Buckets

It has been consistently cold for a few weeks now, and though we’ve had few large storms, the small fallings of snow have accumulated. The skiing is magnificent. We glide down the tractor road, through the copse of balsam I’ve been cutting, into Melvin’s woods, past the old hunting camper ten years unused or more, and finally across the high mowing. We tilt our faces to the strong winter sun, heedless of surgeon general’s warnings. One midday, high-sun ski and already I feel better in a way I hadn’t realized I needed to feel better in.

Back in time for chores, lesser now that all the pigs have been dispatched. One’s on the kitchen counter this very moment, as a matter of fact: We let it hang outside overnight and it got colder than I’d realized it would and now the meat is too stiff for cutting. But the fires are burning and the sun is coming strong through our south-facing windows, and soon the flesh will thaw.

I need to find more piglets. The spring freshening cycle is soon to begin, and the buckets we leave in Jimmy and Sara’s milk room will be filled over and over again with the thick colostrum that cannot be pumped into the bulk tank. I leave four 5-gallon buckets at a time; Jimmy calls when they are full or I stop in if I’m passing by, grab what there is. I carry the full buckets two at a time to the car. They are heavy and if I step wrong, they thump against my legs, not painfully, but hard enough to remind me of their worth.

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The Shameless Commerce Division is again open for business, this time for a single, limited production item, courtesy of our oldest. Happy shopping.