#hopefully ill learn how to draw sam someday

[lavendel081]

Thank you to @snokoplasmic for letting me use one of their scenes as inspiration for this!

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34485277?view_full_work=true

[lazyevaluationranch]

I was wondering if you would be willing to share the titles of your resilience-inspiring lesbian farm books? My google search led me to a book titled “Attack of the Lesbian Farmers” which, while certainly inspiring, is not exactly what I was looking for.

Here are two very different books in the Farm Lesbians Write Honestly About What Went Wrong And How They Got Through It genre. Hopefully at least one is to your taste.

It's nearly fifty years old now, and can be hard to find, but Country Women: A Handbook for the New Farmer is deeply important to me. Country Women was a black and white xeroxed magazine written by a collective of woman-run farms in California in the 1960s. (There are some issues scanned at the Lesbian Poetry Archive). Each issue was half articles about feminism and half articles about small-scale farming. In the 1970s, the how-to articles on farming were expanded and organized to make the book, along with some scattered journal entries, lovely hippie-style line drawings and poetry about wood splitting, bees, and gazing at one's beloved while fixing the tractor on a summer day. The contributors have names like Jean and Ruth Mountaingrove, Ellen Chanterelle, and Sam♀ Thomas. 

It's written in an informal and pragmatic style, mostly organic hippie farming, but using pesticides or conventional medications when necessary.

This afternoon the Anderson brothers began teaching me how to graft fruit trees - the careful joining of life with life. Even more than I loved gaining a new skill, I loved learning from two old men who have so very much to teach me. I admire the audacity of eighty-three-year-old men setting grafts that will not bear fruit for years: the total involvement in a process they love. Those trees will stand and live; I doubt whether Jake or Fred even stop to wonder if they'll pick the fruit. I want to live my life with that kind of harmony and purpose. I want to be planting seeds the day I die.

The first lamb was born today. Premature and dead. Olivia, the mother, seems to be all right though. I had a dream a few weeks ago that the lambs were born tiny (like mice) and pink. And that I struggled to save them, but they were too small to feed. The lamb today was small and pink, its fleece plastered against its body, thin and sparse. For a moment it was nightmareishly like my dream... This is my first animal death. The beginning of a long cycle. It seems even harder to have death come before life, than to have an old one die giving birth. Hopes for the future stillborn.

Driving home today, I suddenly realized that this really is going to be a sheep ranch, that I have done, and am doing, and will do it. That I'm making my livelihood from the land. The canyon is fenced now. There are  sheep out there on pastures that were open hillsides two years ago. 

The very act of building this place, the simple actions of tamping dirt, stretching wire, dumping hay in feeders, has profoundly changed my sense of self. I'm doing things I never dreamed I could do, and I'm doing them easily without even considering whether I really can. Last night I was talking with Susan about fencing the front meadow for feeder calves, and I realized that I could say that realistically, no fantasizing, no bragging: I can fence the front meadow as soon as I get done with the hay barn and get a little more money.

Like almost every other farmer in America today, I'm in debt and hoping for a good season. I'm only at the beginning now, and I know there are many struggles to come and overcome and come again: Someday I too, like my neighbours, will be counting carcasses killed by a marauding dog or watching the spring oats be wash away in an "unheard of" late storm. No matter how prepared I am, there us always that vulnerability - to the weather, other animals, disease - that seems to strike when things are finally going smoothly. But inside me there is also this incredible joy: This life is real and good, and it has made me strong and real and good too. 

I gotta stop or I'll type the whole book into this post. One more: 

My father is here this week ... working on the truck whose engine has been alien to me. I am learning now what I could have learned at 7, 11, 15. Beneath my truck, side by side, lie his seven-year-old son and his twenty-five-year-old daughter, both of us learning for the first time how bearings fit together, how to remove pistons. And here beneath this truck the patriarchy stops: he has passed his knowledge to his daughter, and from me  it will pass to sisters, from sister to sister to sister. 

That's this book. The things women weren't supposed to know in the sixties. They found people to teach them; they taught each other; they learned through bitter loss. The book says: we have gone before you and you are not alone. Here is what we have learned, and here is how we have learned it. We have failed, and we have wept, and we have gotten up and gone on, and it was alright. Here is the fire, passed from hand to hand to hand. Here is the light that will never be put out. 

The week after we first got goats, we received a package in the mail from my coolest relative, a veterinarian who was the first woman to graduate with a specialization in large animal medicine at her school. People thought that women just weren't physically capable of handling large animals. (Hint: the bull weights 1100 kilograms. It doesn't much matter if the veterinarian weighs 50 kilograms or 150 kilograms.) I remember staying with her a child, in summer, laying on the stainless steel operating table in the barn; it always felt cool when the heat was unbearable.

The package, of course, contained Country Women. An old well-loved copy, with notes on long-ago calving dates penciled in the margins, and random scraps of paper with sketches of possible gardens and goat sheds as bookmarks.  A light passed from hand to hand, a light that will not go out. It was like receiving a video game quest artifact.

