Snow

When I was 5, I saw snow for the first time. I woke up and the neighbor’s roof was white, and I was startled. The realization soon sunk in, and my memory is full of that day. Even Texas snow builds massive snowmen when you’re 5 and seeing snow for the first time.

I wake up a few days ago and the same white dusts the landscape, sheeting our barn with an unfamiliar lack of color. I’m giddy with excitement.

Halfway through chores, hands cold chafed through thick gloves, I wonder if this will be the winter that breaks my love for snow. The crunch of snow compacting beneath my feet still satisfies. I enjoy smashing the ice in the animals’ water troughs. The cold on my cheek makes my blood quick. Life beats harder to fend off the cold; I think this is why I revel in the crisp, cold air.

The farm is quiet these days. Our pigs are at the slaughterhouse, our turkeys are in the freezer, the duck, I said, is gone. The hens prefer to stay in the coop rather than brave the frozen soil. The cattle lumber. The sun sets before the afternoon begins, and I milk with darkness just beyond the barn door. The last of the kale has wilted. Our vegetable garden is laid waste.

I’m tired. And I’ve been tired before. But I wake up and my body feels heavy on the hardwood floor. My steps feel plodding, my legs, leaden. Solitude and loneliness tango. The snowy forest captivates me. The stars are rapturous. I think how life is, roughly speaking, a series of decisions of whether to stay or go. I drift off to sleep like an abandoned raft into a whirlpool.

And people ask, why are you here? Why are you farming? What are you getting out of this?

I have my stock answers. I feel. I find singularity of focus here. I’m growing more present. I enjoy working with my hands. Farming is an inherently creative task. I’m not stressed. I don’t think about money. I like having responsibility. I think the work we do here is important. It’s gratifying to see the physical results of my labor. I’m learning. The pig tail baked bean veggie roast I made shows that. The quince jelly I made shows that. The sheep I’ve herded show that. The amount of time spent milking shows that. The massive number of things checked off the To Do lists show that. But there’s always more To Do, and three months into being the only person working here makes me question again. Why am I here?

We eat well. If I can say nothing else, I cannot deny that every meal is a barrage of flavor. Our nourishment gives us the strength to continue.

My friend Alexis once exclaimed over dinner with friends: “Guys! This… this is food!” And we knew what she meant. Not tautology, this is food. We need this; we grow from this; we share this; you are, they say, what you eat. And tasting the subtle difference in the flavor of milk as our cow transitions from grass to winter hay, I see more clearly how what you eat, you indeed are.

I go back and forth. This decision, to stay or to go. And the concomitant questions: how long would I stay? Where would I go? And I am sad both ways and happy both ways. I tell my friends that choice is good. But these days, it seems like choosing to do something smacks mightily of choosing not to do so many other things. And I think on how maybe that’s what being an adult is.

It is the time of year for making wreaths. For pulling out vines and weaving them into wreaths. Yesterday, we disentangled an ancient vine from our hoary hazelnut thicket. The long whips, still green like summer, wound themselves uncomplaining into a giant wreath. A prayer for the return of light.

Two weeks ago, I was in New York City for a grand total of 20 minutes in Grand Central. Snow wavered down, spotlighted in between the buildings. It snows here, as I write this. A forecast of 4 to 8 inches. Crystalline marvels. Here and there are not so different. Because I carry myself with me wherever I go. And I don’t ever want to lose the wonder I feel in a hushed snowfall.

Coming Soon

Is a substantial post.

It's in the works, I promise.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, with Thanksgiving, and all the everything that's happening around it.

In the meantime, the craziest thing that's happened in my life recently is that today we castrated a piglet! Surprisingly simple to do.

More fun updates are on their way! (for only $19.95)

The brown duck is gone!

Beeves in the Night

You look into their eyes and all you see is white shining in the darkness. They gather round you as if called by some shaman, these thunderous beasts. Shambling monsters they congregate around you, heads up, horns proud. Each one weighs ten times what you are and could trample you beneath their hooves. The herd gathers in silence at your beck. You -- you who stand before such a powerful, frightening audience -- you bring them water.

Seriously, it's kind of freaky to have 19 very large cows slowly gather around you as you fill up their water troughs by headlamp/starlight. The light from the headlamp catches in their eyes and makes them look like demon cattle who are going to kill you. It's incredibly surreal, slightly offputting, and also makes you feel a little bit like a sorcerer. I recommend you try it.

On the other hand, trying to find a black cow (or a black pig) in the darkness is almost impossible, even with a headlamp.

This Dinner Is Offal!

Saturday night, to celebrate Halloween, Dom and I went to an offal dinner at the Meat Market, a local butcher shop owned by a friend of ours. Offal is innards – all those parts of the animal that people normally toss out. So, dinner went something like this:

Drinks
They call it a Blood Sucker. Tonight I am a vampire! Well maybe not. But this Tabasco-ginger-beer-vodka-cranberry is delicious. An EYEBALL garnish?! Okay, this evening just got way more serious than I thought it would be. Oh? It’s just lychee? That’s cool, I love lychee. Phew.

