Writing the Ride: Candace Carrabus, Author

The cows.
Good friends of ours have an organic dairy farm. I get to drop by with a couple of gallon glass jugs just about whenever I want to buy raw organic milk straight from the tank–almost straight from the cow. We drink it, and use it in our cereal and coffee, and I make yogurt from it. Delicious!

When I stop in, Tim is always up to his neck in some kind of work, if he’s not milking, which takes 8 hours of every day. That’s 4 hours two times a day. He milks over 120 head.

The mixer.
Today, he was mixing timothy and alfalfa hay together. Organic hay, of course. He uses a Bobcat to lift big round bales into a giant Kitchenaid mixer. Okay, it’s not a Kitchenaid, but that’s sort of what it looks like. The mixer chops the stiff hay stems up and mixes the two together to balance the nutritive content. He says if he didn’t do this, the cows would eat only the alfalfa, and that wouldn’t be good for them. He knows a LOT about nutrition and hay and feed and fertilizer and chemicals, and can spout percentages of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, and calcium like I conjugate verbs.

They’ve been transitioning to organic for a few years. I asked him what the toughest part of the transition has been. He said feeding the herd. He had to start buying organic feeds — much more expensive than non-organic — but he had to still sell his milk at non-organic prices. And, you guessed it. Non-organic milk brings much lower prices than organic. Making ends meet for the last couple of years has been hard.

The hay mixer at work.
In retrospect, he said he should have sold his entire herd and bought cows that were already considered organic so that he could start selling at organic prices right away. The easy part was switching the pasture. All he had to do was start using organic fertilizer. He’s looking forward to the grass being high enough that he doesn’t have to mix hay every day. But then there will be other chores.

By the way, here’s a couple of interesting facts: milk is measured and sold by the pound. One cow produces 45-70 pounds of milk every day. Many of Tim’s cows are Jersey. Their milk has a higher cream content.

I can get more details about life on an organic dairy for anyone interested. Next time you pick up a half-gallon container of organic milk at the store, think of Tim and all those hours on his feet, reaching between the hind legs of his cows, disinfecting their bags, and attaching the milking machine to their teats.

Makes it taste even better, doesn’t it?

No, Spongebob isn’t dead, but a large portion of our TV channels went bye bye this week taking Nickelodeon and Spongebob and his gang right along with them.

Yes, like many Americans, we’re tightening our belts. And one place in the budget that was easy to cut was cable. We went down to the minimum available programming. DH gave up a number of news channels plus HBO, I lost Veria among others, and daughter lost SpongeBob. This is not a big sacrifice for what it saves us every month.

DH blurted the news to daughter at supper with no preamble, nothing to soften to blow. He simply didn’t think it would be that big a deal. But as soon as he said we’d see a big difference when we turned on the TV, her face clouded over and she said, “Spongebob?”

“He’s gone, baby,” I said. Just like I’d told her when my old horse died a few years ago. And how I’d said it when when one of our cats died. And when my mother died a year and half ago and more recently when my stepdad passed. And in the same week, right before Christmas, when her own little dog was killed. Yeah, the kid’s sustained some losses of late. We all have.

She started to cry. No, it was a wail. “Not Spongebob!” Dinner forgotten, the keening and gnashing of teeth went on.

“Well, maybe not, we don’t know for sure,” my husband backpeddled.

I knew for sure. But I comforted her as best I could. “I love Spongebob,” she cried over and over. While I went out to feed the horses, and daughter got ready to take a shower, DH snuck in to the computer and brought up Nick.com to see if they had Spongebob videos online.

The grieving continued through the showering and drying and getting on of PJs and brushing of teeth. Then, reasoning kicked in. “Can’t we just have Nickelodeon?” she pleaded. We attempted to explain the network “packages.” This did not satisfy her.

But by the time I’d returned from letting the horses out, she was sitting on her daddy’s lap at the computer, tears drying. There on the monitor was Spongebob’s latest episode.

Whew. Life can go on.

It was more grief then she’d showed for anyone or anything before. Perhaps an accumulation of it all. I couldn’t help wondering what it meant. I like Spongebob. I know people either hate him or love him. I see him as an optimistic, loyal, and cheerful character. He works hard and for the most part, lives in the moment. He makes mistakes and gets carried away sometimes, and says he’s sorry when he hurts someone else. A good example, if not exactly a role model. I like his family of choice, too. His goofy friend Patrick, who Spongebob never judges, his crabby neighbor and co-worker, Squidward, who Spongebob is determined to cheer up, and his sometimes insane boss, Mr. Crabs, for whom Spongebob would work for free because he loves his work so much.

