May 2019 into Mid-June

The first stop was the farm in Bedford.  The folks were in the process of renovating one farmhouse that they hadn't sold and trying to move out of the farmhouse they did.

To make a long story a little shorter, I spent about a month and a half variously going through every possession I owned (and good willing about half of it), helping the folks renovate the new house a bit, putting a dozen or so boxes into storage in their new attic (Thanks Mom, I'm  glad I didn't have to get rid of everything :), and in general trying not to let myself lapse into any sort of brooding uncertainty.

Everything I kept:

I also took the time to visit and say goodbye to a lot of old friends, most of whom said that, knowing me, it all seemed to make a kind of sense.

Not to be entirely glum, I also took a solid week to build my mother a stone raised-bed garden to help ease the pain of the gardens she was leaving behind:

It may be hard to make out, but some of those stones are easily hundred pounders.  I wore out two pairs of gloves and a pair of jeans, but I'm really happy with how they fit together.

We filled it up with compost before I left, but she hadn't planted anything yet so I don't have any pictures to share of that.  I should also mention, so as not to embarrass my mother, that the siding was fixed as part of the renovation.  It just hadn't been fixed yet when I took these pictures.

Now it may seem foolish for me to focus so much on a garden wall like this, but for some of us a place feels like home in equal measure to the labors of love we've put into it.  Mom was leaving behind all the gardens and paths and arbors that I, and others, had built for her over 30 years.  I had just finished hollowing out my childhood bedroom in addition to everything else that was shifting around me.  Dad was trying to figure out if he had failed as a farmer or succeeded, and couldn't quite seem to make up his mind.  And to top it off I was headed out for parts unknown, with a poorly outlined plan, and no certainty when I would be back.

Under such emotional circumstances the only real options are to bake something or build something.  So I built this wall so that it would feel more like home to mom, feel more like home to me, and as something of a physical promise that sooner or later I'd be back.  It's important.

Middle of June, the task done, I got into my HHR and left once more. 

April of 2019

I spent the month of April wrapping things up with a few clients, putting most of my obligations to various peoples in Frederick to rest, and packing up my tiny apartment.  Turns out that with the exception of a single desk it all fit in one van load.  It's not a very big van either.  I probably should have made an extra trip (see photo).

I had dropped an old friend off at the airport earlier in January.  She was fleeing Altoona for greener pastures out in San Francisco with not much more than the clothes she was wearing and a couple suitcases.  She had called me a few times since, telling me about how the work was greener though the rent was untenable.

She and I had, on several occasions, both lived a tenuous, often nearly homeless, existence during the recession, however.  Not having a place to live doesn't scare either of us too much these days if there's good work to be had.

I should say, for everyone who doesn't know, that though the economy is doing a hell of a lot better now than then, much of the rust belt of Appalachia still suffers.

So she said a few times that I ought to come out and try my luck.  I told her that I had cheap rent, a new job starting at the college (I was officially a professor for 3 hours and 15 minutes according to my one and only pay stub), and plenty of enjoyable side gigs going.

I told her that if she asked me a year ago, I might have, but things were finally looking solidly positive, and I'd be something of a fool to just drop it all.

When it all more or less dropped me, I figured if I was going somewhere else anyway, it might as well be San Francisco.  Everything had all come apart around about April 1st, so I gave myself that month in Frederick to wrap things up, and, on the morning of April 30th, I left

Four years in Frederick.

So, some backstory.

After the whole show down, knock out, (metaphoric) slugfest between Dad and I over the calf conditions was finally settled, I started making plans to set up better heifer pastures and to get the crop rotations really up to gear.

I started getting the same kind of push back, and it just didn't seem worth another years long fight to change things.  In the time since, it has come to my attention that my father has probably got some acute hoarder tendencies and some undiagnosed anxieties.  It would explain a lot about the things that upset him so.

All that aside, I was offered a pretty good deal on rent down Frederick way, so  I packed up my bags somewhere around about the fall of 2015 and I left. 

Side note: Dad has just retired this past year (Fall of 2018) and I am happy to say that things with the animals never did get so egregious again.  He was also able to clear his debts while only selling what I estimate was about half his assets.  A Farmer of any kind with no debt is something of a rarity these days, do he's doing alright. Says he's probably just going to semi-retire, do some crop farming, and raise some beefers.

Mom kept at her schooling, has got her doctorate now, and has some professorial jobs lined up, so she's doing alright, too.  :-)

As for me, I spent a few years down in Frederick, did some tutoring, worked some odd jobs, and eventually settled in for a little over two years as a Brewer at Flying Dog.

