Today we will start with the sheep. Before, in the barn:

After, in the pasture:

Mike Wahl, the owner, but whom, for the poetry of the thing, I will call the shepherd:

And the shearing crew, whose names I did not learn:

I did learn that shearing is a dusty, loud (the generator), dirty job, but the men are skilled and the sheep none the worse for the experience. However, they have 90 days yet to live, out in the afore mentioned sunlit green pastures before their lives are ended. Michael Pollan notwithstanding, that ending is a scene I could not visit. So I’m not a real farmer, after all. The sheep will grow a new, pelt, rated No.1 before they are slaughtered. Meanwhile, they will not suffer from the lack of a winter coat, as Mike has been watching the weather forecast and selected these warm days for the shearing.

One of the naked sheep escaped the fenced enclosure, and I wanted to photograph him. He was agitated and wouldn’t let me get close, but as I stood there, a man in a shiny red car stopped on the road to ask if I needed help rounding him up. I mean, he was going to pull over, get out and help? I now am annoyed with myself that I didn’t introduce myself instead of just reassuring him that the owners were in control. Nice neighbors!

Now let’s talk about the water situation. Sore subject! Jake is the third Well Guy we’ve worked with, though he is technically a Pump Guy, not a driller. He has come to try again to get water from Well No.2 to be tested for salt, and finds it unnecessary even to take this water to the lab, as he can taste how salty it is. And of course, with the particulates of arsenic and other lovely components, this water can’t even be used for irrigation lest it kill the plants. Doomed. We’ve tapped into the Pacific Ocean, it seems. We celebrated too soon.

So, we’re back to Well No.1, the low producer. Jake will test this water to see if it is at least potable. If so, we can pipe it up through the copse to an underground reservoir where it will collect to serve household needs (if my sisters are reading this, remember the cistern?). Jake has a low-tech testing device on his truck and reports that this water has one tenth the particulates as has No.2, which he believes means it won’t be salty. Just sandy. But don’t worry! There’s a solution for that! But now we wait for the lab report, probably available next Monday.

Meanwhile, the Fence Guys are busy drilling post holes for the deer fence they’re building for the orchard trees. And guess what. He invites us to peer into the bottom of one of the holes, and there it is. Water. Flowing. What the? I think it’s one of the springs we’ve been told dot the property, Larry says it’s just seasonal. Hmm. Good thing we’re not planning on a basement, hey?

On Thursday, we go back to meet the asbestos abatement team, and to give them the check. Just FYI, we’re meeting the accountant to create a business standing for the farm and the whole project will become a Very Important Financial Entity. Soon we’ll be getting phone calls from folks eager to help us “grow our business” or “succeed in the market.” Can’t wait! Will report next time with photos of the completed fence and depleted farmhouse.

“Bob,” Will said, sprawled upside down on the sofa, playing on his mini.
“What?”
“You should call it ‘Bob.'”
This in answer to a comment I’d made to Jenny, who was sitting in the normal fashion on the same sofa, opposite me. You must always assume that children are listening, even when they obviously are not.
“We have to get a name for your dad’s new pick-up,” I’d said. “Any ideas?”

What could be better? Bob. I love it. When possible I will post a photo.

That settled, let’s move on to Saturday. Larry and I went to Philomath, to Shonnard’s Nursery for a class on fruit-tree pruning. Arriving a little early, we took our list over to the bin where the bare root trees were dug into bark dust. Found the apples we want, and went in to find chairs for the lecture. I can’t even tell you how much we didn’t know about pruning trees, but the talk started with a discussion of the necessary tools. I smiled, okay, maybe I was a little smug. I’d said I wanted some new clippers, but Larry said we already have some. True, but they’re not sharp any more and date at least from our Tigard days.

“The weed-whacker,” I started, counting on my fingers. “The truck . . .”
“Okay,” Larry said. “I see your point.” He was wise to concede before I got to the new chain saw. It was clearly my turn.

The lecture over, we went outside for a demonstration of the pruning techniques we were learning. So easy, or so it seems. “Outside and down.” I’m sure it will be formidable when we confront our own new trees. Which we proceeded to select. We will pick them up next week when 1.) the new fence is complete, and 2.) the sheep are out of the barn. Because we can’t pick up the trees until we have Bob, and we can’t have Bob until we’re able to park him overnight in the barn.

