K.B. Inglee's Blog: The Shepherd's Notes, page 20

Happy Birthday to me

I am turning 70 this week. I guess I can’t call myself middle aged any more.
I’m pretty pleased with where I am in life.

I have managed to get several short stories published. I can build a split rail fence in 20 minutes a section. I can lift a 65 pound lamb. I am relatively healthy, though my first set of false teeth are driving me batty. My dog behaves well, unlike any dog I have had before. I am in a community of supportive writers and another community of supportive interpreters. My family makes me happy. I hope I do the same for them.

What I would like to do: more of the same. I am trying out some other fiction genres. The last story I sent off was set in the horse world of today, and I have a steam punk that needs some work.

Decisions yet to make: do I want to work on my novels? I have four manuscripts in first or almost first draft, but I enjoy the world of short stories so much that I spend most of my time writing short.

Things are better this week

Something more pleasant this week.
The sheep are all doing well, no lambs yet. I am about to submit my latest short story. It isn’t historical, nor was the last one I submitted. In a previous lifetime I was a volunteer at pre-Olympic horse trials, so my protagonist is, too.
I was lucky enough to see the mill equipment all torn up being refurbished for spring opening of the water system. The stones are apart, the metal bits and pieces strewn around. Some parts have gone off to be re-forged. Once it is back together we can open the water system and start grinding again.
I can’t begin to explain what a joy it is to dress in period clothes and use actual water power to make food.
I spent part of the winter researching the grains that were grown locally. I hope this means that we will start growing our own grain. We could never grow enough for all the grinding we do, but it would be exciting to show the whole process.
We will be shearing sheep at Newlin by hand April 16, and using electric clippers at Greenbank on April 30.

Mortality III

There wasn’t supposed to be a part three to this, but life seldom gives us what we want. It is lambing season, and we should have a pasture of romping babies. Instead we have two ewes down. One died Friday evening and the other is doing well under the care of a vet.
We are rethinking our pasture management to make sure every sheep gets an equal share of the food. The vet said that a single missed meal can upset the energy level in a ewe enough to dehydrate her and deplete her blood minerals.
Sheep are finicky critters, and can look perfectly healthy, then be dead.
I can feel my unconscious working all this and I’m sure it will come out as a short murder mystery once the lambing is done.

Mortality II

While I may feel deeply for the loss of any of the animals I work with, I kill off at least 12 people a year, using picturesque means. I have mourned for only one. I blithely stuck enough nicotine patches on a woman to kill her. I shot or stabbed my share. I often push them off high places, perhaps a reflection of my fear of heights. Some poison, some bashing with blunt objects. Mr. B. and the printer’s wife were both strangled. Sometimes I don’t even know how they died. Miss W. washed ashore and was either bashed or tossed into the freezing river.
Since I write short stories, I don’t have to kill people every time out. I have my share of kidnappings, robberies, stalking, stolen identities, and family violence.
I have several stories about the murder of horses. Around the time horses were being electrocuted for insurance money, I did in several. My writers’ group said “no dead horses.” One member refused to read a story with a dead animal in it. I started another a couple of weeks ago, but I am having second thoughts.
I will go back to killing off people, since readers seem to be less bothered by that.
KB

Mortality I

Last week I had considered writing about survival, and this is pretty close.
We lose a few sheep every year especially as the flock ages. Often we can’t tell the cause of death. Sheep bunch up so every now and then they all try to run through a narrow opening. We lost one lamb when she hit the stone wall beside the opening.
Chickens seem to die more than any other farm animal. We started with 26, ate six and ended with two. Local predators did away with some. The alpha rooster took care of his competitors.
Every now and then one of the cats goes missing. I found one curled as if in sleep on a shelf above the door I had just ushered members of the public through. I tried to keep from looking up at her during my presentation.
My heart aches for all these deaths. I know the sheep as individuals each with her own personality and voice. I loved all the chickens.
Still that’s what farming is all about. Each animal lives its term and then dies. Each dead sheep has given us many seasons of her quality wool. I have eaten my share of lamb (though not from our flock); our heritage chickens were very tasty and gave more eggs than we could absorb into our foodways programs.
I never see a plastic wrapped package in a supermarket without thinking about how that food came to be there.

