My retreat into solitude deepened yesterday with a storm unlike anything I recall in a very long time. Torrential rains and howling winds came late on Thursday night and continued almost until this morning, disrupting routine and shaking our old post and beam to its foundations. Sometimes I could  even feel small gusts of wind blowing through the house. Accustomed to solitude and unafraid of being here alone, I still had my resources tested by the darkness and drama that a spate of heavy weather brings.

Somehow in the morning the wind disrupted the radio reception in the barn, creating a whole new soundtrack to my labours, in the process making me significantly more aware  of the auditory universe  the animals no doubt prefer to the CBC.

Most dramatic were the loudest sounds - competitive crowing from three roosters backed by the clucking of their hens, the braying of a hungry donkey, wind-driven branches tapping on the windows, and the pounding of heavy rain on the corrugated tin up on the roof. Occasionally the old ram would add his deep throated baa-ing to the mix. More softly came the susurrus of hay being pulled through the slats in the mangers, then contented chomping sounds and the occasional satisfied “hum.”

Unable to allow the animals outdoors, I took advantage of my reprieve from heavy mucking out to do the abbreviated version of the chores while handing out peanut treats, touching velvety noses with my own and enjoying the comfort and safety of this second of my homes.

In the house, later in the afternoon, the power went out entirely and as the day wore on without restoration, I made myself embark on the precautionary manoeuvres that would see me safely through to another day. I assembled candles and flashlights and hauled buckets of water from the well. Luckily we have a propane fireplace as an alternate heating source and a propane stove that makes it possible to be quite comfortable even without electricity. It was the deepening darkness that I minded most and, truth be told, the absence of theoretical contact with the outside world. Like it or not, the dependance on technology runs deep.

Having done all I could, in the candlelight of early evening, I  finally curled up with my iPod touch under a warm throw in front of the fire. The wind still howled and the rain continued to beat mercilessly on the windowpanes. Just as I was warming to the romance of the moment and looking forward to my talking book, Nova Scotia Power ruined the spell and thrust me back into ordinary life.

As the lights first flickered then came back on, my first sheepish move was to make a beeline for my Mac.

Last Friday was Sasha’s birthday although when he arrived back here that night from his work in the city, he was far too exhausted to celebrate anything. The film business, whenever there is any, is hell on domestic life.  Snowbound since the previous Tuesday, I couldn’t even make my way into town for so much as a bottle of wine so the birthday boy himself brought home Chinese take-out that we ate in our bathrobes in front of the fire.  It was cozy and utterly fine.

With the loss of a beloved llama and the sudden craziness of the new work routine, I am adjusting to being a film widow somewhat more slowly than I have in the past. It has been awhile and I’d grown accustomed, after so many years, to having another person here all the time. Now things are topsy turvy  again and the realities of country life belong, as before, all to me. After imagining myself in an existence drenched with abstract cerebral activity and contemplations of high art, I now begin each day as the sole caretaker of a mixed menagerie. 

In the course of a conversation I once had with a friend on the subject of equilibrium, we told one another of the particular things in life that were keeping us on an even keel. She had been going through a particularly stressful period in her professional life and found music to be a great leveller whenever her reality sped out of control. I remember telling her then that my own sanity could be defined by that hour or so every morning that I spent in the barn shovelling manure.

As I think about this now, with new callouses forming on my hands, I find myself back again in that simpler, quieter world where the CBC and the other media are the background to my living and not the voices that shape what I perceive and feel. In the world I share with these animals, there are basic requirements for well being and there is Nature, the ineluctable centre of everything else I do.

These are the facts of life. This morning Ceiara’s body lies wrapped in a black plastic tarp in an outdoor paddock just outside the barn. Since Sasha is away until the weekend and it will take both of us to bury her, the bitterly frozen air will keep her from decay. I can’t bring myself to look in her direction.

Every human knows by adulthood these certain truths about mourning - that with death there will be emotional pain, that big hot tears will come often and unexpectedly, and that much time must pass before the memories so newly piercing to the heart will be able to evoke (and be transformed into) smiles and even laughter. One day a lovely warm feeling somewhere deep inside will assure us how lucky we were to have loved in the first place the one for whom today we grieve so much. 

That day will not come soon for me but I have responsibilities here and life has to go on. The other animals still need me.