Amuse-Bouche, or Mouth Fun

I see three small bites in front of me. One is chicharrones made with testa, i.e. pig’s head (so we aren’t screwing around with fake eyeballs anymore, I guess). The second lamb kidney. The other, chicken tongue. Think about why no one in the states serves Mouth Fun as a precursor to dinner. Try not to think about how I’m kind of frenching a chicken.

Course 1 – The Salad

Ah. Salad, totally normal. Nice baby greens. Yum. What’s this? Bacon bits! Oooh, yum. Oh wait, that’s pig ear? Tastes like bacon. I’m cool with that. There’s some other kind of animal tongue in here. I had no idea I’d be getting so much action tonight.

Course 2 – Bone Marrow

By far, this is the coolest dish yet. There’s a freakin’ cattle bone on a platter in front of me. I can totally see why cavemen used these as clubs. Or mammoth bones. Or whatever they used. I guess I’m just assuming cavemen used clubs because that’s what depictions of cavemen always look like. Did I just eat a little bit of bone chips when I was digging the marrow out? Oh well, this marrow is freakin’ delicious.

Course 3 – Fettucine… So You Think

A little bit of pasta. Who doesn’t like pasta? People like pasta; it’s a very safe thing to make if you’re feeding lots of people. But… what if… the fettucine is strips of pig skin? Whoaaaa. And the bolognese sauce? Kidney again. Pig kidney. There’s an unusual dirty earthiness but otherwise, yeah, this tastes like fettucine bolognese.

Course 4 – Onions and Liver

Ah, we’re being upfront again. Yes, beef liver, we have met before. I recognized you even though this time you’re cooked and not being sliced up to feed to the dog. Oh my, you are delicious. Why are we feeding you to the dog? I want to eat you and your sweet tempura onions and sautéed brussel sprouts frequently. Make sure to bring your bacon jam and chicken liver sauce with you as well, because those guys are a lot of fun too. Your flavors are kind of exploding my mouth right now. Forget about that Amuse Bouche, this is the real Mouth Fun.

Course 5 – Something Something Something Cassoulet

What’s a cassoulet? Is it like a casserole? Oh, no, I guess not. It seems like some stuff kind of baked on top of some beans. But oh what beans. Yes, they are just beans, and they are delicious. But there is *blood* sausage on top! I am a vampire! And I will gladly vampire these sausages anytime. What a sentence that was. There’s something else going on here too – but honestly, I’ve lost track of what innards are what at this point. Let’s just stir it all around and put it in my mouth. The more fun in my mouth the better. Okay, gotta stop with these sentences. But seriously, is this kidney? Liver? Skin? Ear? Tongue? Foot? Gizzard? Heart? Who knows anymore.

Course 6 – I forgot

Sorry. Also, good chance this is actually Course 2.

Dessert
Chocolate blood orange sorbet! Oh, I get it – that’s funny. A blood orange at an offal dinner. Wait. It’s… not… real blood is it? Oh good, good, yeah, of course, haha I was just— yup. But seriously, dis bacon bark doe. I’m really glad I got to put all these animal insides inside of me, but I dig the non-offal dessert. Good stuff.

Scottish Highlander Cattle Eat Pakistani Himala Salt In Southwest Massachusetts

A newspaper headline for sure. 

But it's true. Our cows are now licking salt from pink salt boulders which have been extracted from the Himalayan mountains. Some of the highest quality salt in the world.

Because of a convoluted story which I don't fully understand, it's happened. A friend in the community is, it would appear, a salt magnate. And she's offered us some unused salt boulders for our cattle. And they LOVE this salt.

Black Sheep, Piglets, Feet, and So On.

Lots of updates! Too many things to prosetize (which is like proselytizing, but totally not) - LET'S MAKE A LIST!