Writers Bloc?

Here it is Wednesday and I haven’t posted my blog yet. I have plenty of ideas abut none seem to want to shape themselves into 250 word gems.

I thought about writing about survival since last week was about comfort.

I began writing about apprenticeships since that is what I was researching on Monday.

I realized that my problem was not writers block but the opposite. Too many ideas and no clue as to which I should be working on today.

I need five finished stories by the end of April. In January I finished four short stories and began three others. Now I have to finish some, edit some, rewrite some entirely. What should I do next? I pick up one project only to decide that this other one is more important.

SO…Today, after I put up this blog, I will finish editing “Not the Best of Wars,” and submit it.

Tomorrow I will work on Between a Rock and a Hard Place, or maybe my steam punk short, or maybe……….

Surviving winter at the mill

We have had a spate of bad weather. Snow slid off the barn roof blocking the door, so we had to climb in over the fence. The snow is too deep for the sheep to dig down to the grass underneath, so we have to toss hay to them. This morning everything had half an inch of ice on it.
Yesterday, in period clothing, I took a class of high school students through he 1739 miller’s house. No one was interested in how the wood fired oven worked. They wanted to know how people coped with adverse circumstances.
Who shovels?
How do you get to the outhouse through the snow?
Do you have boots?
How do you keep clean if it is so cold inside the house?
How long does it take to turn that fleece into something warm to wear?
All great questions. What they didn’t realize is that while they expected central heating, hot running water and a warm bathroom, the miller and his family had no expectation of such comfort. They would have considered the fieldstone house comfortable enough. Shoveling snow so they could feed the stock was to be expected with the winter.
These kids have more understanding of life in a hard colonial winter, but they are thinking about comfort, not about survival.

Far too busy

Yesterday was the day I usually post my blog for the week. This week has been a bit hectic. I am researching grain crops in Colonial America and I have found some interesting things. Colonial farmers combined wheat and rye in a field. The two plants growing beside each other were more disease resistant, and held to the soil better. The ratio of wheat to rye depended on the growing conditions. The more wheat the more desirable the flour ground from it.
I have agreed to take on the administrative work for an anthology, Fish Nets. I put out the call for manuscripts this morning. I then collect the stories, have them read and scored and send the choices to the editor. I work with her and the authors until we have a final manuscript. At that point someone else takes over to get it through the publication process. The first anthology in the series, Fish Tales, should be out soon.

Winter sheep

Each morning I put on my fuzzy socks, my turtle neck, my fleece, my down vest, and rubber boots, my barn coat, fingerless gloves, a neck warmer and a knit wool hat to go feed the sheep. When I get to the barn, the sheep are wearing wool sweaters, the natural kind. This is sheep weather. They get on well in the snow and the cold. It is no problem to dig through a few inches of snow to get to the grass. Still I get calls from people asking me to come let the poor creatures in where it is warm and dry and they have all kinds of good food. While I do look for signs of discomfort, I don’t usually find them in the winter. Frozen water is a bigger problem. They can lick the ice and eat the snow but they don’t get as much water as they need that way. One of our locations has heated automatic waterers. But at the mill, we suffer from frozen pipes, hoses that are left out un-drained and long distances from heated water pipes. In my day I have carried lots of warm water to barns. Once I had to bring 30 five gallon buckets from my kitchen to the barn since everything there was frozen solid.

My to-do list

This morning I started my to-do list for the week. Along with doctors’ appointments and regular sheep and family care are a number of writerly activities that don’t involve writing, well, fiction writing anyhow.
Lunch with an editor
Write and submit a newsletter article on Sheep Shearing.
Read and critique four works for my face to face writing group
Read and critique two more works for my on line critique group.
Write my weekly blog. That would be what I am doing now
Compose a call for manuscripts for an anthology
Put together a basket for a silent auction to promote a book by one of my friends.
Write a guest blog for another friend. This will take some research, and may make its way onto next week’s list.
It’s amazing that writers ever get any writing done. I am part way into two short stories. In the shower this morning I came up with method and opportunity. Once I have the motive I can finish that story.