The Wisdom of the Radish (29 page)

Sedona, Tuxedo, and Gobi. This photo sums up Tuxedo's personality perfectly.

“Gobi just jizzed all over the place. He had a look of pure ecstasy on his face but he missed his target.”

To which I responded, “Where was the target at the moment of lift-off?”

“She was forward and to the right,” Emmett wrote. “He tried to mount her twice, but bounced off both times. The first time got his winky excited. And the second time when he landed it just went shooting all over, and he arched his head up with his lips curled back and quivering and his teeth exposed, saying to himself, thank you God. By the way, she seems interested now, they were doing funny vibrating tongue things at each other.”

Upon my return, I watched Gobi try to mate with Elizabeth. He thrust forward and then fell backward, twisting in an attempt to land on his feet. I thought about placing a box behind Elizabeth, for him to step up on, but I was afraid it might ruin the moment. Also, it would have been creepy.

You might think it's sick, but trust me, if you had goats, you'd watch them having sex, too. First of all, it's important to know when breeding has taken place: goat kids should arrive 145 days after copulation, and the human midwife must be ready to help out. And second of all, it's like your very own, real-life Discovery Channel. We don't have television, and it's these little hilarities that I miss every moment I'm away from the farm.

 

 

 

There's one thing about the farm that's a little bit terrifying. Somehow the days start to race down a runway and soar up over me—and suddenly little Tuxedo, the coltish black fuzzball, has twin doelings of her own and the udder to match. So does her best friend, Sedona, who is and always will be the prima donna of the herd. Long, elegant, and refined—“very dairy,” as goat people would say—she's a movie star and she knows it. But she's no longer standing on the roof of the goat house arching her long neck and basking in the admiration of her herd and her humans: she's too busy admiring her own two doe kids, one of whom is a perfect miniature of herself, the other an exact (but feminine) replica of the father. Ginger, who once shared a bottle with Gobi—and has missed him since he was separated off from the females; they often flirt through the fence—is now pregnant by him, expecting mini-Gobis of her own.

And so I thank the stars for the seasons, because without waypoints, this would all pass too quickly. I'm glad for the bud-break of the grapevines in March, the first Pruden's Purple tomato in August, the brilliant frosts of October, and the reddening leaves of November. And I'm thankful for the
weather and the difficulties and the fact that I am out in both of them, daily confronting the living and dying that allows us all to survive. Watching the sky clear after a storm, the sun setting behind the hills of gray-green oaks, I will always miss the ocean a little bit—that sense of possibility and unknown that I've traded for a hundred daily certainties and a warm bed.

But that vast emptiness is just a short drive away, as it is no matter where we live. And while we may take only occasional trips to the sea, the squalls that wash ashore remind us that we never have the remotest idea what's going to happen. For all the chores and simple pleasures of farm life, the details that consume our daily existence, the sea is always there, in the same way that those we lose will always remain with us.

I am still inconsolable over some of the animals that have passed away under my care. Even if their deaths weren't my fault, their lives will always be my responsibility. The trouble with animal husbandry is this: killing creatures is easy when you view them as objects. It's harder, but in many ways better, when you know them and take good care of them. And when a farm animal you've loved unexpectedly dies, even if that creature is a seemingly simple chicken, a piece of you goes with her. While the shock grows more distant, the legend only swells with time: those small chicken lives, forever a part of the soil and the flora-fauna-human family that make up a farm. A hundred animals and a handful of ghosts.

So what does a farmer, faced with the loss of a pet chicken, do? Buy a goat and name her after the chicken. (And rejoice when the goat has the same utterly unquenchable lapdog spirit that the chicken did.) What does a farming couple, not earning quite enough money at the farmers' market to make a living, do? Start a CSA, branch out into dairy, host wwoofers, build a barn, raise heritage turkeys.

There's no question that we'll make this work. I've finally found a vocation where it's completely reasonable—expected, even—to be a stubborn idiot. And I've found a wonderfully stubborn idiot to enjoy this vocation with, one who rises at 6:30 a.m. in the off-season to build a barn for the goats, and who can be found in the middle of a rainstorm lashing tarps to that as-yet-unroofed barn and frantically swabbing the decks—er, mopping the plywood floor.

From the table in the living room where I write, I look out the kitchen window. At the very top of the frame, goat feet scamper back and forth across the base of a hill. I hear a hen announce—bokbokBAGAWK—that she's laid an egg, and a young Silver Sebright cockerel attempt to crow. (He sounds like a gagging power drill.) And you know what? Call me crazy, call me poor, call me covered in chicken shit. Call me tired, call me scared, call me satisfied, call me passionate. And did I mention crazy?

Go ahead. But before you do, let me offer you a few eggs and a pair of Chihuahua-sized goat kids, and then we'll see who's crazy. Trust me, you don't have to like worms, or even fresh tomatoes. There's a little farm in all of us.

Epilogue:

As of this writing, Foggy River Farm is three years old.
Still selling at the Healdsburg farmers' market and now offering a CSA program, too. Farm to Pantry gleaners visit regularly; several friends contribute labor in exchange for produce; vineyard workers have set up a small community garden adjacent to the field. We've hosted a number of wwoofers and longerterm interns who have left far more than just footprints on the farm.

