Essence of Donkey

A person once asked me, "But what do the donkeys do all day?". I pointed at my three donkeys, in repose, a slight ear twitch here or there, a lip quiver, a tail swag to shake a fly off, and said,
"Most of the day, this is about it."

They seemed amazed I found it so enthralling.

It might appear a donkey is just standing there, doing nothing, but not so fast. Each second can be filled with a tiny movement that can rearrange the viewer's whole composition. I aim to do an entire study on ear movement of a 5 minute time range. I shall be one of a few who will rush to see the results. Perhaps large abstracts will follow, or a book of ears. I'll leave it to agents, gallery owners and commercial sales reps to tell me it won't appeal to a broad consumer market, but it will give me something to hold onto in years to come. Looking at them, I will remember this evening, the sun setting, the sound of my donkeys breathing slowly, a hoof on a stone.

The look

"Shall I move now? Is this what I should be doing for you? I will do what you encourage me to do, just let me know, I will move my eyes a centimeter if necessary. I love you. What else can I do for you? I feel safe. But is it time to go to that other room? Food. I smell food in your pocket. Oh, sorry, my eyebrow moved."

Queens of the coop

While the hens often act like royalty, it is really the annual visit of the golden queens that cause the biggest stir. Standing a huddle, striking poses in individual style, these ladies are not afraid to cause a stir. They are striking, stunning, one-of-a-kind and they know it.

I like my sunflowers planted all raggedy. It makes the raggedy barn and raggedy fences seem like a plan, which gives me a false sense of order.

Bring an old donkey to Apifera!

This is Cracker Jack, a donkey of about 20 years. He was rescued in Texas where he was neglected and being abused as a roping prop. His leg wounds were open and raw from rope burns [you can see the scars below, which are treated with a topical oil to keep from cracking], a chunk of his ear was chewed off, his feet had blown out abscesses. And his teeth- the vet felt he'd been tied for long lengths and he tried to chew threw chains or cords so his teeth are worn down to points in areas. The police were brought into help, and eventually, he was released to a donkey rescue and hauled to their California facility where he was doctored, and then he made another journey to Oregon to be placed in a temporary foster home hoping to find adoption.

That's where the senior gentleman and I met. His foster mother and I spent the day together today, surrounded by the donkeys they are helping. All were special. But this old guy had a look. It was like an old man who had much in his life, but saw a lot of it fade away, or torn from him. A lot of bad things were done to this noble creature. But he still has this huge, trusting heart. We think this donkey probably had a lot of love in his earlier years, maybe even with children, but like many donkeys, he was let go for one reason or another. The stories in him, they are there. I hope to hear them when we are reunited here at Apifera.






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Crippled old lady speaks

Gertie, one of the three senior pygmies of Apifera, is crippled from neglected feet in her earlier days. I am pleased though that in the past year, due to consistent feet trimming, I really feel her walking is better. In fact, she runs to the barn for dinner.

Gertie is a real talker, and I can't remember exactly what she was chattering about when I took this.

Visit New Moon Farm Goat Sanctuary if you have room for a goat in your life. But remember, they live a long time, and should not be a whimsical purchase. If you want the latter, I suggest a nice new hat, or or apron .

Where he is

I just finished this piece, "Where he is" and it will be part of the upcoming show at Guardino Gallery in Portland [September 30-October 25th].

Inspired by many things, some of this earth, but part of the painting just kept forming in my head over the week. I kept seeing a rabbit in my head. Finally painted it. Later I looked up the symbolism of rabbit, and here is what I found: "Rabbit's medicine includes moving through fear, living by one's own wits, receiving hidden teachings and intuitive messages, quick thinking, strengthening intuition, and paradox. Rabbit also represents humility, because he is quiet and soft and not self-asserting. Rabbit reminds us not to be afraid. Fearful thoughts reproduce (like rabbits) and bring the very thing we fear. Rabbit people are so afraid of tragedy, illness, and disaster, that they call those very fears to them to teach them lessons. If you see Rabbit or in any way feel attracted to him, it may be telling you to wait for the forces of the universe to start moving again, to stop worrying and to get rid of your fears. It always indicates a need to re-evaluate the process you are undergoing, to rid yourself of any negative feelings or barriers, and to be more humble."

