Preemptive Reciprocation

For four straight days it was hot and hazy and we finished our first cutting of hay. One by one off the field and onto the trailer, one by one off the trailer and into the still-unfinished barn. But the roof is on and the hay will stay dry and we’ll do what more needs doing by working around and on the towering stacks. As I have written previously, hay is our most important crop. It is our milk, our meat, and our manure, and because it is our manure, it is also our soil, and therefore, it is our vegetables and our fruit. So it is always a relief to have the barn full of hay. Such a thing is never a given, and although we’ve never failed to fill the barn, we dare not assume. There are simply too many forces at play, too many ways in which expectations can be thwarted.

On comments. Forget the three-pre rule. No one seems to like it, and it was stupid, anyway.

Quickly, I want to address my almost-absence from the comments section, which one reader mentioned (in my experience, if one mentions it, many others think it). “…how much time can the comments really take up for a writer who responds very little? I always read the blog (and read the book) but stopped commenting a while back due to lack of reciprocity.”

Your comments take me very little time. That’s not the issue at all. I scan them briefly to be sure there’s nothing offensive, and that’s about it. Over all these years and nearly 10k comments, I’ve unilaterally deleted exactly one, mostly just to prove I can be a totalitarian asshole if I darn well want to be (that, and it was pretty mean, directed not at myself, but at another reader).

Look, here’s the deal. I roll out of bed at 5 every morning and hustle my scrawny little ass for the next 15 or so hours, at which point I’m generally so fragged I can barely find my teeth with my toothbrush. I ain’t complaining; in fact, I love it. Wouldn’t have it any other way. But it’s not a schedule that leaves much time for responding to comments, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. I would also like to gently point out that insomuch as one considers my writing here to be fodder for the comments that follow, I am reciprocating. I’m just doing it preemptively. It’s preemptive reciprocation, and it’s sweeping the nation, baby!

Anyway. That’s all for now. Comment away.