Anyone with young children knows that sleep can be a precious and elusive thing. When my three were babies, I spent years getting by on about four hours sleep a night. However in my experience, this phenomenon just doesn’t happen once; it resurfaces during the teenage/young adult years.

Let me describe my night:

1:30 a.m. Alan phones to say he doesn’t have a safe ride home from a party and can I come and get him. Of course I do: it’s a golden rule in our house that I’ll be taxi driver any time of the day or night if it’s a safety issue.

2:00 a.m. Jamie calls to say he’s done work but is going to sleep at a friend’s place.

2:37 a.m. There’s a call for Iris. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hello?

Young male caller, obviously slightly inebriated: (party sounds in the background and the person on the phone yelling to someone across the room something about the Canada Games Centre)

Me: HELLO?

Him: (more conversation with someone about the Canada Games Centre).

Me: HELLO???

Him: Oh! Hi! Is this Iris?

Me: No, this is Iris’ mom.

Him: Oh shit! This is her home phone??

Me: Yes it is.

Him: Is Iris there?

Me: No she’s not. (She’s in Atlin at the music festival but I wasn’t going to tell him that)

Him: Oh OK. I hope I didn’t wake you.

Me: Well, I’m not normally in the habit of being awake at 2:30 in the morning.

Him: OK, well PLEASANT DREAMS (laughs self-consciously).

I hang up the phone.

3 a.m. A car stops and drops someone off at our place. I look out the window. It’s Jamie coming home. I go downstairs to talk to him and I find out that plans have changed, and something has happened to put him in a foul mood. I don’t get more than this so I go off to bed again.

3:10 a.m. Thunder and lightning. I toss and turn, now wide awake.

3:58 a.m. Still tossing and turning.

At some point I fall asleep, only to be awakened at 8:33 by Alan running water in the washroom, getting ready for work. I sigh and get up to tell him he can use my car today.

Then I pull on some old clothes and go to the garden to welcome a new day in the Binger household.

It certainly gives a whole new meaning to Hamlet’s famous solilquy in which he says “To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub”. The way he was talking, you’d almost think he had teenage children!

The other night I went for a walk with my neighbour and her dog, and she showed me a spot where there were some berry bushes growing that she didn’t recognize. I became very excited when I saw them, because they were huckleberry bushes…tonnes of them! Usually I have to make a 90 minute drive to find these berries, so to discover they are growing pretty much in my back  yard made my day.

Grant it, I don’t find huckleberries as flavourful as low bush blueberries, but nonetheless, I certainly would welcome them into my freezer any time!

WARNING: vegetarians will likely not enjoy reading this post.

It was just after 8 a.m. yesterday morning when I headed out to Aurora Mountain Farm. My mission was to participate in ‘chicken butchering day’, and to leave with my allotment of poultry for the year. The farm is in an idyllic setting near the Takhini River, and the weather for yesterday’s event couldn’t have been better – sunny and warm, but not scorching. I was greeted when I arrived not just by the Rudge family, but by their two farm dogs, several goats and a few pigs and cows. The soft conversation of the chickens could be heard in the background, with an occasional emphatic statement thrown in by the rooster.

In total, about fourteen of us showed up to butcher 184 chickens (they’ll have another such day a month from now, when the rest of their chicks will be ready for eating). We were quite a mix of people: other farmers, WWOOFers or people who used to be WWOOFers, and just regular folk who – like me – want to know more about where the food that we eat comes from.

My job was first to help catch the birds, and then later, to set myself up at the evisceration table. That wasn’t as bad as it might sound. Things have gone high tech since the days when I used to help my parents butcher our own chickens. Four families have invested in several pieces of equipment that allow the birds to be killed as humanely as possible and allow the dunking, plucking, and cleaning process to go as quickly and easily as possible. We started shortly after 9 a.m. and were finished by about 5 p.m., with a break at which time we were served a delicious vegetarian lunch (including, by the way, some fried cheese make from milk from their own goats).

I realize that participating in chicken day isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But since I do eat chicken, it seems only fair that I take some responsibility for their deaths. And unlike battery hens, I know these animals have had a good life, with lots of room to roam and dig for bugs, and with lots of yummy treats to eat.