Ah, the sheep. There they are, in our pasture:

I have to admit, they’re a bit rough and tumble, not the fluffy white creatures in the sunlit green pastures of my imagination. Not a good photo, because I couldn’t get to the back side of the sun, but still. We’ll have a chance to see the shearing in action next Tuesday, weather permitting.

Larry wanted do give his new saw a test drive, so suited up and pulled a couple of limbs from the burn pile. (It is quite clear from the massive stack of already cut logs that a splitter is in our near future. I would remark that it’s another one for the “Larry’s-toys” column, but to be honest, I think the whole farm belongs in my column, and I won’t be playing that card very often.)

On arrival at home, I pulled the receipt for the trees from the pruning book we’d also acquired at the nursery. “Hey, Larry. Did we want dwarf trees? I thought we were getting semi-dwarf.”

But there they were. Seven trees, all of the dwarf appellation. On to Google. Dwarf trees will grow from 5 to 7 feet, and mature and bear fruit earlier than the semi-dwarf or standard varieties. But 5 feet? That’s shorter than I am. Those would be apple bushes. Not what we had in mind!

We call the nursery and are told that the trees will be 12 feet tall. Is this true? We had just assumed that the trees we were buying were semi-dwarfs, were sure that the bins were labeled that way. Is this another case of “let’s give the old people something they can manage in their cute little yard — after all, they need something that’s going to start producing pronto?” Grr.

We await further clarification when the nursery again opens for business.

And here it is this morning: Poor old thing.

It’s not so bad from the back:

It was going to come down, one way or another:

I counted the rings: Three hundred fifty years old!

But we’d gone to the farm on another mission. The water from our “new” well had gotten a very bad report card from the testing service. Iron. Arsenic. Salt? Actually, we don’t yet know about the salt, because Jake, from Oregon Pump was going to re-test the water this morning. Not that arsenic and iron aren’t bad enough, but if salt, which had unaccountably not been tested, shows up too, we’re in for a huge remediation project.

Larry and I wanted to check on the creek, so turned off the electricity for the fence and climbed through the strands. I wonder how long it would take the cows to realize they’re out of jail, but they appeared to be unconcerned, lazily grazing in the lower pasture. Mark, Cow Guy, says they will know if the electricity is off too long, but how do they figure that out? It looks no different. Cows are smarter than you think.

So here’s Muddy Creek:

I said we should get a raft or canoe, and Larry gave me the look. “You don’t even like boats. And how, for instance, would we launch it, there being no discernible bank. And what, you think we’d go drifting along spotting birds, maybe having a picnic?” All of that in one look, but we’ve been married a long time and I got it. No, I’m serious. Doesn’t it look beautiful?
Well, click on the photo and you’ll see.

We walked the long way around the oak copse and up along the back edge of our property. Here are some of our neighbors:

Jesse, from Shonnards, arrived to discuss the siting for the elk fence. Seems they can start next Tuesday, so we wrote a check, shook hands and he left. And then walked down to see how the well testing was getting on. Found that it wasn’t. Seems the well pump was plugged with whatever and Jake will have to come back with the big truck, pull the pump, clean it, and then run water for the sample. Under the circumstances, he wanted to see the first, unsuccessful well. If, he tells us, that water is good (unlike 2nd well’s water) he would recommend developing a storage tank system for the 2 gallons-per-minute available there. So he will do a flow test on that water next week, too.

As you can imagine, Larry finds this pretty stressful! Somehow it feels like my fault when stuff goes wrong. I know this is irrational. But Larry stopped and bought a Stihl power saw, I came home and ate some ice-cream, and we both feel much better.

On Saturday, we go to a fruit tree pruning class in Philometh. We saw some tarps and equipment by the barn that make us believe that the sheep will be there soon. Stay tuned!

We’ll start with the tree. Here it is in all it’s splendor.

The tree is dying of some internal, invisible rot, or at least that is what the arborist, James, told us. But it’s a wonderful tree, and we are going to take it down. This is very hard for Larry, who would prefer to re-route the driveway, if that were not so spectacularly stupid from an economic point of view.

