day at the farm

There's been a lot of turmoil in my life lately but there have been a handful of nice days intermingled with the shit.

9 days ago, the eleventh, a saturday-- a bright and sunny one at that-- was one of the good days. The night previous was hard on me.. I didn't sleep well for the usual reason, I was lovesick. Tessa came home at 5 in the morning and woke me up because I had left my light on. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't do it. Knowing the one I loved was out at the bars all night--and not only that but she ended up god knows where with god knows who doing god knows what until 5 o'clock in the morning- It was troubling on the mind.

I don't mean to call her out on anything-- It was understood that the transition was going to be difficult.. its just hard to love someone who doesn't have the same feelings for you anymore..

Anyway- getting to the point- I had made loose plans to spend a day out at my friend's recently purchased farmland with him and another friend, Peder. Alex, the man with a plan, is a good friend of mine whose head always seems to be in the right place.
below: a picture of said friends on another, previous adventure-- stickswordfighting along the blue earth river a couple years ago.
alex is on the left and peder is on the right. as you can see, they're terrible sword fighters.

so. I was weary and tired and it would have been terribly easy for me to cancel the loose plans made a week or so prior-- But I knew I needed to get away from the pain and I knew I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep anyway.. So I stayed up from 5 to 7:30 and waited for their call-- When they arrived, we hightaled it over to the nearest gas station to stock up on coffee and donuts and then to alex's parents' house where we packed everything we needed onto the trailer. We also brought Alex's dog, Prairie. She's my favorite.




Then we headed toward the highway, toward Amboy.


the car ride was enjoyable, albeit stuffy. Pickup trucks don't have quite the seating accomodations i'm used to. I had to sit on one of those terrible fold out chairs perpendicular to regular seats. I had about a foot of space between the rear window and the front passenger seat to wedge into... Prairie was opposite of me and we got to know each other really well back there for about and hour and a half or more. (if you know what i mean) ( yeah, we sexed.)

Along the way we listened to some twangy bluegrass and we sang along with our best southern voices
this song was a highlight... ricky scaggs - mansions for me A MANSION FOR MEEEEEEE MANSION FOR MEEEEE

very fun to sing along to..

So it went like that-- we drank our coffee, listened to bluegrass-- their eyes on the road in front of them, my eyes on prairie (the dog).

It was about the sweetest thing ever, getting out of that car to stretch my limbs in already warm morning sunlight... I walked the property's perimeter with camera in hand to get a feel for the place.

the soil was soft and I enjoyed the sensation of walking over it-sinking ever so slightly into the earth with each step... My first inclination was to walk toward the trees along the property's outer edges and so i did.. Prairie followed along leading our pack of two... Interesting how dogs can do that. It speaks of intelligence, i think.. Prairie is a very intelligent animal
.
. ^Above: Prairie leads the way-- waits for me to catch up.

While I was putzing around, taking pictures of the trees and their twisted shadows, the windswept grass which resembled waves churning or fire crawling as it does on a flat gasoline doused surface-- I managed to catch Prairie taking a dump on my landscape... (My viewfinder is not representative of the images I took because I know I cut the sky out of my composition.)

Well this putzing around went on until i took a left at the edge of the property and spied the shed Alex had been working on building in his previous outings this spring.. I took a rather gloomy picture of it then enhanced said gloominess with vignetting hijinks in ps. (sorry)


to be balanced I took a dreamily over-exposed shot of the same shed with a less dramatic angle..

(which I also vignetted-- but inversely.)

if half finished sheds aren't that appealing to you, you might not enjoy the following images either:



alex pluckin on mah banjo above, peder's doubled reflection below:

I waited for about 30 seconds for him to walk into my shot-- i heard his footsteps approaching in the grass and he lingered outside for a bit before he made it into the photo.

I spent a little bit of time inside the shed plucking on my banjo trying to master the rolls I had recently gone about trying to learn for myself.. (with the aide of a youtube video the day before.)

I got lost doing that for a while before I decided to wander back out into the warm sunlight-- again camera in hand... I'll spare the details, but here are some more pictures of the day:



my camera died halfway through the day so i missed some photographic opportunities.. we drank beer on the roof of the shed, we grilled food, i napped in the hammock, drew pictures, read, etc etc... the day was very good for my soul... I have to remember to get out there more often in the summer to keep track of progress made there... There's something very nice about the idea of planting, tending, harvesting your own crops.