Our garden is starting to feed us. We’ve had our first lettuce, radishes, green onions, cucumbers and herbs. And rhubarb of course (that was the very first thing we had). Very shortly we will be innundated with summer squash (we would have had lots already but for the fact that I got a huge number of female flowers but not one male flower until now).

Before we can fully throw ourselves into this year’s crop we need to finish off last years. To that end, I spent part of today going through our freezer, taking stock and making mental note of what our meals might look like over the next couple of weeks. There is actually very little left, which is a good thing. There is nothing worse than putting all that effort into growing stuff only to see it thrown out a year or more later because of freezer burn.  We are down to the very last bits of wild meat and berries too.

But Saturday is butchering day at the farm where we buy our chickens, so very soon the freezer will start to fill again.

I am so sad right now. I was driving along the Alaska Highway this morning when a tanker truck, two vehicles ahead of me, hit and injured an animal. At first I thought it was a large black dog, but as I got closer I saw it was a young bear. The driver of the tanker truck didn’t even stop.

The poor thing slowly dragged itself off the highway and into the bush. I could do nothing to help it but make a phone call to the Yukon government and wait for 15 agonizing minutes until three conservation officers came with their guns to put the animal out of its misery.

Besides myself, one car and one truck stopped when they saw the accident. A few men jumped out of their vehicles.  They were looking into the woods and I heard one say, “Too bad I didn’t have a bear tag!” The other laughed and responded, “Yeah, what a beautiful coat!”

I felt sick to my stomach and burst into tears. One of the men came by to talk to me but soon left me alone, probably not wanting to deal with my emotions.

I say again…there is bad medicine in the Yukon these days. I wish I knew what to do to make it right.

Some later thoughts: I was driving on Saturday morning and noticed that a ground hog had been hit by a vehicle along the highway. The ground hog was dragging its hind end off the road just the same as that bear was dragging its hind end. Two such similar incidents in four days…what is going on? Before now I’ve never seen anything like this. But then I’ve not experienced anything before like what is going on politically in the territory either.  Dishonesty, cowardice…where is this all going to lead?

Today is a holiday around our place. I’ve dubbed it the ‘Feast of the First Wild Iris’, to mark the fact that our very first iris burst into bloom this morning in our garden. It will be a celebratory affair that of course will involve food. I think pasta with pesto (made with basil and parsley from the greenhouse) is in order.

Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been thinking about vehicle accidents lately. I’ve had images in my head of Joe’s truck getting smashed up, and me being run off the road while driving my car. I didn’t know it until tonight, but Joe too has had a feeling that he was going to come back from Toronto (where he’ll be at U of T for several weeks this summer taking more courses) to find his truck had been in an accident.

Then last night it happened, in a double whammy. Alan was driving too fast on a dirt road, and spun out of control in some loose gravel. He went into the ditch, hitting a tree and causing $2,000 damage to my car. Thankfully he was not hurt, nor was anyone else. For him, it will mean a good chuck of his summer earnings are now spoken for, and hopefully it is a lesson learned.

However the daughter of one of our good friends was not nearly so lucky. She took her father’s truck without his knowledge, rolled it, and totalled it. She has six broken bones, one of her arms is apparently pretty much shattered, and she is being medivacced to a hospital down south tonight. If she had not been wearing a seat belt, she probably would not be alive today.

I have no idea what this all means, but I do know that people around here have been surrounded by a lot of really awful energy lately, and in some weird way it feels to me like there is some bizarre connection. I know I am not making any sense, but there is something there, if I could only put my finger on it.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/06/25/yec-atco-opco.html

For my southern family/friends, here are some links you might be interested in following.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/06/23/yec-rally.html

http://whitehorsestar.com/archive/story/plan-was-to-sell-half-of-yec-ex-board-member/

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/06/24/yec-fentie-reax.html

When I am stressed, I garden. And I have been doing a lot of gardening lately.

Here’s the thing about gardening….my plants don’t tell lies. They are not bullies. They serve me, my family, my neighbours and my friends honourably and with integrity. They are worthy of my trust. I wish everyone could be like my plants.