Month: June 2021

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From eddy to mainstream and back again

I’m not sure I want the year of quarantine to end. For 16 months, I’ve felt almost normal. No FOMO or kicking myself for not “participating.” The bars and conferences and receptions and art festivals were dark. No pressure to act like a regular person and just go to the damn thing and wear a smile and desperately try to understand what everyone else is enjoying. No energy spent on creative excuse design. No wondering what planet I’m from.

Instead, I was like an elder stateswoman at home in her element. A lifetime of experience made me a pro at staying home, hanging out with a small number of loved ones and the animals. For the first time I can remember, I felt the satisfaction of being in the mainstream, doing what everyone else was doing.

Good riddance to the illness and premature deaths! Well-deserved rest to the front line responders! Goodbye to the stifling masks and smelly hand sanitizer! But can we all just be a little homier now? Can I stay near the edge of the mainstream instead of eddying back out to the weirdo fringe?

Ah well, probably not. Back to the edges I go. But at least I learned something valuable — I didn’t miss the bars or conferences or receptions or art festivals one bit. I can throw FOMO out with my used masks. To each their own and I’m just a bit clearer on what my own is.

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Good horse, good truck

Last week we had to evacuate because of a wildfire less than a mile from our property. I’ve played out — and dreaded — this scenario in my mind dozens of times and now it had arrived. But it was not as I had imagined before — now I had cows.

I was alone at the time. Dozens of channels in my mind alerted at once. The animals! Paperwork and keepsakes in the house! Where will we go? The animals! How long do I have? The livestock trailers! The animals!

I hooked up our good truck to my big horse trailer. I collected my horses from where they were grazing at pasture. All the time I was panicking about everything I was not doing.

I went to hook up our beat up old farm truck to my smaller, older horse trailer, but found I had been softened and weakened by the advent of backup cameras. In my increasing panic and with lack of practice, I could not connect the old truck to the old trailer without another set of eyes. Luckily, my neighbor was able to come help guide me in.

Then she helped me load the cows in the smaller trailer. Cows are not like horses; they are somewhat trained to lead with a halter, but only somewhat. And they are not accustomed to trailer rides. With a great deal of encouragement, we got mama and the two calves into the trailer and closed the door.

Next we caught the chickens. One by one we accosted them, as they grew more panicked at each of our tries. Somehow we got them all and shoved them in our old, plastic dog kennel and got the kennel hefted into the back of the truck.

Compared to the rest, loading my horses into their trailer was a dream. They were used to the procedure and cooperated smoothly.

I ran to the house and collected our box of legal papers, some underwear and socks, my expensive guitar, my dog’s bed. I snatched semi-randomly at whatever I could.

Finally, my husband arrived home. The dog and I drove off in one truck and trailer and he followed in the other. We headed to a friend’s place who offered shelter for the entire menagerie.

The fire never grew and was quickly contained. Our property was not touched. We reversed ourselves and got everyone back home the following morning.

Yesterday, when I brought the cow and horses in from grazing at pasture, the two calves were nowhere to be found. Mama called for them. I hiked a circuit where they should have been. Nothing. Mama kept calling. This was a scenario I had never pictured.

My first instinct was to saddle my horse and ride out with my lasso rope to find them. That would be the right and normal instinct if you were a cowboy. I’m not. I’ve flirted with cowboyism but never claimed to achieve it. Yet, I had a horse I could rely on, a lasso rope I could do something with, and confidence that together we could do what we needed to do.

In this case, the calves showed up before I could get saddled up, bawling at the gate to get back to mom. I patted my horse on the shoulder, infinitely grateful for what I knew he could have done for us.

It’s one thing to collect some livestock and make friends with them. It’s another to be prepared for the unexpected. That’s the rule of livestock, the unexpected. You can’t foresee every eventuality. You can’t practice all the things that will happen. All you can do is gain general skills and reliable equipment. Build good and mutually helpful relationships. Flirt with and practice whatever comes your way. I never know what I will need my truck or my horse to do, but I rest easier knowing that they will probably be up for it.

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The price of milk

I enjoy milking my cow. It’s very intimate sitting on my bucket, leaning my head against her massive side. I listen to her snuffle through the hay for the best bite, hear and feel her side-to-side chewing and then the great swallow. Her teats are warm and soft in my hands, leathery like I imagine elephant skin. The milk jets into the bucket, full of promise. I imagine I feel contentment rolling off her as she eats her breakfast and gets some relief of pressure with my gentle milking, so much less boisterous than the determined nursing of her calf that comes next.