Hey, who hasn’t had a goofy friend we loved in spite of their goofiness, or a crabby neighbor with a hidden heart of gold, or a sometimes insane boss who would die if we ever quit?

No wonder she loves the show.

I’m glad we’ve cut back on the channels we can watch. Sometimes too much choice is just too much choice. We will be better off watching less and facing each other more–talking and playing games, going outside to ride our bikes.

But I’m also glad she’ll be able to catch Spongebob Squarepants at her convenience on the computer, ’cause I’ll be watching, too.

Today’s ride was our trusty Ford 5000 tractor. It needed a jump from my car before it finally roared to life and belched a cloud of gray diesel fumes from its stack.

I needed to finish harrowing the horse pasture and wanted to get it done before the rain that was predicted. I love harrowing, actually, love just about anything that gets me on the tractor, whether it’s brush hogging, mowing, raking, and baling hay, or towing kids around in trailer full of sweet-smelling straw.

The horse pasture is special fun, though, because, well, the horses are there, and they always manage to position themselves right where I need to be, then suddenly take off at a gallop as I approach. As if they didn’t hear or see the tractor coming. But they grow bored with this game pretty quick, especially when there’s minty-green fresh spring grass to be had.

And then there’s the sense of satisfaction. I know not everyone can relate to the joy of seeing big piles of dried manure broken up and spread across the field in tiny pieces, but well, there you go. When you’re a farmer, even a part-timer, like me, you learn to appreciate the little things.

As you can see from the picture, our tractor is an old, no-frills model. Some days, like when its 90 degrees out and the sun is baking my head and my eyes sting from the sweat, I wish for an enclosed cab and AC. But most of the time, I like being out in the air, moving at a civilized pace, my ear protectors firmly in place to drown out the worst of the noise.

It is time to think, or to drift, and create new stories.

Unexpected Twist: Fiction Reading Is Up
Survey Shows Reversal Of Longstanding Trend

By Bob Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 12, 2009; Page C01

There’s good news about reading, says the National Endowment for the Arts in a report the agency is releasing today.

For the first time since the NEA began surveying American reading habits in 1982 — and less than five years after it issued its famously gloomy “Reading at Risk” report — the percentage of American adults who report reading “novels, short stories, poems or plays” has risen instead of declining: from 46.7 percent in 2002 to 50.2 percent in 2008.

“Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy” is the triumphant headline on the new report. In a preface, outgoing NEA Chairman Dana Gioia called it a “turning point in recent American cultural history” and emphasized that “the most significant growth has been among young adults,” the group previously showing the biggest reading declines.

Yet the survey contains bad news as well.

The percentage of American adults who report reading any book not required for work or school during the previous year is still declining. It fell from 56.6 percent in 2002 to 54.3 percent in 2008.

Meanwhile, no one can say why the number of Americans reporting what the NEA calls “literary reading” rose — though Gioia didn’t hesitate to suggest an explanation.

“Over the past six years there has been a new sense of urgency in the United States about the cultural disaster represented by the decline in reading,” he said in an interview last week. As a result, “millions of teachers, librarians, parents,” politicians and others put their energies into reversing the trend.

Gioia said he likes to think that the NEA’s surveys “played a catalytic role” and that NEA programs such as the Big Read — through which the agency encourages American communities to sponsor the reading and discussion of a single book — have been important.

What are concerned reading advocates, accustomed to hearing that the literary sky is falling, to make of this news?

Fielding questions in the chairman’s office in the Old Post Office Pavilion, Gioia and NEA Research Director Sunil Iyengar tried to clear up any possible confusion.

When considering the category in which the turnaround occurred, it’s important to know that “literary” isn’t meant to imply “highbrow.” The NEA survey includes all fiction genres, including thrillers and romance novels. Mysteries emerged this year as the most popular genre.

It’s also notable that the gain came entirely from prose fiction. The percentage of adults reading drama and poetry declined during the period studied.

But what about prose nonfiction? Why did the NEA decide to single out the “literary” category in the first place?

“Because we’re the National Endowment for the Arts,” Gioia said. When the agency did its first survey, in 1982, it excluded nonfiction from consideration, and that’s the long-term database it has to work with. Questions about overall book reading were added later, but the data don’t go back as far.

This is understandable, but the result is confusing. It means, for example, that reading Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” won’t get you counted as a “literary reader” by the NEA.

The confusion is only made worse by the decline the NEA found — but chose not to emphasize — in the percentage of adults reading any book.

Why wasn’t that the headline?

“We’re not interested in the format of this, we’re just interested in the activity,” Gioia said. But it’s true that “the literary reading seems to be going up, and the general reading seems to be going down.”