• BLACK SHEEP ARE A REAL THING. I went to go check on the sheep about two weeks ago to spy what I thought was a cat hanging out with the sheep. Dom didn't believe me when I told him there was a black bab lamb (they're apparently rare, duh, that's why the phrase black sheep came around, dee da dee). It's also freakin' adorable.
• SURPRISE PIGLETS! I forgot to mention that the lamb was an utter surprise. As were the 6 piglets I found a few days ago with our sow, Bernice. Man, I really gotta figure out when an animal looks pregnant. How are you supposed to tell when it's already big and round???
• DRIVING STICK - Less exciting than the first two bullet points, but hey, find a pattern and stick to it, right? So, caps. I've been learning to drive a standard transmission, because the big farm truck we use here is, naturally, standard (and MASSIVE). This was thrust upon me when, long story short, a flat tire forced me to drive the truck half an hour back home after a very brief driving lesson the day before. Timidity, timorousness, fear, these were all things that prevented me from wanting to drive the giant box around, but I'm getting used to it. I kind of have to. Yay for learning new skills!
• HOT PEPPERS are hot. Immediately and residually. We make a hot sauce here from a variety of heirloom peppers naturally fermented, and in order to do so, we chop up a ton of peppers. Not quite literally a ton, but a good 50 or 60 pounds. Burning hands for days. I wonder if Honeysuckle can feel the heat when I milk her, and I feel bad about it.
• PIG FEET - I spent most of the day making a soup stock out of pig feet and cooking kidney beans in them. What a cool thing that I got to spend most of the day cooking. And that I cooked pig feet. Never would've thought. Tasted like pork. 
• AUTUMN IS ENDING - I'm so sad all the leaves are on the ground and the animal's water is frozen in the morning. My toes are very cold until about 11am. I feel like on this blog I write about how my feet are cold, alot. My feet are cold. Somebody send me wool socks. Please? Here's my address: 816 Barnum St., Sheffield, MA 01257. Thanks. 
• DESSERT ALL THE TIME - Dom sets up his stand at the Saturday's Farmer's Market next to this woman who runs an organic bakery, and she sends him home with things she doesn't sell. Which means we *always* have amazing baked goods to eat. 100% Belgian Dark Chocolate Layer Cake? Yes, please. 
• RATS, I smell 'em. Found they'd eaten some bread off our kitchen counter this morning. And some popcorn kernels. And a tomato. And so on. They're moving in for the winter. We set traps for them tonight, covered them with toilet paper and wrote TRAP on them so we don't forget and hurt ourselves. I find it very funny imagining the rats are literate and that they think we think they're absolute idiots.
• ELTON JOHN, YO YO MA, PAUL SIMON - These are all people Dom has met. He's always got a good story to tell.
• MINT TEA + JACK DANIELS HONEY WHISKEY. Try it. Do it. Good.

Farmboy out.

The bees are in their boxes; the friends are in their car. We dance in little circles, and the fire warms our boots. The whiskey warms the tea; the radio stays off. Weeks pulse in rhythm.

Long is the amount of time between putting hot water in tea and drinking it. Short is the time between drinking hot tea and drinking cold tea. Absence is long. Presence is short.

Goodnight my friends, sleep well. Sleep at all, and say we meet again.

More Moon In the Pictures

I skipped Thursday's posting, though I promise to make up for it at some point in the future. For now, here's another post that's simply photos of the beautiful chunk of Berkshire land that I live on.

The North Pasture 

Hay Wagon

Me. In Hay Wagon.

Morning Mist

The path to the back field.

The farmhouse.

An abandoned farm truck. And a little bit of my finger.

WINTER SQUASH! SQUAAAAASH.

Sunset.

No, but really. Sunset! SUNSET.

Caterpillar! Parsley!

Tha cattle.

Autumn needles.

Chickens! Eating scratch.

Leaves. Leafs. 

The Brown Duck

The duck sleeps on one leg, its head twisted backwards and tucked underneath its right wing. So, too, sleep the geese. The duck sleeps a little separated from the flock, a part of the group, and, yet, apart from the group.

This duck is brown, to oversimplify its plumage. The shades of brown are exquisite and subtly varied, as variegated patches of white and gray also streak across its feathers. But brown, nonetheless. And its beak, when not buried backwards beneath the wings is petite, and tan. A sort of brown.

In the mornings, and in the evenings, when corn kernels are thrown into the air, sprinklered onto the grass beneath the Linden tree, the duck darts back and forth behind the crowd. The rival gangs of turkeys and geese face off, though the turkeys always win – they’re larger, more aggressive, and greater in number. But the geese are louder. And in retaliation for being pushed to the edges of the spread of corn they push the poor duck off the edge. And so, the duck darts back and forth around the circle of fowl, snatching whatever corn kernels lay unattended.

The duck is adopted, begrudgingly, by the geese, and wanders around with them during the day in the same manner, always on the outskirts of the flock, even now, as the duck sleeps, its left leg hyperextended, stiff, still. The duck blends in with the geese, and is missed upon a quick glance. A moment later, the brown registers. The size registers. Little and brown, this duck is no gray goose nor white gander.

Alone, and surrounded by animals so slightly different (so slightly different is one species from another) constantly, this duck is the sole survivor of a once thriving flock of ducks, picked off so gradually and so viciously by the fishercats. This duck does not complain. Ducks do not complain. Even when the water dish is elevated to the height of the geese’s heads to prevent them from splashing in it and dirtying the water. The water dish is too high for the duck. It must struggle and stretch.

