Rudy has been saying with kate’s parents on the vineyard (off and on while Kate and I travel) and they give him a great life. The vineyard has great dog parks like “trade winds” where I am now. It’s an active air strip for tiny planes and Rudy gets exhausted chasing his ball all over the place. Kate and I wouldn’t be able to have nearly as much traveling fun without her parents looking after our animals, so thank you very much.
Every year I inherit my mom’s old iPhone. This year I got the sweet 3GS for about two weeks until Kate put it in the washing machine…thus I was faced with the decision to buy a new one or go old school flip phone. Since much of my communication to the world outside snow camp, NC happens through this blog and phone calls and I’m addicted to words with friends and chess, I caved. Good news is I can now snap more photos for the blog more easily and i’ve got this front facing camera too!
Kate and I are entering our fourth week as North Carolinian farmers (Cane Creek Farm) and I’m finding new things to learn every day. I must have foolishly thought farming wouldn’t be that hard to wrap my head around, but it’s the most complex thing I’ve ever been a part of. This is due largely to the fact that our farm is extremely diverse and ecologically aware. While making high quality food we are also maintaining high quality for both the land and the animals we shepherd. This is particularly difficult considering our scale. We have 13 species of animals: several hundred cows, several hundred pigs, 4 donkeys, 30 goats, 30 sheep, 200 turkeys, 100 ducks, 400 chickens, 30 guinea hens, 8 geese, 3 dogs, a dozen or so cats and 5 permanent humans (several transient). In addition to the multitude, we have each animal in all stages of life, from day-old turkey polts and piglets to a 13-year old goat named Mary. Each animal has specific food, water and shelter needs as well as unique personality traits that make them easier or harder to provide for.
The healthy animals are all relatively straightforward once I understand their needs, which they try to communicate with quacks and grunts and chirps. But we don’t only look after the healthy, we also try to care for the runts, the sick and the weak. Last monday we had a day-old pig, a three-week old chicken, an adult rabbit and two week-old turkeys in our ‘infirmary’ living room. They were all in distress (an extremely unusual day to have so many hurt animals) and all got the attention they needed. That day the pig stood out, however.
Van Gogh, the day-old pig, was born into a thunder storm with his siblings in the middle of the night. Born outside a hut and in a rainstorm, all his siblings died from the elements and from two black vultures who sometimes attack small live animals in distress. Van Gogh survived, unbelievably, after losing his ear and a the skin on his hind leg. He is one week old as of yesterday and doing better every day. He’s not out of the woods, but after surviving his first night, subsequent fly-eggs and infection, he’s finally starting to put on weight and act like a little piglet. He sleeps near us in a box with a heating pad and drinks goat milk I collect from our very own Rosie. Her kids didn’t survive but her milk still gets put to direct inter-species use.
One day a new employee or guest might go feed the pigs out in the pasture and realize one large male that seems oddly friendly compared to his cohorts. Like me she will understand the importance of love and compassion on this farm when that earless pig nuzzles her leg and and stands next to her while the others keep their distance. I meet animals like that amongst our hundreds on a daily basis and they increase the feeling of completeness I sensed from day one.
Tonight I leave Boston, where I’ve been for 3 weeks, to hit the road. First stop is Nick Chaset’s wedding in Philly for the weekend. Second stop is Cane Creek farm where I’ll live and work for two months. I’m stoked, but trying to keep myself cool. Here’s a little catch up:
After the bird workshop out by the Bay, I spent a week in my favorite city, San Francisco. That city was my first self-made home. I spent nearly four years between the Mission, the Castro and Alamo Square. I’ve never gotten to know a city like that and I doubt it’s equal exists. Unfortunately, it cost me a lot to live there, as it does for most people. It’s an expensive city, and that means something when everyone has to work their A off to support themselves. Being semi-employed, I can’t really afford to stay there long and after the week was up, I spent another one in Portland, Oregon.
I’ve actually spent a few weeks over the last few years in Portland. I was there during the 100 degree plus heat wave in 2009 and a couple years back to visit my brother who spent a summer there. This last trip I was sizing that city up, seeing if I liked it or not. San Francisco is a tough act to follow, and I’m looking for a place that requires less cash to enjoy some quality living. I think I might have found a good place to be in Portland. I actually hesitate posting this because I selfishly want to keep Portland to myself, lest too many people try to move there and ruin it. But Portland has a blessing and a curse that keeps most people away, the unemployment. If I can find a way to make some money in Portland, I think I can keep myself in a damn good city. I’m definitely not the first to think that, but I’m hoping there’s room for at least two more of us.
Following the farm visit (which was preceded and succeeded by raucous nights in New York City) I left my love for the West coast. I started this trip out west with a week-long ‘intensive’ in Pescadero. The class was put on by Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness, a progressive group based out of Santa Cruz and Bolinas. They put on this bird language thingy in Pescadero which I managed to work-trade cooking in their kitchen in exchange for some class time. The whole thing was actually pretty cool and started me off on a ritual I’d like to continue.
Basically, birds know what’s going on. Their sensory abilities surpass most of ours and thus they have a keen eye on what’s happeneing around them. They need this because 90% of song birds die before maturity. That means that little guys who live are the absolute best at survival and that’s because they pay really good attention to the forest. Everybody eats these poor little things, snakes, cats, bobcats, hawks and even jays and ravens will bludgeon one to death now and then. But, they can pretty much speak and there are a ton of them out there to look out. There is much to learn from these little birdies.