All-in-all, none of the work was bad, but tutoring was often sporadic, and the brewery was pretty up front about there not really being too much room for promotion or advancement.

I was still pretty glad to have the work.  I was able to save up enough to get the cavities in my teeth fixed, and I was able to save up enough to buy a not-so-old vehicle when my old Honda threw itself apart.  Mostly, though, I felt stagnant and frustrated.

Eventually, I managed to luck into some pretty regular tutoring clients, and I had a particularly good break when one of the local community colleges liked my resume enough to offer me a job at a really excellent rate.

So I left the Brewery, got all my paperwork set up to be a professor, committed a little bit more to some of the odd jobs I had going, and took on a few more tutoring clients by word of mouth. 

I started to breathe a little easier.  Money was looking a lot less tight and all my various jobs together were things I really enjoyed.

My lease was up, though, and the people whose upstairs I was renting decided they were getting out of the rental business.  They were more than fair about it, though, and said that they could even give me a good six months, if I needed it, to find a new place.

The very next day, the community college called me and said that they had over-hired and wouldn't need me after all.  Maybe next year, they said.  An hour or two later, I found out that my most reliable and lucrative odd jobs were also unexpectedly going to be drying out in a matter of weeks.

Now none of this was all that great a tragedy.  They probably would have taken me back at the brewery.  I left on good terms.  If I was willing to brave the hell commute down 270 each morning, I probably could have even found some good work down in Silver Springs or DC.  I had time to find a new place to live, too, though I had such a good deal on the rent that I probably wouldn't have found a place that wasn't at least a touch more expensive.

Point is, that what really got to me was the feeling that here I was, four years later, and other than my teeth and my car, I didn't have a lot to show for it.  I was more or less back to square one.  Mind you, I know that's not true.  I also had all the people I had helped, clients or otherwise, but that's not how a mind works.  Not my mind, anyway.

There's almost certainly a depression that runs through the family, though none of us was ever diagnosed.  I've seen how deadly it is when it catches up to a body, and I know what it feels like when it's coming on.

So I opted for a change of scenery.  It keeps away that stagnant feeling, and I had heard that the work was easier to find out on the west coast.

Looks like I might have heard right.  Stay tuned for more later.

Here I go again.

Well.  What can I say.  I'm off doing weird and foolish things again.  I'm in San Francisco, somehow (actually Berkeley, but no one back east knows where Berkeley is).

 

How did I get here?  What am I doing out this way?  Am I safe? Am I warm? Is my belly full?  What happened to the brewery job?  What happened to the job as a professor?  What happened to the Calves?!?!?!

Well.  It's a long story.  But there's enough people wondering what's going on and asking me for updates that I have decided to resurrect the old blog.

I'll be leaving the older entries up with all their anger and naivete and resolution and adventures, but I'll be adding more again as I go.  And what's more I'll be updating a minimum of once per week for the foreseeable future, so that you guys don't have to worry so much.

Firstly, the most important answers: right now I am warm, safe, full, and rested.  I've also had coffee.

I stealth sleep in the back of my HHR panel van (they banished all the RVs from Berkeley).  It's tiny but comfy and I have just enough room to stretch out.  I honestly sleep better there than most of the houses I've slept in.

I eat cheap but good food and supplement it with the plums that are delicious and ripening all over the city.

At least twice a week I make the 20 minute drive out to the ocean for a pleasant dip in the bay followed by a quick shower.

I've learned which places have the clean public restrooms, and I make a point of leaving them cleaner than I find them by way of saying thanks.

I drove cross country (more about that later) and hit the greater Bay area on June the 25th.

Less than two weeks here and I've already gotten callbacks and phone interviews for several jobs I wouldn't mind working.  When I came out this way I didn't have anything more than the say-so of a old friend that, unlike the rust belt of Appalachia, there's work here that pays.  More on that later, too.

Call backs and interviews are all well and good, but we'll see what jobs actually end up on offer.

That's the first and the most important stuff.  I've got a little savings left, and I've got some backup plans.  For now, though, mostly what I have are a lot good wishes, and that heady mix of anxiety and anticipation that seems to suit me.

Stay tuned if you're curious,  and I'll tell you the rest.

A Final Entry, Part 3.

And at last I come to the end of my ramblings.

I still get angry sometimes.  I still have trouble accepting help from people.  I still fight with my folks.  I still don't feel like I've quite got my past sorted out.  So maybe I did fail in the end.

