Day 15 and 16

Day 15.

Yesterday was my last real day of work. Today is technically my day off, but since I have nothing else to do but farm, I wake up and go about watering the plants and letting the goats out to eat things other than the tables I just sanded.

The pumpkin patch is looking really depressing. The cold temperature a few days ago has left most of the leaves black, and the vines brittle. To me, this means that they need a little extra TLC, so I kneel down next to one of the pumpkins to move some mulch away to water it better, and the whole thing just snaps off.

I find myself curious as to how I ever managed to keep my niece alive when I was watching her, seeing as how I can't even give water to a pumpkin without severing its body parts.

As I am contemplating these mysteries of the universe, I feel a prickle on the back of my neck and turn around to THIS.

"Dude, turn around, act like you don't see her."

Ohh, everyone thought I was paranoid, but I am not paranoid. These fuckers are following me. I start to worry that perhaps I have pissed off some turkey god that is exacting his revenge, but I do not even like turkey that much. Even at Thanksgiving. I would be much more understanding if it was the bacon god or the god of mashed potatoes, but neither of those things are following me around. Then I think perhaps the turkey god is mad that I am not eating ENOUGH turkey, but before I can follow that line of thought to completion, Lauren calls me back in for breakfast.

Today, I introduce everyone to the glory of gluten-free blueberry pancakes. Lauren is shocked at how much it tastes like a really good, really substantial pancake. If there is one silver lining in attaching oneself to a questionable exclusionary diet, it is exploring new and interesting options in cuisine. Lauren might never have discovered a heartier pancake, and I might never have discovered tuna fish.

That second part might be more detrimental than helpful, but damn if it isn't delicious.

The pancakes fill us with delight and wonder, and also nutrition. We are now ready for our trail ride! As it is my day off, I insinuated that I would have nothing to do in the hopes that someone would suggest trail ride. And wouldn't you know it, my subtle and cunning manipulation paid off, and Lauren offered to take me riding with the ponies. She did offer to let me go by myself, but I have no confidence that I would ever come back, be it from general being-lostness or general holy-shit-I'm-a-cowboy-now and then I'd turn up in Montana somewhere, having procured a dog and a drawl and a job herding cattle from the back of my 31-year-old Thoroughbred mare.

Taking a buddy just seems safer.

We strike out on the trail, which is actually the road, and we think about going up to the mountains, but Lauren mentions that one of the men who owns a 600-acre cattle ranch is baling hay nearby. That sounds awesome enough for me to suggest we go talk to him, which we do, and he offers to let us ride all over his land.

Like God telling me I won the life lottery.

I am thrilled. More than thrilled, I am exuberantly ecstatic. I get to ride all over a Utah range, and what makes it even better is that at one point, the owner's mother was dedicated to converting the ranch into an agrotourism business. Her plan was to make little cabins out of antique sheep campers and let people rent the space and then do whatever they wanted, whether it be riding, fishing in the creek, or running around like a crazy person in circles because it's the fucking country, who gives a shit?

For anyone not cool enough to know what a sheep camper it, it is this:

Oh hello, COOLEST THING EVER.

These are little campers that sheep herders would hitch their horses to so they could follow the sheep around while they grazed, and make sure that they did not get eaten by wolves or try to join the Occupy movement. Each camper has a place for a bed, a little wood-burning stove, and storage for whatever you would need to take with you. In short, my new life dream is to follow a herd of sheep in a sheep camper, playing the ukulele and tambourine at night, like a Persian gypsy who happens to own a bunch of sheep.

Alas, the mother's dream was not to be, because she moved to the city and her son does not like people. But their loss was my gain, because instead of a polished encampment where there were people celebrating honeymoons or giving into their Unabomber tendencies, there is only a hodgepodge of old Western cabins and knick knacks. I feel exactly like I have wandered into some pioneer's campsite, and any moment a man in denim and a cowboy hat will come ask me if they've been annexed yet, and whether the railroad is going to make it as far as Utah.

"And how is the Indian massacre going?"