So we got a phone call on Monday morning that the crew was on the way to the property with saws and rigging. And Larry wanted to be there. It was raining fiercely all the way down I 5 and we supposed we would arrive to find the project called off. Yet it was somehow almost sunny when we arrived, so there was no stay of execution. Work had already begun, and it was fascinating to see how a tree comes down if you don’t simply saw it off at stump level.

At least I was fascinated; Larry mourned. I suggested that this was more fun than the Super Bowl, but that was silly. We like the Hawks and all, but this was our tree, for God’s sake.
Here are the woodsmen: Guy and Henry and Tom. As you see, they have already been busy removing limbs from the main, but alas crooked, stem. Click on the photo and you will see Henry high in the tree.

I always fall in love, a little, with these men who work outside, handling huge machines or, in this case, moving with grace and caution about their business. These three manage to move tons of wood through the air with chainsaws, pulleys, harnesses, skill, and caution. When I asked to take their pictures for my blog, Guy was interested. He’s an acoustic guitar singer/songwriter and wants to use the blogosphere to promote his music. I wish him every success.

We had to leave before the main event, and won’t know if enough of the tree remains to shelter the house, as we had planned. Because we had a stop to make at the county offices.

The report from the asbestos survey had come in, with minimal material to remove. Good! Next we have to submit a demolition petition before we may tear down the old house. We must decommission the septic system, if such there be, provide maps, and here’s the good one, photos of the interior, exterior, roof, indoor plumbing to include an operating toilet, kitchen faucets, heating etc., etc. Seriously? We’re TEARING IT DOWN! Does it matter if there’s a toilet? Apparently so.

I phoned the county petition desk to speak to a woman we’ll call Linda. But she is with a customer, is, apparently, always with a customer. However, she will call me back and attempt to answer my question regarding this requirement. As we have already proved, with photos and, in fact, legal council, that this thing we want to pull down is actually a house, may we not refer, on this form, to the county’s files thereon?

Linda has kindly, in a phone message, assured me that we need to provide photos to document that a tree, for example, has not fallen on the roof and thus compromised the entire project. We determine to visit the petition desk in person.

Of course Linda is with another customer and so we wait. I am patient with the certainty that logic will prevail in this case. And finally it is our turn. Linda is also patient. This is not her department. Who helped us previously? By some miracle, she, Janet is in. Comes into Linda’s office. Looks at the document approving our project and says certainly. Just refer to the case number on our document.

In order to calm myself, I offer this photo of sheep, gathered for the first time directly across Llewellyn from our driveway. I don’t know if these are to be our sheep for shearing, but aren’t they beautiful?

You can count them if you have trouble sleeping tonight.

Larry pounds in the first stake. We’ve decided to site the orchard (formerly known as “an apple tree”) southwest of and parallel to the driveway. I like this decision. As we drive up the hill to the house we’ll pass a planting of fruit trees, and in my mind’s eye, I see them, heavy with spring blossom, and beautiful.

The stake is in the service of the elk fence that has to be built, and soon. We have two fencing bids, we have two apple trees waiting to be planted, and are on our own. The fence has to be 60 feet square. We have a 100-foot measuring tape. We have an iPhone. How hard can this be? We’re about to find out.

From the first stake, I’m instructed to walk, playing out tape for 60 feet. This is the opening passage of what we will call “Country Dance” as performed by neophyte farmers of a Certain Age. Quick, if A squared plus B squared equals C squared, then what is the square root of 7200? Um, why do we care? Because we want a square, not a parallelogram. (Yes, I know all squares are parallelograms, but not all parallelograms are square.) Hence the iPhone.

“Don’t let go!”
“Why are you walking in that direction?”
“You said to . . .”
“No, I said to . . .”
“It’s tangled in the bush,that’s why.”
“The tree’s in the way.”

And so it went. But it was a most perfect day. Warm sunshine, crisp air, and we had all the time in the world. On our way to Black Butte, we stopped at the farm to meet a man who had responded to my ad for a free Hammond’s Rhythm II organ, weathering away in the old house. The man wanted only the guts of the instrument, for purposes unknown, although he did say that what he found was well worth the trip from Newberg, and that he planned to make a guitar amplifier from the whatnot he was extracting. All fine, and welcome to whatever.