The duck does not twitch as it sleeps. If it dreams, it does so peacefully, or at least in tranquility. On one leg, one foot, it balances, out of consciousness, and slightly separated from the geese. 

Freezer Burn

I can feel the snow falling on my face, because I’m making it fall on my face. In this large metallic box, I am willfully surrounding myself with ice, frost, and snow, a seeming death trap. The floor is slick; a fan whirrs; my plastic ice chipper is broken. It’s time to inventory the fuck out of this freezer.

For the past three days I’ve spent more time than not tackling the glacial shelves of meat in our freezer, cleaning, sorting, and counting the hundreds of packages of meat we have. The saga begins well before my time in many places – the time someone else cleaned out the freezer and then left the door open, thereby coating the entire room with a heavy frost; the time someone put together an order for someone and then buried it at the back of the room to be lost; the time the slaughterhouse labeled both the pork rib chops and the pork loin chops the same thing: pork chops. But the story ends now.

Here, a box so frozen over I can’t open it to figure out what’s inside. Here, all the ground veal in the lamb boxes because someone thought veal and lamb are the same thing. Here, a magical box of sausage – we were out of sausage!

Counting can be much more difficult than you might presume. How did 14 packs of beef bones become 19 on the second counting? Better count again. Why are there beef bones in three disparate sections of the freezer?

At one point, my gloves become so frozen over that it feels like I’m wearing boxing gloves of pure ice. I can’t take them off. My shoes are quickly headed toward the same fate.

I dust the shelves. I scrape the ceiling, I scrub the floor. I hammer boxes to break the ice. I shovel out an entire 5 gallon bucket full of fine frost, and at least three times that much goes down the sink I use to aid me in my quest to remove ice rinks from the meat packages. I wish I had thicker long underwear.

At the end of three days, my list is soggy, my markers nonfunctional, and my mustache could be broken off with an ice pick. But this freezer is in order, dammit. I wish I had thicker long underwear.

Observations

Sideways light is the best kind of light. The way it hurtles through leaves and tumbles onto the ground like fallen pine needles.

Greenhouses are a good place to be during rainstorms. You can’t see any of the rain, but you can see all the rivulets of water traipsing down the walls of your giant fog bubble.

Clotheslines do not work in the rain.

Anticipation of the future to improve it when it becomes the present should not derogate the actual present.

Cows walk just fast enough to stay out of reach as you try to catch them, and much slower than you want once you’ve caught them.

Milking can be a profoundly meditative act.

Three turkeys trapped in a territorial ram’s pasture combined with a hungry calf’s persistent suckling at your pants leads to farm gridlock.

Fresh pears on a hot day are far more refreshing than any water bottle.

Fallen leaves and pine needles create a more marvelous carpet than I’ve seen in any living room.

Roads are meant to be walked in the middle of.

Doing something is almost always better than doing nothing.

Green tomatillo sauce may be hotter than you think. Frozen yogurt will remedy.

Abundance sells.

Overheard at market: “People are so nice in America.” –A Californian Lady in response to someone saying hello to her.

The best time to listen to music is while cooking. The best time to cook is just before you’re hungry. The best time to be hungry is not just after you’ve brushed your teeth.

Harvesting vegetables while they still have morning dew on them feels very much like the earth is giving you a present and asking you to take care of it.

If a spider bites you, and you don’t die, that’s a good sign.

You have as much time as you think you do. The more deliberately you do things the more time you have to think.

If people’s sleep patterns followed the sun, we would all be very well rested.

When dealing with animals, sometimes you have to walk the opposite direction you want an animal to go to make them go that way.

Knives must be sharpened.

Easier and more efficient are not the same thing.

The world is incredibly detailed. Intricacy, complication, and staggering variation surround us constantly.

The mail service is better in rural Massachusetts than in Brooklyn.

The Day I Flew

Hello. My name is Dino. I am a mouse.

I am usually a very fastidious mouse, who likes to keep everything in its rightful place. I don’t like a dirty nest, you see. I like gathered food sorted into piles. Like goes with like. I keep it all separated from my bed, of course. And frankly, I prefer to eat outside of the nest so as not to leave a mess. But this isn’t about my eating habits. I meant to be concise.

Like I said, I am usually a very fastidious mouse. I travel the same paths every day, as much as I can. Until something changes. If my clearing runs out of foods to forage. Or if there are rumors of a cat in the neighborhood. But more or less the same paths every day. I like the way my paths smell. I know I’ve trodden there before.

But on Tuesday, I went outside to find nothing familiar. I hadn’t been outside in a few days, because I had gotten a terrible flu. The McGregors had brought me some acorn broth. Very good for your digestion. Anyway. Everything had changed. The beautiful towering blades of grass I had grown to love lay flat on the ground like dried spaghetti sticks spilled on the floor. And there was a terrible humming in the air. A rattling bass clicking in the distance. Or so I thought. It grew loud quickly, and though I tried to dive back into the front hole-way of my nest I was swept up in the dried grass into a giant churning metal screw.

