November Hill farm journal, 133

 What a morning! Elsa is moving in and when I woke up, the rain had just started. I ran out and got the horses and the donkeys in, gave them their morning hay, tidied the barn, and then ran back in to take the dogs out for a run before the rain got heavy. Thankfully the big rain set in after we were back inside.

It looks like we’re in for a very rainy day. I hope this storm passes through with the least possible damage for those east of us and up and down the east coast as it makes its way north.

For now, this is what’s happening on November Hill:

It’s been a fairly quiet but crazy week. On Tuesday we lost internet and cell service simultaneously for about 12 hours. That evening found me sitting in a silent house with book in hand. Actually, a nice break from devices! But I was glad to wake up Wednesday a.m. to everything back to normal.

We lived through three nights of fireworks this year, though Keil Bay seems to be having an EPM flare-up as a result. The disease is never truly gone, and flares can happen when stress increases. We did everything we could to minimize that for him, but we couldn’t stop the idiocy of humans shooting things off, and if you detect anger in my tone here, you are right on the mark. I’m so disgusted, more so than ever, with the use of fireworks to celebrate anything, really, but independence in particular. What I want is independence from people’s desire to create what sounds and looks like a war zone. And one that impacts every living thing around them to boot.

I’ve checked in with Keil’s vet and we’re putting him on Banamine for several days, then Bute, and finally Equioxx, to try and get control of any inflammation going on. She’s on the schedule already for her monthly visit, so he’ll get a thorough assessment then, his acupuncture, and we may increase acupuncture to weekly for awhile, again, and if absolutely necessary, we can do a course of EPM treatment as well. 

He’s in good spirits though, whinnying for meals, and generally seems to feel fine, for which I’m very grateful.

Everyone else in the barn is doing well. 

We’re in the midst of cucumber production here - I’m deluged again! I picked 10 large ones yesterday in advance of the rain coming in today, and three large tomatoes. For whatever reason, the tomatoes aren’t doing quite as well this year. They’re producing, but not in large numbers. We staggered planting, though so have several plants coming up to replace these older ones. I’m also overrun with sweet and African basil, and should have cut some yesterday before this rain so I could make the annual favorite brie and tomato and basil pasta for dinner! If we get a break in the rain I’ll run out and get some later today.

Everything is growing - grass, pollinator plants, trees, shrubs. We’re in NC jungle mode and with the rain we’ve been getting, it’s NC tropical rain forest mode as well.

The bees are doing well too. We have ended up with 5 colonies. We’ll soon be in summer dearth time here in NC for bee forage, though all the pollinators I’ve planted that bloom in midsummer will help out some. This year’s spring nectar flow was very strong, so the bees have plenty of honey and we don’t harvest it (though we would if they had extra, and probably could have this year). They should be fine until the fall flow begins.

Speaking of bees, I dreamed that we started finding bee trees on November Hill. In other words, trees with  bee colonies living inside them. In the dream, we kept finding another one, and another one. It was quite wonderful. I would love it we found even one!

Writing: I have 15 pieces out on submission and am working on a creative nonfiction chapbook of essays this month. I think I forgot to note here that I had a piece come out on Manifest-Station recently. If you go to their site and search for Billie Hinton, you’ll find this one and an earlier essay they published a few years ago.

I have a number of writing projects on the stove, as is usual for me, and am trying hard to get them completed and out the door!

In other news, my grandson is loving cloth books, laughing and smiling and in the midst of early language development, and a total joy to behold. 

We’re at the second viewing stage of land shopping, which has been an interesting process. With larger land parcels there are more things to review and consider than I realized. Since looking at land has been something I’ve loved since I was a young girl and did it with my parents, this is in some ways like a return to childhood, when I analyzed each parcel we walked for its suitability for horses. I started that early and I continue to do that now. Life is full of circles, isn’t it?