Everything is better than it used to be, though.  I don't get nearly as angry.  I don't reject help outright.  The fights with my folks are more and more becoming constructive discussions now.  They don't always listen (especially Dad, and especially about the livestock), but more and more often they do.  Maybe it's juvenile.  Maybe most people learn how to fight their parents and how to make peace when they are still teenagers.  Maybe that's what being a teenager is for.  I'm a decade behind, in that case.  I didn't learn to fight them until I was 23.  I don't know if I've learned to make peace even now.

But, I've told my story enough times to enough people that the past isn't just a jumbled maelstrom of mixed emotions anymore.  There has been some perspective given.  Things are looking up.  For the first time in a very long time, I'm eager to see what the next year will bring.

So thank you all once again for listening.  I think it did me some good.

Quite Sincerely,
Thomas D. Ladson

A Final Entry, Part 2: The things Dad did right.

So we fought, Dad and I, over and over and over again.  But we worked together, too.  Sometimes once he realized he wouldn't be able to dissuade me from a course of action, he would heave a big sigh and then help me instead.  Sometimes he would heave a big sigh and just walk away.

My mother paid me for my hours, albeit at workman's wages, and celebrated the things I accomplished. Dad grudged me every penny.

Now that the year is over and he can physically see what I have done, I thought it might impress him.  I showed him the numbers and the animals and I could see him calculating what it was worth.  I asked him now if he would consent to giving me a freer reign.  I asked him to make an effort of not arguing with me without thinking first.  For my part, I stopped bullying, threatening, or indulging in outbursts of anger.  I asked him to make peace with me now that he could see what I was trying to do from the start.  I asked him if I made the farm even more prosperous than I had already done if he would share that prosperity with me or at least with my brother.  (Joe's been quietly and consistently working away at the farm for years and years now.)

He said no.  On some level I think he's realized that I'm trying not to be angry at him anymore.  This, unfortunately, puts me at quite a disadvantage when dealing with him.

He told me that the liberties I already had taken made his head hurt, and that he felt like I shouldn't expect wages above the poverty line.  After all, there are thousands of high school drop-outs that would be glad to make $20,000 a year, so why shouldn't I be happy with it?  The fact that I never dropped out of anything didn't seem to matter.

I didn't get upset.  I'm trying to give up anger as an everyday tool.  It's useful but dangerous.  So instead,  I simply heaved a sigh of my own and gave him my two weeks notice.  I still help on Saturdays, but it's a far cry from the seven day work weeks I pulled back in high summer. (Addendum: I often only worked half days during summer, I just worked at least a half day everyday.) I like the Saturday work.  It lets me keep an eye on things.

For his part, Dad didn't get upset and barely tried to send me on a guilt trip at all when I gave my notice.  He often complains that there seems to be a lot more work for him to do now, though.  He doesn't seem to draw the connection.  More importantly, though, there are the following things; the things this year that Dad did right.

The Things Dad did Right:

#1. When he saw how many animals I was successfully raising, Dad spent a lot of time and money building a brand-new heifer barn.  We all helped but Dad spearheaded it.  It looks great and should be operational in just a few weeks.  To reiterate for emphasis: This year he built an entire new barn with full facilities just for the sake of our previously neglected young heifers.

#2. Over a decade ago Dad switched from Holstein Cows to Jersey Cows.  This really doesn't have anything to do with our latest arguments but we are still reaping the benefits of easier calf births and he deserves a lot of gratitude for it.  It has, in fact, reduced the suffering and death due to birthing to less than 1% amongst our little brown cows.

#3. Dad has decided to keep up with the changes I made to the animal rearing practices.  He started the inoculation program and he built the quarantine pens years ago on both accounts.  I just happened to be the person who started using them properly.  I think he means it, when he says he isn't going to let things backslide again.  I'm still going to keep a close eye on him, though.

This about wraps things up.  I've started tutoring again.  It's less hassle, more money, and a lot more gratitude from the people I'm helping.  Dad didn't believe me when I told him I was taking a hit financially to help him with the farm.  I've stopped trying to convince him.

That being said I'm not sure what my relationship will be like with either the farm or my father in the coming years.  Dad doesn't hold grudges the way that I do, especially not when it comes to family.  I do hold grudges though, and my respect for him is highly conditional on whether he slips back into habits of extreme neglect when it comes to the livestock.  With the new facilities, though, I think it's going to be a lot easier to keep him on the strait and narrow.

Since I gave him my two weeks notice (about a month ago) we haven't had anything to fight about.  Things have been good between us.  He seems to like me better if he doesn't have to pay me, for one thing, and I have seen that the conditions for our animals are no longer shameful.  Calving season doesn't start again until late March.  We'll see how things go between us then.

