An Atmosphere of Fear and Anxiety

  My World

An Atmosphere of Fear and Anxiety

So here we are, in the beginning? midst? of a pandemic, all relying on the media to keep us informed. What has media accomplished? It doesn’t matter which media you subscribe to, which news program you watch, whether you prefer mainstream Canadian news, mainstream US news, alternate Internet news sites, Facebook memes and testimonials, or conspiracy theories. All media have succeeded in one aspect. All media have given us something to fear.

You may be afraid of Covid19, this lurking virus ready to attack us on numerous fronts. You may be scared to go anywhere, to see your friends, to shop, to pass a jogger on a trail. You’ve been told conflicting and evolving information of how to protect yourself. We are told, now, to wear masks, to physical distance. We’ve been told the virus can be mild, can be asymptomatic, people who don’t know they have it can pass it on. We’ve read frightening accounts of people who survived but whose symptoms were severe. We’ve learned that there is a slim survival rate for those who end up on ventilators. Economic hardship has been endured. Our aging population has suffered terribly simply because they live in “for profit” warehouses called long-term care homes. “Essential workers” have been hit hard due to crowded working conditions. The statistics are continually displayed to confirm the serious nature of the pandemic - the number of cases, the number of deaths. We are bombarded with all this, in the interest of our safety, every day, every newscast. To different degrees, depending on individual reactions and levels of belief, mainstream media has succeeded in creating a state of fear and anxiety in the population.

On the other hand we may think it’s all BS. We may believe this virus is no worse than the annual flu we are accustomed to. We may believe this virus was purposely released by the deep state to get people to willingly give up their privacy by installing controls such as tracking apps. We may think it’s a cover-up to eliminate physical currency and replace it with digital. Some prefer to blame the Chinese thinking they have some world domination scheme up their sleeve. Some believe the 1% have released the virus on us to control the masses who are getting rather uppity these days thinking the wealthy should be taxed heavily to provide better infrastructure and social programs. Some fear the establishment of a police state. Some think pharmaceutical corporations are delaying or hiding a treatment or cure so that they will profit greatly from a vaccine. Some think a vaccine will be mandatory and have no trust in its effectiveness or fear its side effects. Some scoff at the statistics because they know how easily statistics can be skewed. To different degrees, depending on individual reactions and levels of belief, alternate media has just as successfully succeeded in creating a state of fear and anxiety in the population.

The effect of all this conflicting information is polarization. We are getting ugly.

We are aligning ourselves with one camp or another. We sneer and snarl at one another on social media, pass along both our substantiated and unsubstantiated beliefs. We criticize any action “committed” by public figures that seems, to us, to be in conflict with the mainstream narrative. We berate people in public for not wearing a mask or physical distancing. We purposely invade someone’s personal space to see their reaction. We scoff at people who adhere to the recommendations of the WHO. We report on people who fail to follow the rules. And on, and on...

We are acting like a bunch of chimpanzees facing off in a battle for territory.

Even though I live in what I would call the best of all possible worlds during this crazy time, I still find myself feeling out of balance. I am more and more finding it necessary to tune out the media. On my personal Facebook page I’m avoiding the pandemic, forwarding pictures of birds, art, beautiful places, accomplishments - anything light, positive, uplifting, humorous. I won’t live in a bubble and will continue to pay attention, but for my mental well-being I need to concentrate on other aspects of life. Maybe I’m not the only one who needs to take a step back and breathe.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, June 23, 2020

Free Range Eggs

This is today’s collection of  free range, free in every way, eggs. Look a bit small to you? Well, yes, they are a little smaller than Bantam chicken eggs. They are pigeon eggs - perfectly edible, perfectly tasty, absolutely free range and raised on natural food which we do not provide. Other than gleaning a few tidbits of barley left from feeding our ewes every morning, “our” flock of pigeons forage nearby fields for their food (no city junk food for them!).

