Sheepish Read online

  Spraying works best without wind, and it doesn’t stop blowing until dark, so Melissa begins her spraying job at 10:00 PM. During the summer I fall asleep to the soft putter of the four-wheeler as Melissa sprays one side of the row, then the other, row after row, her single headlight carving a narrow path through the warm darkness.

  And here’s a perfect example of how farming can be romanticized, even by the farmer herself. I’m lulled to sleep by the comforting image of Melissa happily spraying her vines. In reality, her four-wheeler headlight attracts every moth within miles. While I sleep, she’s fighting off the moths flying in her face and crawling on her neck.

  I like my version better.

  The Perfect Nest

  Young cat, if you keep your eyes open enough, oh, the stuff you would learn! The most wonderful stuff!

  —DR. SEUSS

  After years of draining my writing energy, the farm slowly begins to give back, with Hit by a Farm, and then The Compassionate Carnivore, a mix of memoir, nonfiction, and self-help. Yet the farm continued to withhold ideas for children’s stories. Farms should be ripe with children’s story ideas because farms play such a role in their learning. Stephen Kellert, who studies animals and human behavior, found that more than 90 percent of the characters used to teach language and counting to young children are animals.

  Yet I manage to go years without any decent ideas. But then the Farm Story Goddess looks down upon our meager fifty acres, where I sit dejectedly without inspiration, and graciously awards me two events that will generate a story.

  The first event is the day in the barn when I hear something banging back in the corner behind a feed barrel. I timidly peer down into the darkness, afraid to see a rat. Instead, I see what looks like a chicken’s body and a duck’s head. Whoa. Gotta lay off the caffeine. I ignore my hallucination and continue with chores.

  The next morning I hear the same banging, only this time when I look, I see what appears to be a duck’s body with a chicken’s head. Now I am worried, so I track down Melissa, who’s out in the pasture fixing a fence. She knows exactly what I’m talking about. “A duck and chicken both laid an egg back there and neither wants to give up the nest.” Later I find five hens in a nest box meant for one, basically stacked on top one another, each determined to lay her egg in that nest.

  The second event is of a feline nature. We don’t encourage stray cats to live in our barns or pastures because kittens can carry a disease that causes abortions in sheep. Not good. But when a half-grown orange-and-white cat shows up, so friendly he must have been dumped (by one of those irresponsible pet owners who should be abandoned in the middle of the Arctic Circle as punishment for doing this to a domestic pet), we fall in love and name him Oliver. He takes up residence in the hay mow, the warmest, driest, safest place on the farm.

  The next year, Oliver himself adopts a half-grown cat, but the only thing we ever see of this guy is the flash of his orange tail as he runs from us. All winter long we feed two cats, one of which is terrified of us. But then Melissa begins leaving a saucer of milk in the barn. Within a few days the orange cat comes down the wooden ladder, sniffs the milk on Melissa’s hands, and rolls over on his back as if to say he’ll do anything for some milk.

  Two cats—Oliver and Pumpkin—and many baby chicks and ducklings hatching every year would seem to be a bad combination. But Melissa scolds the cats whenever they look at the babies, and soon the boys figure out that if they’re going to be allowed to stay, baby poultry are off limits. When Mama Duck has a batch of eighteen ducklings, she marches them past Oliver, stretched out on the barn floor. He watches, but he doesn’t dare touch.

  I begin to think—what if I write a story about a cat that wants to eat the eggs in a nest but instead ends up taking care of the babies that hatch from those eggs? And maybe there would be poultry that fight over the same nest. The result is The Perfect Nest.

  For me, waiting for a picture book to make its way from a few scribbled notes in my notebook, to a typed manuscript given to the illustrator, to a series of sketches, to many finished paintings feels like a century, but when illustrator John Manders is finished, the story becomes a real book.

