Sabbath morn, June 12, 2010

I sat down to write last night and couldn’t find the words. I’ve thirty minutes before time to milk the cows, there are chickens in the pot, literally, produce needing picking and processed, and God only knows what lurks today. So it’s now or never and by necessity, this will be brief.

We had a flood this week. Most of the rain fell upstream from us, some 12 inches I am told, in a matter of hours. New Braunfels took the worst of it. We were warned that the river would spill from its banks, but I wasn’t convinced the rise would be life threatening by the time it reached us, and it wasn’t, at least on our particular stretch. Seems like whatever weather we get is of the extreme. Guess I should have moved back to Texas if I didn’t like the weather.

Reminds me of another current event: most white folks suddenly wanting to build a fence and get rid of the Mexicans in the Southwestern US. Did not someone tell you all of this was once Mexico? La reconquista has slowed as our own economy continues slowly but surely to erode, but I am telling you, these people are going nowhere, no sooner than white folks are going to pack up and go back where they came from. For many the border crossed them, not the other way around. They are part of the fabric of this place, whether you like it or not.

Our kitchen swells with produce in varying states of decay. The house is unkempt, not filthy, but dirty. I track mud in and out: taking off boots every time I carry something in or out the door is impractical when you do it as often as I must. Leah decided well when she picked dirt colored tile for the floor. There are four large ice chests full of rooster carcasses on that floor as well and a pot full of cooking carcasses in a large pot waiting to be canned. Takes a while to get rooster meat tender.

The roosters were killing our hens, literally fucking them to death. I hated that they had to die, but they had to die.

Sometimes I wonder if am insane. It’s cheaper and a hell of a lot easier to just go buy food from the store and I have the money to do so at the moment. We’re working our asses to a frazzle of late.

But the bottom line, right or wrong, is this. I think our current way of living, this thing we call civilization, will fail at some point—is failing—as I write, and I am trying to rediscover tried and tested ways of making it on this earth. Contrary to public opinion, it’s not all fun and games.