I have been trying to write to you for weeks but every time I reread the words I wrote they seem unhelpful, foreign even. Written by a sad person. But here you are – a bunch of unrelated beginnings:
I don’t know which days I wrote them:
Do you feel like you have been living in a tunnel. I do. I watched a little frog hop into the bushes last night ahead of my booted feet – it is wet and warming up so the little frogs are out – it was like the tiniest of shadows, insubstantial, a tiny ghost caught in my eye then gone. I feel like this frog, scuttling to and fro along my designated pathways of mill to farm to mill to farm, forced to move on only two tired legs, not quite sure why things are thus.
Then: I have not written lately because this is how I think now. Maudlin and cast down.
Another day I wrote this: Breath has become our enemy. Mouths are covered. Ears strain forward from elastic bands. We focus on eyes, we are masters now at reading eyes.
Then this: I am searching for more masks for my mill people. Everything is going to take weeks to be delivered. I will not buy the disposable masks used by more important people. Even if I could find them. I leave those for the more important people. I search for American made ones. Ones made from the left overs of other projects like shirts or hoodies.
Everyone only tolerates wearing the masks but me. I feel safe behind one. My face can rest. I let my eyes do the talking. I feel less ‘seen’ but I am behind a mask fourteen hours a day so I also feel suffocated and confined. I need to find more filters.
Hmm: just discovered that there is no space in my little abattoir for my beef cows. With the big slaughter houses closed my little place is booked up to February. 2021! The hogs will be even longer. This is all no good. Nothing I can do about that problem. But no meat for us for a while.
And: I have decided to take the Airbnb offline. It is my safe place now. And people make me nervous.
This: I still have been nowhere but the mill and the farm. Since this all began. Since just after I got back from New Zealand. In fact I feel as though I might never go anywhere again.
This entry: The world as we know it is gone. We are facing an uncertain future. We are. Due to aggressive proactive measures ‘ shelter and wait’ the human loss has been mitigated but at a terrific cost to our futures. I believe this minute organism, so small it can be carried on and expelled by breath, yet replicates 2000 times faster than a cold and has big teeth, is the catalyst of a new way of living. This will not be the first pandemic to hit our modern delicate biological systems. We need to be always ready now. Plan ahead.
But we are herd animals. We collect in tribes. In years past these tribes and villages did live close and safe – connections were at yearly gatherings or fairs. A funeral was a village affair – a wedding the same. People did not wander far. The biggest cities were always dangerous, beset with disease and strife. But we need our tribe – we need to gather.
So, In a way this is not new. Staying in our patches. A mill feeding her village and sending flour in sacks to the big towns bakers is old. Going to a local farm to buy your eggs and milk is old. Having large country gardens and city gardens is old.
A later thought: I have just realized that my Green Card never came. The immigrant service must have been disbanded. Immigration is at a stand still here in the U.S. and my application seems to have been caught up in the slow down. I am not alarmed. The repercussions of being illegal would include eviction from the U.S. I would want to self isolate for a long time before I could see my family though. But NZ feels safer to me now. I did complete the application procedure so I think that should help whenever that big machine starts up again.
And this morning.: Sheila and Poppy are well. Sheila is so much happier now that it is warm. Wai and Tima get on alright but do not choose each other’s company.
Mr Flowers limps about curling his bad foot under and using it as a crutch but when he flies out of the barn in the morning he is still our regal jewel.
I have lost two of the new pigs to some ailment. I wormed them and the vet sent antibiotics but still two died fast and the rest still have not started to really thrive. One is still particularly unwell but I am determined not to give up. I carry him out into patches of deep weeds and grass for the day. He eats out there and is drinking again but still very unsteady. 
Dogs are good. Cats are all present and correct. The chickens are laying and the ducks have taken us over. One is sitting on eggs right next to the front door in the garden by the deck. 
She is well camouflaged.
Today for the first time in what feels like forever the sun is out.
I think sun will help.
Take care my darlings – sorry to talk so much about myself. But I feel foggy and out of focus. I have lost my sense of being and am just waiting now. Like some of you maybe. Lucky I have a very busy job. But still a large part of my Self has curled up by the fire with her back to the world. Still. Gathering my forces maybe. But deep down. I have gone deep.
Cecilia
The Kitchen's Garden 
65 responses to “The Tunnel”
I think you have just articulated what we all feel. What will be next?
Pip
You are right to make it your safe place, to make your place safe. Love the photo of the duck so well camouflaged.
The third day with strong winds today, I long for the sun now, my ears are tired from the storm.
I have retreated into my “happy” bubble. I live on my own and keep myself amused watching TV, internet, playing games, communicating with my children by calls, video calls and texts. Thank heavens for technology. But I feel so disconnected. Here in England we are allowed outdoor picnics with one person so I met up with one of my daughters and my newborn granddaughter which helped my mental health no end.
Take care XXX
Things will get better. Here in France we started deconfinement 2 weeks ago and all is going very well. Full deconfinement in 1 week. It is amazing how quickly we all adapt to changes in our lives, both good and bad. Hang in there. Nothing lasts forever.
Happiness is all a state of mind.
That is wonderful news. Will you be able to stop social / physical distancing after the full deconfinement?
No, not yet but it is not really strictly observed. About 1m in shops.