I wish not for the first time that there was a 'capture the entire feeling of this moment' setting on my camera, but I imagine that if that were invented, robots would run the world so I am content with just taking this picture instead.

I like the can that says 'Can' on it.

Lauren and I share a couple ciders, and then we mount up and turn back for home. It pains me to do so, because I think that I could stay in this spot forever, fixing up my little sheep camper and never having to be beholden to anything except the amount of cows I can poach from the property I am squatting on.

 And how fast I can drive the fence.

Lauren points out that I do not even have a gun, which would probably be necessary to realize my dream, and I curse her for the very correct person that she is.

Select mode: American.

Since this is America and not having a gun is pretty much a crime, we go back home and shoot shotguns. There is no good reason for this, we are just on a farm and have nothing better to do. We don't have clay pigeons or anything good to shoot at either, so we mostly just throw strips of leather into the air and try to hit them through some miracle of fate. Not being Annie Oakley or anyone remotely good at doing things like this, I pretty much am just firing a gun into the air Yosemite Sam-style. You know, the way guns were intended to be used.

I mitigate this rustically violent act with baby goats. The No Name Twins have names now! They are Castor and Pollux, which feels a little adult for them, but they will grow into it. Castor is the little goat who loves me so much that he lets me do things like this:

Of course, immediately afterward, he goes crying for his mom, so I dunno.

I spend the rest of the night inside after the goats go to bed. I can feel that it is getting time to leave, and I hate that feeling. I read articles about the French Revolution to console me that leaving a farm is not the worst thing that could happen to me.

That cloud could be a guillotine.

Still, it feels pretty close. 

MEET THE PONIES: Coco and Color Me Ruby

Coco is an old pony, as I have mentioned, but I did not mention that she was basically on her way out when she got to Planet Goat. She has a sebaceous gland problem, and apparently sweat is something that kills ponies, or there were other problems, I don't know. Either way, Lauren rehabilitated her and now she is a lovely pony with way too much energy for an old animal. Trotting on her is like gliding on air.

Ruby has similar circumstances. She came from a neighboring farm, where the owners bought her because they wanted a pretty, registered paint pony. Then they realized that she was a fidgety, spoiled pony who was no good as a riding horse. She has a lot of bad habits that Lauren says would have developed into sending her straight to the glue factory. After a week and a half, those habits are slowly dwindling due to the proper care she is receiving. She is a puppy pony and will follow you around the yard and always come up looking for treats.

"I'm pretty sure she's watching us again."

Day 16. 

There is nothing to say about my last day on the farm. I am not one for goodbyes, so I refuse to go around petting all the cute animals I will never see again.

I leave the farm in the only fashion I know: destroying everything before it gets me first.

It's pretty effective. 

And finally, time to go pick up Dan from the airport and traipse through Zion and Bryce Canyon, and hope he still loves me even though I smell like a goat.

Day 14

I wake up at 7am, because I have been here long enough to start doing things like wake up on time for work. Granted, I am still the first one awake every day, and the first one outside to do things. So I really have no reason to wake up at 7am other than the fact that that seems like a time that people wake up to work on farms. I would wake up before dawn, but we do not have any cows to milk.

Even at 7am, it is hot. Already in the 70s, which means it is going to be annoyingly hot today. I am not a fan of extreme temperatures. I think my ideal location would be in an old folks' home in Southern California, but then I would be living in Southern California, and would kill myself. I resign myself to the fact that I am in Utah and it is going to be in the 90s and there will be no games of bridge.

I go to water the plants, and have a day just like any other.

"Whatcha doin', bitch, watering plants? WELL TAKE THIS."

The Dickhole Twins strike again, and stand outside the garden, fluffing up at me. Seriously, I have done nothing to them this morning, but they have clearly spoken to their turkey father and follow in his footsteps of just standing near me and annoying the shit out of me. I consider purchasing them from Lauren so that I can take them out back and shoot them.

