Toby

The last month and a half has been… The single most insane period of time that has ever existed on this farm, and Good Roman Goddess Mania, it isn’t over yet… I think it began with projects beginning to kick into planning gear around here. We are doing several upgrades to the house, as well as building a better barn for the animals. What we have now we make work. But I feel like this new barn that we have waited twelve years to build is going to really make life work sooo much better. Inside the house we are hoping to add a screened porch, do some small cosmetic things, and gut and replace both thirty year old dilapidated bathrooms, and move the washer and drier. These last two characters have been the bane of my existence for the last twelve plus years of life in this house. They eat 60% of the storage on the lower level of the house. Not only inconvenient but a battle to use all these years. So I wind up exhausted just trying to do something so minor, because it requires fighting the house to get it done.  So I am in planning phase of these projects which is eating large amounts of my time.

The next shoe to drop, was my mother deciding to move. Which meant her basement had to be cleaned out and old family heirlooms needed to be rehomed here at the farm. Dealing with all that was a lot, especially since it all happened suddenly and unexpectedly… It was also greenhouse season starting plants for the spring garden, then our goats popped and produced babies, so we have been feeding bottle babies. Then Pikku, our darling dog of about 8 years died very suddenly and unexpectedly. That has been difficult. Every day I say two different mantras for her. One related to Kwan Yin for when people die, and one for when animals die. For me, she was both. Most days I bring her flowers from the yard and decorate the box containing her ashes. She is not forgotten. She was loyal to us and we are loyal to her even now that she isn’t here. 

A difficult and hard decision had to be made. Which we thought we would have time to make on our own schedule but we learned we did not. So, to keep things running smoothly and comfortably through the summer, we decided to bring home a new puppy, sooner than we initially thought we would. His name is Toby. My husband calls him Topy I hope I am spelling that properly. He says it is the Finnish version of the American name Toby.

So what can I say about Toby? He needs a buddy to play with because he has an obscene amount of energy. He is extremely sweet. He has achieved two nicknames. Captain Toby Sunshine, and Toby Tornado. He is a tornado…. A walking tornado with puppy teeth straight from the 9th circle of Helvete. He is a rather destructive little boy… He steals shoes and socks. Made off with a pair of my underwear the other day. He is a chronic chewer because he is teething. He is Growing like a weed. He is very different from our Pikku, who is never forgotten. We liked Toby, partly due to how different he was from her. We didn’t want to be trying to replace the irreplaceable. I have never met anyone as bright and slap happy as Toby. He is very innocent and always smiling. He is the bright spot in my day and the reason the bruises on my legs are shaped like a dog mouth. He seems to be extremely bright. Already he knows roll over, sit, lie down, wait to eat, come, watch me, shake, shake with other paw…. Stay, is still a work in progress. So is heel for leash walking and so are off and leave it. But for a 3 and a half month old puppy he is doing pretty well. He has not yet mastered the concept of going potty outside. We work on that too, He will get there. Now he is napping in his crate because he becomes a tornado of menace when he does not get sufficient puppy naps. Soon he will go to day care a couple days a week. I can’t wait, I miss being productive. I miss having a vocabulary made of more than a single word two letters long. No, has become the only thing I say these days…. He is very attached to me. I can’t even use the toilet without him. He learned to swim by trying to follow me into the pool yesterday. He is devoted and likes to be super glued to my side. It can be a bit much. He makes it difficult to work on things like this blog. 