Now there’s fresh milk in my kitchen. A lot of it. I’ve learned how to make yogurt, ice cream, butter, cottage cheese, hard cheese. Every milky thing we can dream of we have. It’s clean and rich and hasn’t given us a moment of discomfort or concern.

My cow is sweet, the milk is sweet. It’s a lovely cycle.

So how do I reconcile the other side of this exchange? To keep in good milk, our cow has a calf every year. The traditional thing to do is butcher these calves after 12-18 months. A calf born, a calf killed, every year.

On a small spread like ours, you get up close and personal with the animals, the way I like it. By the time our current calves reach butchering age, I will have logged thousands of hours with them. Watching over their health, halter training them, scratching their heads, enjoying their playtime, observing their developing minds and bodies. And then I’m supposed to preside over their deaths.

The justifications are many:

  • These calves will have the best possible 18 months of life and the easiest deaths we can provide
  • As long as we consume any dairy products, we’re participating in this cycle, and it’s ethically cleaner to face up to it directly
  • By raising our own milk and meat and sharing it with several families, we are reducing the demand for the services of confined animal feeding operations, hellish places on many levels

Mama cow is grazing contentedly in the meadow. The calves pretend to eat grass, kick up their heels and run in aimless circles, butt their heads together, and return to mama’s side. The milk is sweet, the calves have 16 more months to live.

The justifications are many, and the heartache has yet to be plumbed.

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Reasons to Burn

One day, I decided maybe I could burn at the stake, after all. Before that day, I thought, “there is no belief that I hold so dearly that I would allow myself to be burned at the stake rather than forsake it.” According to Wikipedia, when Joan of Arc was burnt alive, her last words were “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” Now that’s fidelity to a belief. It was a relief to think I could burn, too.

It’s sad to have such paltry beliefs that they could not survive the mere threat of burning alive. Yet, over the years, under attack from innumerable opinions and theories lobbed at me from friend and foe alike, some solid beliefs have lodged in me. “No,” I can say, “I cannot agree with that, because I believe something else and I will not be shifted.” Tie me up and bring the oil, I’m ready! I believe two things!

#1.  Nature has it right.  The web of biological, physical, chemical, quantum, and mathematical powers is perfect. More than perfect, it’s unceasingly mind-blowing. Stable and independent orbits of numerous bodies around a central star.  Giant Tubeworms that survive without sun or oxygen, 5,000 feet below the sea’s surface.  Tardigrades that can survive the vacuum of space and incorporate other beings’ DNA into their own. DNA.  The brilliance of the Jack Pine cone that only drops its seeds after a fire that clears the ground for their germination.  The structure of the inner ear. 

Nature has lots of rules. Things that happen so universally that they are, de facto, rules. Here are just a few: You’re born, you grow, you age, you die.  Entropy happens. Everything is made out of something else that already existed.  Things come (and go) in cycles. 

Here are a few more: There’s no such thing as eternal growth.  You can’t consume more than you need for very long.  Over-crowding is not tolerated.  There is no top of the heap – the bacteria will get you eventually.  You can make a tree into a house or a tiger into a rug, but there are limits – taking atoms apart has grave consequences.

Nature doesn’t screw around. You can’t break the rules, it’s not possible. And if you try to, really work at it, you’ll most likely die.

I believe in nature.  I can go to the fire shouting “The laws of nature! The laws of nature!” Hooray!

#2.  It’s all gray area. There are (almost) no absolutes. Outside the laws of nature, that is. Usually. 

People who are certain of things all the time bother me. First, it’s boring.  Absolutists have no imagination and no curiosity and that is very dull.  Second, it’s demonstrably false.  Show me most absolutes and I’ll find you some exceptions. Third, it’s lazy.  Absolutes take no effort, no thought. Remaining open to all possibilities and casting around for nuance takes more time. Fourth, it ends all conversation. There is no answer to an absolute except (1) another absolute (i.e., a fight); or (2) a meaningless acknowledgment (“mmmmm” or “oh?”). Back to boring, and downright rude in settings where conversation is the intent

Can I go to the stake shouting “Maybe! Sometimes!”? A martyr to uncertainty?

But what if I already professed absolute belief in the laws of nature? Hopefully I would only be called on to die for one belief at a time, because they kind of cancel each other out. Now I’m just confused again.