Fear be gone.

"Muddy! Could you please just lie down!"

"What? Who me? Sit down? Again? But it's cocktail hour, it's when I run and flop and run and flop and run. And run. Don't you want me to run some more, so I can pant, and pant, and pant? Oh, alright."

Trudge, trudge, trudge. Flop.

Chicken underpants at sunset

Love note to the Dirt Farmer

I think the thing about mid life, or once you pass into that part of your life you view as some kind of internal marker of 'mid', is that time goes very fast. I don't remember life as going fast from age 1-20, or from 20-40. But I find myself saying more and more, "That seems like yesterday."

Such is the case as I write this post. Seven years ago I married Martyn, and it seems like moments ago. My name when I woke up that morning was Miss Dunn, and later that day, I became Mrs. Dunn. For those of you who don't know the story, I moved to Portland in 2003, after spending more than a year with my drapes drawn in my old homeland of Minneapolis. I had been suffering from the worst kind of broken heart, the kind that lingers, and leaves a visible dent in one's heart area, and sort of takes your dreams and shifts them around until you start doubting what those dreams were.

I bought a sweet little cottage in Portland, and the very day I moved in, a man knocked on my door. "Hello, I'm Martyn Dunn, and I heard you had the same last name as I did, so I just had to introduce myself."

Yes, we had the same last name, and now instead of having just two Mr. Dunn's in my life, my father and brother, I had many Mr. Dunns - my husband to be and his many brothers and his father. I knew immediately this was a good thing, to have this particular Mr. Dunn right next door, and I did know I'd marry him. I didn't tell anyone, not anyone. And if I had, they all would have rolled their eyes.

Many of you know the rest of the story. He climbed his cherry tree in a heat wave and brought me his harvest, while I sat suffering, my fair Irish skin wilted even in the shade of my bamboo grove. I thought it odd that he'd be up in a tree in a heat wave, but when he brought me his bounty, just like a male cardinal fetching food for his bird, I internally had an epiphany - that this was a worthy mate. The next day I baked him a cherry pie from his harvest and that too led to an epiphany- that if I was baking in a heat wave, this must be love. And it was.

I don't believe that there is just one person out there for each of us, but I do believe we are given opportunities to connect with optimal relationships that change our lives. Each day is full of tiny choices, that can change our paths- and while all these paths teach us, engage us, challenge us....some paths help us reach what I call a "place of sense".

And meeting Martyn has helped me get to this place called Apifera, this 'place of sense'.

I will never forgot the wonder of this story, or how so many things had to line up for us to meet. Like the fact there was already a buyer for the house in Portland, but I insisted I had to have that house, and the details were ironed out so it became mine. Or the fact that when I bought the house in Portland, I gave up on ever having a small farm, which had been my life long dream. I figured this little Portland house was perfect, and my dream of owning a farm just wasn't meant to be and wasn't logical. But we all know that dream was just waiting to present itself in a proper manner. Don't forgt your dreams, don't let them down by abandonning them.

So, seven years have passed. And the pictures here show us before Apifera exisited. How can that be - no Apifera? I can't imagine it now. I can't imagine life without Martyn. When he married me, he had no idea he'd become a Dirt Farmer, or be surrounded by a semi feral cat colony, and senior short goats....and donkeys who share fresh apple pie.
He allows me to be very independent, and I need that. I need to be the child of wonder, in my barn, communing on my own in nature just as I did as a girl. I need space and time to think, and breathe into the neck of my horse. It fills me up to make art, and write and create.

But we come together at night, we still like to be together. I still anticipate his car coming up the gravel road. There is no seven year itch here, except for the hay stems that have crept into my shirt.

He is the most patient person I have ever met in my entire life, and I am the most impatient. He tolerates the gas emmissions of my little pug, and drove in a snowstorm to help me pick up a senior pygmy goat. He understands that when Neil Young is singing, he is not to interupt with idle chatter. I really do make him pies, and he really does help build me things that I concoct in my head- like double dutch doors that lead to donkey hug area.

