a full day before dawn

this seeking work and space is a process with many furrows and ditches. to be seeking a roof and a place at a table is proving to be more difficult than i expected...i was, however, treated to a day's work at the Blue Hill Farm which works to provide dairy, eggs, beef, chicken and pork directly to the Blue Hill Farm and Stonebarn restaurants of New York City and Westchester.

the man who oversees the space and the animals, Sean Stanton, gave me directions. through many shades of green and gray, at 4:30 in the morning, before the first beams of light swung down from the ridges and poured, i ascended hill and hummock. the air was still and at a slant and mist hung in the mud ridges at the foot of a red barn. the sign was prim and plain.

we milked 15 cows of a broad range of pedigree and breed- norweigan belted, gurnseys, jersey, swiss. all named and dozing while the milking machine thumped agreeably. three bull calves in pens howled for breakfast. 

Sean's gentle cows are smaller than conventional dairy breeds, those who famously produce outrageous quantities of inferior milk- a paler, watery milk, lower in milk fats and hardly worth drinking. his cows are fed on grass during the warmer parts of the year and hay during the winters. absent from their diets are grains, soy, genetically modified feed or any nutrients that have been processed with pesticides or other chemicals. nor are the cows treated with antibiotics, likely because their natural diet and regular exercise boosts their immune systems and helps them maintain a resistance to such infections as cystic ovarian disease, mastitis and staph.

it was astonishing the amount of milk from the cows, gallons and gallons from their first milking (with a second to follow in the late afternoon).it was weighed, recorded and poured into a cooling tank to await the arsenal of glass bottles stacked against the back wall. from the 15 cows roughly 75 gallons of milk were collected and poured off into buckets.

none of the milk sold from Blue Hill Farm is pasteurized- a heating process which neutralizes some of the incredibly nutritious fats and, more importantly, fat soluble vitamins such as vitamins A and D which help the body absorb the milk's calcium, and enzymes like lactase (which is absent in the digestive systems of those individuals who are lactose intolerant,) which aids in the digestion of the milk itself by breaking down lactose and which boost the efficiency of digestion in general. additionally these fragile fats contribute to the deep yellow color, richness and complexity of the milk which is incredibly delicious. laws across the country differ in their opinions of how raw milk should sold and distributed (or not). in Massachusetts, where the farm is located, raw milk is legal for sale only at the location where the cows are milked and put to pasture. larger scale distribution is not allowed, nor is raw milk legal to use in the cultivation of yogurt or the fermentation of cheese. 

so, in summation, this milk is special. the bottles have to be procured at the farm, near the cows, which seeds a relationship between milk drinker and animal. its nutrition panel is far superior to commercial milk, rich in antibiotics, production enhancing chemicals, and devoid of taste and color. how lucky to spend time in the company of the quiet animals whose warmth radiated in the barn while the cold nipped like a blade outside. 

not all of the milk was collected for cooling. some was set aside to be separated into cream. the cream separator was a horrifically loud device, all stainless steel and mounted on an  old steel bombshell from earlier days. seriously. milk was poured into a reservoir at the top and separated by virtue of its weight and speed of the machine's motor and funneled out into two long tongues of metal where it collected in respective buckets.

from the 60 gallons that were put aside to be separated, roughly 6 gallons of cream were skimmed. the bi-product of skimming cream is, of course, skim milk and in Sean's opinion the only creatures fit to consume 54 gallons of skim milk were his pigs. this was put aside for a trip down into the wooded slopes behind the farm where the pigs and piglets slept in sand and deep shade to roam comfortably at their leisure.

