Dear Folks, Well, I was too optimistic when I wrote last month.  The slaughter isn’t over at all.

Don has shot three raccoons now, and we’re still losing chickens.  The loss rate has gone down, because most of the tree-sitting hens have been wiped out.  So far the clever masked bandits haven’t figured out how to get into the cages of the young layer pullets, but last night one of the big, dumb, white meat birds stayed out by mistake, and became meat for a raccoon instead of for us.  I heard its dying cry about 3 AM.  Sigh.

An even worse tragedy happened yesterday.  I went down to the sheep pasture about 9 in the morning and saw a gray, skinny, long-legged beast way over on the other side of the field, nose down, very preoccupied with something.  My heart stopped.  Coyote, I thought.  The town has been abuzz with coyote sightings, and people have been losing sheep everywhere.  I’ve been hoping that we’re close enough to town to keep the baggers scared away — or that our fence holds.  But that sure looked like a coyote bending over a kill out there on the pasture.

I fumbled with the gate while I counted sheep.  (On a farm counting sheep is not a soothing exercise; it’s done with fear and dread.)  Just sixteen.  I counted twice more.  Just sixteen.  Just sixteen.  One lamb missing.

As I opened the gate, the strange animal out in the field finally noticed me and calmly, silently, ambled over to the fence and disappeared.  It looked as if it melted through the fence, as if there weren’t a fence there at all.

Cursing, I led the sheep to the upper pasture to get them out of the way before I went to view the disaster.  And suddenly I heard a lonely baa.  The missing lamb, sheep number 17, came running out of a far corner and joined the herd.  Thank God! I thought.  But then what had been going on out in the field?

I came back down the hill breathing a lot easier.  Then I thought to count the geese.  Caesar was missing, our big, bold gander.  I found his mangled body out where the strange animal had been.  There were great bursts of white feathers everywhere.  It must have been a hell of a fight.  I presume Caesar was caught because he would have been the one to turn and protect his family.  He died in the line of duty.  He deserves every medal of honor our farm can bestow.

I felt so mad and so sad.

And so apprehensive.  If that was a coyote, this is only the beginning of a massacre.  With six more fat geese and a passle of fat lambs on that pasture, he’ll be back every night.  So I went back and conferred with my farm-mates, especially Don the hunter.  Don conferred all over Plainfield.  The coyote wisdom of the community is being summoned to the cause.  Couldn’t have been a coyote, says one — they never hunt in broad daylight.  Could have been a rabid one — they hunt any time, says another, not too comfortingly.  He’ll be too wily to shoot, but you can get him by trapping, says one more.  Better give up, bring the animals up to the barn, and feed them hay for the rest of the summer, is a widespread opinion.

I don’t have enough hay to do that.  At least all the avid hunters of the town know about the problem.  Maybe one of them will nail the beast.

We’re not really sure what beast we’re dealing with.  Don and I investigated the scene of the crime this morning, and Don filled me with doubt about what I had seen.  First of all, we didn’t find any hole in the fence.  A deer could have jumped it, a raccoon could have climbed it, but a coyote could only have gone under it, says Don, and there’s no evidence of going under.  Furthermore, as he tracked the animal trails back into the woods, he saw sign of raccoon and deer, but not coyote.  Maybe a raccoon did the killing, and what you saw was a deer that came along later, says Don.

Now I’m not sure what I saw.  The animal was far away from me.  It could have been a small deer.  But why would a deer bother to nose a dead goose?  And can a raccoon kill a full-grown gander?

Don set some traps back in the woods along the animal trails.  I’m afraid I’ll be checking down there every morning as soon as I wake up — and waking up with every strange noise in the night — until this mystery get solved.

More on this story next month, I suspect.

Nature is bloody in tooth and claw.  Every blasted thing on this farm is trying to eat everything else.  Bah, humbug, on all the beautiful food chains of nature.  I do not approve of their workings.

I get into this mood every summer, when nature begins to run rampant over all my neat plans.

