The Faux-Hawk

In Boulder, Phil faithfully patronized the local barber shop every month (about a 10 minute walk away). Shortly after our marriage, he asked me to cut his hair. At the time, I possessed long blonde spiral curls, and haircuts in general horrified me. I sobbed, and he gave up. (In retrospect, that may have been during the few ill-advised months I was on the Pill, so I probably had some chemical weirdness, as well as basic immaturity. I don’t cry over such strange things anymore.)

Since moving to the country, the inconvenience of finding and driving to a barber shop, as well, perhaps, as the novelty of a different hairstyle after over a decade of the same close-cut look, has prevented a single haircut. Today, I conquered ANOTHER phobia and cut his hair. (Perhaps it helps that my spiral curls vanished sometime during the few years of child-bearing. Hormones! Blah!)

I didn’t do a great job, but we laughed to see how it is short enough to form the faux-hawk. (He won’t wear it like that normally, though.)



Feeling like he was presentable to the world, Phil went to buy the last 200 pounds of feed the pigs will need, before he and Dennis slaughter the pigs on February 28. (Dennis’ friend Ara will be there, too. Ara is Armenian and works as a butcher, or something like that. He’ll be the real expert.)

Phil stopped at the John Deere store; he had hoped to get a small-scale harrow to pull behind our little riding mower, along with chains for the tires to give the machine more leverage. Sadly, our machine doesn’t have quite enough horse power.

The children and I went out into the cold and breeze to play with the kids for a bit. Oh! They are even cuter today! They jump around, just a little. One will nurse from under Annabelle, while the other nurses the other teat from behind Annabelle. Their healthy pelts glisten in the sunlight, and I admire their beautiful coloring and unique markings.



Isaiah asked if the second born could be his. Phil said, “It could be, but you know we’re going to eat him.” Hmm. That clearly hadn’t been on Isaiah’s radar before. Hmm.

Phil got in touch with a Milking Devon breeder up in Vermont. We know enough to know that we like his program and farm, so we will try to figure out how to get some of their cows to us here. Phil got a book on oxen today, and we think we’ll pursue that.

I wondered if I could uncover some vegetables from my garden. I hadn’t pulled all the daikon radish before the snows came—perhaps one or two yet survived.

The ice-encrusted snow still lies six inches deep, and I couldn’t even tell which raised bed held the daikon radish. Under the snow, I will hope that the spinach and chard planted in late fall might sprout and grow. I crave fresh greens. Spring will come.