 

this being an industrious little dairy, the day's cream in addition to twice against as much from previous milks was put to use in the butter churn. butter is made most easily at a temperature of about 54 degrees. the cream stored in the refrigerator from roughly 5 days ago (useful because its slight fermentation adds a noticeable depth of flavor in fresh butter in addition to undertaking slight antimicrobial qualities) was about 37 degrees. the cream separated an hour earlier from the morning milk was 85. 16 gallons of milk, then, were poured back and forth in predetermined fractions, to result in a three buckets of cream roughly 56 degrees each. it was a beautiful closed circuit system of logic and timing. 

the cream was divided into two batches and put into the churn where it processed for roughly 15 minutes achieving the texture of whipped cream and then, abruptly, changing cadence and pitch as the cream  solidified into butter (whose texture resembled couscous) and liquid. the liquid of course is buttermilk, or more specifically 'sweet' buttermilk which has not been fermented or 'soured.' Sean cautioned me against overwhipping butter which can re-emulsify if treated too roughly and then be unfit for buttermaking or consumption. once the couscous texture satisfied Sean's careful eye the butter was washed (sent back into the churn with equal parts water and poured off over and over until the water ran clear). we had roughly 30 pounds of butter. almost. following the washing the butter was scooped out of the churn and heaped into a bowl where it needed to be 'wrung out', that is, Sean and myself had to mash slap and whack the couscous until the water which resided in air pockets was extruded. because the butter's structure depends on remaining at a cool temperature, handling the butter as much as it needed required that Sean and I soak our hands in the coldest water we could stand so as not to melt the butter as we shaped it.  we wrapped the butter in heavy paper in parcels weighing about 2 pounds each and called it quits. selling butter is another method of using raw milk that is not allowed, so it was packed into crates and taken back to the house.

it is also extremely interesting to note the nutritional panel on raw butter. most commercial butter, a solid fat, is churned and packed at a ratio of 75 - 80% fat and 20 -25% water. pastry chefs and bakers rank butter according its fat content. superior butter is any with a percentage of  85 - 95% fat. traditionally made butter however has a lower ratio of fat to water (roughly 65% fat to 35% water) because of the difficulty in manually extracting enough water to yield higher fat percentages. additionally, the fat profiles of butter made from raw, grass-fed, milk indicate high levels of conjugated linoleic acid (or CLA) a polyunsaturated Omega-6 (similar to those fats in fish oil). this amazing fat has an impressive resume, known to remove fat from the abdomen, raise metabolic rates,  boost muscle growth, reduce insulin resistance, strengthen the immune system and lower an individual's likelihood of developing food allergies!  To be clear, these health benefits can be derived from only those products made from raw, grass-fed milk. i've never seen or smelled such beautiful butter.

following buttermaking the calves were fed; they are slowly being weaned from their mothers and are just learning to eat communally at a large bucket fitted with pink nipples that radiate from a center vessel. the feeding bucket can accommodate roughly a dozen shy calves. that day was only the second time the calves had had a go at the communal feeder and i was interested to see if they would catch on.

 no problem.

the last part of the day involved bottling off a few gallons of milk to stock the farm stand and a taste test off the cooling tank's spigot.

 

we left the farm at one o'clock having spent a full day's work in the gray sleep of pre-dawn. coffee is taken at 'the half way mark,' and the rest of the chores are tended to following a meal and a nap in the deep grass.

Sean estimates that he and his two current interns work 60 - 100 hours a week with the higher number reflecting time spent haying. the stipend provided for an intern, who was given housing in a tent on the farm house lawn, was $100 a week. that's roughly $1.25 a hour for the duration of the warm months.

i shook his hand at the end of the afternoon, having another interview to attend, covered in calf slobber and cow manure. i had butter in my hair and under my fingernails, i had cream all over the front of my shirt, pig bristles in my boots, mosquito bites on my eyelids and a sunburn on my nose. i was happy and i was offered a job. i told him i'd take it under serious consideration.

*for more information or resources for obtaining raw milk where you live you can visit www.realmilk.com

**for more information about nutritional healing (where i got most of my information about the chemical make up of butter) you can visit http://www.westonaprice.org/
***for more information about Blue Hill Farm you can visit www.bluehillfarm.com

weasels, waning, widening

"...Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein. Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow? We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience- even of silence- boy choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's mean to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity."

