbed the skunk it had stiffened with its paws up near its face. I lowered it onto the grass and untied its feet, and began cutting into the skin from the inside of the backleg. It felt more appropriate to skin it there, surrounded by trees, rushes and the creek. I removed the scent glands and threw the carcass for a wild animal to feast on. The animal was beautiful. It was easier than I thought. But kind of shameful to cut around the eyes, releasing the skin from the head and leaving the small beast naked. I'd have rather cut off its head and butchered the muscle into strips to roast on the fire.

On our initiative we're slitting the throats of three old laying hens this weekend. I feel more prepared for the first life I'll have to personally take. I have processed chickens before, but never killed. It will be interesting.

It dawned on me the other day that I will never have much money. I will always be scraping my pennies together. I'll have holes in my socks and experience little glamour. My childrens' clothes will be patched and we'll have no time for television. But we will never go hungry and never have idle hands. We'll have to work for our firewood but we will have warmth.

My writing might be more indepth were I not so tired. We are roasting by the fire; reading novels and how-to books on self-sufficiency; dogs snoring and kitten playing.