Actually, though I’m sad about gallant Caesar, I can’t complain much about this summer.  In general, it is bountiful.  The rains are coming well, it’s warm but not too hot, all bugs seem to be under control, and the garden is gorgeous.  I don’t remember ever before hearing so many bird songs — maybe because I never really listened before.  I’ve just finished freezing a lot of peas and peapods and baking my first batch of zucchini bread.  (Lost track of the zucchini for just two days; a big mistake.)  The house is full of bouquets — sweet peas, Shirley poppies, bachelor’s buttons, beebalm, calendula.  The perennial garden is full of lilies, delphinium, phlox.  (Heather is just learning all these names.  She likes the name “bachelor’s button” best, though she has no idea what a bachelor is.)

We’re eating outrageous salads every day.  Beets, beans, cabbage, and carrots are just coming in.  Broccoli is at its peak.  I am feeling wonderfully healthy.  Who wouldn’t, on a diet of vegetables 5 minutes from the garden?

One natural food chain seems to be working my way.  For four years the garden has been overrun with slugs, the most slimy, ravenous, and disgusting pests I’ve ever had there.  They used to be kept under control by toads, but all the toads suddenly disappeared just before the slug outbreak and haven’t been seen since.  I have heard that toads and frogs are mysteriously disappearing all over the world, perhaps because of acid rain, though no one knows for sure.  Well, I can testify to the unacceptability of a world without toads; it means a world overrun with slugs and with big holes in all the lettuce and cabbage leaves.  But this year the toads are back again, little guys hopping all over the garden!  And the slugs are once again no particular problem.

Where did the toads go, and what made them come back?  There’s so much happening on this farm I don’t understand.  I suppose that’s why it continues to fascinate me.

I am a “Ruth Stout mulcher.”  That means, following her book How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, I cover the garden with several inches of spoiled hay everywhere but in the plant rows.  For my big garden (roughly a quarter of an acre) it takes awhile to lay down all that hay.  It’s a joyful labor, though, because as row after row gets tucked into its mulch blanket, it not only looks good, but it means the weeding task in that row is over — the mulch smothers weeds.  And the watering is over — the mulch holds rain, shades soil, and keeps roots moist.  And the mulch slowly breaks down to release nutrients to the plants.  When I finally have the whole garden mulched — which is just now — I can lean back and do nothing but harvest.  The plants thrive in the mulch.  So do the slugs.  So will, I hope, the toads.

Well, summer in New Hampshire means lots of visitors, which is a good thing, because we need help eating all the vegetables.  Our unoccupied bedroom and our guest loft have been pretty constantly full, with people from Norway, India, Russia, and, of course plenty of red-blooded Americans.  I’ve been trying to find another housemate to occupy our spare bedroom, but my efforts haven’t yet succeeded.  I’m not sure why.  I’m not selective about who comes to live here; I take whoever God sends, but God hasn’t been sending anyone.  What I want, of course, is Anna back, or at least someone who could be as good a friend and as cheerful a farmer as she was.  But I’ll take any warm body who can pay some rent and stack some wood.

It’s been six months since Anna died.  Her family had a memorial service for her not long ago on Cape Cod, where she spent her childhood summers.  I miss her even more now in the summer.  I could swear she’s out in the garden, cheering on the tomatoes.  Every time I weed asparagus or haul up a load of zucchini, I can hear her enthusing.  I find myself welcoming a newly opened lily or the first green beans and thinking, “I have to show Anna.”  Karel has taken over the potato patch in her name and with her meticulousness.  We put the potatoes in the sheep-yard, and we’re growing them “Anna’s way,” which she actually learned from her brother Peter — just set the tubers on the ground, pile mulch over them, and stand back.  She and I had a fight over that last year.  I told her it wouldn’t work.  It did.

Well, life goes on, and I’m still abnormally grateful for it.  I’m not being as meticulous about my health resolutions as I’d like to be — I guess you have to be sick to feel that motivated to be healthy.  But I’m meditating and doing yoga regularly, getting plenty of exercise in the garden, eating organic veggies.  I’ve gained back the weight I lost when I was sick; now I have to worry about not gaining any more.  I’ve gone through my 3-month cancer checkup with flying colors.

My explorations of alternative health movements are continuing.  I finally met Deepak Chopra the Ayurvedic doctor in person.  He’s lovely, humble, centered, and wise.  If I were into gurus, he’d qualify.  I’ll be taking a primordial sound course from him next month.  The month after that I’ll be learning about homeopathy.  You’ll hear all about it.

Love, Dana