Bantry

6/4:
You have to blink a few times to remind yourself you're still in the same century if you arrive in Bantry on the first Friday of the month. The main plaza is full of people. Nearby, a horse is tied to a lamppost while at its feet a noisy cage crammed with chickens has a pricetag on it. Another man rides his horse through the square, announcing the price while a woman bargains over the cost of her two puppies with a customer. Knick knacks are everywhere and you can buy everything from Gubbeen cheese and sausage to wellies to fox traps to tomato seedlings to chicken feed to old watches and sandwich presses.

Chicks

6/4:
Chicken jobs seem to follow me where I go. First at Pie Ranch I was an egg collector, then at Full Belly a chicken catcher and now again here I'm a chick hatcher. Every morning I go into the "chick shed" to check our incubators for signs of life.
Half the room is already taken up by a flurry of feathers and a chorus of peeping from all the tiny chicks that have already emerged from their shels. But on the other side are all the eggs that are just waiting to hatch tiny balls of wings and beak.
I check them with excitement, watching, waiting for a crack or a hole, anything. I spritz them with water regularly to help the little ones along until finally, a crack! I pick up the soft, cream colored egg and tap it gently with my finger. A soft peeping tickles my ear and I feel a wiggle. Carefully, I put it down and wait a few more hours. When I come back, I find a wet, disgruntled little mass that's supposed to be a chick. To me it looks more likea hairball that a cat spit out. I gently pick it up and place the fragile body into the second incubator so its feathers can fluff up a bit.
After another half day, the chick is ready to join his flock mates. I place him carefully inside the cage and he stares around at the bigger chicks as if it were his first day of school.

Rabbit rabbit!

6/1:

My arms and legs ache. Not so much from hard work, but from nettle burns. I spent a good chunk of the sunny (!) afternoon carting wheel barrows full of stinging nettles down to Clovis' compost pile. Rosie taught me to use bruised dock leaves (which always grow together with nettles) to calm the welts but even with this trick I still feel slight throbbing in the affected areas.
The day was a lot less dairy-centric than yesterday because Tom pulled me aside to help with all the animals that had to be moved.
First Rosie, Brennan and I loaded up onto the moto to go pick up a newborn calf in the field and bring back its mom for milking. After heaving the slumbering calf into the back, we had to convince the new mom to follow. We managed to get her started with some cajoleing so we set off down the road to walk the mile of road back to the farm. Despite a lot of cow chasing and near escapes we made it back remarkably quick and left mother and child alone together in a pen.
Next on the list was to move three sows and their litters. First we moved the fierce wild sow with her tiny piglets in with the rest of the wild pigs. The second two moms were easier because they had been put into farrowing crates from the very beginning. After moving the moms first, we chased the piglets around the tiny room and caught them one by one, holding them by one leg as they shrieked bloody murder. After this crazy early afternoon of animals, I went back to weed more nettles before checking on the newest batch of chicks. I had found a few cracked eggs in the incubator in the morning so I sprayed them and waited for a few hours for the real hatching to begin. Sure enough when I went back, three new chicks had emerged and were peeping about the warm interior. One of life's greatest miracles fo sho.

Gubbeen at last

5/30:
I immediately show my true colors -- when Rosie picks me up we walk up to her little white car and I go straight for the right side. She smiles and I sheepishly walk around to get in on the left side. Kipper the bulldog is in the back and he greets me with a big doggy smile. The drive is nearly an hour and a half but it goes by in a flash for me. We pass countless towns, each beautiful and quaint with cobblestone streets and tiny colorful houses jammed together. I want to stop at each town. Rosie keeps apologizing for the fact that there's no roadway btu I assure her that I ADORE the tiny country roads and little sights we get to see. The radio quietly plays opera and Irish music as we cruise through green in a light misty sprinkle of rain. We finally round a corner and I see ocean, we've arrived at Schull and we pull off the road to see Tom at the Farmer's market. I shake his rouch hand and he feeds me salami with pistachio in it while Rosie hands me slices of Gubbeen. We stop at the stand next door to buy some Irish soda bread which looks dark and hefty. After getting two gourmet burgers at another stand we chew and swallow as we walk the main (and only) street of Schull. There is a film festival going on this weekend so the town is covered in blue and yellow confetti and streamers. We say hi to everyone that passes. In just the one street there are probably about 4 or 5 pubs. Rosie promises we'll go. We pass a bookstore, fish monger, grocery store, pharmacy, health food store and a handful of other stores before we come to the end. We turn around to get the car and then we drive for a few minutes until we get to Gubbeen House. We turn off the main road and enter through a beautiful wooded area that opens up to reveal a fairytale bunch of buildings. More cobblestones cover the ground and 300 year old buildings make it look like I've just stepped into a postcard. I can see why people believe in fairies, gnomes and leprechauns around here.
I take my bags over to my luxurious trailer (with electricity, hot water and even a bathroom!) which looks out to a buttercup-covered field.
After changing shoes Rosie takes me to tour the farm. The smell of cows scents the air gently as we walk the paths until we reach the dairy. The smell of cheese, brine, whey and salt fill the air. We pass hundreds of cheese rounds and I get more and more excited about my first day tomorrow. We meet Rose who comes every Sunday to brine and wash all the cheeses. After our tour of the dairy Rosie takes me to see the animals. A handful of chickens peck around the yard and a huge goose with a shining orange beak hisses viciously at us. Rosie sends a kick in his direction and he quiets down. We pass in to the incubator room where a rucous of peeping comes from dozens of chicks. Back outside peacocks strut about as we walk over to see the newborn calves, ducklings and piglets. Then Tom invites me for dinner and we eat delicious lemon sole, chips, and peas. I meet Rosie's boyfriend Brennan and then almost collapse from exhaustion on my way back home. The door of my trailer has barely closed before I land on the bed fast asleep.