Today was very busy. Toby, and I met with the guy building the barn to go over the plans. Then I worked on putting the starts outside in the spring garden while Toby, took a nap in the house. I did my usual cleaning regiment, and took a short but wonderful swim. I am feeling rather exhausted….The hits and surprises and heavy duty labor just seem to keep on coming lately. Wave after wave just seems to keep slamming into me. My nervous system, is feeling battered, as if it has been bounced from one extreme to another so much it can no longer keep it’s grip. Which is making everything hard at the moment and really causing a lot of exhaustion. But somehow, we will get through it. I keep telling myself once my garden is planted the worst will be over and I can just go to sleep for 3 days and then wake up to head out to do the daily milking, egg collecting, watering and weeding, and exercising and exorcising of Toby… 

We had a recent surprise in the barn yard! A couple of our chickens by some magic did what most chickens find unthinkable! They hatched some of their offspring. Sat on them to term. Now they are proving to be good and dutiful mothers, a trick I am trying to match them on only in relation to Toby instead of chicks. But it is very difficult because my nervous system is so shot to hell due to the last month and a half. The puppy obnoxious is driving me up a wall… I wonder if the chickens ever feel this way about their chicks… If they do they never show it. I am trying so hard to be like them….

It has been a time of many large changes. Making hard personal choices about the kind of people we want to be. We decided, we don’t want to be contributing to what is happening here. We don’t want to be giving our money to corporations that enrich a man who literally opened up an alligator concentration camp. This has lead to changes in our social media use, our technology usage and methods of usage. For example I am now using Proton email, non Microsoft Linux, Duck Duck Go and Firefox instead of Google, and I am getting one of those Finnish Sailor phones so I can put Linux on it next time I update my phone. We avoid Amazon as much as we humanly can, even when the other options are all more expensive. Because the fact is… The cost we are paying isn’t what we think it is. We pay with our privacy. Tell me, what is yours worth? We pay at the gas pump, at the grocery store, everywhere we pay more, tariffs costing us all. None of this would be happening right now except businesses like Facebook, X, Amazon, etc, gave money to further the campaign of Trump, the inflation we pay because they put a lunatic in power, is the price of their “services.” Do you really feel served??? I don’t. I feel angry. But not at them. I feel angry at us. We did this to ourselves by being lazy consumers. Laziness is a choice. I am making a different choice now.

Oh, but but but…. That is cancel culture! No. It is standing by my values. It is having values. It is also MY money. I do NOT owe it to them simply because they exist. Money is EARNED. They are welcome to compete for my money. But from now on part of that includes not just producing a product but helping to build a world containing compassion, empathy, and human and corporate decency. It means they will have to jump through the hoops I set. One of which is making the world a better place. Failure to do so won’t result in cancelation. It will result in failing to meet my values and losing your invitation into my home. They are not entitled to be in my home. I don’t earn money because it is for them. I earn it so I can pay for my continued existence. It’s my money and my right to spend it where I want. That isn’t cancel culture. It is shopping my values and free market capitalism. Just as any other employer who hires the services of an employee can disqualify them for any reason and give the job to someone else. So too can a consumer of pretty much anything. So, spare me the BS about cancel culture.

We got rid of pretty much all the vile streaming services we used to get. Let me explain my reasons. Some of them were truly evil. Other services were ableist. It seems like some services are all K dramas lately with subtitles, Which drives me nuts since I am dyslexic and I don’t read that fast. So why should I pay for a product I can’t effectively use? Either that, or it seems to be a lot of dumb reality tv. I don’t care which souped up bimbo is shagging which jack ass on love sex island. I have a farm to run. Quality programming has gone off to die somewhere and we are paying for rubbish. In addition, streaming services too are giving lots of money to evil people raising the cost of living. So, again, the price we are actually paying for them is a lot higher than we tend to realize. Here at Wildflower Farm’s Red Bird Cottage, we have PBS, The Great Courses, Nasa TV, Finnish broadcasting rather than American because the folks who own our networks here seem to be sickophants these days. In addition we have our local library, it costs nothing and it supports our community. It makes the world a better place by existing. It furthers the cause of education reaching every corner of society. This is a cause I can get behind. It is something I can feel good about supporting. I can look at myself in the mirror and not feel tarnished by being part of what feeds the beast that is literally erecting alligator concentration camps, and bombing little girls at school for no reason that has as of yet been articulated. 

