New composter!

This is my new composter. I got the plans from this site.

Fram time passed!

But don't be grumpy!



There's more to come, via retrospect!!!

Hold tight, fram coming soon!

August

the island

a couple weeks ago we went to help Lee on the island. it is a remote, mile and a half long island off the coast of Maine whose name i will not disclose, because of the utmost secrecy! The sheep that inhabit the island are a specific herd of north country cheviots that have been inhabiting that space for hundreds of years. Lee takes a crew up in the spring to castrate and dock (de-tail) the lambs and to shear the full grown sheep. He also seperates the rams which have been freely breeding for the winter and puts them on a nearby island.

In the fall, the same journey puts the rams back on the island as well as selecting lambs to bring back for slaughter. It is a beautiful island, with huge rocks and a few select species i had never seen before, like red sorrel and sea lettuce, growing in ocean puddles on the beach. It tasted like salty sugary and green, like salt water taffy, but chlorophylly.


red sorrel


sea lettuce


There were also buttloads of seagull eggs all over the place.




The sheep look much like the sheep that we have here, north country cheviots are prized because of their long legs and stout figure, which offers up the best loins and chops. Though Lee is planning on breeding in some old school scottish breeds that are shorter, stockier and can better maintain themselves on a diet of almost pure pasture in the grain-grass ratio.



Though, the island sheep maintain themselves amazingly well, only needing the slightest of care. Shearing isn't even necessary, as the sheep (i'm told) are insulated the same in the summer as in the winter by their big wool coats. Not to mention the assorted conifers that grow on the island, the big spruce and pines offer a decent shade.

In the winter they eat kelp and bladderwrack which washes up on shore. The seaweed bladderwrack (which is supposed to be good for thyroid problems in humans!) is heaped abundantly on the rocks of the beach. Because the island is coastal, it has a more temperate climate. The sheep munch on this grindage all winter, it probably makes their coats that much shinier.

Bladderwrack?


Yes, Bladderwrack!

Rich, rich as a fiend!

Our job was to herd the sheep when we got there. We started in the middle of the island and sort of staggered ourselves into a line. The casual saunter of our walking, coupled with the sheep' worried retreat made me think of the last scene in Full Metal Jacket, where all the soldiers are singing the Mickey Mouse theme song. (i can't help comparing everything to some pop culture reference. Farm people have found this to be really annoying.) We essentially built a wall, then like a clock hand turning towards the twelve; we flanked the sheep up then made a wall in line with the length of the island until they went into the pen we had set up for them.



My part in this was pretty great. When the sheep on the southern part of the island were being moved, i volunteered to run as fast as i could in order to get ahead of them. My mission was to open the gate and then lie in wait so they couldn't see me:

Where's Jason?


I felt like a comanche, running as fast as i could through marshes and blueberry patches that were two feet of muck. But i had to run my heart out, and in an absurd light i was just thinking, faster, faster, faster

He's gotta be here somewhere.


Finally when i got there, i lay in wait behind a small rise. The sheep didn't notice me. Can you?


There I am!!!

Man, what a crazy thing how stupid sheep are. I mean, every year we do the same ganging up on them. The crowding and like a good herd they follow suit, just running away right into the trapping of the pen. Then, they start bleating like madness, asking what the hell happened! There was a point made by one of the farmers who helps Lee. A couple men who are hardcore Mainers, own (or owned) sheep farms and now come out once a year to eat junk food, drink hi-life, talk and herd and shear and castrate sheep. Someone said sheep are stupid.

"Stupid!" he says, "Well let me think about this...we feed them, we clean them, we protect them from wild animals...now who's stupid?" And he's got a point. I recently read the Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan's book about certain plants whose genes choose humans as their carriers. The apple is a mere sweet fruit that gets eaten up, but its seed--spat out to grow new apple trees--spreads its sowing as easily as trash. Just as sheep, who are so easy to trap and who can sustain themselves so permanently on an island are worthwhile for a mainland shepherd to come out and make the trip.

Stupid animals, smart genes.

The actual process of what we do to the animals was pretty disturbing for me. I mean, we basically corner the sheep, they move into a different pen. Then we isolate a few to be sheared if they're yearlings or older or castrated and docked if they're lambs.