I tumbled and tossed and scrambled my way along the tines of this dreadful device when I found myself jammed into a thick stack of dried grass. Normally, not an unpleasant experience. Downright cozy in the winter. But frankly, I was squished. And my blood sugar was low. And I was weak. From the flu. Like I said.

I wriggled as hard as I could, but my little mouse legs had gotten wrapped around a few strands of grass that were now tightly matted. And the noise! The racket, you wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t hear myself think. And just as I think I’m going to suffocate from the stuffy grassy air I’m buried in, I feel a slight draft. It seems the whole mess of grass was being pushed along. I could feel my right front paw was cool from the air. Aha! I thought. My escape!

A couple of mighty tugs, with a few graciously helpful bumps from the hell machine, and I was finally on the outside of the grass bundle. Except the familiar ground was trotting along beneath me! I had never known such a velocity. I didn’t dare leave the vehicle I found myself on. I clung tightly to a tuft of dead grass sticking out from the block, trying to think.

And then I WAS FLYING.

All I remember was a monumental SPROING and a fluttering breeze encompassing my whole body as my gut moved weightlessly in a giant arc. The blend of heart-numbing fear and unparalleled adrenaline is nothing I think I’ll every experience again. And before I had time to tuck my tail between my legs I was on something solid again.

A mountain of dead grass in an unusually rectangular pattern spread out before and below me. I was a good 1,000 tails above the ground. And this is where I’m writing from. What I really want to say is, I need help. I need help. I’m trapped up here, and I don’t know where my home is anymore. Please come find me if you find this message. Sorry my story is so long, I just needed to say I need help. But I thought context would be necessary. I meant to be more concise. Sorry.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A hay baler packs hay, scoots it forward and then launches it into the air onto the wagon, where someone (me) stacks it. The above, if you're wondering, is inspired by a mouse I saw emerging onto the launching end of the hay baler we used the other day. 

What We Do When We Have Dinner Together

She is four, and she hides behind a calculator. Her flaxen curls bounce as she ducks her eyes away from view, a game of peek-a-boo. She smiles, she hides, she smiles, she hides.

The woman speaks with a heavy Hispanic accent; the man has a buzz cut and asks if I meditate. They buy enough meat to last them the winter.

Puck drives his little lawnmower around everywhere and always waves as soon as he sees me. His blue baseball cap shades his eyes and fades in the sun. His vest lining flashes dirty white as he shows me how he wants his siding painted. He is a potter and his truck hasn’t been inspected in years.

She always comes to our stand with her dog and sometimes with flowers. Her flaxen curls wave instead of curling. She invites us to her housewarming but we miss it. She stays and talks.

He asks if the tomatoes were grown in the field or in the greenhouse. He only wants ones grown in the field. He wants to make sure. His vest lining stays hidden, zipped up.

Mike would have an afro if he didn’t have a ponytail, I suspect. He moves 400 lb beams but he has the build of a runner. Because he does, every day, down the dirt.

I stand on the knob of the pasture and watch the shadows strike the grassblades as the wind ruffles through the trees like a father mussing his kid’s hair. I am solitary today, like most days. I walk on green and brown patches of earth and lay fence posts and run electric wire and busy my hands moving pieces of things around, and I say my work has meaning. And I mean that.

Because she is four, and she loves raw milk, and she feels loved here. The couple drives an hour to come visit. Puck is every bit the neighbor neighbors want. The dog is almost as sweet as the flowers she brings. He can taste the difference in a tomato that touches sun. Mike fixes our doors when they break.

We live together. We commune. The lives of neighbors and friends are intertwined, and our community is more than just people living in proximity.

So, I try not to measure value in the accomplishments of a day, because time slips away. I try not to worry if I don’t finish my to do lists (because I never will, we never do, we just like to check things off). I try not to think of any time as wasted. We spend our days as we are supposed to. Patience is a perspective of appreciation, not longsuffering.

I’m beginning to understand why Dom always takes time to talk to anyone and everyone. The work that we do here is not about pieces of things we move around. When we cultivate food, we cultivate community. And community is what we hunger for when we think of good food. Sharing a table is as important a thing to share as any other.

I smile when she emerges from behind the calculator. Her palm brushes the patina on the barn door as we walk off to visit the calf. She lifts her head up to watch the turkeys fly from the tree. 

