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.

Traffic Jams in Arnolds Valley

Folks driving by our place often slow down.  Witty, our goat sire, might be dancing on the goats' jungle gym or the female goats and their kids might be grazing together.  Sometimes a car parks along the side of the road and the occupants walk to our fence to engage in some heavy petting, which the goats love.

Last year I was hoeing at one end of the 1/4 acre field garden while Olga, our scarecrow, stood guard at the other.  I was out of my mind as usual until I heard someone talking.  A car had stopped and the driver was talking to Olga.  He seemed pretty embarrassed when I walked over to bid him hello.

People also slow down after I install a new set of CDs to keep crows away from newly planted seeds.  Take a look.

"They're very sparkly, very sparkly, like a holiday," says Virginia.

"Yea man, unless it rains," I say.

When the Rubber Hits the Road

Karen's before and after pictures of Puck, our former rooster, God bless his soul (see "A picture paints a thousand words" at http://holesinmyjeans-kpannabecker.blogspot.com/), provoked a wide range of responses from "rooster killer" to "I'm proud of you; you're a real farmer now."

I'm reminded of the scene in "Julie and Julia" where Julie's husband wanders around the apartment singing "lobstuh killuh."  What strikes me most was his silence when Julie cooked boeuf bourguignon or duck.  Frankly, it's kind of like the millions of world citizens who ignored (and some still ignore) gas ovens in Germany, except, so far as we know, human roasts weren't shipped to supermarkets.  Okay, that's a rather extreme comparison.  Instead, think of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, who provided Mrs. Lovett with cheap meat for her pies.  Did you laugh when they sang "try the priest" or "the financier, peak of his career?"

Vegans and vegetarians, you're not off the hook, by far.  Take a fresh green bean, cut it in pieces, and look at it under a microscope.  What are those little things moving around?  They're not vegetables.  Do you think the farmer that grows the vegetables you eat avoids killing creatures as he drags his plow, cultivator or hoe through the soil, which, by the way, has likely been amended by pesticides and fertilizers that animals eat, get sick from, and die?  Moreover, unless you're buying locally grown produce, lots of petroleum has been consumed getting those plants to your kitchen, and as we all know -- but ignore as part of our typical mass denial -- kills not only animals but some on the top of the heap, humans, now and future.

I'm also curious about the distinction we draw between heads of lettuce and beef or pork.  Consider the gentle plant, which produces its own food from (non-living) nutrients it obtains from soil and air.  Unlike a pig or a cow, it doesn't need our daily help.  Instead of rewarding it with respect, we eat it without a first thought regarding its death and sacrifice

"Wait a minute," says Virginia.  "Do you think we resent the independence of vegetables, which is why we eat them without remorse; that our egos object to being at the killing of pigs, cattle, chickens, turkeys and so forth because we made them?"

"Hmmm," I say.  "The next time I lop off a head of lettuce I'm going to be more circumspect.  And hey, you meat, fish and fowl eaters, be there or be square!"