 

Today the fog rolled back. Earlier, we spent days drifting through suspended water, fighting our own dumbly spinning compasses. We failed at questions of any kind.

Breakfast? Waffles? Highways? Back roads? Maps? Atlases? Destiny?

We drank terrible coffee, we made due with microwaved eggs, we were sorely disappointed by donuts. We tried to hide our anxious mists as they packed up into our sleeps and receded, saltily. And then. We parted ways and stuck our thumbs out to catch the correct current. Nevermind our fear of open water or waves. My own especially.  Calling voices can take on any timbre, any species, any shade. Greens where I am, and birds, and lakes that are easy to call across. Grays over There, slants, windows, elevators, stunted refrigerators. Love is a hard thing, tongues can be stones.

But! 

Light.

Startled.

Everyting!

     ....today.

 

All kinds of calcified water marks. Things left behind, discarded. New selves on this end! Smooth knees, beeswax lips, combed hair, verbena cream rinse. Cream rinse! Things have to look up because I went on a boat ride and ate raspberries and stewed beet greens into a sludge that wasn't even terrible. Right?

Faith in something Bigger is here, with sunburns to distribute.

(...the above quoted text is by Annie Dillard in her amazing essay Living Like Weasels, published in Teaching a Stone to Talk.)

adaptable cartographers

we spent some real time getting.

getting prepared, getting packed, getting sorted, getting anxious, getting ready, getting in, getting confused, getting on with it, getting there.
 - - -

it is an important thing, journeying. it forces you to ask yourself what to do with the expectations that are heavy like wrapped stones in your pockets; things to acknowledge without looking at too closely.

 - - -

breakfast happened, and then a latching ourselves into a practical and dependable station wagon, and off we went.

 

in a fanfare of defeat winter is receding and the lowlands are overwhelmed with water-drapery. water in all directions, all dimensions. water that is forded by stubbornness and balding tires, parted like fine braids at mountain passes, assimilated dreamily into the fabric of our new lives, water endured through fitful sleeps.

as the magnet of the northwest kingdom pulled on us, water rose. for the untrained eye of a westerner, the roads began to dampen, spread and look all alike. the drive was punctuated by little other than varying densities of forests and the weak crests of elevation. fog abounded. blue smoke like spindles hung motionless over weedfires. vaguery was absolute.

we arrived in the late afternoon: watered down sunlight, a slant of pack clouds. Lake Champlain's banks had not been as immersed in as much water as we saw for over one hundred years. Grand Isle was in a panic over failing septic systems; flood plains and leech fields of debris shone wickedly at the feet of the animal pastures.

but when we did finally get out and don our muck boots we came, it seemed, as a surprise to our host mother who apologized in a daze for not having finalized our accommodations. their septic tank had currently backed up into the sheep pasture and they were devising various ways of disposing of water. or, more aptly, not using at all. (...minimal showers, dumping dishwater out of the window, foregoing toilet flushing completely....) we followed her through her small parcel of front land. there were icelandic sheep and their lambs, a hobbly old dairy cow, many small pullets under a gas heat lamp in a slouching, softening green barn.

...thoughtfully described hoop houses for young lettuces, promises of fireflies, red wing black bird abound. 

sound was a physical plane to cut through with boots. insects and biplanes resonated along bare arms. we trudged out to see our tent spaces (though the tents themselves were no where to be seen.) we learned a surveying crew had taken bits and parcels from the pastures in order to discover (hopefully) deposits of natural gas (to no avail.)  the pockmarked pasture was greened over in a ferocity of swamp weeds and water skeeters. who knew what flatness was navigable? we tested our footing. we stumbled into holes and ditches. we were warned of electric fencing wires submersed in the mire. we became alarmed. questions began to arise with the mosquitos.

why weren't the tents set up? (we had called emailed two days before, we had called just this morning after breakfast, was there some crucial etiquette we had foregone?)

