Karma Ends

Dambara and I spent the morning chipping away at our brush pile. It's huge. It's taller than me, maybe 7 feet high, about 20 feet deep and, I don't know, 40 feet long? Last spring, we hired a young man to take out some hazelnut trees that stood in the path of our planned deer fence, and he got pulled into another job before he was able to chip the wood for us. So it's waited all these weeks, patiently drying out, growing larger and larger, as we added a hefty dead tree and many, many pruned branches.

It's hard to hire help out here in the country. People are either overwhelmed keeping on top of their own to-do lists, or in great demand, or feel it's not worth their time to drive out this far in order to do the work. So, we end up doing a lot of things ourselves that would be much better undertaken by people who knew what they were doing, who had the right tools, and who had the time, which we do not.

We finally surrendered to the inevitability of Plan B (Looks Like We're Going To Do It Ourselves) for tackling the brush pile, and bought a chipper and a small, electric chain saw that was light enough for me to wield. We gathered safety glasses and protective headphones, thick gloves and water bottles, and trod up the hill where the brush pile loomed.

We've whittled away at the pile, every morning, until the heat drives us indoors. The chipper, which looked so huge when it arrived, seemed dainty when initially stationed next to the brush pile. Now, it's regaining some of its heft, as the neighboring pile diminishes, bit by bit.

We're at the icky part, where it feels like we've been doing this forever, and there's still a LONG way to go. We can see our progress, not only by our ever more dominant chipper, but by the expanse of long, green grass uncovered each day, which is happily chomped down by the llamas each evening, giving us an ever widening wedge of flat hillside on which to lop, saw, and chip.

We've already changed out a dulled blade and a damaged drive belt, so we're getting to know our friendly chipper pretty well. We remain on good terms, us and the chipper, mutually respectful. We admire the chipper's strength and endurance; the chipper responds greedily to our hands with their opposable thumbs, repeatedly cramming branches down its feed tube. It's consuming an impressive amount of branches, and producing an impressive volume of wood chips, which we're spreading around our young orchard trees to nurture and encourage all those tentative root systems.

But, as I said, we're still in the icky middle, where we cannot yet see the end of the tunnel, much less the light that must be shining somewhere up ahead. And I'm reminded of some advice that a friend gave me years ago, when I was swimming in a vast sea of dismay over a seemingly endless challenge that was simply not improving or shifting: "Karma ends."

If we keep working at the task at hand, no matter how seemingly endless, we will come to its end. If we gather the right tools, be it meditation, living in community, or a lightweight chain saw; if we summon the right attitude, be it gratitude, power, or joy; if we persevere at a pace that we can sustain over the long term, in the company of an enthusiastic partner, like-minded souls, or even in seclusion; we'll consistently make progress. We can overcome a destructive habit or an immense brush pile, learning useful strategies along the way, and finally, finally, arrive at the point where we can easily handle the next pile of pruned branches, or, the next refrain of an old habit.

Because, karma ends.

Efficiency Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

My husband and I ordered a chipper, to aid us in managing our aging trees, as well as looking forward to our youthful orchard growing up and needing sculpting along the way. Also, our soil has a lot of clay, so the wood chips will be a welcome ingredient in our cycle of farm life.

Dambara is a gifted internet researcher, so he found the perfect chipper for us, affordable, powerful, and move-aroundable. The adventure began upon the arrival of our friendly delivery truck driver. We live out in the country, surrounded by peaceful hillsides, with a fairly narrow highway out front. Our friendly driver parked his 36-foot delivery truck on half of the highway, hiked up our somewhat steep gravel driveway, and kindly announced that he could leave the boxed chipper at the entrance of the driveway. His truck could not make the turn into the driveway, and since it was now at the end of his day, his next-to-empty truck would probably not make the climb up the driveway.

He was so friendly. Upon finding out that my husband was out of town for several more days, he gamely tackled the possibility of using his walk-alongside forklift to bring the heavy box up the driveway. We made it half-way up, then he set the box down at the edge, leaving enough room for cars to sneak by, in the interest of saving his friendly forklift from permanent meltdown.


I waved him on his way and called for help.

My friendly neighbor chugged his bright orange tractor, complete with front loader, along the narrow highway, up the gravel driveway, churning here and there, and was able to hoist the boxed chipper the rest of the way up the driveway, and oh joy of joy, up into the pasture where our enormous brush pile lurked.

I waved him on his way and turned to examine the boxed monster, which stood almost as tall as me, and much, much wider and heavier. Luckily, my variegated background includes paper art, so, Exacto knife in hand, I attacked the admirably stalwart packaging. Cardboard corners, and plastic wrapping, and mysterious parts were strewn around the hillside, but there it stood, in all it's black and orange glory, like an ungainly Halloween costume, ready to chew and chomp anything I might decide to feed it.

