All Growed Up and Other Lessons

Bippies on the loose

Yesterday was a big one on the farm. It didn't feel that way starting out. My morning began in the usual way, with me sitting on a cushion and trying to expel all extraneous thoughts from my noggin, and instead noticing that my headpiece is straight CLOGGED with crap, mostly having to do with people sleighting me or me being deficient in some way and a LOT to do with what I will eat for dinner. I suppose it's VALUABLE to know that this is the sort of thing my mind burns energy on, but I have yet to reach the point at which my brain becomes a washed canvas. The second I wake up I seem to be gripped with anxiety -- will I make it to work on time? Do I have clean pants? Does my hair look weird? Did I make a huge mistake in leaving New York? You know, basics. 


I got in early to put the Crawfords (our small cow's milk cheese) into the brine, which takes a while because you have to measure the pH and salinity of the brine and the cheese and weigh every piece so that you can calculate the time it needs to spend in its salty bath, and Crawfords are our biggest batch -- fifty plus pieces. Also I'm snail-slow. Tuesday I did my first complete solo curd-cut and generally was responsible for most of the make, though I'm still not totally confident in my ability, just as far as the sequence of things. And Boss being Boss, he always likes to throw something new into the mix, so this time I had to culture the vat for the first time, which requires measuring out cultures and weighing them on a little scale like a tyrrophilic drug dealer and mixing them into warm milk and then incorporating them into the vat. I keep hoping that magically I'll wake up one day and intuitively know how a make proceeds without having to refer back to my copious notes, but alas that's not happened yet. I keep forgetting that my Ringworm Incident (also the name of your new favorite jam band) really set me back as far as being able to actually DO shit rather than just observe. And YES that is a real thing. 

The more time I spend learning new shit the more aware I am of what methods are and are not effective for me to really absorb something. I've come to understand that I need really clear instructions, and then I need to actually do the damn thing with supervision to correct for mistakes. And then I need to do it over and over again until it's drilled into my brain. So my first several months at Twig, while totally excellent in terms of explicit instruction, was a bit marred by the RWI and then the inevitable drying off of the herd, which has reduced our weekly cheesemaking by 80%. 

For example, the other day I filled up the does' water trough with a hose that runs from the barn, along the ceiling and outside in a downward slope. It's been a constant challenge trying to finagle ways to ensure that various hoses and pipes do not freeze and that the troughs are left relatively full of drinkable water rather than solid blocks of ice. Now that winter has officially arrived in the state of Vermont, this is a fun new thing to contend with on the daily. After filling up their trough, I drained the hose (LOL) to the best of my ability so that water wouldn't freeze inside it rendering it unusable, and then I fastened the end of it to a fence so it wouldn't fall and get caked in goat shit. The next day I came in to find that there had been water still trapped in the hose and that my fastening it thusly trapped it inside. So I spent the first hour plus of the day unfreezing the hose end and soaking the hose in hot water so that I could pass water through it. The moral of the story is that it woudn've been way easier to wash the tip of the hose that might have gotten dirty than it was to deal with unfreezing the whole goddamned thing. An important experiential lesson. 

We are now in the TINKERING phase of things at the farm -- doing all sorts of little chores that need doing but also that are at least partly fabricated to keep us busy. Yesterday after brining, Boss asked me if I "felt strong." Why yes, in fact I was just consulting with my arm muscles to stop growing so I can safely say that I am RIPPED AS FUCK and basically pure muscle. He then charged me with moving a (large) hay feeder from outside of the electric fence into the yard. A distance of perhaps 80 yards or so, but tricky because the feeder was certainly too heavy for me to lift on my own. He provided me with some possible strategies and then said "This is part of the job! Figuring out how to do stuff as you go!" Gauntlet thrown. 

Suffice it to say after many minutes of head scratching I was able to detach a length of the electric fence (I did not whiz on it in the process) and then shimmied the feeder through the gate and across the lawn using brute strength. It took about a half hour and I did not have to fasten the thing to a wheelbarrow with twine, which was one of Boss's suggestions. I went and let him know I'd finished and he seemed surprised that I'd been able to do it so quickly, but perhaps that was the paint fumes (we're repainting the milking parlor) and his head cold. 

In the afternoon, we collared the doelings who up to this point have been sequestered in their own enclosure and moved them en masse to the main yard with the big girls. When Michael told me this was on the docket I'd exclaimed "NO! It's too soon!" And felt for all the world like a mom sending her kid off to kindergarten, relinquishing her to the battering pummeling big bad world for the first time. "It's better now than later. They'll just keep getting pregnant-er. At least now they're little enough that they can manage to run away!" Boss said. Every time I passed their pen leaading up to the mass exodus, I apologized in advance for the beatings they were likely to sustain when they joined the herd. "You guys don't know what you're in for." 

Finally it was time. I shook a bucket of grain to tempt them forward and Michael herded them from the back and we slowly led them through the gate. It was a free for all. Mostly they were thrilled at all the extra space and started running around and jumping like maniacs. Some of the more brazen ones -- Christianne, who's the daughter of alpha doe Crapapple --got into it with Natalie and was not backing down. Already the pecking order was gelling into an observable hierarchy. As I cleaned out the barn and put down fresh bedding, I noticed that the doelings were able to slip through a length of fencing into the baby orchard we're planting (not to grow babies unfortunately but a young orchard populated with saplings). So as darkness fell, Michael and I had to post up several more lengths of fishwire fencing to block them from escaping. 

And so the babies shall soon become the mothers and it will cycle over as all things do. I hope to god I do not arrive at the farm this morning to discover some prison break or injured goat. Or, worst of all, a frozen goddamned hose.

*Side note: I had a breakthrough with Gar, for those of us who are following our burgeoning love affair. Whilst monkeying with the doe's collars and basically not paying any attention to Gar whatsoever she came over to me of her own volition and started chewing on my jacket. Then she let me scratch her cheeks for a good long time and seemed very contented. The moral of the story is LET THEM COME TO YOU. I'm learning SO much.