And we did need to outline that fence. Mission accomplished, we walked down to greet the cows, which were having a mid-day siesta under a grove of oak. In my latest Harper’s magazine, I read the following quote from Edward Abbey, referring to cows: “these ugly, clumsy, stupid, bawling, stinking, fly-covered, shit-smeared, disease spreading brutes.” Well. I don’t think they’re stupid, and as for the rest, hardly the animals’ fault. Our boys have 50 acres and all the grass, water, and sunshine they may want. Oak trees for shelter from the rain. But I’ve seen the Harris Ranch feed lots, too. I don’t know. I don’t know.

On the way back out Llewellyn, we saw the sheep in the pasture across the way gathering at the fence line. Lots of sheep! But no dogs, no people on horseback or in pickups. Curious. Our sheep? Do they know the time has come?

I hope you read the blog comments now that the system has been sorted out. And if you have, you will have seen friend Gordon’s suggestion that we name Larry’s new truck. So in the sun-warmed car on the way to the mountains, we considered. Candidates are Eeyore, as per the Hundred Acre Wood and, less poetically, Viehls’ Wheels, or the Viehl-Mobile. Late entry: The Heffalump. Thoughts? Other suggestions welcome, but no promises. The truck is a big, old, white pickup. In case you’re inspired.

Finally found them! They’re practically still babies, looking bewildered. We believe they just arrived this morning. Not a good photo, but here they are:

It won’t be hard to keep track of this funny face:

Remember, you can always click on the photo to get a better look.

But what were we doing at the farm today, anyway? Got a call from the Asbestos Survey people offering to come out this morning and determine what, if anything, needs to be done in the way of asbestos abatement before we can tear down the ugly abandoned house on the property. So Survey-guy takes 45 minutes to crawl through the wreck, peel back the linoleum floors, look under the carpeting, behind the peeling wall paper, beneath the cracked paint, taking samples. Not anyone’s idea of a dream job, by the way. Yuck! We await analysis from his lab work back at the office.

Someone has been removing “stuff” from the garage associated with this house. Odd behavior, as whatever was in there, besides the over-stuffed chair swollen with rainfall, could not have been more attractive than Larry’s hard-won weed whacker resting in the nearby barn, open to all comers. I thought maybe the person was looking for a place to winter over, but the bed springs were still there, stacked against the wall, and the sodden mattresses on the house porch still leaning against the siding. A work in progress? Asbestos-guy charmed us with a narrative of knife-weilding squatters he’s encountered in the course of his work, which added to the atmosphere of the morning. Fog, drizzle, sad stories . . .

As antidote to the above, we drove up to the top of the road to picnic on a nice SubWay chopped salad with an accompanying bag of Cheetos. On the way to our asbestos meeting, we had seen the cows along the road and I wanted to photograph them, but they’d disappeared. So we pulled on our boots and walked the fence line to try to locate them. Nothing doing. What?

We gave up, shut the gate behind us and were pulling out on Llewellyn when the cows appeared right where they’d been before. It’s a mystery! I have to try not to personalize them, but they do look a lot like young boys tossed out on their own, bunching together and staring in confusion at the old lady with her cell phone telling them how lovely they look.

Late breaking news on the sheep front: Larry has just spoken with the rancher who says it may be another two weeks before the shearing can start. For now, we’ll have to be content with eleven cows and call it good.

We’re traveling down the length of Utah in a dense fog. It’s cold, hovering around 30 degrees, which means it’s a frozen dense fog. We drive in a cloud tunnel seeing only a truck loom ahead and disappear behind . Our story on Audible has ended, and so we talk. We’ve agreed to buy Tommy’s truck, and there is nowhere in the basement garage of the Crane Building to park the monster. We think that if we close off both ends of the barn/shed on the farm, we could safely leave the truck there.

“We could use one of the gates,” I say. There are eight to ten farm gates lying around the property in various states of decay.

“I was just thinking that,” Larry says. “I could do it myself. But first we have to shovel out the floor.”

