The evening sun was lighting the trees on the other side of the meadow, so I donned a jacket and headed out for a walk. The air was filled with sound — the honks and squawks of dozens of flocks of geese approaching, the silly quacks of duck quartettes flying over, the sharp protests of crows in the bushes around the yard, the rustle of wings and trees as nesting birds flew up and away at my approach. By the time I’d walked onto ‘the hill’ (I still say that’s no bloody hill, but it used to be before the road crew demolished it, so the family still uses the identifier) on the west side of the treed-in farmyard, I had to stop. Otherwise, my footsteps blocked out the sound. I stood there a very long time, listening and looking around me.

I heard the pigs in their pens in the distance, squabbling with each other over their feed. I heard children playing in the yard, and Loverboy and his dad calling out to each other as they did evening chores. I stood there looking up at the sky — so many birds, it’s incredible! — and tears came to my eyes, overwhelming gratitude at the beauty of this planet and its life and the gift of being here. It was one of those rare moments of knowing that I am part of something immensely bigger than myself and my little world of self-focus.

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Before going to bed last night, I checked as always on my boys to make sure they were covered, and went out onto the deck to bring in the bedding plants so they wouldn’t freeze during the night. There was a light rain falling; it was gorgeous out there, and this morning it remains that way, with dew shining on the now-green grass and water glistening off tiny kelly-green leaves. For the first time in weeks, there is no hard wind, just the slightest breeze making the poplar leaves quiver. As Loverboy left for work, I sat on the sundrenched wooden step in my housecoat, a purring cat on my lap, and reflected that perhaps today will be warm enough for shorts and a sleeveless top.

The inside of a half-ton that is used on a farm has a smell all its own. Is it dust? Is it straw? Manure? I’m not sure, but this morning when I got into the old half-ton to hide for a few minutes from the steady rain, there it was, familiar as old shoes, and just as comforting.

I’d been enlisted to go along out to the north pasture to bring a cow and her calf home. The cow is too skinny and yesterday appeared to be wobbly, so they want her here where they can feed her up and keep a watchful eye on her. So Loverboy, his brother B, Pa, and I drove out in two trucks, hauling a livestock trailer behind one.

I stood out there shivering beneath my black umbrella while the three of them decided how to set up panels and gates for optimum herding, and then helped dump chop onto the ground from five-gallon pails while B struck out on foot across the field to urge the cattle toward us. Normally they come stampeding over as soon as they see someone, but this morning perhaps the rain affected the way sound carried and they couldn’t hear the repeated calls of “ka-boss!”

Finally they came, the cow and calf were quickly cut from the herd and loaded into the trailer, and we were on our way home ... until the greasy road impeded Pa’s progress with the trailer and he and B ended up leaving Loverboy and I waiting in one truck while they went to get the tractor to pull it out.

But oh, the cursing and yelling! All three of them are as bad as each other, and if I could not see who was speaking, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish which was Loverboy and which was his father. They all fly off the handle the moment the other one does not read their minds or things don’t go just right. I wanted to be a million miles away while they were going for each other’s throats.