I just feel like talking to you. A message won’t do. But I don’t want to disturb your bubble. I am strangely, uncharacteristically optimistic. But that may be because we dealt with it all so differently here. Without the rancor. And the me-first selfishness. People put their heads down and did what was best for everyone. There is still danger, but we bonded doing that. We all cared for each other for the most part. x
I was a little worried that we haven’t heard from you in awhile. After 10 weeks we have slowly started phase 1 of our reopening. Schools will not reopen though, online learning will continue until the end of the school year. This will pass but we must all be very careful even when things start to go back to “normal”. I worry that people will not heed medical advice anymore and we end up back in lockdown. Only time will tell. Stay safe.
I have missed you, Celi, & all the characters at the Farmy & in the Lounge. I checked several times back through my emails to make sure I hadn’t missed a post, but knew you were doing vital work. I saw a feature on the PBS Newshour that the historic Mill on the River Stour in Constable Country had started up again to produce flour for the neighboring communities, so great was the need for great British bakers. I’m sorry Covid 19 has ruined so many of your plans. I’ve been reading Notre Dame de Paris with my online book group & believe me if anything in the world could make me appreciate this dire & battered time & place, it is the harrowing life of France in the Middle Ages when there were horrors, filth, inhumanity, ignorance, cruelty, plague & disability beyond imagining. Though Victor Hugo did. If I weren’t so gripped I’d toss it. To lighten up I’ve rewatched on youtube several old tv series I enjoyed years ago, The Rector’s Wife, from a novel by Joanna Trollope, & The Cazalets, from a novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Those families had only to persevere & overcome stifling patriarchy & war. So I am pressing on. My neighbor is coming later this afternoon for gin & tonics on the back porch, so I must get out there & discourage the persistent hornets buzzing about the wicker for nesting sites. At least they aren’t Murderers! A small blessing.
I am profoundly glad that you posted Miss C. Connections to others are so easily slipping away as we sit in our own bubbles of existence. Time has stopped, and without digital assistance and reminders of expectations and responsibilities I find it too easy to forget individual days, or even that others exist.
Stay well friend. I, like so many others, miss you and miss this collective group. I hope that everyone is remaining steadfast until we can come out from this shadow.
So good to hear from you with this post. I know it’s hard now, but I echo others comments in saying that this, too, shall pass. And I do hope we come out of it better people, with more care and concern for others and for some of the simpler ways.
Sending love and virtual hugs to you Celi and everyone in our Fellowship of the Farmy.
I have missed you! Each morning I check my email to see if you have posted, so I was really happy to see you waiting this morning. For whatever reason, I’ve wondered if you have been feeling ok–meaning spiritually/emotionally. I’ve wondered if you are feeling trapped because you know you cannot easily get to your family in NZ. I’ve wondered if your work was distressing because there’s such an urgency in filling orders in this pandemic. I’m glad to see your post, but sorry that my thoughts about you were so on point. I don’t write often, but I am thinking about you each morning and hoping that you are all right. Clearly you are managing, but it sounds like you are really missing the joyous part of yourself and your life. Does it help to know that many, many people are wishing you well and sending warm thoughts through the air to you?
It’s been a bit like Groundhog Day here, but the sun has been shining a lot and it definitely helps. I go out cycling everyday, exercise is allowed and combined with the sun it keeps one relatively happy.
As the others have said, things will get better – there is always hope.
You have been missed!
I have been wondering how you’ve been doing, knowing you’re so busy and that rest is essential to a positive outlook. Without cohesive leadership it falls to us to find our best way through. But that works best when we can do so together. Know that we’re thinking of you and each other.
What a wonderful surprise to find at the beginning of the day! We are a group – friends – the farmy family to me. You are so busy now – even more than before, it seems. But doing a vital service in making good, clean, solid, and safe food available. Happy to know the animals are doing well, including the stoic Mr. Flowers. You are our friend – and if I may speak for all of us – please feel free to vent, rant, laugh, cry, whatever the need – at any time. We are truly scattered all around the world, so someone is thinking of you around the clock! Isn’t that a bit of a comforting thought? We are all just that little mouse-click away. We are all yours. Any and all will listen quietly and send you as many good thoughts and virtual hugs as we can. Take a deep breath whenever possible and consider… we are becoming, not adapting.
I came to Colorado from Missouri last year to retire, but found a new focus with the National Park. Now, after being totally closed, the Park opens on Wednesday – we seasonal rangers begin work tomorrow in preparation for what will come with the flocks of visitors.
Nothing beats good soap and water!!
Thank you for this Ranger, so very well said!
You have articulated what a lot of us are feeling. For me, being newly retired, I do not have the stress of work. I rarely leave the ranch and when I do, I feel like an alien behind my mask venturing out. I buy my groceries and go directly back to the ranch, unload, and there I stay for the next two weeks. We have closed our ranch to WWOOFers — they would need to fly to get here and then what… sit in quarantine here for their entire stay? No sharing of time in the kitchen, working shoulder-to-shoulder in the garden? What’s the point. Being older, I (like you) welcome the security wearing a mask gives me; the distance. But all around me are demonstrations and people shouting about “freedom” to infect themselves and others. Apparently, us retired folks are expendable. It’s a sad time for sure. Try to take a few deep breaths here and there, enjoy your airbnb space, try to nurture yourself as best you can.