I will find the bones of buried pigs
And hang them on your clothesline.

listen to the sound of them drying.

I will become a cattle egret who perches on the
memory of cattle
and picks insects from the dark skins.
I will bury myself deep enough

goats’ milk fills in
around my shoulders. Around my neck

I will wear a string of gourds and old farm
machinery,

and in the ceremony
of your work

I will put coal on my ring finger
And tell myself, wait.
I will eat your apples

Because apples are proof
and they have fallen from the trees.


- Molly Bashaw- Letters to a Farm






I love March. Red-winged blackbirds return, the males at first, their fire-engine red wing bars blaring, their cheerful song bursting life into the silent, ice world of winter. Then come the black-green grackles singing tunes that sound like bad ring-tone choices on cell phones. Killdeer and woodcocks follow soon after, and then it is upon us, spring and its swell and hopeful greetings of change. No more bitter cold winds and nights where long-sleeved shirts and four blankets are required to keep warm.

The mud is the worst it’s been in ten years. School was cancelled once already, because the scant three inches of snow on the muddy roads made it impossible for the plows to pass. The $1800 we poured into the driveway is really getting its mettle tested as nights plummet to the teens, and days caress the warm winds of the 40s and 50s. I love mud season. And I love that today marks the first day of spring, which means we have 12 hours of daylight to luxuriate in.

Shannon Duffield started her apprenticeship this week. She applied for a position at Country Animal Hospital, where I am a veterinary technician, and I immediately became intrigued by her. Her resume was spot on, and she had a boatload of charisma. Her only weakness was that she couldn’t offer any length of time past August at the animal hospital without certainty. So when I saw her name on the list of potential NOFA apprentices, I jumped at the chance to have her come meet the farm.

And she is great. She’s already cleaned out the sheep pens that we refer to as the moldy pens, and today, I came home to find the chicken coop spotless. This is good, because VPR is coming on Friday to do a book interview, complete with chicken noises.

She has no farm experience, and I hoped to let her in on the stark realities of this business slowly, but Compaya, my 21 year-old llama died the day after she started her apprenticeship. Then there were two difficult births by yearling ewes (all the lambs and moms are fine), followed by a stillbirth four days later by a young ewe not experienced in the art of licking her newborn dry.

Today takes the horrible reality award though. Petal, the beautiful, sweet, perfect calf hung herself and died today. She was not even two months old. Her poor mother, Ginger, has the rope burn scars, where the halter her calf wore razed a jagged line across her back. I can only guess that a startled Ginger rose, while Petal was lying on the other side of her, and she strangled her own baby.

Shannon bravely handed me water and tools as Kyle and I scrambled to replace the horror of this tragic accident with practicality. Here was a 300 pound milk fed calf that would be composted if we didn’t act quickly. Had we been just minutes earlier, she would have been saved, but now, we had just minutes to save her meat for consumption.

Shannon stayed back as I slit Petal’s throat to bleed her out, then skinned her feet. Kyle got the tractor, and we hung her to skin and gut. We washed her and hung her to cure, and truly, the meat is beautiful. It is perfect veal, like that you would find in any specialty store. The problem that I have in allowing it just to be perfect meat is the tragedy of her death. I wrestle in my brain with why it’s easier for me to accept the local butcher coming with his gun to shoot the grass-fed steer than to accept Petal’s absence. And then, I think that it’s just that. I had dreamed of Petal romping about pastures, raising her own beautiful calves, not dying a horrible freak death.
I am truly thankful that we were able to pull our grief together so quickly and save the meat: although I feel as though it is important to feed the soil, it would somehow have felt like a waste to me.

For Shannon, it was easier to see the carcass without the beautiful hide, the head with its brown eyes, the feet, the tail—those things that make it a real animal. I know how she feels. It may be why I worked so hard to turn the animal that I know and kissed and pet and dried when it was born, back to a carcass. I don’t know. And the starkness of this reality always confronts me as though it’s the first time that I‘ve had to think it through.

So this is my letter to the farm, although not nearly as beautiful as Molly’s. We are at the cusp of fertility, of rebirth, but always reminded of our fragility.

As you read this, Whitney is on a boat to Tern Island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where I spent almost four of the happiest years of my life. Reality abounded there, but so did magic. I hope that she finds the same. If you want to follow her adventures, she has a blog called It’s the Sun. I miss her terribly, and I know that she would grieve Petal as we do.