My old Aunt Emily wrote in her wedding note to us that we only needed three things to succeed in a long life together- bread, love and laughter. We have it all, plus fresh eggs, donkey brays, dog and cat hair on everything, and a river front to fish in.

Dinner line

Each night, they stand at the gate, waiting, patiently. Huddled, squeezed together in any temperature. At this time of year their noses and hair are tarnished from the oils in the fields and weeds. I never tire of their faces.

Chicken self absorbtion

"Oh, I feel so...fine...so fine, I am fine, I am beautiful, yes I am, is she looking at me, yes she is looking at me, of course she is, looking at me, what, is that some one over there looking at me too, yes they are, because I am so fine, so fine, and now I will show them my underpants."

I call it, "Old goat and chicken watching beard"

So, I invested in my new Nikon that I've been wanting, coveting really. As a born and bred Minnesotan, I guess I felt I had to reach some level of accepting myself as good enough photographer to take this next step into camera motherhood. And motherhood it is, for I will be working hard to pay for it, keep the battery well nourished and hope it never gets in a car accident or something catastrophic.

It might seem odd to pay a million dollars for a new camera and then take a picture of...a beard. But you see things in such clarity that even chin hairs become entities of their own. So it's not my best shot - and mind you I have a million more of the same subject, because I also am now the mother of a memory card that holds a billion pictures at once - and my biggest challenge will be...not taking 300 pictures at once of a beard, or a tail, or ears.

But I'm just warning, it might happen.

Stay tuned for the next few days or more of letting me get my ya-ya's out with my new camera. In fact, it might even begin later today.

I'm book birthing

It's approaching, the release date of my new book. I am like any mother of creation - ready to birth it and get on with the next step- living with the creation, sharing it, and learning from it.

My publisher just relaunched their website and it looks great. Please visit, and of course if you go to my page , you can always write a note in ALL CAPS saying how you don't sleep at night waiting for the release date. A girl can ask, can't she? Seriously, there are some other books there in many genres you will like.

I also plan to do some videos and a Flickr group to help promote the book. And wouldn't a book signing party be nice, with Pino the puppet and Pino the donkey? I'm working on it. It has it's complications.

Gods of the garden return

Another attempt at what I call 'capturing the essence' of a moment, and my feeling in that moment. I think the top photo succeeded.

The globe thistle have once again put on their annual show. This staging is better than Shakespeare in the Park, as we have a private performance all to ourselves, and the show continues on and on for more than week. We take many intermissions, as the splendor of these magnificent Gods renders one sleepy at times, so much purple and beauty to soak in at each viewing.

The grounds and fields are browned out, the dust feels slightly deader than spring dust. August is a time for me to rest more, stay slightly hidden from the sun. I find my energy flow is much more inward, and it is only in September that I begin to flow again. So if my writing feels somewhat sleepy, somewhat dusty, it's just the August in me.

Love song to a puppet

I was experimenting with some still shots of Pino the puppet, and when I put it into a slide show, this is the generic song that was embedded. It was so appropriate, is so appropriate to me and this puppet. I know, I know, he's just a puppet, but we are in a relationship, a friendship, him and I. I can say he believes in me because in fact, he is me, and I am him. And we are all together, cooo coo coo choo.

I am going to continue to create what I feel propelled to create - with or without the blessings of the current commercial markets.

Dog...and goat...days of summer

What thoughts are in that beautiful brown head, now enhanced with one white whisker,surely brought on by his duties as older brother. And the old goat sits in a forever home, perhaps thinking of summers long ago under spent under a tree in what must seem like a far off land.

More rides with Boone

I posted pictures from another ride to the cemetery with Boone . It's turning into a special place for me, one of the places within a short distance I can be alone with Boone, quiet, just a horse chewing, or a twig breaking. Perhaps on some visits we aren't alone, but so far, I feel welcome there.

Essence of cat and thistle

How does one capture a feeling, of a creature, or a moment, or a time in one's life? Can that essence only be fleeting and known to the observer at that moment, or can this photo take me back to this exact second, years from now? Is that why take pictures?

