Bee Tree Farm

This summer has been unforgiving. The humidity so heavy we wear it like a wet, woolen suit, the weight is released only during sleep through which we dream of swimming under warm waters, slow movements, the feeling of pressure that’s built up to bursting but can’t be released.

It’s been THAT kind of season.

I feel the tension in every interaction with every poor soul who finds themselves prisoner to the weather, which is to say, prisoner to the geography we’ve chosen or that’s chosen us. Sometime in July when I knew I couldn’t wait for our (one) annual fall trip out of state, I hopped online late at night and purchased August tickets to New Mexico, not knowing then how much would be scrambled on the farm right when I’d planned our vacation. Not understanding how dangerous the temptation would be to stay in Taos forever once we drove through the mountains with the windows down and only the river sounds and cool desert breeze as soundtrack – the unrelenting force of desire to just keep driving. It’s a tricky thing, vacation, the way it gives a glimpse of an alternate reality that could have been yours, if only some decisions were made differently. I’ve never thought too much about escaping Texas, not just because I’m tied tight to my family (now more than ever since we have kids), but because it was just never a question. Texas is home – it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.

But this summer my sister, also a lifelong Texan, moved far away, across an ocean, across several countries because she was brave and because she wanted to. I didn’t know I’d been longing for that sort of freedom until I brought her breakfast tacos on the morning of her garage sale, two weeks before she left. I watched strangers pick over the objects gathered carefully during her many decades here, imagined the equations she solved to determine what was precious enough to pack, what must be sold. I’m sure, for her, there was catharsis in those decisions and handling the memories each object conjured. For me, there has been no catharsis aside from the four days spent in the mountains. It was a trip I wore like a safety blanket: if I need to run away, this space exists as respite. But don’t spoil it by considering moving there. Living in a fantasy could ruin the fantasy. Does that make sense?

Sometimes that’s how I feel about the farm.

See, for years, I dreamed about exactly the life we are now living. I sketched floor plans first of the house, then barns, then a dairy footprint along the margins of my yellow legal pads when I was supposed to be taking notes during work meetings. At that point we had the land and my greatest joy was in escaping here to the woods on the weekends, wandering the vast possibilities, picturing a herd of goats, imagining a few horses by the pond, hearing the hens saunter through tall weeds and argue over grasshoppers. We managed to make all that happen, I don’t even remember how, but something to do with blind stubborness is to blame. Something about fighting, scraping, arguing, crying those hot tears of frustration. Something about pushing and pushing and pushing. We got here, we got all the things I scribbled in my marginal fantasy life – through grad school, and job changes, and job quitting, and home building and moving and pregnancy and raising babies. It’s all images flitting across the rear view, now. All old battles we thought we came through unscathed but I’m realizing now I paid a high cost: I am burned out, used up, tired. I’ve lost my hustle.

This is the stuff you’re not supposed to admit publicly, it’s what you whisper with friends over drinks, or to your partner after the children have gone to bed and you’re surveying the detritus of the day – you declare you’re tired. But this feels bigger than that – the realization that everything I thought I wanted was possibly too big – or that perhaps the energy needed to fuel the machine I built takes more than I have. For now, at least. For now.

I’ve considered all my options, and the easiest is also the most difficult: I could just NOT breed the goats this fall. I could just not. It would mean no fresh season. No fresh milk supply. No big plans. No babies in the spring. It would also mean no exhausting hours in the barn in freezing weather tending/welcoming/ending/saving lives. It would mean no more relentless anxiety. No more juggle of accounts and orders and deliveries. It’s a lot to consider, considering how far we’ve come.

As of today, I’m still moving forward, going through motions and planning on keeping on keeping on. Like my sister, I am forming equations to determine which piece of this farm puzzle fits and what does not. It’s not the same as a garage sale of my personal belongings but is an emotional inventory of the clutter that’s got no space here anymore. For now, the goats will be bred. The dairy stays although the joy for me is perhaps not in the production of cheese. But the beauty of these animals and the abundance they provide remains as an underlying source of energy for me – in all things. They simultaneously destroy and revive me, perhaps a dramatic admission, but the truth. I feel the same about this summer and its over-saturated heat, its smothering humidity, its constant, penetrating pressure like a heartbeat you can actually feel reverberate slow through the veins. The weather is so terribly tangible that it reminds a person how deeply they are rooted and alive within it. That’s a beautiful thing.

So for now I keep my windows rolled all the way up in Texas. I watch the steam rise from the pavement after a brief late summer rain. I stare at the clock inside, listen to the minutes tick off, watch the sun slip low until it’s comfortable enough to tiptoe outside, like sticking your tongue into the first sip of coffee you’ve been cooling. For me, summer burns all the way down to the wick. I am the low-flickering flame whose strength fades then endures, and with the first breath of fall air that comes blowing over our northern hill in early September, maybe I will feel some release, some urgency again to get back at it. To move, to work, to create, to hustle. I hope so.