We lived here on our farm for close to 40 years before the pigeons found us. We’ve always blamed the destruction of a wooden granary about 6 km away for making them homeless refugees. They were under a forced evacuation order! Upon arrival they moved into our house, inside the insulation of the roof. We were not pleased. After quite a lot of work and some renovations we convinced them to find more appropriate lodgings in our barn. Since then my husband has spent a fair amount of time training them to confine their residence to the loft, just so their droppings are more concentrated and we are not bombarded with frantic pigeons every time we open the barn door. This training, I am told, consists of grabbing any pigeons who try to reside within (they are fairly easy to net) and holding them directly in front of your face, staring directly into their eyes and having a serious talk with them, letting them know there are unpleasant consequences to their actions.  

My husband grumbles a lot about the yearly pigeon poop clean-up before lambing begins, but we try to look on the bright side and enjoy the advantages of having them in residence. They are quite pretty; their cooing is a pleasant sound; it’s enjoyable to watch their helicopter flying in formation; and they provide us with a few eggs (resulting in a planned parenthood program which they most certainly need) and an occasional pigeon feast. (If you ever read “Watership Down” by Richard Adams you may see some similarities in our management policies.) We feel this is a small price to pay for a secure and cosy place to live. In any case this rental agreement seems to be acceptable as the pigeons are clearly not going away.

Our House, Lambing Time

APRIL 4. Outside early morning -21C. A ewe lamb somehow managed to get  out of the barn shortly after birth in the early morning, before our first check. One of triplets, she was found lying in the snow on her day of birth. Another lamb was also outside, chilly but still in good shape. The mother was inside giving tender loving care to the third lamb. This little one was not doing well so we brought her in the house. I dipped her limbs in warm water, towelled her off and set her by the fire, alive but...time will tell. 

Her responses were poor so RB stomach fed her and we left her to warm up. When she began to perk up I made a bed for her in a Rubbermaid tub & spent the remainder of the day coaxing her to drink from a bottle. By evening she had figured out the relationship between sucking on the bottle and getting food.

APRIL 5. She’s perky, noisy, finally able to get up and walk around but not out of the woods yet. Her back legs are swollen, don’t seem to work all that well, probably frost bitten. We are sharing the mostly unspoken reality that she may have to be euthanized. Life and death struggles/decisions are not uncommon on a farm. We are not insensitive, just realistic. Here’s hoping the damage to her limbs is not too great. Today is warmer on the thermometer but humid, snowing, no sun. Hoping for better weather, a successful lamb crop, and not too much heartbreak.

The mother of the triplets decided that the other lamb that was found outside was not hers and has been refusing to feed her. This is not uncommon when lambing is disrupted and confusing. So she is now confined in a stanchion, keeping her from batting the unwanted lamb away from her teats. This hungry lamb had a happy and long session under her mother, sucking happily, tail wagging, filling up her belly. After 3 or 4 days the ewe is expected to change her mind and decide this is her offspring after all. Her smell after ingesting her mom’s milk will change, become the same as the accepted lamb’s smell. This process is also used when fostering another ewe’s lamb if the mother ewe is unable to feed it.

APRIL 6. The lamb in the house is eating well but seems to be having a harder time getting up.... I’m worried.

A sad thought - in many countries throughout the world during this pandemic, doctors are forced to make the same life and death decisions for members of their flock - prognosis poor, save those who have a better chance. What a terrible, disheartening position to be in for a person who is dedicated to saving lives.

Raisin Bread

Raisin Bread

A good friend who has a bread maker told me he made a loaf of raisin bread and took it to his mom for a treat. Just mentioning raisin bread got my husband and I salivating. In saner times I’d pick up a loaf now and then at the grocery store, but these are really unprecedented crazy times - not going to the store anytime soon. I have been making my own bread for many moons and I always use part of the dough for cinnamon buns, just roll it out and spread butter, cinnamon and sugar on top, jelly roll it up and cut into pieces. They are delicious and don’t last very long, grazed on until gone, usually in a day or two. But I’ve never made raisin bread and wouldn’t want to make a whole batch (5 loaves) cause there’s only two of us and I don’t have sufficient freezer space to store the extras. But I guess isolation brings on the desire to try new things in the kitchen so....

