Farm Music

Do you hear what I hear? Loud snorting, like a giant pig.  Maybe soon it will develop into a foghorn.  Chy, our jenny, just like me, gets very excited when Karen comes near.  Maybe she's bringing something special, some arugula (for Chy) or some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies (for me).

If you think roosters only crow early in the morning, come for a visit and you'll learn the truth.  Which reminds me -- since the rooster born last Spring spent a few hours at a slow bake, the barnyard has sounded different.  I sort of miss the crowing duets, back and forth, back and forth, usually in the afternoon.  Lately, too, the change in seasons has caused most of our hens to abandon their egg-laying squawks, taking us down to two eggs per day.

Each time either of us slams the back door on our way out, a chorus of baas calls from the goat paddocks.  I must admit it's great to feel loved.  Don't tell me they only want me for food because even after they know I'm carrying none, at least one of them crowds me and massages my glutes.

Today and yesterday, underneath everything, inside or outside, is a low rushing sound.  Not like the random rumblings of motor vehicles or aircraft passing, it's constant, continually up and over and down.  Sometimes when I step outside, my first thought is it's raining, then I remember it's not, it's Elk Creek after rain.  I'm reminded of Opossum Run, up by Arrowhead Lodge, which happens to feed into Elk Creek -- we moved downstream -- after a hurricane, rushing so fast we heard it rolling huge boulders.

Even seeds talk to me, as you already know if you read my blog posting two days ago.  Thanks to Susan, I no longer feel self-conscious talking back to the plants that schedule much of my life.  More accurately, perhaps, it's not the plants scheduling me, it's the result of me tracking my holodynes.  Lord knows, I do not, what this is all about, but sometimes I think there may be something to it.

"Listen," says Virginia.  "Do you hear what I hear?"

I hear her, too, but probably not what she hears.  I always hear.  Pillows pressed against my ears, I cannot escape chirping, sizzling, humming and pulsing.  Just now I heard a mouse trying to slip unnoticed through our heating ducts.

Oh, how could I forget?  The chattery quacks of our rambling ducks rarely fail to draw a chuckle.  

I loved the movie, "August Rush," always music everywhere.