farm life, part one

chronicles of most of the month of may, northern georgia

my month on the farm, as i imagined it, would be a quiet and peaceful one, connecting with nature, spending lots of time alone, reading, meditating. a solitary and simple existence. a monastery of mother earth.

in reality, it was more like a three-ring circus. owing to an odd collection of quirky, good-ol-boy farm hands, nudists from michigan, fairies and vortexes, a stressed-out control freak of a boss who slept with domesticated squirrels, several drunken escapades by rebellious staff, persnickety farm animals and a sickly alpacca, retirrees in giant motorhomes with satellite dishes.  all colliding on the stage of an organic farm situated upon sacred native lands in the beautiful but very red-necky mountains of northern georgia.  it was a very interesting month.

the idea occurred to me somewhere along the journey in florida. i wanted to work on a farm.  my friend steve told me about a network of organic farms that took short term volunteers, giving them room and board in exchange for labor.  back-breaking labor, i now know.  i found enota. a partially self-sustaining farm in georgia near the border of north carolina, practically the middle of nowhere.  it sounded like a great place to do a little soul-searching and enjoy the satisfaction of hard work.  (website, by the way, is www.enota.com, if you wanna check it out)

enota encompasses some 60 acres of forested, mountainous land with flowing streams that you can drink from, waterfalls, hiking trails.  a small portion of the land is devoted to farming organic produce of all kinds, anything from watermelon to collard greens.  and a barnyard full of chickens, goats and two cows produces an endless supply of fresh eggs and milk.  and manure.  and believe me, poop is a BIG deal on an organic farm.  in addition, enota brings in extra income with it’s extensive campgrounds, cabins for rent and fresh farm food offerings from the lodge diner.  at least when the cook isn’t MIA.

the cook was Reuben – at least until he finally got fired during the month i was there.  ya gotta love this guy, a puerto rican motormouth, world traveler and poet, trained in the art of french  and italian cuisine, wine and cheese.  he was an incredible cook when he decided to show up for work.  he went on permanent strike a week into my stay after he was wrongly accused of running over part of the garden with one of the golf carts.  he tended to be the scapegoat for a lot of things.  not to mention that he had adopted a beautiful little cocoa brown puppy, canela, with whom it was necessary to wear leather gloves to handle due to her incessant biting.  not a welcome addition to an already full farm.  reuben was typically drunk on straight vodka by 11am and prefered to spend his days wandering through the woods with his dog, writing poetry.  here’s one of my favorites of reuben’s writings:

nela se pasea selosa la noche entera

y emilia, hambriente, la confunda con una dulce barra de chocolate

y se la come

(nela paces jealously the whole night long

and emily, hungry, confuses her with a chocolate bar

and swallows her whole)

one day i encountered reuben emerging from the woods, his face covered with green paint, binoculars around his neck.  there was a group of nudists staying in a secluded area of the farm and he had hiked around back to see if he could get a look.  unfortunately for him, canela had started barking and making a racket and he had to beat a hasty retreat.  “whaddya expect???  i’m a man stuck on this farm for five months with only a bunch of goats to look at!”

these nudists gave all of us farm workers a lot to gossip about.  i was pretty much the only woman working the farm (other than a few older ladies who pretended to work the front desk at the lodge).  i got my own pretty little cabin up near the lodge.  the guys were cordoned to a barn-shaped building with thin walls and a layer of flies on everything down by the pasture, lovingly named “the dude ranch” by moi.  but let me tell you, these hardened country boys could gossip to beat a teenage slumber party.  any and all news was hashed and rehashed around the fire at the dude ranch.

so, the nudists came in a white minivan with michigan plates.  five, generally unattractive women, a child and a white-haired man who would talk your ear off about how he worked for the CIA, was under the protection of the russian government and controlled the weather with his mind.  he and his clan brought along some secret, plant-growing formula of distilled energy called “biodynamic.” (i don’t mean to belittle the concept by my tongue-in-cheek delivery.  biodynamics is actually something i’m very interested in learning more about in relation to organic farming and sustainability.  never heard of it?  check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture for a brief explanation)  they could be seen at odd hours running through the garden rows with a fertilizer sprayer, dousing each plant in their path with the magical juice.

i can imagine that this could have been a very sacred experience.  that is until, chris, one of the farm workers, drove up, cussing and waving his hands, in his gas-guzzling, smoking rattle-trap of a ford.  chris is one of the reddest, red-necks you can imagine, existing on a diet of energy drinks and burger king.  he throws tantrums that can be heard clear across the farm, slams doors, kicks animals and loves nothing more than operating large pieces of farm machinery.  he interrupted the ceremony of biodynamic baptism, roaring around the potato patch on a tractor putting down a layer of fresh manure.  “jus lak spredin’ peaNUT butta’ on toast!”  he gleefully shouted over the engine. 

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