  Here’s the publisher’s description: “Jack the cat is building the perfect nest. It’s bound to attract the perfect chicken, who will lay the perfect egg, which will make the perfect omelet. And sure enough, a chicken shows up (‘¡Caramba!’) but so do a duck (‘Sacré bleu!’) and a goose (‘Great balls of fire!’). Feathers get ruffled—and Jack gets much more than breakfast—in a funny tale rich in details with a sweet final twist.”

  After the book is published, I begin hearing fun stories from teachers who read the book to their class, then the next day all the first-graders run around the classroom exclaiming, “¡Caramba! Sacré bleu! Great balls of fire!”

  Our dear Oliver died a few years later, and we were heartbroken. We adopted little Maisie and Eddie Velvet. Unfortunately, Eddie was a roamer, and after we’d totally fallen for him, one day a year later he never returned home. Pumpkin and Maisie remain, and Maisie has learned the same lesson about baby poultry as Oliver and Pumpkin did. Paws off. She knows sparrows and mice are fair game, however, so she stalks them daily.

  Because she loves us, and is a good provider, Maisie often shares her kill, leaving the only part of the mouse she doesn’t eat on our front step. I’ve yet to come up with an idea for a children’s book about these green, kidney-bean-sized large intestines, but perhaps one day my muse will return.

  The Farmer’s Wife

  I love being married. It’s so great to find that special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

  —RITA RUDNER

  Women have farmed for millennia. Social scientists believe that when humans first made the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, it was women who discovered how to domesticate and cultivate plants. Women have farmed alongside men for centuries on all continents and, in many countries, they still do. It was not until the industrialization of agriculture that women were shifted from being farmers to being farmers’ wives.

  According to the USDA Census of Agriculture, women are rediscovering their roots. Women farmers increased by 30 percent between 2002 and 2007, so now more than one in every ten U.S. farms is run by a woman. This is great. Unfortunately, on those farms “run” by men, many are actually run by both spouses, yet the man is the farmer, and the woman is the farmer’s wife.

  I’ve never aspired to be either a farmer or a wife; basically since I was nineteen, I never expected to be able to legally marry the person I loved. Although I call myself a farmer, Melissa is definitely the primary farmer and I’m the backup farmer. As for me fitting the old-fashioned stereotype of the “farmer’s wife,” well, not really. I don’t can fruit and vegetables or make quilts, and I can’t stand to weed, which is sort of a requirement if you’re going to garden. I can make a mean batch of strawberry-rhubarb freezer jam, but that’s about it. I’m happy to hang out laundry, as long as it’s not too cold or windy.

  A gazillion years after my realization at nineteen that I would never marry, the world has changed. It’s now possible for me to not only be a farmer, but to also be a farmer’s wife.

  There isn’t a deeply romantic moment when one of us kneels before the other and whips out a diamond ring. After this many years together, surprises are rare. In fact, when California legalizes marriage for everyone, and I look at her and say, “What do you think?” Melissa’s response is something like a shrug, and “I don’t think we need to do that.” Perhaps we should have been more creative, like the guy in Yorkshire who proposed to his girlfriend by spelling out “Will you marry me?” in sheep. Of course, he first “wrote” the question in corn on the ground, then let his sheep eat the corn.

  Three months later Melissa turns to me and says, “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I’d like to get married.”

  When I tell my straight friends I’m getting marrie
d, most are so happy they choke up. When I tell my gay friends, some are wildly happy for me, but I can tell others wonder what my choice means for their lives. And when I tell my parents and sister, I once again drag them into uncharted territory. Why enter into a marriage that will only be legal in a handful of states? How does one celebrate this event? What traditions of the legal-in-all-fifty-states marriage are appropriate and which should be rejected?

  Melissa and I will fly to California. San Francisco City Hall will take care of the ceremony, but beyond that, what do I want? One tradition of marriage I reject immediately is the bridal registry. But my stepsister keeps at me until I cave and register at www.macys.com. The Web site recommends I choose 150 items for the celebration party we’ve planned, yet I’m appalled at the prices and feel weird picking out my own gifts. I choose seventeen items and stop. Since I’m not telling anyone I’ve registered, seventeen should be plenty.