I object. “I like the straw,” I say. it smells nice and barn/sheds should be carpeted with straw.

“Except it’s only straw for the first ten feet. Then it’s just dried dung,” Larry says.

Dung? The word sounds odd to my ear. Like something elephants might produce on their African savannah, not cows just southwest of Corvallis. But what is the right word? I reflect that in my quasi-farm childhood, we did not discuss bodily functions occurring in the barnyard. So for now, I’m sticking with Road-Guy Ken’s usage: cow poop. Can be either noun or verb. So, fine, but am I really going to talk of cows “peeing,” the obvious corollary? Hmm.

“Great,” I say. “We can shovel it all out and spread new straw and use the old stuff as compost for the orchard trees. Are you going to mind shoveling dried cow pies into your new truck bed?”

Of course he won’t mind. That’s what trucks are for. We drive on. I think about our barn owl. Male or female? I think about our apple trees, safely tucked away at Shonards Nursery in Philometh. I think about the new cows. Time passes.

Now, after ten days, we’re back in Portland. A cold, frosty morning. On the way home yesterday, we stopped by the farm to greet the new cows. Except we couldn’t find them. Without our farm boots, we couldn’t go wading around the hollers looking. Had to be satisfied to see that at least the electric fence is strung. Cows must be there somewhere, or . . . maybe I will get to watch them arrive after all? A nice thought!

We picked up a permit application for removal of the old house at the county offices in Corvallis, stopped by the nursery to get the schedule for tree-pruning lessons offered in early February. Got some recommendations for a fence builder who will know how to keep the elk herd out of the orchard, and came on home.

To an amazing phone call: a local farmer wants to rent our barn to shear his sheep! Seriously, this is so cool. Three hundred sheep per day, for 7 or 8 days, overnighting in our barn and getting fleeced by itinerant shearers the next morning. I cannot wait to see this spectacle! There will be photos — stay tuned!

I know, I know. I encouraged you to work through the subscriber sign-up, and now, nothing?
We’re leaving this morning and won’t be back until the 22nd, so no posts for the duration, but please don’t go away!

(I’m speaking to you from the bottom of the page — back on top just to proof-read. Now I see on the side bar that I have two comments! Hooray! But if I try to read them, I get a warning that if I leave this page I lose everything on it. Come on, computer, that’s not nice. I just want to peek? Okay, after I hit Publish, I’ll call up a new screen and see what you have to say. In advance, thanks for joining in!)

See, I can’t tell if anyone actually has subscribed, so I’m making a hopeful leap here that one or more of you, whoever you are, may have. (Hey, apparently someone has!) And I don’t have anything now to tell you about the farm, except to say that we had a nice meeting with the architect. I’m sure you’re not interested in learning if we decided for or against an appliance garage, and the dimensions of the fire-pit where Larry hopes to do some serious barbecue, so I’ll just tell you a little story instead.

We have new neighbors across the elevator lobby here in the Crane Bldg. They’re darling, nice, have come here from South Africa, and oh, to the point, young. At least to our eyes. So I was telling them the numeric code which gets the elevator to our floor. “It’s four-four-four-four-four-pound-P.” The woman looked puzzled, glanced at her husband, who translated: “hashtag-P,” he gently explained. Now was the problem her South African provenance or her youth? #Millennials!

Of course that wasn’t the real code, so if you come to visit us, please let me know and I”ll give you the real secret number . . .

Larry keeps wandering into my office, keys jingling, looks at me with that I NEED my coffee face, are you almost through? So for now, see you again on the 22nd. Thanks!

January 2, 2015. Alli and Will at the farm.

I’m getting darn good at the new protocol of placing my phone on the dock when arriving home, so my phone is always charged. Good. Now if I could learn to put it back in my purse when departing . . .

So I didn’t have a camera to record the kids at the farm yesterday, but as you see, it was a blue-sky day. Cold enough that the ice lately flooded from the creek remained as wondrous sheets of glass waiting to be stomped and slid upon. Picked up entire and shattered. “Like in Greece,” Will said. “Where they throw their plates.” Huh? Kids these days!

