This’ll be a short one, and it’s one that’s been a long time coming. As we prep for our seventh lambing season at the Hirsel, I realize that after living here for almost eight years, my life is all about the farm, now, and whatever I write – about politics, about life and all that…
Sometimes, one has to take a kick up the backside for what it can be, instead of what it feels like at the moment: an opportunity. In my case, the combination of Brexit and Covid forced me to rethink my priorities, and choose where best to focus any creative energies left after a day on…
Sometimes I talk about how this farm, and the way Donald and I work it together, has healed me. Brought an earlier version of myself back to me again. One of the ways it’s done that – for both of us, actually – is to reconnect us to the cycle of the year, the cycle…
It needn’t have been the Big One. In the beginning, scientists assured us it wasn’t. And at first, it wasn’t. The country it started in got it quickly under control. The horror felt by the rest of the world, looking on at the draconian measures that government used to control the outbreak, was balanced by…
I’ve been a pagan all my life. Sure, when I was a kid, my parents and Sunday school had me convinced otherwise. But as I got old enough to join the grownups at church services after Sunday school, and noted the widely different god the preachers were describing (Hell and damnation waiting for most of…
My husband and I are farmers, I’m an immigrant – a dual Dutch and American citizen – and we’re both over 60. All the stats say we should have voted No in 2014, and leave in 2016. But we both, along with his 90+ mother voted Yes and Remain. Donald’s mother was an Indy and…
Time for a change. Actually, it has been, for a while. Life moves on, offering new adventures and challenges, and this website will reflect that more and more, as I update it to my current reality. It will now function only as a scrapbook and personal blog, as I will no longer use it as…
When I was 18 years old, in my first year of college, my father and I had a disagreement about who I was allowed to date. Disagreement is a huge understatement: I still get flashbacks to the violence of that night, the fear and loss I felt, as I ran into the night to find…
I very nearly didn’t come here. When I googled D’s address, and realized he was a 4-hour train ride north, up beyond Inverness, I nearly balked. I’d been in a long distance relationship before, and knew the difficulties of keeping things going via irregular visits and nightly phone calls. Even though this was only 4…
Originally posted on The Hirsel:
It’s amazing how time flies on a farm – it’s been nearly 7 months since Donald wrote ‘The Yorlin’s Sang’. I laugh – a little wryly – when I read that he was looking forward to the snow melting …we were to be hit by the ‘beast from the east’…
Reading an exchange on Facebook between two people lately (about the ongoing antisemitism row in the UK Labour party), it calls to mind a recent exchange I had with someone on a Scottish Independence page (about some of the ongoing abuse directed toward farmers, due to a lot of them supposedly voting No in 2014…
I can honestly say that I haven’t worked this hard since I left New York for a new life in the Netherlands. Oh, I’ve worked hard since then, nobody who knew/worked with me during my time in Amsterdam would say otherwise. But my life in NYC meant regular 72-hour work weeks, with 4am ‘dinners’ after…
I’ve been on a steep learning curve in the sixteen months since I moved to the Highlands to live with D on the family farm. I’ve learned to build and repair fences, and harvest, bale and wrap haylage (a wetter brand of hay). I’ve learned to use a compost toilet, and all about the different…
Yesterday, D and I climbed to the highest point on the farm, a small hump atop the flat-topped hill we call ‘the Mesa’. We leaned against the flag pole there, grateful for the breeze that kept the midges away, looking out over the sun-bathed fields and woods below, wondering if this would be a better…
Watching Andrew Marr’s interview with Boris Johnson Sunday morning was educational. And terrifying. Because it made three things clear to me: Why he and the pro-Brexit faction he belongs to really are pro-Brexit, why him being Prime Minister would be a disaster for the UK and especially any part that isn’t the ‘Home Counties’; and…
Donna DuCarme 