Last week (with a little help from our friends), we loaded the cow into the bed of our pickup truck and transported her back to Old Sturbridge Village and reunited her with the rest of the herd.
So now, we have actually transported livestock to and from Star Field Farm. (Can you refer to a fiberglass cow as livestock?)
It was surprisingly hard to say goodbye to my cow friend. After all, she filled our entire entry way for two months. And, although my hands were definitely weary by the end, they also feel surprisingly empty without such a massive project in them.
This was definitely the strangest project I’ve gotten myself involved with, and it, like all the other things I’ve done (open a physical therapy practice, write a novel, move to the country and start a farm), it started with a cavalier “how hard could it be?” … Only to realize too deep into the process to back out, oh, yes, this is hard.
But one of the lessons of tackling things like this is learning that we can do hard things. We can accomplish big (strange) projects.
I am grateful to Old Sturbridge Village for allowing me to be part of their Cow Parade and for giving my cow pride of place right inside the visitor’s center. (Doesn’t she look cozy in her stall?)
If you have a chance, do go to the Village and enjoy spending a day in the 19th century as you walk the grounds and visit with all the decorated (and some real) cows.
What’s next for me? Summer is busy at the farm, though now that everything is planted, weeded, and mulched, and the fruit trees are pruned, much of the work is in harvesting before things bolt.
And my bff’s sweater is next on the crafting list. She was very patient while I set it aside for the cow.
And now that the Cow Parade project is completed, I have no excuses for avoiding the novel in progress. It’s the sequel to Litany for a Broken World which came out in February and I’m just over the 1/3 mark.
Knitting a sweater for a life-sized cow in a 60 day timeframe was definitely easier than facing a blank page. So, I will remind myself that we can do hard things and get back to writing.
Thank you for following along in my journey “Yarning for the Past.” I hope it offered you a bit of whimsy in trying times.
scare crows. Then again, as a writer, I do love puns.