The castration didn't seem like too big of a deal. These big ol' clamps that looked like salad tongs were clamped on to the immature vas deferens for about ten to twelve seconds, just enough to cut off circulation for ever. Lee described it as your leg falling asleep and never waking up. But in this case, your leg is your balls.

The docking was a little bit crazier. We use a tool called a hot dock, which is a bit like a hair crimper that gets up to a zillion degrees. We close it around the lamb's tail and it cauterizes the wound as it cuts to stave off infection. Some pink goop is also applied to keep flies out of the open wound. The lambs twist for a moment and fight, probably the same jolt of white hot pain that comes in getting an immunization as a child. But then they are fine, nuzzling against your chin as you hold their legs up. In a matter of moments, their anatomy is completely changed.

I thought the tail thing was pretty brutal until one of the farmers on the island explained it. His name was Link and his family has ties to Maine since the 1730's. They lived in southern Maine and each generation made its way steadily climbing up the coast until they got near Canada. Now he owns an insurance company and lives along the coast again, serves as historian for his district and has insane stories about rich people accidentally blowing up their houses and old obstinate women who refuse to ask for help.

He explained that as the sheep grow up, their wool gets burlier and the tail, in particular, is a space where a build up of crud occurs. They just have heaps of shit fall on this area and it attracts flies, and in turn, maggots and then all sorts of potential infections. Not to mention the shearers, having to navigate vibrating blades around a triangular tail is like slicing the petals of a dirty flower as it violently jerks in the wind. So they cut the tail off, cauterize it. the end.

Link also had another story that went like this: "So it was about 6 one night and i had to go to bible study, but as i was going out the door Elizabeth tells me, 'hey dad, we have a sheep with a prolapse.' I didn't want to be late, but i went out there and it was sticking out, so i was pushing it back in. Elizabeth says, 'Dad, the kids at school don't believe what we do for a living.' So i stick my arm in more and say, 'Want to take a picture now!?'"

He ends up having to replug the prolapse a few times, and eventually the story moves on, "So i'm late for bible study and i'm sitting in the back. A few of the old timers there come up and i'm talking to them. It was only later that i realized my legs were covered in shit and blood!"

It's a strange sense of humor up here. But that's the reality, animals have to be taken care of and they as crazy as naked fools who don't speak your language.

The next day on the island, we were part of either one of two crews. Either we wrangled the sheep, grabbed them by their hind leg and guided their kicking mania towards the shearer. Then we would grab their head, turn it backwards and plummet their bodies onto their behinds, so all their legs were sticking up and they sort of looked like Frankenstein. Then we would stand by in idle agitation waiting for something to go wrong or for the shearer to finish, so we could take the sheep away and get another one.

Or there was the woolpickers. The wools, caked in shit, grass, burrs, and salt from the sea would have to be rooted through at lightning speed to get them to a quality where they could be used to be spun. Then they were stuffed into a big ol bag and someone had to climb the wool tower...

There's Davis, one of the apprentices i work with, stomping down the wool tower:


like the french stomp grapes into wine...



What a dork!

The art of shearing is fascinating. It requires a certain dance, a dalliance with the handling of the sheep. They are cutting every part of the sheep, but doing it without the sheep's legs touching the ground. Sheep are immobilized when their legs are off the ground. But as soon as the legs feel the ground, they impulsively try to leap up. It's the cold water that brings them out of shock and back into a reality where they are capable of moving. So it's up to the shearer to keep them locked in a dream for just the couple minutes it takes to give a haircut.

And there are a few ways in which sheep shearers have an attitude. Beth told me that sheep shearers in New Zealand say, "once you do ten thousand sheep, you will know how to shear a sheep." Lee has been shearing sheep for over thirty years. It used to be his job. He would run across tons of sheep. One time he thought he was scraping the skin off their backs, it was so bloody, and worried, before he realized they were infested with ticks and he was shaving their heads off. Another time he came and set up a generator and lights to shear sheep for the Amish. When the lights went out, he saw at least eighty silent Amish people: children, men, women, all very silent. He said it was creepy.