I want to be clear, this is how I protest things that upset me. I take my money and I with hold it. What I do not do is violence. Because violence has never solved anything. It never will. It never could. Because it just begins a cycle that grows more extreme. It serves no one. So I encourage people to go to marches amd protest peacefully. I wish more people though would start looking for alternatives rather than fueling the evil, fueling the orange evil. Keep your money. Hold corporations to some actual standards. This is the power consumers have. Use it. It is far more effective than violence. Far more effective than just marching. Change is going to start with us or it won’t start at all. We will make changes and change will result from the small changes of where we spend our money and what we invite and welcome into our homes. For me, the last month and a half has also included a large component re-evaluating and changing the way and the where I once spent money. Which only added to the crazy of the last month and a half. Long term, I know it will be worth it.

So if I am not using these things anymore what am I doing? Well, I am looking into getting a Finnish Sailor phone which I will load with non microsoft Linux, when I upgrade my phone. I am spending time working on training with Toby, watching the chicks and baby goats out back, planting my vegetable garden, mourning Pikku, reading some really great books in particular one by Etaf Mur, called A Woman Is No Man. Now, being dyslexic, something hit me right off the bat. Her name. It is fate backwards. So what is Mur? Evidently it too is backwards. Rum, is a hebrew word and it means change. This book was about women from a certain culture changing their fate or trying to. But, fate belongs to each of us. Not just to women of a certain culture. It belongs to every person. Each of us decides the collective fate of our society, especially in a Democracy. This brings me back to, if we make changes to how we consume, be it consumption of old and terrible cultural ideas, or streaming services and social media, we can take control of our communal fate together. We can stear it wherever we want it to go.

Right now I am watching Due South on dvd, I got it from the library. I think life is better without all the services and social media. More time having fun. Less time wasting my life in front of a screen. I still do have social media. I manage my book club on a site designed for that, I socialize there sometimes with the members of the club who meet here regularly. I follow what is happening in the world watching Meidas Touch, and keeping an eye on Bluesky which is a non evil X alternative. Fewer algorythms, it doesn’t corrupt my thought patterns. Instead of Meta products, I have joined this fabulous network in it’s infancy out of Belgium called Monnett. I absolutely love it. Such a positive place and privacy remains mine, as does everything I post. It truly does cost nothing at least right now. It has been fun to explore. Fun to find alternatives, which will get better and bettwe the more people use them. 

Today I spent some time in the garden, digging in the dirt. It was the best I have felt in a while now. The sun was shining, there were some puffy white clouds and I could smell the blooming wisteria in the air. The grass was so beautiful and green. It was hard not to soar with the birds passing over singing the song of their people as I worked getting the vegetables in the ground. Digging my shovel into the ground, smelling the fragrance of earth mingle with the wisteria flowers and the smell of sunshine. Time spent in the garden achieves several things. The first, it combats the price of services I dumped, at the grocery store. (That is the other reason I am pissed at big tech and streaming services. Even if you don’t use their service you are still held captive and forced to pay for it in grocery bills and at the pump. I mean that right there is just theft. A trade of no services, while extracting money.) I apologize, I digressed…. Sunshine fills me up with vitamin D. Gardening is a free work out, that actually pays me in vegetables. I bathe in fresh air blowing in from the nearby woods. Sometimes I listen to podcasts or audio books or music while I work. Theres stuff in the dirt that battles depression, which I need right now due to how stuff is going in the world, and because my nervous system is currently so run down. Gardens give hope for tomorrow. The garden  gives me a readon to be outside which also benefits Toby, as it helps him rid himself of puppy energy. There is no losing in time in the garden. Only time well spent which is more than can be said for spending time watching streaming services funding the guy who tariffed everything and is costing us money, or started an illegal war which is costing us money. Better to use time in the garden than to be part of the destructive cycle that these horribble companies force us to perpetuate with their algorythms. 

I don’t know who reads this. Honestly I doubt anyone does. 
But if you do, consider how your use of your time is serving you. 
Consider how it is serving the person sitting beside you on the bus.
How does it serve your child who has lost access to some education as a result of where these big corporations have spent the hard earned money you gave them so you could waste time you could put to better use. 
Thank you for reading
Amanda of Wildflower Farm
and Toby Tornado