Moon in the Pictures

Several people have asked me for pictures of where I am, so I decided instead of writing a post tonight I would post some of the pictures I've taken here. (And also, because I want to go sleep now)

Dom at our Farmer's Stand outside of Rubiner's Cheese Shop in Great Barrington

Our back fields

Jerred the other farm intern who left a few weeks ago

Egyptian Walking Onions

Hydrangea

Our own naturally fermented sauerkraut

The Scottish Highlander Cattle

Ulysses, our bull

Piglets

Turkeys on our hay wagon

Moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches

Mary, our new calf

Chili peppers for our hot sauce

The main road out of our house

Our hay barn and elevator

Dom unloading hay

Dinner prep

Zinnia

Sunset in the Berkshires

Reminders

There is a reminder in your alarm to wake up. Wake up, because the decisions you make now telescope through the rest of the day. Twenty minutes longer in bed now could mean getting to bed an hour later, which makes tomorrow harder. So wake up, wake up now.

There is a reminder in the ache in your back to stretch, roll, bend yourself. Take care of your body; it’s the only one you have.

There is a reminder in the cold wooden floors to put on a jacket before going outside. The frost may not have come yet, but the wind will chill. Put on your wool socks. Put on your hat. Layer. Stay busy to stay warm.

There is a reminder in your phone to open the greenhouse, put the chickens in at night, feed the calf every four hours, because she is hungry, and she is your responsibility. She needs care, and you must give it to her, for at the moment she can get it no other way.

There is a reminder from Dom to keep things clean, keep gates shut, keep an eye out for everything, anything out of the ordinary. Reminders, awareness, these are things you must. There is a reminder when the strange sounds from the truck turn out to be a flat tire that these are things you must notice. Everything means something.

There is a reminder in the sudden emergence onto a magnificent bridge over the Hudson that the world is wonderful. It’s not that we must appreciate it; we are reminded that we are made to appreciate it. There is a reminder to be grateful. In every bite we eat, the drop of honey in yogurt, the flesh of chicken steamed in beer and roasted in woodfire, the slip of dandelion wine down your throat. In the thick blankets on beds and the hot water in sinks. In the moment of meeting a new friend.

There is a reminder in the sawdust of stars that the world is brilliant without us. But we are the ones who witness that brilliance. We are the ones who can feel the dew forming on the grass on our backs. And we are the ones who can hear the wind shake the mighty forest.

There is a reminder that every moment is bizarre and beautiful in how unlikely it was to happen. That a greenhouse would play host to the Jackson Five, Jay-Z, and the Beatles, and so many work boots would dance in the mud they normally cultivate. People everywhere dance awkwardly. But we smile as we dance. And the way your boss cuts a rug reminds you that he too is human. And though he may frustrate you, you probably frustrate him. We must give and take.

Remind me. It reminds me of this. It reminds me of the 14-year-old me selling pizza in the park in October with my cousin. There are so many memories which flit in, and I want to keep them all, but I don’t know how. Remind me, please. I promise to remember. Remind me. 

Getting Swamped

You know your shoe will come with you when you walk. You know this intuitively; you don’t think about this. You walk, and your shoe walks with you. This has been established. So when you walk, and your shoe doesn’t come with you, or when you try to walk, and you can’t, because your shoe won’t let you, this, this is startling.

And when you realize that your mid-calf rubber workboots are sturdy, well-built shoes, you will find that when they don’t want you to walk, it can be somewhat difficult to convince them to. You can push, pull, wiggle, and wriggle all you please, but nothing’s gotta give.

And when you realize that your left mid-calf rubber workboot, which, like its right-footed companion, is supposed to be completely waterproof, has a tear in it, you find the mud and water which encase your feet, vacuuming you to the earth, will trickle in, chilling your toes with fear as well as, well, chill.  So, too, will the deluge of mud and water which dredge down both of your boots, when, as you struggle to free yourself, the top of your boots sink below the swampy surface.

You will find it ironic that earlier that day you had smarmy thoughts about how swamped you were with only one other person working on the farm, and having a newborn calf to feed five times a day and a newly nursing mother cow to hand milk twice a day. The irony is that now, you think to yourself, you are literally swamped. You just wanted to run a bit of electric fencing through the swamp to extend the cattle pasture so they’ll stop getting out and trying to browse from the neighbor’s garden because they’re hungry because their pasture is running low on grass and greenery because they ate it all because the herd is larger than it’s supposed to be because the farmer missed a slaughter date earlier in the summer because he, too, was swamped. Not literally.

You will freak out for a minute, because, what if you really are stuck, and the neighbors are away on a trip, and Dom is who knows where, and it’s a good thing the swamp has a bottom, but what if you can’t get out and you’re stuck here for, like, I guess, an inconvenient period of time, until somebody finds you, which will probably not be that long, because if you went missing, work wouldn’t be done, and then Dom would come looking. Oh. Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad. Breathe.

Assess. Ooh, you will see a stick, that is promising in its stick-ness. It promises to provide you a third leg, something to push off of to get your feet out of the muddy mud. You will break it. Darn.

