And Life Goes On
Life is messy. How many times have you wanted things to turn out one way and they go in the opposite direction? It’s not the end of the world. As I am spending this year delving deeper into the Stoics, I’m constantly reminded that life is not good or bad, it just IS.
Yesterday while others were standing in line to vote {I dropped mine off at the Elections Office two weeks ago and still stood in line to do so}, I was dealing with infirmed livestock. One of the big breeding buck goats wasn’t eating.
He turned up his nose on Sunday to treats and feed. Monday I walked him down to the barn to a quarantine pen where I could keep a closer eye on him. By Election Day it was evident that something was wrong with his plumbing as he strained and whimpered. Given all my years of goat doctoring, I suspected he had kidney stones that had blocked him up. If you’ve ever had a kidney stone, you’ll understand the pain, but in goats they tend to collect in sensitive places causing a back-up that can be both painful and deadly.
While the Twittersphere raged with political pundits and images of voter intimidation, I was doing things that would turn the stomach of most human beings. Friends texted and telephoned telling me how anxious they felt over the whole shebang while I repeatedly washed my hands with toothpaste in an attempt to extricate the musky odor from my skin.
Living in Pennsylvania, I’ve been bombarded with messages regarding the counting of votes, especially in my county which is hotly contested. I knew the tallying of votes was going to take time. I knew that absentee votes were already targets of suspicion. I knew that I’d already done my civic duty and now my attention needed to be focused on the farm.
Wednesday rolled around and people all across the country were screaming. So was the buck. He’s getting up there in years, his sweeping horns curling elegantly over his shoulders. Unlike so many breeding males, he remained docile, a beloved favorite. To write him off at this stage would have been like calling the election before all of the votes had been counted. We called the vet.
In the late afternoon she arrived. I explained the symptoms, we agreed on the diagnosis and she sedated the big boy before attempting to relieve him of his blockages. Despite his relaxed state, it still required four hands to attempt a procedure that would make males of any species wince. It was during this we found the big lump.
“Oh, this is not good,” she said while shaking her head. I knew it meant that today the outcome would not be what was wanted. We thanked her for her time and then proceeded to go through the motions despite the outcome not being what we had hoped for.
It is what it is and life goes on.
I know so many are apprehensive about the outcome of this election, including myself. There is so much at stake, yet despite the outcome I know that I will continue to farm, I will continue to raise food, to feed others and show up every Sunday at the farmers market. History has taught me that civilizations and empires rise and fall. Farming has taught me that we all come and go, getting recycled into universe at an atomic level as I have watched this process intimately throughout the course of my lifetime.
The buck went into the compost pile. Next season he’ll be spread on the hay fields that will feed the next generation of his offspring. Four years from now we will again vote for a president. Sometimes the outcome is not what we planned for, but life goes on.