The rise in literary reading, Iyengar pointed out, was the first really significant positive trend the NEA had seen in five surveys done over 26 years. The spike was “aberrational to us,” he said. “We were like, ‘What’s going on with this?’ ”

One possibility is implied by Gioia’s point about format. Could an increase in online reading — or in the reporting of online reading by survey respondents — be a factor? After all, the new survey asked specifically about Internet reading for the first time, and nearly 15 percent of adults said they read literature online.
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It’s not a question the NEA numbers can really answer, Iyengar said. But he pointed out that the overall reading question was asked early in the survey (as it always has been) and thus the later query about online reading would not have influenced responses.

The spike in reading in the 18-24 age range being so high — it accounted for nearly 40 percent of the overall growth in reported literary reading — raises another question: Was the “Harry Potter” phenomenon a major factor? The final volume of J.K. Rowling’s series came out early in the 12 months covered by the survey, and in the years since the first “Harry” arrived, the young-adult sector has become one of publishing’s main growth areas.

Maybe. But Gioia pointed out that Potter books were in stores when the NEA’s literary reading rates were still tanking. He was happy, however, to spread around credit for the fiction-reading uptick.

“It’s ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Twilight’ and Oprah and the Big Read and the Internet,” he said — though he’s not planning to declare victory as he returns to the private sector later this month.

“We’ve turned around a war that we were losing,” Gioia said. “But victory is a long way off.”

Writers, if you haven’t checked out www.fieldreport.com, then you are missing something. This online writing experiment is fascinating, providing a chance for your stories to be read, reviewed, and rated by real readers, not some poor editor trying to please a greedy publisher. And if the real readers rate your story high enough, you can win real money.

For instance, my story, “A Farmer at Last,” was the highest-scoring in the Home+Garden+Auto category for the most recent review period ending October 1st, and I won $1,000. And that makes my story eligible to compete for the $250,000.00 grand prize which will be awarded at the end of the year.

And if that doesn’t qualify as real money in your book . . .

www.fieldreport.com/contests

What the heck do riding and writing have in common? For one thing, a peculiar stab at alliteration. But other than that, how could sitting on a chair at a desk and staring at a blank page be like sitting astride a live horse surrounded by soaring scenery? At first glance, you might answer, nothing. These two activities could not be farther apart. One requires movement and strength, the other stillness and thought. But anyone who has pursued both will understand. There is a secret contained in the essence of these disparate vocations that joins them in my heart.

Nothing has ever drawn and held me like horses. Nothing, that is, except writing. With horses, whether riding or grooming, or even mucking stalls, I am both lost and found, consumed and set free. Their scent and sentiency is so alluring as to be addictive. So it is with writing. The characters begin to live, breathe, think. Their world and stories emerge from my imagination onto the page, and I am one with them, wherever they are.

Not only that, but it is in the rhythm of the horse where I find myself conceiving new stories and ideas. I am standing on my horse’s left side with my right hand slipped into a curry comb and the other grasping a stiff brush. Curry comb first in circular motions against the lay of the coat to loosen dried mud and sweat. One, two three circles. The brush follows in long strokes down the flat muscles of his neck. One, two, three strokes. Move to his shoulder, repeat. Move down to his side, repeat.

I can do this in my sleep. My horse is leaning into the rhythm now. He knows it well. I have been grooming horses like this for well over thirty years; my body knows it well too. Muscles have memory, my friend the physical therapist says. I do not have to think, I have only to allow and to follow. So I do not think, I simply do, and my mind is free to wander where it will. How will my protagonist get out of her latest scrape? I can see her figuring it out. My mind can follow her and take notes while my body and heart are with my horse.

My family knows better than to speak to me when I am working with a horse or working on writing—which, as you can see, I frequently do simultaneously. I will not hear or answer their call, for I am somewhere else and can remain in that somewhere else a long time.

Yet, occasionally I go to great lengths to put off or avoid both riding and writing. Some days, anything would be better than mucking another stall or starting another chapter.

For to begin—riding or writing—is to keep going, to the profound neglect of everything else. But to submerge myself is bliss. On a good day, my horse glides beneath me as if we were one. My fingers slide across the keyboard as if divinely inspired. On a bad day, I wonder who that was, that woman who was in the flow. So, sometimes, instead of riding, I peruse catalogs of equine equipment until I have no time left to ride, or immerse myself in the minutiae of the writing business until I have no time left to write.

This is the shared secret of my two passions: Both are meditation and movement. Both are time well spent while both take time away from everything else.

Now, I must hurry—because I’ve been writing, and it’s time to go riding.