I made my usual bread dough adding only 10 of the 12 cups of flour called for in my recipe. I separated off 2 cups of this mix to a separate bowl and let the two batches rise in their covered bowls. Since I hadn’t added all the flour yet the first rise was somewhat gooey. I sprinkled cinnamon over the top of the risen dough in the small bowl, added approximately 1/8 cup sugar, 1/8 cup butter and a handful off softened raisins (I boiled the  raisins in a bit of water to plump them up) and mixed all this in. I kneaded the two batches separately on a heavily floured counter to arrive at a more bread like consistency, left them to rise again. After this second rising I formed 3 regular loaves, one raisin bread loaf, and one batch of cinnamon buns, let all rise again and baked at 375 till done.

I’m happy to say my raisin bread turned out quite yummy and went as fast as  the cinnamon buns, a couple more slices and it’s gone.

🎶 Mama’s little baby loves raisin, raisin, mama’s little baby loves raisin bread 🎶

The Banjo Dick Built

Oatmeal Raisin Bars

Pandemic Covid-19 Isolation Day 10 and needing a hearty snack. These are easy and yummy. Not gaining weight during isolation/social distancing may turn out to be difficult. Seems like baking is a good take-your-mind-off-it-all activity for me.

Oatmeal raisin bars

3/4 c butter or margarine, softened

3/4 c packed brown sugar

1/4 c granulated sugar

1 egg

—————- mix these together

Add

1/2 t salt

1/2 t cinnamon

1 c flour

2 c large flake rolled oats 

1 c raisins

—————- mix till blended well, may need to use your hands as batter is thick.

Press into bake pan.

Bake at 350 in a square bake pan lined w/parchment (or buttered & floured),

about 25 minutes until toothpick come out w/ a few moist crumbs. 

Take care, over-baking will make them hard.

Cool in the pan, lift out and cut into squares.

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Lambing to starts April 1st, counting the days. Waiting impatiently for the snow to melt, the geese to return, and the pussy willows to lure the bees from their hive.

Unsung Heroes

Funny, the things we think we cannot do without when all of a sudden our supply chain appears to be threatened - toilet paper, cleaning products, disposable diapers... hmmm. Well flour is gone from many shelves so some people must be thinking clearly. Rumours abound, frightening people into even more panic buying/hoarding. 

The US border is now closed to all but necessary traffic. What traffic is necessary in times like these? Trucks - the supply chain of foodstuffs and all the other products we've become accustomed to having readily on our shelves, cleaning products, medications. Canada is dependant on our neighbours to the south. Maybe, after this is over, we’ll reassess this dependency and make some changes.

Country folk, naturally isolated and tending to be more self-sufficient, are probably better prepared for the unprecedented scenario we find ourselves in. But we need supplies too, and vets and veterinary products. We ventured out of our self isolation for sheep minerals and salt, meds, just yesterday, and will have to go again. Town was very quiet, easy to self distance. People are beginning to understand.

We spoke to our son recently. His family is in lockdown but he still has to work. He’s a self-employed truck and trailer mechanic, part of that vital supply chain. He compared the trucking industry to the human circulatory system - the highways to the veins and arteries, trucks and their drivers to the red blood cells carrying oxygen, and the mechanics to the white blood cells fighting the diseases that invade the body. Without this system, catastrophic failure. That’s how vital our transportation system is. 

In times like this we begin to recognize the anonymous people out there who serve so many basic functions in society that are vitally important. We begin to take notice of occupations that are rarely acknowledged. Those in the medical profession, nurses, doctors, pharmacists - we see them and hear them. They are brave to go to work! But so are the janitors, the grocery people, retail clerks, bus drivers, truckers, mechanics, postal workers, oil field workers, farmers, all those folks we would describe as “the working man/woman”... the list is extensive, longer than we realize. These are the people who are still out there, who must be out there, who cannot work from home. They are vital to our health, safety, food security. Many are self-employed, many are minimum wage earners, many are, in normal times, quite invisible.

I want to raise a glass of 2020 Isolation Raspberry Wine (which I’ve named my last batch of 30 bottles) to all these incredible people, to thank them, to recognize their contribution to society, and to tell them they are appreciated. Please be as safe as possible. We need you.