  Although I don’t want a fancy white dress and veil, I do want flowers in my hands. I call a charming San Francisco florist and order six bouquets of white lilies for me, Melissa, and the four California friends who’ll be with us.

  The night before we leave for San Francisco, I talk with a friend about marriage. We agree it’s silly when people expect to feel differently about a relationship because a judge says some words. Melissa and I have made it this long without a marriage license, thank you very much. Getting married won’t change anything.

  But when Melissa and I step into the San Francisco City Hall, with its grand marble staircase and soaring ceilings, something happens. I realize for the first time the significance of what I’m about to do. I’m going to publicly declare my love and commitment to another person. We are legally joining our lives together. A man and woman are being married in the rotunda at the top of the grand staircase, which chokes me up. Twenty minutes later two men exchange vows, and I get another lump in my throat. After another couple marries, I take Melissa aside. “I think I’m going to cry during our ceremony.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says, patting my hand.

  Turns out we both do, but we also manage to squeak out “I do” when asked. And then we are done. We are married. I feel light and insanely happy all that day. In fact, for our entire stay in California, I feel light and insanely happy. I wonder about the source of this feeling—security? recognition? affirmation?—but I know full well that when we return to our farm in Minnesota, this amazing, giddy feeling will fade. But it doesn’t. Melissa feels it, too. For some people, marriage does change how you feel. Suddenly I’m angry at the world for denying me this feeling for so many years.

  A package shows up on our doorstep, a gift chosen from my macys.com registry. Cool. Perhaps I’d been too hasty in damning the registry idea. I could get used to gifts spontaneously appearing. In fact, I wonder if I can combine the state-by-state extension of marriage rights with the whole bridal registry thing. Each time a state legalizes my marriage, it will be like getting married again. I’ll send out e-mail notices: “We’re now legal in Alabama. Hurrah! We’re registered at macys.com.” The stream of gifts should last for years.

  But then the people of California pass Proposition 8 and my marriage to Melissa enters the Twilight Zone. Eventually the California Supreme Court decides that Proposition 8 will stand, but so, too, will the legality of the 18,000 marriages that took place before it passed.

  What a relief. Now I won’t have to give the wedding gifts back.

  We settle into married life, which is, of course, no different than our life before we stood in the marble rotunda and recited our vows. But we do feel different. Perhaps that’s why I’ve decided that it’s not only okay to be a farmer, but it’s also okay to be a farmer’s wife.

  Just Ducky

  I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  Although our farm may be built around sheep, other animals always seem to work their way into our lives. The llamas have a job to do, so they support themselves. The beef steers are here to be raised as meat, so they make sense, and the chickens lay eggs, so they’re an obvious choice as well.

  But the peacocks? The little golden pheasants? The ducks? Melissa has always had a weakness for birds. We got rid of our two peacocks because they were defecating on my car. Melissa missed them so much she built a thirty-by-twenty-foot pen with room for them to fly up on perches, and the peacocks were back. They did a little too much breeding, however, and soon the pen was full. Melissa eventually found the peacocks new homes. The old guy, Ben, remains, as do the pheasants to keep him company.

  The golden pheasants are sweet, and they make soft chittering sounds when you enter the pen. Pharoah is yellow and blue and green and ruby—a dramatic splash of color in the grass. Trixie is the female, a demure mottled brown. Life is about to get very confusing for both, however, as after her most recent molt, Trixie’s feathers are growing back as if she were a male. She’s beautiful, but still, it’s a little freaky.

  Ducks aren’t on our farm for profit. They’re here because Melissa adores them, and because baby ducklings are funny little peeping balls that enliven the barnyard. The comings and goings of ducks from this farm, both planned and unplanned, illustrate the revolving door that operates, on a much larger scale, for a farm’s livestock. We’ve had many more sheep and goats than anyone wants to track without a computer program, but the duck numbers are a little more manageable.