In April 2010, we held our wedding ceremony and reception down at the field. The wedding party rode in on a neighbor's horse-drawn wagon: a service that had been provided in exchange for an old tractor. The tables were decorated with farm tools, eggs, and produce. We married shortly after becoming goat grandparents: movie star Sedona and her two-week-old twin doelings joined us at the field and punctuated the ceremony with the occasional “meh.” One of them, Misa—a lapdog doeling we named after another lost friend, an adopted feral cat named Mouse who passed away—features prominently in our wedding photos. Her sister went to another family to become a backyard pet milker, but Misa
will stay with us, and we hope she'll soon give us our first great grandkids. She and Tie, Tuxedo's kid who also stayed with us, are the best of friends, just like their mothers.

In other firsts, I made my inaugural chèvre, and it was fantastic: raw and savory and decidedly chèvre tasting, not terribly different in flavor from the artisanal store-bought varieties. But it meant so much more and therefore tasted so much better. It carried with it the frustration of a kicked bucket and the patience required to train the first fresheners, the memory of the soothing, quiet mornings in the milkroom and the gentle psh-psh into the stainless steel pail, the satisfaction of a full udder deflating and a bucket filling.

Did I mention the sheep are growing on me? My first chèvre was even made of half Babydoll Southdown milk—which, I suppose, makes it technically not a true chèvre. Though we eventually gave up on milking the sheep, it's nice, actually, to have a few animals that are reasonably predictable and low-maintenance. The goats and chickens pride themselves on their ability to create chaos, but the sheep focus on simply existing. And these days, the sheep exist even more comfortably with the companionship of our two gay alpacas, Ben and Humble. (And yes, I'm quite sure they're gay. My gay ex-boyfriend suggested that they might just be bros, but I pointed out that bros don't typically hump each other, neck, and watch each other pee.) Teddy mellowed out and joined another farm; in fact, we traded him for the alpacas, thanks to Craigslist.

And so it is that, after much hemming and hawing, we're putting down roots. We have a permanent space now: a patch of earth surrounded by a stout fence and watered with irrigation pipes that will never have to be moved. Emmett's parents have carved out a corner of the vineyard for us, and we're
starting to put in some permanent crops of our own: berries, fruit trees, artichokes, asparagus. We've even built two barns—one animal, one vegetable. (The vegetable barn was finished just in time for our wedding reception barn dance.)

I don't get away much. It's not just that it's hard to leave the farm—which it is, since we're responsible for so many lives—but it's hard to afford to leave the farm, too. Between the Healdsburg farmers' market, our CSA program, and the animals, we gross about $30,000 a year. That's before we pay for seeds, irrigation supplies, chicken feed, hay, and the barns required to house the animals and equipment. We're working on increasing our CSA membership and boosting farmers' market sales so that we can subsist entirely on farm income, but in the meantime, I work as a reporter for the local paper and write whenever and wherever I can. Not that writers make much more than farmers, but every little bit helps.

Being anchored to one spot is a little bit lonely and a little bit lovely. While I do occasionally wish I could shove off and sail around the world, there's something to be said for loving where you live. The oak and eucalyptus trees, the morning fog, the wide-open spaces: all have become familiar. A host of four-legged and feathered friends greets me every time I open my front door. I know every curve of Eastside Road; the sudden rumble as my station wagon banks left onto our dirt driveway signifies that I'm home. When I rattle to a stop, I look for Emmett's pickup truck—either parked in the driveway or a barely visible speck across the road and down the hill. We got the truck for a good price because it had been in a fender bender, which means some panels were replaced and even after two years, they still haven't been painted. The hood is starting to rust and it's like a hundred other things that fall to the wayside, below the farming priority list. Our
house is rarely tidy because a clean milk room and chicken coop are more important. Our Christmas lights stay up year-round and our first mistletoe is still taped to a doorjamb, but every evening we gather the day's eggs and shut the coop door. Four months after our wedding, we were still working on our thank-you notes, although we managed to raise an entire barn in just over two.

But—and this is a big confession for a San Diego girl—I don't mind being a little bit redneck. Like the goats and the chickens, the tomatoes and the lettuces, I'm a happy creature of routine. Every day, Tuxedo starts her soprano trilling at 6:00 a.m.: a morning milk-me serenade. I don't even hear the roosters anymore; they're impotent in comparison. If we don't hear her, Emmett and I start worrying about coyotes, and one of us will slip out of the warm bed and walk over to the front door to peer into the chilly morning. Each time we do, she bursts into song.

Home feels like the whole world, and the whole world feels like home.

1
United States Census, “Data Set: 2006-2008 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates.” 997,082 Individuals employed in “Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations.” 143,195,793 total civilian employed population.

2
United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Data Set: Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States (FATUS),
www.ers.usda.gov/data/FATUS
.

3
National Ag Safety Database, “Older Farmers: Factors Affecting Their Health and Safety,”
http://nasdonline.org
.

4
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, “USDA Announces that National Farmers' market Directory Totals 6,132 Farmers' markets,”
www.ams.usda.gov
.

5
United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “State Fact Sheets: California,”
www.ers.usda.gov/statefacts/ca.htm
. Average age of principal farm operator in 2007: 58.4.

6
Texas A&M Agricultural Extension, “Universal Boon to the Salad Bowl,”
http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/vegetabletravelers/lettuce.html
.

7
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, “‘Tennis Ball' Lettuce (
Lactuca sativa
),”
http://explorer.monticello.org
.

8
Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, “Lettuce Profile,”
www.agmrc.org
.