The course got me into the practice of doing a ‘bird-sit’. I went out every morning at 5:30 am (caffeinated, definitely) to a large meadow with a group of about 60. This can be done in smaller groups of 2-3 also. Everyone sits in an area and pays attention to the birds. The dawn chorus starts up and we scribble down everything we can about songs, alarm calls, flights, and suspiciously quiet areas. Forty minutes, cut into ten-minute periods passes by quickly and afterwards we compare notes, compile an enormous map of the area and begin to unravel their little social lives. Following this with some tracking one can get a pretty accurate image of the daily routine of all the animals in the area.
Once you bird-sit, you’ll start hearing all the birds in your neighborhood. There are a lot an they talk a lot and when you tune in, it’s hard to tune out again. Try a bird-sit on your porch or in your yard or in the park nearby. If you’re lucky enough to live in a more rural area, you’ll get more drama. Life, death, survival, family and society are all playing out in those trees and we pass by unknowingly almost every day. Getting fluent in bird language will be an asset for hunting and further incorporates you into the outer world. Far out, perhaps.
Let me catch you up (again!) on the last month or so of my life.
My darling girlfriend and I spent a week in North Carolina on Cane Creek Farm three weeks ago. The farm is incredible, raising just about every animal I can name and more that I can’t. They have chickens for eggs in mobile hen houses who cruise huge pastures daily. They have free range, birth-to-death grass-fed cattle (that make a burger like you would never believe). They also have a rambling group of exotic breed pigs for sweet, tasty pork. They are truly happy animals.
Kate looking after a wounded Clinton-the-pig
On top of those regular farm animals they breed ducks, goats, donkeys, sheep, guinea hens, turkeys, cats, and dogs. The animals mostly hang out with each other, peacefully like some type of Eden. The farm is run by Kate’s cousin and we loved it so much she’s letting us come back for June and July to work and learn with and from her. In short, we’re pumped. The farm is set up the way I would run a farm, there are no shitty jobs. Really, no shit shoveling of any kind because it all goes back to the soil from whence it came. There is no ‘farm animal smell’ and the cute animals still like being petted from time to time. It’s basically an extension of the education I started getting in France, rounding it out with a productive, working farm that stresses quality above all, for the people, animals and food they all produce.
It might be the stepping stone to the next adventure. Or it might be the next adventure.
I haven’t written a blog post in quite a while, perhaps because I’ve finally synchronized my pace with local life here in the Trieves. For a long time, I worried that I didn’t do enough everyday. I didn’t make money, I didn’t contribute to some greater effort with management and superior direction, I simply lived. After three months, I can feel my heart beat for the first time in my life. At first I felt a palpable discomfort, the two and a half decades of training to be ‘productive’ (profitable?) every day clinging on to my soul. Then I had a thought one day.
Everything I do here; read, write, hike, meet with friends, cook, eat, fix farm stuff, care for chickens, butcher, make candles, write letters, it’s all good stuff. You couldn’t say any of this isn’t ‘worth’ doing. But in the beginning i felt as though I was such a lazy sack. Now I feel like I have too much to do in any one day. Then I thought, if everyone did this, looked after their own small patch of land, we might be in better shape overall. That’s probably too much to ask now.
Slow food seems to be the first step towards a slow life. Anybody want to join a movement?
Just one last post about the wonderful uses of lard. Today I took my lovely hiking boots out for a cleaning. They are leather and very cracked and dry, the snow beating them up for a few months now. I decided to try just rubbing straight lard on the leather and it has darkened and moisturized the leather really nicely. See for yourself:
Left: before, Right: after. Dogs love me!
I wrote previously about using lard for candles and soap. While you can make soap (what I hoped to do), it is illegal to purchase sodium hydroxide (lye, the stuff they used to burn their hands in Fight Club) in France. Lye and oil combine to make soap and Lard is supposed to make nice, soft soap. You can also make bombs with this stuff, thus it’s unavailability. Don’t despair, we can make candles instead. To make candles that are hard at room temp like normal wax candles, I would need to use something called Alum or another acid. I have no idea where to get this stuff in France, so I will instead make straight, lard candles.
Since the lard is soft at room-temp and melts very quickly when heated, we need a container for our candle. I use old glass jars, baby-food size for my first experiment. The theory is simple, fill a jar with liquid lard, insert a wick (I used an old sheet, torn into strips and twisted up) and let solidify.
Left: Lard Lamp, Right: Lard Candle
On the left you’ll see the lamp I made. I got the idea from Instructables. Simply make a wick by wrapping metal wire around linen, sheet strips or cotton balls. Make it so it can stand up on it’s own and place it in a shallow can. Pack the can with solid lard and good to go. Here’s my wick before I put it in the can:
Cotton/Wire Wick
The wick stays up and the flame stays at the top while it sucks up the liquid lard like a normal lamp. It works pretty well and I imagine will provide many hours of light for about one and a half cups of lard. The lamp is better than the candle since the candle wick has started to fall over from liquifying the lard holding it up.
noah & meg’s wedding weekend is pretty spectacular so far. 23 of us are in this big ol house on her family’s property with this as our view.
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