Country Women is rooted in second wave feminism, which is not everyone's cup of tea. For something more modern and story-focussed, consider Hit By A Farm or Sheepish by Catherine Friend. These are collections of short, funny autobiographical essays about farming and relationships. Their tone is honest and wry, self-deprecating. You can see Catherine Friend's blog here and decide if you like her writing style. She wanted to call Hit By A Farm "Sheep Sex and Other Disasters" but her editor didn't think it would sell. 

In Hit By A Farm, Catherine - a professional writer - goes along with her partner Melissa's lifelong desire to ranch sheep, and describes the results from the perspective of the slightly reluctant farmer's wife as they start a farm in Minnesota.  Sheepish is written fifteen years later, when they're thinking about quitting the farm, after all the shiny newness of farming and the relationship has worn off. There are different mistakes then, different sorrows, and new joys. 

From Sheepish: 

We rarely pay attention to middles. Perhaps we ignore them because they're problematic. The middles of our beds often sag. The middles of our bodies sag. The middle of a long story told by your brother-in-law is likely to sag, and so you'll need another beer to stay focused. Everyone needs a reason to keep going when they're in the middle. 

And:

Don't expect a farm to fix your life, for once the romance dims, you must still muck out the barn and stack hay bales and give that sick goat an enema...Although there are tons of stories about starting something new, there just aren't that many about how to keep doing something, about how to slog through the middle when the going gets tough.

The quotes are all from Sheepish; I can't find our copy of Hit By A Farm:

My spinning wheel continues to torture and confound me. I realize I'm not interested enough in the craft to really commit to learning it. After a few more tries, I tuck the wheel into a corner of our living room and turn it into what Melissa likes to call a Dust Accumulation Research Project. Clearly our wool market will continue to be the wildly unlucrative wholesale warehouse.

The patron saint of spinners is, interestingly enough, Saint Catherine. She was a Christian martyr in Alexandria. In 307 AD, she was condemned to be torn apart by the spokes of the wheel.

Well. No wonder.

Spoiler: things get pretty rough, there’s illness and hard winters and financial issues, but they do not, in fact, give up the farm or each other. 

The book says: We made it. You will too.

[lbibliophile-mcu]

Star Spangled Bingo 2020 masterpost

The @star-spangled-bingo​ for 2020 is complete! 

I was hoping to get a blackout, but a combination of being side-tracked by ATLA fandom and misreading the closing date made me just miss it - I’ll just have to ssav those ideas for the next round!. But I’m still impressed by the number of Cap fills I managed (although none Sam-centric this time).

Fill details and links are below the cut (all fills are gen/teen).

Sleeping Bucky Prompt: Rescue Mission Fill type: moodboard and drabble  Characters: Steve Rogers / Bucky Barnes  Tags: fairytale au, cryofreeze, amnesia  Summary: They say that true love’s kiss can break a curse. But love is too vast and complex an emotion to be encompassed by a single kiss.

Armed and Ready (Winter Soldier braid]  Prompt: Losing Control of Powers Fill type: fancraft and drabble Characters: Bucky Barnes Tags: tablet weaving, Bucky Barnes’ metal arm, Infinity War Summary: He looks at the open case; at the dark limb with its bright tracery. He should have known this was coming. He had known. 

Conduction Prompt: Cuddling Fill type: fanfic (970 words) Characters:  Bucky Barnes & Tony Stark Tags: touch-starved, Bucky Barnes needs a hug Summary: Conduction n, the transfer of heat energy via contact. It is a small thing that makes him notice. A simple clap on the shoulder, emphasis for whatever point he is making. But when he moves to take his hand away, Bucky follows, just for a moment, prolonging the contact.

Wounds Unhealing Prompt: Home Alone Fill type: poem (440 words) Characters: Steve Rogers Tags: canonical character death, grief/mourning, Steve Rogers has PTSD, Endgame Summary:  They say time heals all wounds. But how can he heal when every memory tears away the slow-forming scab?

How Many Times? Prompt: “Where’s the fight?” Fill type: moodboard and poem (160 words) Characters: Steve Rogers Tags: grief/mourning, Steve Rogers has PTSD, Captain America as a role, suicidal ideation - potential interpretation Summary: When Steve agreed to become Captain America, he pledged his life in service to his country. And he gave his life, crashing a plane full of bombs into icy water. But then he wakes. He wakes, and they ask for Captain America once more. Again and again... He never thought about what it might mean that his contract had no end date.

Fri on the Wall Prompt: Friday Fill type: Drabble sequence (600 word) Characters:  Friday, Bucky Barnes / Tony Stark Tags: mutual pining, supportive Friday, 5+1 things, dialogue-only Summary: Friday watches her idiot, pining boys. Or, five times Friday tried to support their relationship, and one time she decided to take more drastic measures.