Just as a perfume can transport me back into my family home of over 30 years ago, or the smell of dog fennel takes me to of our first days here at the farm, to a moment when I was walking in the pasture with my then-first horse, Emily Brown, so too I hope these pictures will transport me to this place I've conceived, Apifera.

And I have conceived it, for my own sanity. For a shelter from the rural county I often feel so much like a fish in, without water. It's really not my job to soothe anyone, or inspire anyone; it is certainly nice my photos,art and words do that for some people. I like that, it gives meaning to my art, for sure.

But it's not why I photograph, or document, or create. I don't do it for anyone. I think I'm just trying to hang onto moments I know are whirring by....so fast. Just as I look at photos of me as a child, or a young woman, some day I'll look at these pictures as an old woman. God, let me feel the sense of donkey ears, and cat tails brushing my leg, and hay as it's being cut in the distance, the sound of a horse on gravel, my husband's voice in the kitchen. I think that's why I create. To experience it in double time, to say, 'Hey, thanks, Gods, this moment was too good just to experience, I had to, well, I had to do something more to honor it, or capture it."

The Apifera Cats have dwindled over the years from 25 to a 12, and this weekend I thought we'd lost another, Bradshaw, but he came back after a 3 day Apifera hiatus. It me to thinking of this farm without cats, or years from now, when all the animals I know so well will be gone. If I'm still here, on this farm, will this picture bring back the delight in seeing BW in front of the yellow Santolina plant? I hope so.

Will I partake and feel the mystic in the blur of the globe thistle, or will I wonder why I took it, all blurry like that? Who knows.

Two plus more

Inspired by yesterday's ride on Boone up to the old cemetery...

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

His left ear twitched towards her, the right ear went forward. His muzzle bulged of breathing nostrils, and he didn't even bother to shake the fly on his neck. He hated flies, abhorred them.

"Me too." she said.

And they rode on.

Getting past the troll

In which one must ask, can a face lone, or a body, move sheep?

Nothing, no one, no how, not man or beast, can get past Frankie without the secret code. To this day, I don't know the code, nor does anyone else that I'm aware of, but then again why would they tell me?

I think this picture captures the essence of Frankie completely: bold in a compact package, standing her own ground, comfortable with her looks even though her ear tips froze off and her horns weren't debudded properly.

See more Apifera pictures from today's Flickr upload here.

Perfect underpants for a summer evening

I think the title says it all.

You say calm I say exhausted

It is said that lavender calms and soothes the beholder. With lavender harvest once again in full swing, I'd like to take this moment to squelch that idea. I have lived and worked with lavender, lots of lavender, for 6 years now. After caring for, weeding, cutting and bundling, then hanging, then drying, then taking those bundles and re-bundling them for sale, then boxing them, then taking them out and debudding them, I have to make an admission to you, my readers. I really don't feel calm at all. Or at least, I don't feel any calmer then when I start out in the morning without bundles and bees surrounding me. If anything, I feel angst, because there is so much of it, and like our friend the hay, when the lavender is ready for cutting, one must cut it, or lose the quality of the dried bundle.

Who had the idea of planting lavender, you might ask? Um, that would be me. The sheep sure look pretty walking in it. Maybe they feel calmer, I guess I should consider that. Growing the lavender is possibly calming my sheep, very important come lambing time.

The Dirt Farmer and I were getting ready to go to the field yesterday, and a segment came over NPR on how lavender farms are growing in popularity. They interviewed some woman up in Sequim, the lavender capital of the Northwest, and when asked why she thought there was an upswing in the plant's popularity, she said something to the effect that in our chaotic, fast paced life, lavender is soothing. Perhaps she's smoking it, I don't know.

I guess this isn't a very good advertisement about our product. I'm hoping that people that buy lavender really do feel nice and calm from it. I think the word that comes to my mind, about how lavender makes me feel is...exhausted. I love the plantthough, and there are many days when I'd like to just leave it in the field, and let it live out it's life whole, communing with bees. Maybe next year. Maybe not. An old farmer in the midwest once said to me, "You can always change your crop, farmers do it all the time."