Re-assess. You will look around a little more and see a small tree that you could probably use as an actual pushing off point, because, duh, it’s solidly planted in the ground. It will be too far for you to reach. You will wish your stick hadn’t broken because it had a little hook you could have used to reach the tree. You will realize you would have broken the stick trying to pull yourself to the tree anyway. Darn.

Think, think, think. You will remember, or think you remember, something about needing to spread yourself out when stuck in quicksand. You will be confused about what that means now that you’re actually stuck. Hmmm.

You will naturally go back to what you started doing, which was wriggling, pulling, and desperately trying to walk your shoes as you have done so many countless walks before in your life. In the process, you will lose your balance, and fall to the side. Your muddy, cold toes will feel grateful that the rest of your body is joining the fiesta.

You will realize two things from your prone position. THIS IS WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT WHEN THEY SAID SPREAD YOURSELF OUT. It makes sense now. Your body is spread out, and you can definitely pull your feet out a little bit. Also. THE TREE, THE LITTLE TREE, IS SUDDENLY WITHIN REACH. With these powers combined, you will free you and your faithful shoes from the muddy maw of the swamp.

And when this happens, you will keep going, keep doing, just as you were before. 

Begin Again

Things are changing here at Moon in the Pond.

This is obvious; things are always changing here at Moon in the Pond. But today was momentous, and I felt a certain seriousness all day. Jerred, the other intern here, finished up yesterday, and the kitchen table was conspicuously smaller without him. Dan, a former apprentice, was here this weekend, but left today. This leaves Dom and me to run the farm, a somewhat daunting task for someone who’s been here so briefly.

Honeysuckle, our dairy cow, finally gave birth sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning, as I walked into the pasture today and out of the mist stumbled an uncertain calf. I sympathized completely with her. I, too, am feeling like I’ve been given a brilliant cacophony to absorb and deal with, and I’m just stumbling to keep my feet underneath me.

We separated the calf and her mother today so that we can milk Honeysuckle by hand to regulate productivity, which means we feed the calf by hand as well. I learned that the first milk a cow produces after giving birth is called colostrum. It’s a super milk, highly rich in proteins, fats, sugars, and all kinds of nutrients the newborn needs to energize it as soon as it comes into the world. So, day by day, the calf grows stronger. We just need a little bit of fortification.

It’s starting to get cold. The weather forecast for this week harbors brisk temperatures and threatens frost. My toes are cold when I let the chickens out in the morning. And so I wear my flannel, and I wear my wool socks, and I welcome the autumn air which smells so full of comfort.

Imposing A Little Structure

Life on a farm, I’m learning is often about method, habit, regularity. There’s a lot of making sure that things are as things ought to be. The whole enterprise feels a little like humanity’s effort to hold out against Newton’s 2^nd Law for as long as possible.

But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. And hey, Cincinnatus, one of Rome’s emperors was a farmer. So to help me keep up with this blog I’ve decided to post on a biweekly basis, that is every Thursday (as evidenced by this post) and Monday (as evidenced by the post I will post next Monday). Just some updates on what I’m doing on an organic farm in the Berkshires as the rolling tide of Autumn approaches. Excepting my intro post on MITP and my discussion of Turkey stupidity (everyday it’s something with those birds), this will be my first of the regular postings. And as such, I’ll start from the beginning!

What does a regular day on a farm look like?

It starts the same. Wake up sometime before 6:30 in order to start the day at 6:30. We commune in the kitchen, make some coffee and head out to do chores. (Usually with coffee in hand. Also, please stop for a moment and know that our coffee comes from Costa Rica and makes me immensely happy and reminiscent of the coffee I drank every day last summer). That mainly means feeding and watering all the animals (turkeys, geese, chickens, pigs, sheep, cattle), though it will soon also mean milking our one dairy cow, who is very pregnant by nature of being two weeks late.

Then we have breakfast, which is often eggs from our hens, in combination with something else. We’ve recently been having a lot of toast, with an organic hazelnut chocolate spread (yes, nutella, on organic crack, it’s delicious). During breakfast, we make the plan.

After breakfast, we enact the plan.

Remember what I said about method, habit, regularity, etc? It’s true, but also entirely false. Everyday the tasks at hand come as a reaction to what we’ve done before, what we need to get done before X, what unplanned circumstances we’re presented with (e.g. did the cattle fence stop working? does the intense heat mean we can’t work in the greenhouse? Is all of our broccoli going to go to waste if we don’t pick it today?). The plan is our plan for the day, and what needs to be done. The plan normally takes the shape of a to do list with far too many things to do. Those undone get carried over until tomorrow or become irrelevant.