His style is very quick and precise. I think what he looks more forward to then anything is the job being done, so his ambition is for concision and speed. And this is the way we would bring him sheep, chop chop chop. No dilly dallying. The whole atmosphere that day was one of perpetual readiness, a new sheep, to take the wool, to pick the wool. We were all in flux and wide awake.

The other shearer was a woman named Emily with cool blue eyes and rope for hair. She looked like a goddess. Her handling of the sheep, it was a music. Somehow when Lee or Aran (his son) were shearing sheep, they were restless. That white eyed, open stark fear kind of look that penetrates with the infinitesimal look of confusion. Emily was very soft spoken, and she didn't seem to tire while working.



aran working




I particulary liked her. She seemed to have an appreciation for the sheep that i got when she described the top fleeces. These are the thick, "lustrous," she called it, coats which are hand spun and thus a little more expensive. It looks like wrestling with sheep, but it could just as easily be holding--maybe comforting. I wonder if the force applied during sheep shearing could be more of a gentle coercion rather than manhandling and demobilizing. I figure i'll read some Temple Grandin later and try to figure that out.


Emily

We spent the rest of the day exploring the island. Just a few miles off the coast, there are thousands upon thousands of buoys that wash up throughout the year. They appear as random ornaments, island trash. The people that live there just sort of stack them in mountains.



Or if you don't have glasses:


this ship washed up on shore a few years ago during a violent squawl.


Isn't it ironic!



the guy with this sweatshirt randomly showed up mid-day. he is an ornithologist who spends the summer surveying birds on the island. He seemed really really amped that people were on the island. Considering there are a total of six people, i can't imagine what it's like. He spends 10 hours a day on a house on stilts watching birds fly. He came up to us, drinking a beer, and exclaimed, "Sorry I'm late! You guys need some help." And he became our most excited woolpicker!



Here's a picture of me and him picking wool. This gives a nice overview of the pens we worked in. The shearers, powered off a generator, were hoisted on a pole. the sheep were bunched in the pen, then dragged in for their turn.



The island lacks trees mostly, with low lying ferns, sorrel, blackberry and raspberry bushes. Plus marshes that are covered in cattails



But the trees are especially nice, completely covering the last 1/2 mile of the island. we climbed them at sunset and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets i've ever seen:


on top of a tree!


and again!


Another good one!

One of the girls we working with was this farmer from Chewonkee summer camp, where Beth--the farmer i work for--and Emily, the shearer, worked.


Abi

We all climbed trees together



Can you find Davis in the tree?:


Man, this is better than Highlights magazine!

Abi was a kind of funny girl. The sort of pockets-out, everything goes, hair in the wind kind of adventurist who knew a lot about plants.


Here she is sleeping on some rocks. I think the best story to accentuate her character is one time we were all going to a MOFGA potluck and she decided ice cream sandwiches would be a good idea. She took the last of the cream from their dairy cow, made the cookies from scratch and then packed her bag. But, deciding that they would not hold up, she filled the rest of her bag with ice. So when we picked her up on the side of the road, she was napping, but then said, "Hey, i figured i'd make ice cream sandwiches. So my backpacks full of ice" Needless to say they didn't hold up, but the farmers whom got to eat their mash said they were terrific! And that's Abi.

While we were docking the sheep too, a bunch of blood splattered on her face. It was kind of lightly speckled there all day, like freckles. A key remembrance is Abi's big smile with all that blood sort of dried on her skin. Unreal.

We navigated this fern maze that the sheep had made throughout the years, colonizing trails for themselves.


It was like the shining. It was Davis, Abi and me. She compared it to Mycelium Running, a book by some guy about teaching fungi to grow cognitively.


We were as smart as mushrooms together!

Then we stayed on a rock talking about the day as the sunset on the island. And i commented very astutely that this was by far one of the most beauitul places i had ever seen.

The Pigs

Yesterday we sent off the pigs. After a year of enjoying their time here, they were sent to the butcher to be made into chorizo, italian sausage, canadian bacon, loin roast, pork chops, tail, snout, jowls, feet. The whole shebang. I was told not to name any of the animals that were going to be slaughtered. However, two achieved names. One was Chester:



Chester wasn't named by me. He was named by the farmers when he was a piglet. Chester was the dominant pig in the bunch. This means that he was the most aggressive when the pigs were fed. He would be the first to get milk from us. He would guard the feeder until he was satisfied, roaring like a lion and biting into pigs' ears when they were in his way. He was a terrific brute. A real son of a bitch pig.

