Farm Visits

I’ve got a quick trip down to New York City today, a development that came upon me yesterday. Expected, anticipated and yet I wish I could Elizabeth Montgomery myself down there instead of having the 5 hour drive. Knowing I’m leaving, even for a day and a half, makes me appreciate our Vermont place all the more. It adds a vividness to everything. I want to be present, see, hear, take in everything. At around 6 or 6:15, with the cats already stirring, I urged Richard to stay in bed and went down to let “the girls” out. Usually they don’t honk until the front screen door slams shut behind me on my way out to them, but this morning they were honking to be let out long before I left the house, inspired, no doubt, by all the roosters crowing. My God, the roosters! We still have 7 roosters of various breeds and colors and they’re forever posturing and crowing and wreaking havoc on the hens. This morning I was appalled by the frenzy whipped up in all those plumed boys. And those poor hens, running for cover, squawking for help, and no help to be found, just a field full of crazed men wanting to hump. And they’re violent about it. They use the hen as a thing, less than a thing. They’re competing with the other guys, trying to get there before the competition – and believe me there’s a lot of competition – so when they get their chance, they grab it. They grip the back of the hen’s neck with their beaks and force her down into position. When I broke up one such rape, the male came away with a hunk of the hen’s feathers in his beak. I know I’ve said it before, but I feel I understand a world run mostly by men after having witnessed the madness of a barnyard with too many roosters. As I stood there watching, I thought this is what a woman must feel like in Africa where the violent rape statistics have gone off the map. Madness. So to alleviate our particular madness we will be “processing” (oh, that euphemism) at least 5, maybe 6 of our roosters next Monday. Once more it’s “Tale of Two Cities” time. Start the drum roll, get out your knitting, a few more heads are going to be lopped off.


My mom’s coming for a visit in a few days. Mom grew up on a farm in southern Indiana and I think she’s getting an odd kick that her son and her son’s partner are dabbling in their own version of farming. She’s interested in seeing all our hens and roosters because in addition to growing up on a farm, her first job after having left the homestead was at Purina’s hatchery in Washington, Indiana, where she helped in the accounting. She tells a very funny story about a group of Japanese men who would descend upon this small hatchery in this small Indiana town in the late ‘40’s to sex the baby chicks. They had a 99% success rate. The men, who had extremely long fingernails, would pick up the chick, spread its legs (I suppose) and with surprising dispatch toss the chick into 1 of 2 bins or chutes, 1 for females and the other for males. Most of the males would be further dispatched with. Mom had more fun hatchery stories too. When she heard about the chicks we had gotten earlier in the year, she told us to dye them for Easter, a practice the hatchery had taken part in annually.

“They were so cute, Dan.”
‘But wouldn’t the dye hurt the chick?’ I queried.
“Oh, I don’t know, Dan. The color grows right out of them. And the kids would just love it.”
‘Okay.’

Mom’s a little bit leery when it comes to our geese, however. She has had some unpleasant tangles with barnyard geese in her day, as well as being hissed at and cornered by some Canada Geese that inhabit a pond area in her condominium development now. She can’t quite get her mind around the idea that some geese are sweet, that their breed lends itself to liking being around human beings. Seeing is believing for her, so we’ll give her a look see when she comes to town.

I’ve been thinking about my grandfather a lot lately. Both my grandpa’s really, for they both took pride in growing things; I find myself talking to them when I’m planting something in our garden, hoping I’ll be given a horticultural hit from beyond the grave. But it’s my mom’s dad that is most vivid these days. I wonder if he’s watching over the goings on on our spread of land with interest. I didn’t really know him. There are memories, a few, but he died by suicide when I was 8, so my image of him has mostly been cobbled together through conversations with my relatives. He was a perfectionist, a driven man whose whole life was work. Most of this work ethic was required, for farming was a tough life, completely dependent on the vagaries of weather, price changes, etc., but, sadly, the rigidity of his idea of work left little time for play or enjoyment or rest. Or love. He was a great farmer, though. He knew what he wanted and he was willing to put the labor in to make that vision happen. And he made other’s toe the line of that vision. It’s been fascinating to see how his work ethic has translated down through my aunts and uncles and mother and on to me. There’s an interesting “at odds” duality that comes with it. For instance, I’m grateful for a sense of discipline, for the willingness to work hard at a task AND I’ve discovered that I’ve defined any experience that hasn’t come through hard work and labor as “less than.” Also, there’s a learned sense that one must always be doing, be moving, be busy. There’s no time for reflection or meditation or stillness. My aunt once said: “(When I was young) If I saw him coming and I wasn’t doing anything, I got myself busy because he’d sure enough give me something to do.” And nowadays she’s said: “I can’t do all the things now that I used to do and when I don’t feel plum wore out by the end of the day, I feel lazy.”