  Although some years, it doesn’t feel that way. Mama Duck and Mr. Duck make batch after batch of babies, and Mama Duck keeps every single one of them safe with her fierce posture and angry hissing. Both techniques convince me to keep my distance, as does the memory of her incredibly strong bill clamped onto my knee.

  Then one day Mama Duck disappears. Just gone. She wouldn’t have wandered far from the barn, so something took her. Melissa is stunned. Even I miss Mama Duck.

  Melissa keeps one of her offspring and names her Daphne. Daphne and Mr. Duck have many ducklings over the years. Melissa sells most of the ducks to Harry’s Chicken Ranch. Harry is sort of a poultry broker. But one fall when the elderly man becomes ill and stops dealing poultry for a while, the current batch of ducklings grows into adults. Soon most are nearly as large as Mr. Duck himself.

  This bunch is rowdy. They begin going on long-distance walks, terrorizing the neighborhood. We start getting calls. “I just passed a bunch of ducks walking down the road. Might be yours,” says one neighbor. I walk down the long driveway and herd them home.

  “There are some ducks in our lawn,” says another neighbor farther down the road. “They might be yours.” Melissa drives down there, but by now the ducks are all strong flyers, so they take off for home. Then a third neighbor calls, reporting the ducks are on her driveway, the farthest they’ve traveled. “They might be yours,” she says.

  I’m walking to the mailbox anyway, so I just keep going and find the ducks. I say, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be here.” The ducks perform their awkward running takeoff and soar over my head.

  All except one. He either hasn’t figured it out or is just too tired to get his carcass off the ground. I can relate. Still, I can’t just leave the guy to find his way home alone, so I escort him back. Even a duck in a big hurry moves slowly, so what should be a tenminute walk home becomes thirty-five. We have a nice chat, though, so the time passes pleasantly. As we stroll, I decide there is nothing so endearing as the backside of a Muscovy duck patiently waddling homeward.

  Melissa keeps three females from another batch and names them Veronica, Chloe, and Helen. She still has Ping II, the duck she raised by hand. Sadly, eventually Daphne disappears. There are many benefits to free-range poultry, but safety from predators isn’t one of them.

  Then one day I find Molly, our hunting dog, chewing on Ping in the backyard. The duck wandered into the Dog Zone and Molly killed him.

  The next year, we sell Chloe to Harry because we’re sick of her attitude. She sits on the nest just fi
ne, hatches her eggs, but then is either unwilling, or unable, to keep track of her babies. Many of them disappear.

  At least we still have Veronica and Helen. Then a predator, probably a weasel, kills Veronica near the driveway but finds her too heavy to carry away. Mr. Duck, now quite elderly, falls ill and dies.

  We’re down to Helen, a white duck with black wing tips. Melissa worries she’s lonely, but in inimitable duck fashion, Helen stays busy eating grasshoppers and earthworms out of Melissa’s hand, patrolling the barnyard, and taking noisy baths every day.

  Naming the peacocks and the golden pheasants and the ducks (and the llamas and the rams and the roosters) soon proves too much for even me, and my principles collapse under the weight of all those names. We continue to sell all our bottle lambs, but one year we keep two for ourselves: an all-black lamb and an all-white one. We’re fascinated by the all-black girl, and Melissa likes the genetics of the all-white girl’s mother.

  I feed them four times a day, then three, then they’re old enough to live with the flock and add grass to their diet. The two of them hang out together because it takes them a while to really connect with the other sheep. To feed them, I walk out to the pasture and call “Hey, lambies.” In this context “lambies” isn’t really a name, but just a generic noun. Please note the use of the lower case. Anyway, after I shout this noun-that-isn’t-a-name, out from the flock shoot two little rockets, butts dropped low to increase their speed, each on fire to be the first to the bottle.