A Final Entry, Part 1: Unfortunate Calf Conditions

So this is my last planned entry (broken in two for lengths sake) in regards to my long trek.  If I was smart I'd throw out some very specific numbers.  People like hearing numbers about mileage and dollars per mile, etc. but the truth is I don't much care to relate.  Suffice it to say, I went a really long way.  It might have been 3000 miles; it might have been closer to 4000.  I spent a lot of money.  It was about $1 per mile (assuming that it was 3 to 4 thousand miles).  Maybe, in fact, that's not a lot of either distance or money, but It seemed like a lot to me.

The final thoughts I really want to share are about what I did in the year since.  So here are a few:

Unfortunate Calf Conditions.  Again.:

I went on the trip to try to let go of a lot of pent up anger.  It almost worked.  In fact I think it would have worked entirely if not for what I found when I got home.  My brother Joe had taken great cares to better the conditions of our heifer lots, but there is only so much a single person can do.  In the meanwhile, the persons (predominantly my father) in charge of our nursery calves had once again let their conditions decline.

This issue was the core of my anger at my father to begin with and, once again, here it was rearing its ugly head.  The animals were far too large for their pens.  One had an infected, swollen leg which it was not receiving antibiotics for.  Another few were suffering from severe bloat, and the calf nursery absolutely reeked of ammonia.  Many were covered in caked manure and a few of the older ones were in danger of losing their tails due to dingles. Although dad ignored all of that, he was concerned, however, with the calf that had collapsed due to malnutrition.

I was upset.

Instead of raising merry hell, I instead set about cleaning up the pens, reorganizing the animals, and building larger group pens with more space for them to winter in inside the nursery.  It was a bit difficult, but shouldn't have been too bad.  It only took about two days labor, albeit in some very cold and unpleasant weather conditions.  The chore wouldn't have been difficult at all if so many of the wire panels I was given for pen building hadn't been partially buried in the frozen earth.  They were the only panels available, of course, and they had been slowly sinking into the mud for the better part of a decade.

The real trouble was when dad tried to stop me.  Again.  Once he saw that it would be a bad chore in bad weather to get the panels free he decided to order me to postpone the enterprise for a few more days.  It didn't occur to him, I guess, that a few days of extremely bad weather in bad sanitary conditions were exactly what the animals could no longer afford.  So I got mad, and I told him off, and he left me alone.

In his own words, he said I looked, "possessed".  This was when I learned that he would let me do what needed done if he was afraid of whatever anger I might react with.  So I kept my anger and I used it for a year.

I held conferences with the vet.  I ordered antibiotics.  I researched better electrolytes.  I overhauled our sanitation rules.  I separated feeding equipment for use on sick calves from the equipment for non-sick ones.  I learned to give fluids intravenously (although usually too late).  I learned when it was too late.  I spread lime everywhere.  I instigated a more rigorous policy for new born inoculations.  I began a quarantine program for bull calves that were to be sold (and thus couldn't be inoculated).  I cleaned up piles and piles and piles of junk.  I built calf pens where the junk used to be.  I had hundreds of gallons of used motor oil removed from the homestead.  I threw out the vet supplies labeled 1955.  I finished the birthing pens that Dad began to build in 1999 before he lost interest.  I got my brother to help me install better ventilation in the calf nursery.  I helped Joe keep the heifers and keep them well.

I fought my father every step of the way.

I lost four heifer calves to disease this year before I was able to break the disease cycle.  I raised 53 of them.  To put this in perspective my father's usual record was to raise about 30 and lose about 20 to disease.  He would lose 2 out of every 5 and I reduced it to less than 2 out of every 28.

He wasn't happy with me.  He was happy with the results, but he wasn't happy about how each time I disobeyed a direct order it worked out splendidly.  The farm has never run so efficiently and at such a high profit margin.  Part of this is because market prices are excellent right now.  Part of it is because he no longer has to take dead animals away and bury them by the dozen.

He told me repeatedly this year that he feels like he can't trust me; that he can't count on me to listen to him and do as he says.  This is true.  I now value my judgement above his own.  When I point out how many tens of thousands of dollars of additional living, breathing livestock he has, he gets quiet.  When I point out that it's all a direct result of things I did that he specifically ordered me not to do, he gets a sad look in eyes and asks me not to keep reminding him.  He doesn't disagree.  He just says it's harsh of me to say it out loud.

It's hard to help a man despite himself.  Everything would have been so much easier if he would have helped me from the start instead of trying to thwart my efforts.  I often had no back-up, knowing that if I made a single mistake I would have a devil's mountain of "I-told-you-not-to-do-that" to contend with.

Fortunately, I never made a mistake I couldn't handle on my own.  It was close sometimes, though.  I really missed having him to fall back on.