Feeding time in our barn is an extremely hectic experience, every movement carefully choreographed to minimize the chaos of large hungry animals in lively competition for the food. There is a hierarchy in the herd that needs to be respected, there are special diets for the older animals and for anyone who is thin. There are chickens to feed and eggs to be collected. There are buckets of water to haul. All this must happen in the midst of a sort of free-for-all complete with warning sounds and occasional gobs of spit. Be efficient, keep your eyes open, move quickly and be prepared to duck.

Today when I entered the barn at chore time, I discovered there a silence so pervasive that it took my breath away. As I worked my way, strangely unmolested, through the usual routine - small buckets of grain for the oldest or the thinnest animals, fresh water for everyone, and then mangers filled with hay - I saw the entirety of the female llama herd standing absolutely still, oblivious to my presence and utterly disaffected by their food. To a one, they were huddled together, clustered in the doorway, each facing outward to the black tarpaulin lying before them in the snow. Once again, I couldn't stop my tears.

In stillness they remained there until I finally went away. They will eat when they are ready. Humans, it would seem, have no monopoly on the rituals of loss.

Sasha is in the city today working on a film and I am writing through a veil of tears that somehow will not stop. 

This morning our veterinarian arrived at our barn to administer that painless but fatal cocktail that will terminate an animal’s life. The diagnosis for Ceiara was so dire and the rate of her decline so rapid that it became intolerable to endure. 

By yesterday we were unable to keep her sternal, which means that every time I checked on her she had flopped over onto one side, her lovely long neck no longer upright but flat to the ground. The veterinary examination determined that Ceiara’s spinal cord had been, by whatever means, so badly damaged that she could feel no deep pain in any of her limbs. She would never walk again, never graze in the fields with her companions, never be able to leave the confines of the barn. By this morning she had ceased to eat or drink, her neck curled awkwardly behind her, her big beautiful eyes empty and very far away. 

Over time and over buckets of tears, we have come to see this stage of the journey, replete with all the heartache, as an integral part of the responsibility that accompanies our stewardship of all the living creatures in our care. We are family, after all, and our hearts have beaten in unison for more than a decade. To end her time with us was an anguishing choice and not one taken lightly, but we are long past the metaphysics and the guilt some would have us feel for “playing God.”  It never gets any easier.

Before daybreak this morning as we positioned her listless body in the barn, agreement came without any words. We have loved Ceiara far too long and far too much to let her suffer any further. Although my partner needed to be elsewhere, I was there to cradle her neck, her companion until the moment when she crossed the rainbow bridge. I owed her that much. 

In pacem requiescat, my beautiful girl.

Sometimes the life of the mind has to take a back seat to the life of the heart. As I write this, one of our beautiful female llamas is very ill and the odds in favour of recovery are unclear. 

There is an old saying that “a down llama is a dead llama," but we know that this isn’t necessarily so. However, Ceiara has just gone down and seems to have little if any sensation in both her front and hind legs. We found her this morning at feeding time, lying on her side with her limbs spayed out around her.

Ataxia of this nature is the usual result of trauma to the spinal cord caused by parasitic infection. Since all the animals received the appropriate wormers at the appropriate time, we are mystified as to the cause. We are following a treatment protocol developed at Ohio State University and working with our vet to give the necessary care. Just as with human patients, sores can be the uncomfortable byproduct of lengthy periods of recumbency just as limbs tend to atrophy when they are not exercised. So for the next many days we have our work cut out for us. Food, medications and injections, physiotherapy and lots and lots of love.

One thing we owe to Michael Pollan and his insightful writings on food and the North American diet, is an awakening to the notion that foods are best and most delicious in those times of the year in which they naturally come into season. Although this is on one hand stupefyingly obvious, when the knowledge is focused, as Pollan and others have enjoined us to do, the results can be quite incredible.

Here,  in the full bloom of citrus season, with not much freelance work on the table, we embarked upon the project of making marmalade from the Seville oranges now abundant in the stores. These, we are told, are the very best oranges to use for marmalade. Our results, using brown sugar held to the tart end of the taste spectrum, were dark and bitterly beautiful, leaving us with an unfulfilled desire to make more.

Blood oranges came next. The rose pink product so produced involved less trimming and shredding since whole slices of the unpeeled fruit went directly into the pot, but not before we held a few of them up to window light where their richly mottled colour put us in mind of stained glass. 

From oranges we moved to lemons and limes, producing small precious  batches of both marmalade and curd. My husband, who is the baker at our house, is mastering cream scones, so with tea by the fire in the late afternoons, our madness for marmalade will help take the edge off the long days of winter on the farm.