There was still enough ice melt to provide plenty of bog in which I could break in my new boots. Called, appropriately enough, Bog Boots. It’s kind of fun to splash about the lower field, even though it’s not technically wet-land. Technically. Couldn’t be more “wet” and still considered “land.” We’re beginning to understand just what it is that we’ve acquired.

We were to meet Mark Wahl there at 2:00 to discuss the placement of his electric wire fencing. He arrived in the company of his little Cecily and Jefferson, the sheep dog. He and Larry marched around the property, establishing the boundaries for the new arrivals. At first there will be only 20 cows, but the numbers will rise when the animals move off the fields of rye grass in the spring.

We’re to have a combination of some Angus, some Charolais. Of course I Googled Charolais and found that they’re white (good — more picturesque) but are also being bred red and brown. So we’ll see. I asked Mark if he would Skype their arrival and he laughed — if he know how to Skype, he said. Nope, I’ll just have to wait until another shipment to photograph the animals’ arrival. Wonder how I’ll manage my mixed feelings about contributing to a practice I don’t really support intellectually, but do cuisine-wise. Hold two thoughts simultaneously?

The land eases my mind just now. Winter wood, leaves on the ground, two huge flights of geese honking their way to some neighboring wet-land. Silence except for the sound of the kids over by the fallen tree, laughing. Now I won’t be back until late in January, after Band Camp. But I go to sleep with the image of green hills, ancient oaks with clumps of mistletoe newly visible, hawks soaring. Lucky.

You’d have to know Tommy, which you probably don’t, but when he says “Dude, I’ve got a truck out in the parking lot I’m trying to get rid of,” you should not be expecting to see some Datsun mini on the tarmac. Tommy is the king of boy-toys, and he’s earned every front-end loader, grader, boom-truck, D6-dozer parked out on his John Day ranch. (Plus he and his gorgeous wife hike the entire Compostela de Santiago every other other month or so. I’m just sayin’) No, you should be expecting a monster crew-cab Chev diesel, ’02 or ’03, doesn’t know for sure, a hundred seventy-seven thousand on the odometer. Can’t give it away to his kids. Does Larry want to buy it?

OMG. Does Larry want to buy it? Should be able to haul a lot of oak in a behemoth like that. Should command a little respect next time we pull into a equipment store and say we want to look at a weed-whacker.

So Larry has all the patience in the world when I want to go shopping for kitchen sinks. Rod (the architect, in case you’ve forgotten) says it will be helpful to his planning the interior if he has details which will indicate our thinking. And sure enough, I do find a sink I like. It is, of course, ridiculously expensive, so new that it doesn’t yet appear on the manufacturer’s web site, so details are hard to come by. But they have it in stock! The problem I’m finding, though, is locating fixtures for said sink that aren’t farm-housey, homey-cutsey, Vermont Country Store-esque.

Good news: our neighbor-to-be, Kristin, says sure! Of course we can extend the power easement from the box on their property to our property. Really, really nice. So we can check that box on the important-stuff-to-do list.

Haven’t heard from the water quality test folks re our well, so that box remains unchecked.

And the cows are coming back! Did I write that last time? Nope, just checked. Well, Mark, Cow Guy, wants to meet with us the first week in January to outline the areas he will fence. I wanted to be on site when the animals are unloaded, but I’m afraid we’ll have to miss the event, as we’ll be in San Diego at Band Camp on the proposed date. Dang! Gordon suggested that maybe we could Skype the arrival. Sure. Mark should be happy to oblige.

Last time down, I got the idea that I’d like to consider the organ which is rotting away in the old house. Maybe it’s a wonderful instrument that just needs to be cleaned up a bit. Hmm. What do you think?

So I’m missing the land. Shopping for sinks just isn’t that much fun. But I got a bad cold and a stupid case of bursitis or whatever, so we didn’t go to Black Butte as planned, with a stop-over at the farm. Going up to Seattle for New Years, and there I’m going to revisit the country- home books I’ve stockpiled with, I hope, more focussed attention on details like kitchen sink faucets. I wish I could show you the adorable return address labels from Allison with a little farm house and a barrel of peaches. See, it’s really going to happen. Christmas, 2015. The good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.