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.