Plans

As much as I thought I was getting used to this whole "not knowing my next step in life" thing, a change in plans this big still shook me pretty hard. In a fraction of a second, my entire Ireland trip fell through my hands and now I'm facing at least a few weeks of confusion and mystery.

Despite my unsettling change in plans however, I can still find comfort in being at the farm and seeing that life here boldly marches on. It calms me to know that no matter what happens the cows will still have to be milked and the greenhouses will still have to be closed every day. No matter what happens, those bad radio stations will still exist and will still cause my brain to play random songs on repeat all day log (the one that's currently on loop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93X2mZ5xT8Y). The world around us can go up in flames but chickens will keep laying eggs, grass will still grow miraculously in the back of the forklift where dust and soil has gathered, lambs will still need to be bottlefed, lettuce will still surprise me with its beauty, and pigs will still squeal when they see me coming with a bucket of scraps.

Eyes.

As promised, a study of the eyes of the farm.

Darling the cow

Spot the sow

A freaked out chicken

Crackers the evil cat

Fern the dog

Neo the goat

What a day!

My day in a word: action-packed. And very invigorating! Read on:
1) After a lot of charging, snorting and even a bitten leg (!) we finally managed to castrate the final piglet.
2) Milked the two cows (Arnica and Mapache) and the goat (Neo).
3) Fed 12 lambs.
4) Chuy gave me two packs of tamarind candy since I told him I missed Mexican candy. It was so good, now I'm planning a trip to La Superior in Woodland so I can stock up on all my guilty pleasures.
5) Killed, plucked, and gutted all 18 roosters.
6) In a few minutes managed to accidentally give away almost all of my tamarind candy to the workers after I presented it to a group of people and they all took me up on the offer.
7) Ate lunch which consisted of a lot of fried kidneys and sautéed liver and onions that Joe made as a sort of joke. (I opted out since I was still sick and the faces of the roosters were still too recent in my mind.)
8) Fed 11 lambs. Sergio has been bugging me all week to feed the lambs which is the cutest thing coming from such a tiny, stalky, pot-bellied man. Brought Poppy over to where he was pruning plums so that he could feed her. He giggled the whole time.
9) Sorted chilis in the greenhouse so that we could later plant the seeds. Subsequently blew my nose with my handkerchief and accidentally rubbed chili powder ALL over my raw nose and a bit in my eyes and mouth. Then spent ten minutes heaving outside.
10) Practically dove into the shower after work to rid myself of the chili and the chicken smell.
11) Fed some stale crackers to the momma sow so that she might like me better.
12) Next, I'm heading over to donkey basketball in Esparto. Which is, strangely enough, exactly what it sounds like. It literally IS donkey basketball. It's a face-off between the seniors and the teachers. Everybody rides rubber-boot-wearing donkeys in the gym and then they try to score on each other. I still haven't figured out if they're all pulling my leg but I will soon find out!

chicken herding

My laughter keeps me from being able to successfully snatch the chicken that Rawley and I are attempting to capture. A few times I've almost gotten her but I'm giggling so much that I can't seem to get the hand-eye coordination quite right and I keep missing her. As we run through the orchard on our somewhat ridiculous mission, I can't help but think how funny we must look, flailing behind a freaked out chicken that keeps darting back and forth between the peach trees. Finally my partner in crime arrives, Nellie to the rescue!

