Republic of Dirt by Susan Juby

Author:Susan Juby [Juby, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443423984
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2015-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Prudence

Seth would tell you that optimism like mine is hubris. Only Seth would not use the word hubris because he did not complete high school and I doubt it’s a word used often in the heavy metal blogosphere.

I am beginning to think the word farm actually means “land upon which things go wrong in surprising and unexpected ways” or perhaps “place where it’s impossible to get good help.”

Oh dear, thanks to my illness, my defenses are down and Seth’s negativity is rubbing off on me. I really must get back to Dr. Bachmeier for another assessment.

I was so thrilled at Mr. Spratt’s progress with Lucky that I decided to try to catch the mule myself. Specifically, I wanted to show the members of the Mighty Pens, my writing group, that Woefield is a safe place for livestock. Some of them are inveterate gossips, and I thought word of our prowess with mules might get back to the social work office. An absurd notion, I realize, and one based in bruised pride and our desperation to at least get visiting rights with Sara.

Her father has not yet broached the subject of her coming for visits and I’m slightly afraid to ask. He seems to think if he reverses his decision to keep Sara off the farm for her own good, he’ll be letting his ex-wife win the argument. And it’s clear that he’d remove one of his own molars with a penknife rather than do that. I remain hopeful that exposure to us and the farm will convince him to do the right thing and let Sara see us. I also wonder if Sara knows he’s spending his afternoons here, but haven’t had the courage to ask that, either, even though it seems grossly unfair.

Back to the writing group. Seth calls them the Untalented Pens. I have some sympathy for a lack of talent in the writing department, thanks to my experience of publishing one of the least successful young adult novels ever. The less said about it, the better. But somehow, my lone novel convinced the local writers that I’m qualified to help them. I’m too broke to disabuse them of their mistake.

As noted, some of the Pens are under the mistaken impression that the animals of Woefield Farm are lucky to be alive from moment to moment thanks to the shocking incompetence of me and my staff. More than once in free-writing exercises, they’ve written about the things they’ve seen here. I’ve stopped giving them nature-based writing prompts because one of them inevitably writes about the time they saw Bertie’s feet covered with maxi pads and duct tape (from when we tried to trim her hooves ourselves) or that time one of the hens turned blue when Seth added too much bluing to her pre-show bath. It seems there’s nothing quite like a Smurf-colored frizzle hen to capture the novice writer’s imagination. They never write about the leaves turning color or the heady scent of turned earth. Not that

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