To feed the pigs, we carry over the milk-water mixture that is used as runoff when the milking machines are cleaned. This happens after bi-daily milkings. The pigs absolutely love this milk.



When the pigs come to get the milk, we have to be quick. Largely it's a competition between us and them. It's a wonderful thing; to see the pig's ears perk up when the sound of maggie's collar jingles in the not-so-far distance and they realize the greatest period of their day is about to arrive: breakfast.


Here is a photo of the new pigs running after me.


And then enjoying their breakfast, madly.

The pigs run like nothing you would think a pig would run like. Their whole body lifted in a heave. You think an animal that fat couldn't run the way it does.

I don't think pigs are the smartest creatures, but that's why i like them. They're simplicity is something to be adored. In a way, i think, it surpasses our intelligence, subsiding anxious neuroses and complications for the sake of what's empirically there. A pig has no reservations other than the now, and in that, is completely terrified or ecstatic.





people use this expression, that "pigs could fly," to somehow render an impossibility possible. In dubious conceit, they assure themselves of a security within our world. Pigs can't fly. they are too fat. too dumb. too pink. whatever. I have seen a pig fly though. And it happened on a particularly crazy day last month.



This is the only picture i have of the scene. One of the pigs, who we'll call Sally, kept escaping the pen. The pen is held by an electric fence, which isn't much, but usually good enough because pigs, like bears, test things with the most sensitive part of their body, their nose.

But this pig kept escaping, kept leaving her pen. It made this day particularly awkward because the farmer i work for was being interviewed by the Portland Press Herald about a petition she had signed. (You can click on the link to see a picture of the runaway pig & read an article somewhat about the farm!).

We were able to coax the pig back into her pen, but between the end of the day and the start of the next day, she escaped four more times. The farmers thought that it was because she was in heat. Oftentimes, when pigs are in heat, other pigs will pick on her. A pig in heat is a sow, and even though most of the pigs we have are female, they don't shy away from mounting one another.





They are female, but it's largely prison rules. I can't quite explain it.

So the next morning, quite coincidentally, we were going to pick up a new set of piglets. Sally was huffing and puffing, and even though we put up a good line of sheep fencing, which is a pretty heavy-duty grate of electric wire meant to keep sheep from jumping over it; the pig did not care a bit. She just ran right through it. So it was decided. There was going to be a pig slaughtered on tuesday. It was Saturday. If we could only keep her penned up until then, things would be okay.

It was a hell of a time baiting her. I don't have any pictures of it, unfortunately; so, sorry. I can assure you it was ridiculous. We took big metal fence sections, and three people stood as walls to guide her towards a sheep pen. I tried to lead the way, by dropping peanuts in front of her. She was mildly interested, but mainly she was crossed between a terror and an anger that i can't quite explain other than a woman, excited preternaturally by a instigant longing in her loins, finding herself shuffled through a crowded area by strangers, as if on a subway and being careened towards the back car. And while this is happening, a nervous looking man is dropping peanuts on the car floor so she will be enticed to follow him. And smiling the whole time, a nervous, half-click smile, trying to entertain the easy fracas of the day: "free peanuts! free peanuts!" he exclaims. And she's just getting mad, upset, confused. Bewildered by the combination of her own crazed animal instinct coming in contact with an imperatively sleazy baiting.

Finally, we get her caged. In a sheep pen. And we put a bucket of barley in there. Some water. Some peanuts. We tied the metal gates up with twine and thought, okay, if she can make it till tuesday then no problem. and we ambled over to the piglets' pen and started to think about the future.

Sally was circling her cage, her huffs becoming more and more audible, obstinate, engaged in a sort of frantic paranoia. She was realizing that it was a cage and that she was penned. And as hell hath no fury as a woman scorned, farms hath no fury like a pig in heat encaged. So the next moment, when all of us, having our backs turned to the pen, turned suddenly when we caught sight. The pig, lifting herself up on her hind legs (and keep in mind she's a 200 lb. animal), made her way, half-stilted by the fence grate meant to hold her in, leaps, and like nothing I, nor any of the farmers had ever seen: the pig flew.