Ice Bound - pt 1 Prompt: Soulmate AU Fill type: fanfic (620 words) Characters:  Steve Rogers / Bucky Barnes Tags: assumed character death, soulmate AU, cryofreeze, CA:TFA Summary: Steve and Bucky are Bonded. From the day they first meet they are inseparable – best friends and brothers – hardly a day goes past without the other’s company. People say they are lucky, finding each other so young, so close, never having to search and wonder; they say that it is a sign of the strength of their bond. They will need that strength

Workout Prompt: “I need a new set of lungs” Fill type: moodboard Characters: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Tags: animal AU, dog!Steve Rogers and dog!Bucky Barnes, human!Tony Stark Summary: If there were such a thing as supersoldiers in dog form, Bucky and Steve would be it. Tony loves them, but their energy will be the death of him someday.  

Trauma Bingo Prompt: PTSD Fill type: fanfic (1120 words) Characters:  Bucky Barnes & Avengers Team Tags: PTSD, therapy, crack, many traumatic topics touched on briefly and non-graphically - full list in AO3 tags Summary:  SHIELD remembers that trauma therapy exists, and their sights are set on the Avengers. Aka. How many issues can you fit in one team, and can you also get them all in the same person. Succeeding at trauma bingo is not actually winning…

Decorating Bucky’s Arm Prompt: Avengers Tower Fill type: moodboard/graphic Characters:  Bucky Barnes & Avengers Team Tags: Bucky Barnes’ metal arm, Avengers family, joke gifts Summary: “I’m noticing a trend with these gifts…”

Captain America braid Prompt: Free Space Fill type: fancraft Characters:  na Tags: tablet weaving, Captain America’s shield Summary: na

Visions of Xmas Past, Present, Future Prompt: Time Travel Fill type: moodboard and drabble Characters:  Bucky Barnes / Sam Wilson Tags: A Christmas Carol remix, blood, future relationship Summary: Christmas Eve in his shity little apartment in in Bucharest, a recovering Bucky Barnes is granted a gift: a reminder of how far he has come, and how much more he still has to gain.

Subject SS2 Prompt: Crying Themself to Sleep Fill type: fanfic (540 words) Characters: Steve Rogers Tags: Hydra, imprisonment, implied torture, implied medical experimentation, supersoldier serum, hurt no comfort Summary: Hydra has finally managed to achieve something they have been dreaming of since WWII: the capture of Captain America. But what to do with him? The science division calls dibs. After all, there's only so much you can learn from a historical sample size of one.

Cleaning up the Evidence Prompt: Giving the Kids a Bath Fill type: moodboard and drabble Characters:  Bucky Barnes / Tony Stark, Steve Rogers Tags: deaged!Steve Rogers, fluff, dialogue-only Summary: Tony discovers the unexpected pitfalls of an artistic toddler

Hunters and Haunted Prompt: Chance Encounter Fill type: moodboard (and pre-published drabble) Characters:  Bucky Barnes & Natasha Romanoff Tags: nightmares, blood, guns Summary: Not all monsters can be fought with guns and steel. But a friend to guard your back is always invaluable.

Preventative Measures Prompt: Losing a sense Fill type: moodboard/graphic Characters:  Bucky Barnes Tags: self-mutilation, ear trauma, blood, Winter Soldier trigger words, CA:CW Summary:  ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones...’ but words turn me into a mindless killing machine. So Bucky takes matters into his own hands.

Heat-sensitive SHIELDRA Mug - Buy Now! Prompt: Mistaken Identity Fill type: graphic Characters:  na Tags: Hydra, crack, merchandise Summary: Do you want to show off your loyalty to your organisation? Frustrated that undercover operation cramps your style? Worry no more!

BUCK-E’s Problem Prompt: No-One Believes Them Fill type: fanart and drabble Characters:  Bucky Barnes & Tony Stark Tags: DUM-E’s Drawings, Bucky Barnes’ metal arm, cats, mechanical repairs Summary: Hanging out in TON-E’s workshop, DUM-E collects the best stories. BUCK-E is not amused.

A Dead Man’s Face Prompt: “I thought you were smaller.” Fill type: fanfic (530 words) Characters:  Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Tags: Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, partial amnesia, brainwashing, CA:TWS Summary: The Winter Soldier knows that he was once called Bucky Barnes, and had a childhood friend called Steve Rogers. The Winter Soldier knows that Captain America is his enemy and the enemy of everything Hydra stands for. The Winter Soldier now knows that Captain America is the type of man - monster - who would use the face of Bucky’s dead friend as a weapon against him. But he will not falter; he has a mission.

Collage Prompt: Mental Illness Fill type: fanfic (400 words) Characters:  Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Tags: PTSD, therapy, self-identity, Steve Rogers has issues, Bucky Barnes has issues but is dealing with them Summary: “You really think you don’t have anything you need to talk about? Because my therapist doesn’t just help with the Winter Soldier shit, y’know. I’m learning how to be a person again, and that means dealing with everything that makes me who I am. “In your case, there’s Captain-America-who-fights-aliens, Captain-Rogers-who-fights-Nazis, Steve-from-the-40s-who-fights-bullies, and Stevie-who-became-a-big-buff-supersoldier-to-hopefully-win-some-of-said-fights. And that’s just the obvious. No wonder you’re a mess.”