farm part dos – if you haven’t, read part one first

so i never did get around to explaining in my last post what exactly i ended up doing on the farm.  unlike mike, one of the other volunteers who came the same day i did and got stuck weed wacking the campsites for 8hrs a day, i had the great fortune of being assigned to work in the grand garden.

some days i was on my knees in the mud poking cantalope and okra seeds into warm, moist soil.  others i was in the green house coaxing beet seedlings to sprout or making strawberry planters for cabin porches.  on more difficult days, i could be raking dirt between the vegetable rows to prepare the ground for clover ground cover, weeding or slogging through clammy piles of manure in the potato patch.  i came into a permanent state of filth, of oneness with the earth where it was difficult to tell where it ended and i began.  dirt ground into the fibers of my pants, under my nails, in my pores.  and hours of crouching over the garden darkened the skin on my shoulders and back until it was several shades darker than the rest of my body.  every night i would consume an enormous meal and fall, exhausted, into a mud-stained bed, rising early the next morning still aching from the previous days’ labor.  it was wonderful!

i worked in the garden with a guy from florida named hugh.  a surfer and partier in his younger years who had grown disillusioned and weary in body from his job in construction and decided to escape to the simpler life on the farm.  when he first met me, he looked me up and down, taking in my head wrap and braids and asked “you ever been to one of those rainbow gatherings?”

“no, why?” i asked

“oh…i was just profiling.”

i found out in subsequent conversations with him that his daughter had run away with one of the “rainbow people”, a guy who had gotten her pregnant then came back to with her, living off hugh and his wife like a parasite.  he didn’t have a particularly positive opinion of the rainbow folk.  thankfully, i had passed the first test.

working with hugh, though i quickly grew to love him, was a little like torture with his caustic wit and gruff manner.  he yelled at me for slamming his truck door too hard, for dragging the hose over the plants, for overwatering the seedlings, for leaving my stinky farm shoes under his chair.  but i found if i just yelled back at him, he’d usually settle down.  despite his hard exterior, he had a soft side, collecting flowers from the woods and bringing them back to identify them using his field guide.

and he LOVED his garden.  after so many hours of tending it, i soon did as well.  in the mornings, we would walk up and down the rows, peering into the soil to see what had sprouted during the night.  we’d talk like the proud parents of a great many children,

“the pepper plants aren’t very happy.  maybe the sun is a little too intense for them.  do you think they need more water?”

“did you see the tomatoes?  there are a few starting to come in this week!”

“i don’t know what’s going on with that row of beans…they seem to be really rebelling.”

“those peas are going crazy!  we’re gonna have to put up some string before they get much taller.”

apart from gardening, i sometimes gave visitors tours of the farm and occasionally took care of the animals.  those were on the days when roger went crazy.

other than being schizophrenic and a social recluse, roger was just an ordinary guy.  in charge of the animals and the dishwashing, he had what one of my hospital friends coined “a positive columbine sign.”  one of those types who wears camouflage clothing, doesn’t say much and gives you the feeling that he might snap at any moment and go raging through the place with a semi-automatic.  i first met him when he was in washing the dishes one day.  for the entirety of our conversation he stood facing the wall,  his head a full 90 degrees from facing me.  prior to knowing him a little better, i pissed him off one day at the milking barn.  my friend ed told me that later roger had been ranting about all the newcomers to the farm and his conviction that it was he that needed to maintain the equilibrium of enota.  “i shall make retribution…and he shall redeem me,” he’d told ed.  i slept with a stanley blade under my pillow for the next three days for fear that he was going to come for me at night.

it had been a bad week for roger.  he was already in the dog house with the boss for breaking into the lodge at night to watch TV and steal food from the pantry.  then he screwed up the work truck by filling the tank with diesel fuel.  this was the same work truck which had it’s driver’s side door ripped off the hinges when roger had been driving around with it hanging open.  the boss had taken away his monthly stipend as well because he had ditched his cow-milking duties earlier in the week to go to town. 

by saturday, things were getting ugly.  and then the girl scouts came.

that morning, reuben grabbed me in the kitchen before i’d even had any coffee.

“dyou godda ged down to de farm righ’ eway!  der’s 20 leettle girlz waiteen to see de cows an’ dat fucker roger won’ let dem een!” 

reuben went on to describe how he’d come out of “the shitter” that morning, a cigarette dangling from his lips and his pants still down around his ankles, to find a troop of girl scouts gathered outside the dude ranch, wanting to see the cow milking.  they found roger hiding out in the milking barn who told them to tell the girls to “go away.”  given that cow-milking was advertised up at the lodge as a fun activity for guests to experience, it was clearly a PR emergency.  i sprang into action.

i found thirteen grade school girls and their pack leaders standing at the gate to the pasture, all looking confused and disappointed.  when i showed up with the crowd of them at the milking barn, roger was clearly upset.  he busted past with the goats he’d just finished milking, leaving the door wide open and within moments both of the cows had rushed in, knocking over buckets, spilling hay and feed all over, a couple goats were head-butting me and chewing on my shirt, girl scouts were everywhere.  everything had dissolved into chaos and roger had left me to sort it all out.

generally, i really enjoyed milking the animals.  although we used a milking machine, it was a very hands-on process and – i’ll admit it – i liked touching those big nipples.  and watching the streams of warm, steaming milk squirt out into the collection chamber.  i liked being with the cows, daisy and elsie (death and pestilence, so called by hugh), though they were very naughty.  and enormous!  i always experienced a mixture of fear and awe standing near their giant forms.  it was very exciting for me. 

after i was able to restore order, the cows got milked, the girl scouts were happy and the good name of enota was preserved (at least as far at the girl scouts were concerned). 

with time, i grew to understand and appreciate roger and his eccentricity.  seeing him in his dark sunglasses, driving around in the doorless truck, with his rigidly straight posture, filled me with affection.  occasionally he’d even give a sharp wave, jerking his head voilently to the side so he didn’t have to look at me.  one night i even coaxed him into joining us at the dude ranch for dinner.  it was a big breakthrough, although he took his plate and squatted behind the grill while we all sat together around the fire.

this was a fateful meal in other ways.  reuben had given me an indian food cookbook and, after many days of planning, i put together a magnificent spread of chicken tikka masala, rice and vegetable biryani.  perhaps when i came back from town that day and found the body of the alpaca, dead and in a stinking heap in the back of the pasture, i should have considered it a bad omen.  other than being extremely spicy and the meat a little overcooked, everything tasted great.  however, the next morning michael and reuben were sick.  reuben was vomiting in the morning in his especially loud and demonstrative way.  michael was in bed all day.  hugh became sick the next morning with an upset stomach and was emitting alien-sounding belches as we planted the acorn squash.  he took half the day off to go lay in his room.  it became rumored that i had secretly fed them the two-day dead alpaca instead of chicken.  though i fiercely denied these allegations, i was not asked to cook again.

 

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