When you live with a puppet

Ride with Boone

I have been wanting to start a photo project about my rides with Boone up to the old cemetery a couple miles from the farm. It's a nice, easy ride, with lots of shade, good snack vistas and the added dimension of many worlds colliding right under our feet. Head stones go back as far as 1800's, up to present day. I'd say it's about 2 acres at most and it backs up to forest, and looks out on cattle ranches and coastal ranges.

When I first rode there a couple of years ago, I felt a lot of activity, as they say, in the back of the cemetery. Not to get all woo-woo, but I'm very open to feelings that are generated from energy floating around, and if you want to call it a ghost, that's fine. The first time I rode to the back of the cemetery a year or so ago, as I look back on it, I think maybe they were just checking us out, those that came passing through. I know Boone was very intent that day too, and while horses are much more in tune with sounds and smells than humans, I think we were on the same wavelength that day. It wasn't exactly a scary feeling, but more of a "I think someone is watching us" feeling. I didn't ride to the back of the cemetery again, until this month, partially because I feel more confidant as a team with Boone, and I figure if some cranky spirit is going to spook us, I'll just say, "Git' on" and Boone will head for the hills.

We visited several graves today. Wondered about the lives of those people under those stones. So many stories under that dirt.

So I have started this ongoing project for myself, with one goal: Take many photographs over the many months and years to come of my rides to the cemetery with Boone in hopes that one, just one, will somehow capture the essence of that ride, and that horse, and that place, as we are all together, alive. For that cemetery is alive. When I'm old, or I can't ride, I want to look at that photo and feel that moment. So I'll treat these photographs more like paintings, they might change after leaving the camera, some will, some won't.
See more here.

Short short story: "Walnut"

He had lived his entire life in this tree, this tree of senior status, on a grassy knoll where he could only see shades of green from the leaves that entombed him. He was surrounded by nuts, most the same age as he, and while he was programmed not to care, he was weary of the view. It had been a good life, and even though he knew falling meant a slow death, drying from the outside in, he was ready for change.

She found a home!

Update: Kitty Who Dressed Herself has found a home in Oklahoma! I am so pleased she will get a taste of living on the plains and midwest, it will ground her immensely.She is currently packing for the trip, "her ownself".

"What shall you wear today?" asked the mother cat.

"I'm dressing my own self, Mama." came the response, confidantly.

And so begins each morning for this little cat. She reminds me a lot of me as a child. From a young age, I refused to underwear, and my mother would greet me at the breakfast table with a little good morning pat to my behind, to check to see if I was sans unders. Alway, I was sans unders. A tradition I abide by to this day.

Oh dear, I've shared too much.

Anyway, this little cat needs a home. Made of recycled Dirt Farmer socks- clean of course - and scraps of fabric from the bottomless scrap box. A teeny bit of Apifera lavender bud is stuffed in her- better than perfumed kitty litter.

She has no formal name, preferring to be called, "Kitty who dressed herself".

$39.50 includes USA shipping. Scroll to bottom of post to pay.

Chicken of the sky

I love this photo, it reminds me of a set from a natural history museum. But to make things clear, this is Clara, and she is very much a non-stuffed chicken. Clara is one of our Buff Orpingtons, and tends to hop instead of strut or run. She is on one the first hens out in the morning, and runs to me when I'm in the barnyard. She has lovely underpants too, when they are clean.

I now have a a Flickr photostream, and you can escape from whatever your reality is and visit the farm.

More fashion from the Dirt Farmer

If you are a reader of this blog you know my right hand man, my side-kick in fencing work, the chef of Apifera, the one who follows with hammer and tool belt, is also a fashionista in his own right. It can not be duplicated, so don't try. One must actually be Martyn to pull these outfits off.

Yesterday the Dirt farmer came out to have a coffee break and I noticed the rip in his pants at the knee was being held together by many safety pins. He carried it off with such grace, I felt it deserved a mention.

And for the record, I do not stage these fashion encounters with my husband. As we say in our house, "I dressed my own self today!"