So, the bulk of our day, from about 9:30 to about 5:30 (with apple-picked, vegetable sliced, sometimes left-overs reheated lunch in the middle) is spent working on the plan and getting as much done as possible. Whether that’s weeding, mulching, digging, moving things, cleaning things, moving fences, moving animals, laying out beds, harvesting food, preparing for market, being at market, fixing tools, selling to customers, planting seeds, cultivating beds, fermenting food, preparing preserves, or any other kind of thing that comes up and needs doing. I spent one whole day making 70 lbs of sauerkraut, because we needed to harvest our cabbage before it went bad, and it wouldn’t stay fresh. It’s fermenting in the basement now.

Then at 5:30, we do chores again, come back to the house, cook dinner, eat dinner, relax a little, blog if we can (really that’s just me), then go to sleep.

So, if you’re wondering what I’m doing on a farm, that’s kind of what I’m doing here. Why I’m here is a question for another post.

In closing, here’s a picture of one of our pastures. Idyll indeed.:

Turkey Talk

Turkeys are much more stupid than I thought.

I mean, I guess I never really thought turkeys were that smart, but still.

We have about 20 to 25 turkeys that we’re raising here in preparation for Thanksgiving turkey season. Everybody wants a nice, big ol’ organically raised turkey for the Thanksgiving dinner and we aim to give it to them. I asked Dom what Thanksgiving on the farm was like, and in his typical fashion he first responded with a mini-rant about the problematic nature of institutionalized, commercialized holidays. And then, in his typical fashion, he answered the question fairly and calmly, talking about how hectic it is getting everybody else their turkeys and so on, that there’s no time for a proper Thanksgiving. But a couple days later he’ll throw together a big meal. Of course, as I’m learning, almost every meal here on the farm is a big meal. We’re making chocolate zucchini bread soon, because we harvested several 6 pound zucchinis. I digress.

We keep the turkeys in tractor cages that we move every day so they have fresh grass. We keep them in there at night to protect them from predators, like the fishercats that ate almost all the ducks. But during the day, we let the turkeys roam free. When we let them out of their tractors in the morning they all stretch their wings and run up the hill flapping. I think about the flight of the Valkyrie. Or putting them in slow motion and parodying a football team running out of their tunnel.

Anyway, the pasture their tractor is in isn’t secured, so they wander all over the farm during the day, and besides recently getting into some herbs, they normally don’t cause a fuss.

But man, they do have a penchant to meander into a place, any place, and have no clue how to get back out. They are completely incapable of understanding what a corner is, or, really more importantly, what a fence is. I learned about birds that stash their food and are able to represent notions of the temporal and spatial dislocation, but turkeys must be on the opposite side of the phylogenetic tree from those birds. They’re like those monsters in Chip’s Challenge that always hone directly to your exact location, with no ability to move around a barrier.

I was walking past the chicken garden this afternoon, when I heard some distressed gobbling. Yup. The gate to the garden had been left open (or more likely had creaked open – the gate has no latch and needs to be repaired), and one solitary turkey had been stranded, left behind by the rest of the herd, none of which are intelligent enough to notice. This turkey was running back and forth, trying desperately to get through the chicken wire fence to rejoin his friends. Retreading the same 3 feet back and forth back and forth completely unable to realize that the gate it had just walked through was a mere 4 feet to its right. I circled around and herded it out the gate, allowing it to frantically scramble back to his compatriots.

Well done, turkey. Keep up the good work.

Moon In The Pond: Let's Begin

“An old man took his grandson outside to show him the stars. The child wanted to see the moon. The old man extended his left arm towards the sky. The boy said that he still did not see the moon. The old man responded, ‘I can only point at the moon. Stop looking at my finger and gaze into the sky.’”

I moved to a farm yesterday. And as Dom drove down the single lane gravel road, the earthy smell of humid cow manure weaved through the windows. Looking through the mist in the trees, I couldn’t see much of my surroundings.

I’ve been living a lot of memories lately. It has something to do with this time of year, a sudden departure of normalcy, and an amazing expanse of options. I’ve been reading old emails, opening up old documents, and trawling through old notebooks. It’s good to remember the moments we forget, and we forget so much. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but it’s a relaxing search. I’ve spent the summer in mini-bouts of flux, often not sure of what my plan is, or when I would have a plan. I still don’t have a plan, but timing and circumstances have left open a natural next step, and I’ve taken it.

So, I’ve left New York City, and my small sublet in Brooklyn, and I’ve hired myself out as a farmhand, here at Moon in the Pond Farm in southwest, Massachusetts. I’ve been here before, but this time I’m not sure when I’ll be leaving.

I'm not sure I’m on the precipice of any great adventure. I’m here to work hard, and learn everything I can. But there’s an excitement in the creaking of this wooden farmhouse, and all the uncertainty I’ve been living with is now reduced into concretized tasks and tangible results. I know when I’m done weeding vegetables. I know when the cows’ fence needs repairing. The geese let me know when they haven’t been fed.

So, I’ll be here. And I’ll try to update this blog as I can. And maybe if the haze clears up, I can see the moon.