why, when we dug in the dusty barn, had the tents been stored in a crumpled up piles, furred over with the mold and mildew of an obvious hasty and damp dumping?

why, when the tents were taken out, as the light began to fail, was she missing not only the totality of the tent poles (how many did each tent need, was it?) but also the rubber stoppers that served to cap the central thrusting pole and thus keep the tents from toppling over?

how could we get two thirteen foot high canvas tents, all the poles, the tarping and stakes out across the two and half acres of pasture to the tents sites when we could barely cross the pasture on foot carrying nothing?

how, as the rain began to fall into the open and still unpitched tents, were the promised futon frames and mattresses going to be hauled across the same pasture when we had barely succeeded in hauling them in a decrepit hand cart?

how, as the rain set in and we were left alone in the field to pitch and stake the tents while the family was inside enjoying a meal, were we going to get the lives we packed, into only a few very heavy duffel bags, into the tents?

how, as we were hauled in a tractor hitched to a hay wagon, balancing a broken futon frame (who knew to check and make sure all the parts were serviceable  before offering them to an intern for four months?) were we going to get the wooden palettes, joined by bailing wire, that served as the platform for the damp mattress stored in the wet and leaking barn that smelled of chicken shit, (since they had assumed they had had two but really only discovered one futon frame to offer us), apart, since, not an hour ago, the palettes has served as temporary fencing for a lambing sheep and were still warm and hay-smelling?

how, when we had at last deposited wet luggage into the mud-filled tents erected crudely and with no precision, were we to keep the rain and wind out when the zipper that kept the door closed, the only central zipper to the entire tent, came off in our hands as we tried to close ourselves in for the night?

how, when we trekked back in the mud to find some remaining dinner  and address a tent with no door, and to look into the house at last, were we to share a shower with 8 other people in a bathroom swollen with mildew, not cleaned since its construction, and being bailed out with a paint bucket?

how could we, in our right minds, undertake an education putting up food, baking bread, and cooking the bounty of our farm labors in a kitchen so filthy and fitfully maintained that it had given food poisoning to its third intern and from which it took an entire week to recover?

how would we stand making $50 a week, in broken and moldy tents, in the soft cornered squalor of a flooded island see fit to say until the frosts came?

and in short, we couldn't. 

and so after pantomiming drinking a bowl of soup from the self same pot of the previously poisonous lentil soup a week earlier, we trudged back out into the rain and mud, to curl up on our animal mattresses, draw our own clean but damp bedclothes up to our throats and let the soul darkness flatten the day.

islands

all of the sudden it happened.

instead of ticking off the checkboxes or smoothing down the folded shirts over and over: zipping up.
instead of pairing socks and washing towels: tucking tissue into jam jars.
instead of squeezing hands tightly and trying to feel as much dog fur as possible: small bells going off and glass sealing.
instead of planning: going.

and here i am. on the far coast. in the smallest state. not truly a physical island, but certainly an island of a different kind. this one has only the smallest family and company that was smuggled between t-shirts and bed linens. (small shrines, some red yard tied to me, a bell with a wooden clapper.)

to sit with a lapful of lists whose items have been struck through is a kind of built in hovering mechanism. these last few hours i have floated instead of traveled and watched the world through suspended water. part of it is a coastal fog, forecasted in advance, and dimming out the aerial heights of the city. the other part is the phantom limb feeling of building a vessel of plans to ferry myself into another life and not knowing what to do once i've broken it down into manageable parcels and disembarked.

i slept through the sunrise and woke up over the course of two cities. home like spider silk is still billowing around me and when it yanks i don't know which way to orient myself in order to get a sight of it. but tomorrow the Proper journey will begin. there will be paper packets of scones and soft butter and mugs of coffee too hot and too full and certainly spilled on the car seats. there will be canvas bags and plastic cartons and we will leap empty handed into the void. we will leave one island and arrive on another and nothing will be the same again.