She flew over the fence and into a sheep feeder, and with a loud harumph!, she hesitated a moment, stunned at her triumph. Just as the farmers, mechanically gravitating towards her, uncertain, leaped over the same sheep feeder and contained her movement. Mesmerized, but at the same time working against her will. They grabbed her legs, and with a pig screech that sounds like a train stopping, she was lifted and put back into the pen.

"I've never seen a pig do that before," said Lee. He's been a farmer for more than 30 years. It was said that when a pig learns to jump as a piglet, they never forget how. But we put plywood up, against the sheep feeder, weighed them down with cinder blocks and thought, this ought to hold her.

Oh, huberis. Always getting in the way, beckoning conditionals of when pigs can fly after pigs have flown. And not more than two minutes later, she flew again. Against the plywood, she knocked it down. The cinder block came tumbling and Lee, jumping up to stop her, was ransacked by a pig kicking up like a wild horse. He was thrown back and he landed on a 4x6. The look on his face. a look so penetrating none of us moved, even the pig. We all stood back uncertain of what just happened, as if time froze on his face. We thought he was impaled.

He broke a rib. His air was knocked out. That really didn't matter, because his adrenaline was so engaged that his body was an airplane on auto-pilot. Damn a downed engine, the pigs not escaping again. So she was put back into her pen.

We called the man with a trailer who was going to take her to slaughter on tuesday. He said he could be down in half an hour. And for that next half an hour, it was like the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." The pig ravenously tore around the pen, searching for her way out, while Lee and me knocked her snout away. Each time, a contemptuous yelp then huff, then the search began again. Trying to upend anything with that mighty snout.

Then finally the trailer came. "Guess she's going to have to enjoy a couple days on the countryside." So the farmer broke a rib. And she was made into kielbasa and pepperoni.

If there's a moral to that story, you'll know it when pigs fly.

***

The pigs are mighty creatures, not to be messed with. I think their power is something to uphold. The wild pigs in Hawaii are the biggest pest, eating any and every crop. It's said that a pack of hungry pigs could devour a human being in eight minutes. Actually, I learned that from the movie Snatch. It could easily not be true.

The new pigs though are called linebackers. They are called that because they are mighty, like Ray Nitschke, Dick Butkus, Lawrence Taylor, Mike Singletary, Ray Lewis & Chester. They are funny little guys, sheepishly sneaking up to the edge of their cage when you near, a ponderous look on their faces. They wonder in some way, 'What is this giant doing! Why is he here!' I think of them as the stereotypical tribe of savages in an old movie. Transfixed on this strange new creature. then approaching:



and approaching...



Then Ah shit! They're cannibals!



These pigs will leap over one another, squeal excitedly and tackle like a healthy group of young brothers clamboring for the last piece of a candy bar. When we enter their pen, they inspect us the way a group of savages would inspect a dr. livingston, having known no social mores, and believing you can eat and dominate anything, they try to lift me from my boots and bite into my feet like candy. And i am trying to give them milk or day old bread or barley, but they are insanely curious, the way a fire spreads insanely curiously.







But even after all that, all that mad toughness and deep rooted genetic power; they are still my favorite animal on the farm. They are sun-lovers, who are bathed to be pink by solar warmness. They sit all day in the sun, eating and tanning. They are very clean for an animal accused of sitting its own filth. Occasionally on hot days, they roll around in mud. But they don't shit where they eat and they manage to only get two things in the dirt, their feet and their snouts. They uproot sod like it's a buried salad bar and they sleep huddled like camaraderous soldiers. It just seems so fraternal, relaxed and clean: a whole life on vacation.

Here is my favorite pig, Everest:



She was the last pig that got a name. She was just a fat beast, with huge jowls. And she never tried to push me out of the way when i gave her milk. She would waddle up, sometimes fast, as fast as pigs can fly, and smilingly, sink her head into the feeder and gulp until heart's content. Then she would waddle off, caring about nothing, being fat as the day, and simply loving it. My heart goes out to you, pig. You've lived a good life.