Monumental Moments, a Heart Attack and Compost
Monumental moments have happened here on the farm this week. For one, the UPS driver (who delivers much welcomed packages right to our front door) and I have become friends. This past week he said to me, “Wow, you’ve really done a lot to the place — it’s looking goooood!” He has been driving up our driveway for the past 15 years and he has seen what the previous owners did not do to this property and what we are starting to do to it. Having his perspective on our work here made me incredibly happy. I felt like it was one of the most validating nods to our dedication to bringing this land and this space back to life.
This week we also welcomed friends from Sedona, who were passing through New Mexico, to our property for the first time. They have heard us talk about home and finding a farm for the past three years and it felt even more potent to finally show them the property we purchased. There are three structures on our property: a casita that we are renovating and will be renting out to clients, a studio where I work and a main house where Heathar works and where the communal kitchen and living space is. Usually, when I show the main house to people I start by saying that I would not mind leveling it to the ground and starting over. It is not that the house does not have its charm, but the house was built one room at a time, bit by bit. The pantry slants downhill at such a steep slope that you can literally roll glass jars down the slope without pushing them. The living room still has a drain in the floor, showing its remnants of the bathroom it once was and there is a rat problem in the roof. When we do actually take the roof off and replace it, we will find many rodent treasures. But our friends said, “Jen, I don’t think you have to apologize for the main house. It feels cozy and warm and completely welcoming.” Again, total validation and relief. My eyes see all the cracks and all the blemishes of our property right now. It is a welcomed reprieve to view the property through the eyes of those who see its beauty.
And then, my wife welcomed her first group of students to the property for a 4-day retreat, which ends tomorrow. Having a group of 7 women on the property has felt like we are using this property for what it is meant for and what we have been envisioning for the last decade of our lives. To feel these women loving our space, hiking along our ridges, cooking in our kitchen, eating on our porch and releasing their tears alongside the mountains, feels incredibly right. Aside from me feeling jealous that I am not privy to the intimate, emotional processing of this retreat, I feel joy as I hear the women talking, sharing, laughing and cooking together. It truly is torture for me to not be involved in deep, intimate, emotional sharing while it is happening in our sacred space but I am also practicing not being the space holder and letting my very capable wife lead her group of students through her retreat. Torture and joy, all at the same time.
Today, I had several errands to run in our community — it was not a day of heading into the big city to run errands but I actually had errands I could run by driving to my neighbor’s homes and interacting with all the local people who live here. As I drove up into the Sangre De Cristo mountains, I was so deeply moved by the beauty of this landscape — the puffy white clouds against the crisp blue sky and the deep dark blue of the mountains lined with green even though we haven’t had real rain in 2 months. I stopped at a friend’s home who recently had a heart attack, bringing her and her husband some of Heathar’s homemade flourless chocolate torte. They showed me their home and all the love they had poured into it, the handmade chairs made out of skis and snowboards, the doors that they carved and crafted into beautiful ornamental designs and the bountiful blackberry bushes that they didn’t quite get to harvest because of the sudden heart attack that happened only 2 1/2 weeks ago. I walked around her art studio and the magnificent work she is creating there and met their dog, who greeted me wildly with licks and bounding jumps.
Next, I stopped at a friend’s house to pick-up some handcrafted face and body products. As I walked into her kitchen, there were bushels of lavender on the kitchen table and simmering pots of oils and lotions on the stove. Her kitchen window looked out onto a wide open green pasture, the dark blue mountains in the background. “Is that your pasture?” I asked her. “Not yet, but one day I hope it will be.” She answered. I know that dream. I know that hope. One day it will be my friend. She eagerly showed me all the projects she had been working on around her property and how tall her sunflowers were and what was eating her arugula. “Your home is lovely.” I told her. She blushed and tried to brush me off and I said, “You don’t see it with the eyes that I see it with. It looks really beautiful.” Her husband sat outside on their porch, strumming his guitar and told me about how he used to spend the night in this house when he was a little kid. His best friend used to live here and now he does. He said, “When I was little, I never noticed the vigas or the wood floors. I never noticed how beautiful the house actually was.”
And finally, I stopped at Antonio’s house. Antonio has a mill and a sheep business but he also has the best compost around. The raised beds that we put his compost into back in the spring is growing and producing the best food out of all our beds. Antonio welcomed me to his house holding a cold beer in his hand and with his pants slightly unbuttoned. He had just come in from working outside and I was sorry to ask him to go back out into the steaming sun. Antonio said, “Where did you get that tan? Would you like a beer?” There was something about him putting both of those thoughts together that made me deny the invite. “No thanks Antonio. I’ve got to get back to the farm.” I said. We walked out to the pile of compost, his dog Lupé following us. When I had come to Antonio’s house in the spring, the river outside of his house had been rushing and raging, threatening to flood his entire property. Now, it was a small trickle, trying to run through the stony river bottom with all its might.
Antonio loaded the compost into the back of my truck with a front loader while dust and manure fell onto my skin. I evened out the compost in the back of my truck with my hand, leaving my hand smelling sweet and damp. As I drove home, I thought about community and how oftentimes, I don’t interact with the community on my own. So often, Heathar is with me. She was still with me, in the conversations and in the connections, I think that is just how marriages are — we are never fully on our own again even when we are alone. When we are married, the spirit of the other is with us, in us and part of the weavings of our soul. But it did feel good to feel my own connections with the community, as an individual. I have felt in this community, that I have been slower to come out and into the open. My work in the world is not something that necessarily blends or makes sense to all of this community and sometimes people are puzzled when I tell them what I do. They assume I am a city girl who is from Southern California and has no experience of this rural and wild world. But slowly, I feel that I am building more trust here in this community. I am showing my face, showing up and bringing pieces of homemade chocolate torte when I can.
I left the places I visited with promises to return and promises of Yahtzee games to come. I felt like I did when I was little again, knowing everyone on the block that I lived on and the blocks surrounding me. Instead of jumping into all my neighbor’s swimming pools like I did when I was little, I was getting compost and hearing stories of heart attacks that made someone stop their 40-year smoking habit. They were different kinds of interactions but they held the same feeling: familiarity, ease, comfort and home.