The packaging included a wrench for tightening bolts and very clear instructions on how to attach handles, feeding chutes, and trailer hitch. Luckily, I wasn't expected to build the engine. I can put together any Ikea product imagined, but I draw the line at metal objects that whirl around at a scrillion revs per second.

There were perhaps two dozen bolts that needed tightening, and most were only moderately accessible, necessitating a repositioning of the wrench at every half turn. As I sat next to my new workmate on the sunny slope of our upper pasture, working each nut slowly, steadily to a firm fit, I thought, "I should go get Dambara's socket wrench. That would be much more efficient." And then I realized that I had no intention of upgrading tools. I was looking out over our beautiful valley, hearing the birds, watching the chickens explore their new excavation, with the llamas migrating serenely past on their way to check the apple trees. . . . why would I want to hurry through this task? I was bonding with my chipper, getting familiar with her heft and strength, immersed in joy. The longer I could be here, doing this, the longer I could experience joy.


About 24 hours elapsed between the arrival of the chipper and the driver clumping up the driveway to strategize delivery schemes with me, to the coaxing of my neighbor's tractor past our carport and through the pasture gate, to me sitting in the sun putting the finishing twists to an array of well-designed bolts. Nothing had been hurried. Kindness and generosity flowed happily through every twist and turn. Joy burbled and spread and lingered.

My days are gentle and peaceful, filled with a joy that shepherds me along from task to task. Efficiency has taken its proper place, far down the list of priorities. It has taken me 60 years to get here, but for this moment was I born.

It's a girl! No. . . it's a boy. So is she.

We finally received the papers on 3 out of 4 of our llamas a couple of weeks ago. The previous owner had promised the papers to us, and had some trouble locating them, but then here they are! Hurray!

It was sort of a mishmash of papers, so it was an interesting read going through them and figuring out which papers belonged to which llama. We knew the birth name for one of them, but not the other three. Luckily, one paper for each llama included a description. . . "white with black tail" . . . "King Louie". . . "gelded male". . . . check! That's the one name we knew. He's now Ahimsa. Then there's "deep brown". . . . "female". . . . there's only one with that color fur, so check! That's Prani. . . . "White with grey body". . . that must be Santosha, so che. . . wait. . . "gelded male". That's weird. We have 3 girls and 1 boy. Ahimsa's the boy.

Great. We have papers on 2 of the llamas, and the other 2 are still a mystery. Plus there's this set of papers on an unknown gelded male. That's not so useful.

As the days went by, I kept thinking about the papers. White with grey body; gelded male. That really does describe Santosha. The color part, not the anatomy part. I wonder whose papers those are. . . .

You might think that it's easy to tell the gender of a llama. Not ours. They're wary of people, and keep their noses pointed straight at us; all the better to see you, my dear. And their fur is long and thick, reaching far lower than is easily convenient for peering at their nether regions. But, IF they do happen to have their backs to you, and IF they swish their tails at just the right moment, it is possible to glimpse what might be there.

Dambara saw it first. "Definitely a boy." Then we paid attention to their peeing habits. Prani, the confirmed girl, sent it behind her. Ahimsa, the confirmed boy, sent it forward, to land under his bellybutton. Santosha, caught in the act, peed forward, giving another convincing gender clue. She's a boy. A gelded boy.

Then all eyes turned toward Satya. No papers, no descriptions, no nothing. The previous owner had told us that we were buying 1 boy and 3 girls. Since he was wrong about one of the girls, might he be wrong about another one, too?

She's so timid. She and Prani hang out together all the time. The girls hang out together and the boys hang out together. It all makes sense when you assume that she's a girl. Then again, a glimpse. Another glimpse. Sure looks like a boy. Or is that a mammary gland?

It's surprisingly hard to find out boy/girl llama clues on the internet. You have to be careful of your search words, or you can end up on some very odd sites. The FBI probably monitors those sites. At least I hope they do.

Pee watch was surprisingly hit and miss. We're not out there all the time, and they pee at any time of the day or night. Who knows when? Plus, it makes a lot more sense if Satya is a girl. She acts like a girl.

A video went around Facebook a couple of weeks ago, asking young women to  pantomime throwing like a girl. It's a very moving, insightful video about stereotyping and how we diminish people when we indulge in those thoughts and sneers. My stubborn insistence that Satya acts like a girl was simply stereotyping her into a body of false information, demeaning for all species.

So, moving past my stubbornness, we're now accepting the fact that Satya is a boy. He's timid, and he panics easily. He likes hanging out with Prani. Maybe Prani is his mom. Maybe her smallness reassures him. Maybe they like the same music or share a delightful enjoyment of puns. Whatever the case, we have, not 3 girls and 1 boy, but 3 boys and 1 girl. And they're perfect, every single one of them. Our friends, the llama troupe.