I loved going down to the farm when I was growing up. “Down home” as mom used to call it. It was so different from our home in the suburbs. It was this wonderful, exotic, other place with different smells (Dust; sharp, stinging manure when you’d pass a hog farm; the smell of both perspiration and soap on my uncles after they’d washed up – the smell of labor), different sounds (Quiet; the lazy whirr and drone of cicadas in the summer; the slam of a screen door), and different tastes (Well water; my aunt’s homemade noodles and fried chicken; corn on the cob right from the field!) And the space, the open, open space. Fields forever, of corn, of soybeans, of wheat, almost bleached out white by the glare of the hot July and August sun. It’s so fascinating to me that a place of such stillness and peace could also be the sight of such endless work. I would dabble in work down there and romanticize it since I would only take part in it as a visiting emissary from another place. What an exhausting and invigorating day I had helping them bale hay one day, absolutely filthy and spent by the end of the day and exultant in a job well done. My cousins wearily chimed in “Yeah, do it every day and then let’s see how happy you are about it.”

I think I caught a glimpse of what my grandfather must have felt most everyday of his life last summer when for a week we reconstructed the stone wall out in front of our house. From 8 to 5 for a week, I would be the “rock boy” who would accompany our neighbor’s little bulldozer and load his shovel up with heavy rocks from the old stone wall up above our orchard, then follow it down to the new site and unload and arrange the rocks there. By the end of the day, I was worn out, my shirt sopped, my energy sapped, dirty. I remembered stories my mom would tell of grandpa just sitting out by their water pump, spent at the end of the day, still, grateful for a back scratch if one of his daughters might agree to do it. I felt as if I knew him a little bit better, understood him a little bit better through fatigue. And then my thoughts flew to another generation of farmers that cleared this land and built these first stone walls without the help of motorized machinery. They moved them with horses and levers and brute strength. They often worked themselves to death. I suppose there’s a subtle honoring of all those people that have worked this land, any land, by our carrying on in our own random way our appreciation of this place, our appreciation of the work it takes to maintain it, and also the work of appreciation, to simply be and notice, and be amazed by the views, the incredible produce that grows and comes out of our garden, the eggs that are laid daily, all the cycles of nature and of season. At dusk on those “wall building” days, I did see anew, my weariness gave me little choice. I sat and noticed the work I’d taken part in. I was happy with it. I liked looking at it and how it fit into the larger picture. I wonder if that’s what grandpa felt at the end of his days. Maybe that was his reflective time. I hope so. I hope it gave him some peace.

One of the percs of living out in the country is that you can pee outside whenever you’ve a mind too. It helps if you’re a man, it’s easier, more convenient, and there’s plenty of places to shelter yourself from the odd car or truck that meanders down our road. It gives you a “Live Free or Die” feeling, to borrow our neighboring state’s motto. That’s fine and good, you may be asking yourself, but why are we going down this tangent? I’ll tell you. The only artifact I have of my grandpa’s is a little Plaster of Paris-based souvenir of a plastic naked boy with a rubber cone shaped hat, standing, facing an open shell. When you remove the hat, fill the naked boy’s empty plastic body with water, replace his hat, and then squeeze it, the naked boy pees into the waiting shell. Now no one knows where grandpa got this; it may have been a gift because grandpa never went on a vacation where he might’ve bought such a thing. But this peeing boy cracks me up. And I think it made grandpa laugh too. And that makes me happy.

One of my few memories of grandpa was of him laughing. I must’ve been 5 or 6 and I was telling him about an upcoming family reunion and he asked me if there was anything I’d like him to bring and I answered “Gobs of mustard!” for I loved - and still love - all kinds of mustard. (Interestingly enough, my aroma therapist sister tells me that mustard is a natural antidepressant.) For some reason “gobs of mustard” tickled him and he set off into gales of laughter. That memory makes me happy. With all the stories of work and depression and arthritis, a vision of him laughing seems like a rare occurrence, so I cherish it. And I choose to believe that if he is watching over the goings on down here, down home, he’s getting a kick out of it. Gone are the particulars of how straight the rows need to be, how we ought to pay more attention to weeding, how we should keep our eye a little more closely on “the right way” or “his way” of doing things. All of that way of thinking flew the coop with his old skin and body. Now he’s just sitting back and wishing us well , watching all the barnyard antics, watching me try to bring all these various topics together into one written piece, wondering what the hell a “blog” is, just sitting back and enjoying the view, enjoying the show. Maybe eating a little popcorn. And laughing. Just laughing