With her intense crouching stance, Nellie slinks around the back stealthily and flushes the chicken my direction. I see my chance and gain composure, just in time to lunge at the blur of feathers that goes darting by. In a flapping of wings and loud squawks, I manage to hold on to one leg and I swing her around so she's tucked safely under my arm. We walk over to the fence and I toss the hen towards the rest of the flock where she settles and begins to peck at the ground.

-----

Over the past few weeks I've been discovering Nellie's amazing herding abilities. Being a pure-bred Border Collie, herding is definitely in her blood. But I didn't realize she was actually staying true to her ancestors until I started noticing all of her quirky behavior. Nellie is constantly on the move, she has to have something to do at all times of the day. Normally her job is to follow Judith around and she does so with utmost intensity, taking her job very seriously. When Judith isn't here however, Nellie is suddenly left with nothing to do. In these moments of emptiness she resorts to stalking piglets, lambs, cats, chickens, or any other furry beings that she feels merit attention.

Witnessing this ability going to waste, I decided to begin the process of harnessing her skills. I started with lots of treats and I would take her out on runs to make her like me more. Then, as our trust grew, I started taking her with me to my work. It worked like magic, the second she saw the first loose chicken, her instincts kicked in: she crouched down low and locked eyes on the hen, watching its every move. Walking slowly towards it, she would force it in one direction or the other. As a team we've actually been able to capture quite a few chickens and I'm working on getting her to recognize commands so that she can be even more useful in my chicken trapping quests.

Mission: Midnight Chicken Trapping

I stumble my way through the muddy driveway to my trailer, tonight there are no stars. Last night I can remember lingering outside longer than normal to stare at the brightest stars I’ve seen in a while. But today a thick layer of clouds hung in the sky all day. The clouds didn’t make an exception for the sun and it appears they don’t intend to make an exception for the stars either. My trailer is cold when I get in but I go straight to the HeatDish that warms the sleeping area and turn on the Christmas lights that instantly make the whole room cozy.

I feel my hands, they are starting to get tougher and my nails are now caked with a healthy layer of chicken grime. I've just come in the door from a chicken trapping extravaganza. Tonight our mission was to get the pullets accustomed to their new trailer. Long after nightfall when they were all huddled together in their makeshift pens, eight of us went out to ambush them. With our headlights beaming paths of light infront of us we chased the few loose chickens around, cornering them until we could grab them. Then, three people went inside the mesh pens to trap the bulk of the hens. One by one, they were passed down an assembly line of people by their feet and handed to the five of us who would shuttle them 20 yards away into the trailer. With two chickens dangling from each hand and all sorts of chicken dirtiness dripping from our fingers we walked through the dark and placed them carefully on the floor of the trailer. Stunned form the hypnotic journey they would lay there stupefied for a while until they could get their bearings and stand sleepily. At the beginning, I felt each of the four chickens I was holding, aware of their movements and differences. By the 300th chicken, I was significantly more desensitized, the scaly feet felt all the same to me. Nevertheless the novelty never quite wore off, every time I made another trip to the trailer I watched in awe at the mass of chickens that covered the floor. After a few trips some chickens even began to get the idea and move up to the rafters.

Day 3

Today I dealt with more animals in the morning. First milking and egg collecting, then feeding animals. My favorite to feed is the little calf (Ushi) who was just weaned from her mother. After milking, we bring her back a whole gallon of her mother’s creamy, fresh milk and she slurps it down in a few seconds. Then she spends a few minutes with her head stuck in the pail trying to lick the last drop from the bottom. After her dose of milk we toss her a flake of hay and she stares at it in disgust. The other calf (Betty) who is two weeks younger, is already proudly starting to eat hay with her mother (Mapache).

The afternoon was spent mostly pruning. Despite the frost that withered all the leaves, the lemon verbena is pungent as ever, almost as good as the wreath room (!).

After the aromatherapy session with the lemon verbena, I spent a few hours in the greenhouse sorting hot chili peppers with the crew. Spending time with them I can really notice how rusty my Spanish has become. I find myself stuck on some vocabulary words that have over the years snuck back into the deep recesses of my brain. (How do you say "hinge" again?) I love their company though -- they know so much about the different scenes of farm life and about the vegetables and fruits. Most importantly, we get to share an integral part of farm life, listening to terrible Mexican radio together. 

These are a few of my favorite things

So far, I’ve figured out that collecting eggs at this farm isn’t quite as fun as I had remembered. However, I have figured out two things that I do like very much:

First, is the pirate chicken that escaped the coop and now lives in a grove of bamboo. I am thinking that a name is definitely in order but I haven’t thought of a good one yet. So far the best I’ve come up with is “chicken-that-is-followed-by-a-loud-peeping-noise” because you can easily find her if you follow the noises coming from her new chick that is never more than five inches away. Maybe I should just give them both one name, “the-pair-that-can-make-even-scrooge-smile.”

My other favorite thing is the wreath room. On the outside, the wreath room is only a large wooden shack. But step in, and it smells like heaven. Inside the walls are covered in wreaths and from the ceiling hang hundreds of flowers and herbs in bunches. The wreaths have taken hours to make by hand, crafted by the flower ladies who sit inside on rainy days to weave the plants together. Now I know when I need a pick-me-up, I can just stick my head inside to get a whiff.

Day 2

Today was a very chicken-y day. I started my day with mostly animal chores: milking and feeding cows and then collecting and cleaning eggs. Collecting eggs on this farm is not really the same as collecting eggs at Pie Ranch. In Pescadero, I was always the first one to volunteer myself for egg collecting and relished those last few moments of sun when I would go from one coop to the other with my basket in hand. I suppose the reason I don’t like it as much here is because the Full Belly hens are older and much more crotchety. The first time I stuck my hand under one it made loud screeching noises and pecked repeatedly at my hand. Needless to say, since then I have learned harsher methods. Now every time I come up to a mean looking hen I quickly use my other hand to hold her head back so she can’t attack. I guess what it boils down to is that the Pie Ranch chickens were much less caring about their eggs, they weren’t “mother hens” like they were supposed to be. There, they seemed only mildly curious when you stuck your hand under them to grab at their treasures. Here, collecting eggs seems more like stealing.

After my morning of thievery, my next project was ironically to help facilitate others’ stealing. I spent the day hanging a (human) door to the brand new chicken trailer where the new pullets will soon start laying eggs for us to harvest. The door was my second official construction project, but unlike the planter from a few weeks ago this project took much longer than expected. What I had believed to be a two-hour job ended up taking Rebecca and me an entire day! To our credit, the builders (*cough* Joe and Alex *cough*) neglected to level the frame completely so our job was inundated with headaches. Despite all these complications, after a full day of assorted doorknobs and power drills, we finally finished and the door now closes perfectly…And now, some day soon I will be able to use this door to collect baskets and baskets of fresh eggs.

No more pie: Part II

It's strange, in some ways it's harder to say goodbye to animals than it is to say goodbye to people. I guess it's because animals are harder to talk to on the phone.

Death and all his friends

This morning, woke up and went to check gopher traps. 2 down, 130498329 million more to go. It's hard, you feel bad jabbing traps down their holes and into their living rooms but at the same time it feels like the battle against them is never ending. These days I feel bad for them, winter is coming and they must be having to work harder for food, it's sad seeing their cute faces squeezed between those big metal clamps. But thinking back a few months I can remember cursing them over and over while having to fix endless leaks in the strawberry irrigation... Can you really justify killing an animal only at certain times of the year? Yes yes, november through march you are allowed to live but watch out, the rest of the year I'll be out to get you!

Being around large groups of chickens they become dirty and seem stupid, they all act as a single unit. But passing the coop of 90 chickens this morning we found four broken eggs in the bushes; a renegade chicken had decided to flee the coop and start her own nest nearby (then an animal had found the loot). My faith in the individuality of chickens was restored!

A somewhat unfortunate realization for me since just a few hours later we found out that we had to kill chickens for a visiting group... (Heidi and I then spent a rather humorous twenty minutes chasing chickens in circles to try and snatch three of them.)

With three chickens stuffed into a cat carrier we walked up to Caleb's to do the slaughtering. It was these few hundred yards that felt the most uncomfortable and wrong. Not the slitting of the throat or the cutting of the head, the walking. I had chosen these three unlucky hens to be killed and with every step was bringing them closer and closer to their doom.

The station was all set up: three metal cones, a bucket for blood, a pot of water (150 degrees), knives, a plucker. I even wore my rattiest t-shirt, anticipating a bloodbath. Surprisingly the whole process was cleaner than I had expected. A bit of warm blood on my hand was in fact the dirtiest I got.

That was a weird moment, having to hold on to the soft head so that the body didn't flop in the cone as the blood drained. A moment of connection, of understanding. But as soon as it fell limp, I changed. I pulled it out by its feet and held it hanging in the air, it no longer felt so much like my pet. I guess in my head it had already begun the transition from cute animal to tomorrow's soup. That was the most shocking to me, the speed at which the process happened. Within seconds the birds went from soft warm hens to slimy carcasses, a science experiment.

Without heads, feet, and feathers, the bodies became something to dissect, the actual moment of death was forgotten.

My favorite part was in the dissection, finding eggs of all sizes inside. One large white egg that was never laid, lots of smaller yolks clumped together, the possibility of life in death.