Instead, I take care of all the plants. I use that term loosely because every time I water something, I have the distinct feeling that rather than providing it with nourishing elements, I am just murdering it slowly. I cannot put my finger on the reason why I feel this way, but it is probably because everything I have planted thus far has died a violent plant death.

A few days back, I made fun of Odysseus for being the laziest goat. I walk to the sunny side of the yard and see something that makes me take it back.

"Are we dead? I think we're dead."

The rising temperature has an inverse relationship with how vertical the goats are. They spend much of the day like this. Even Pan and Pandora are not immune.

Heat oppression does not affect all goats equally, however.

"Don't do work, pet me instead."

The little baby goat makes a compelling case, and I take a break from being hot to pet him for a long time. It is hard to say no to a baby goat, with their little triangle heads and devil eyes. There is also the worry that you are insulting Lucifer himself if you deny his creatures their due. Also they are cute. Look at their little noses!

After the rigorous goat-petting, I return to the house for breakfast. Lauren is a master of cooking eggs in things that are not just butter, and today she fries them in tequila and tops them with the precise amount of bacon I usually serve myself, i.e. a third of the package. Truly, this is the promised land.

Then it is time to start helping make the farm look a little bit more like the agrotourism business that it is. This starts with hanging up the Utah's Own sign that Lauren has just received in the mail. We contemplate where to put it, because it is so little that on the big red barn, it looks like a weird black stain instead of a sign denoting sustainable farming practices. I recommend that we take the Goat Crossing sign from the other side of the barn and put it next to this new sign so that it looks more put together.

"Great idea!" Lauren replies enthusiastically. "That's your new job."

Let this be a lesson to everyone: do not supply useful information unless you are prepared to execute it. 

In the noontime sun, this easy task becomes hellish. Mostly because I do not understand how to use drills, and the bane of my existence has always been figuring out how to remove drill bits. Why is there not a universal way to remove drill bits? Some screw out, some pop out, some have to be sledgehammered in a violent rage and returned to the store under the "It was broken when I got it" warranty. I eventually cave and ask Lauren the secret to her drills, which she gives me, because they are not secrets so much as common knowledge that I lack. Either way, I make the barn pretty.

Someone call the MOMA.

Since I have proven that I have something of a prodigy-esque proficiency with signs, Lauren gives me what she deems an easy job, which is to fill in the Planet Goat sign with permanent pen. On any other day, this would, in fact, be an easy job. But it is hitting the 90s, and standing in the sun in any way shape or form is the worst. I consider forming a union consisting of myself and waging a worker's strike, but Lauren is repairing a fence next to me in the same heat, and her job involves a lot of hammers and hinges, and my job involves making sure I don't color outside the lines.

Harder than it looks.

Since I have had all the easy jobs today, Lauren helps me with my quest to be a hardened farm worker by giving me the task of scraping all the bird poop off the tables in the barn and washing them down with the hose. After being out in the sun, anything sounds better than slowly turning into a shriveled brown husk of dehydrated Persian, including, but not limited to, scraping bird poop off of tables.

Besides, once I am done cleaning the bird poop, I get to play with power tools! I have to sand down the rough edges of the tables, and I take to sanding with a weird delight reserved only for people who have found their true calling, of which sanding is not mine, because Lauren takes the job away from me after she discerns that I am just sanding EVERYTHING, instead of actually sanding the spots that need the most help.

THEY ALL NEED HELP. 

But it frees me up to move on to the next thing, which is riding the ponies. The best part about living on a farm with ponies is that they are like oversized dogs with soulful eyes that can see into your heart and straight through to the eternity beyond. So when I go to wrangle the ponies, I am met with this face:

"Is it time to do things? I love things!"

Since I have bought another saddle pad, we finally have enough gear to take both of the ponies out together. Lauren and I have been impressed with how quickly Coco and Ruby took to each other, but the ride makes it evident that they are...just a little bit in love with each other. They are in pony love, and hate to ride nose to tail, but only like riding side by side. They also hate being separated. This is a problem because Coco is an old pony, and every day needs to go into the barn to eat her special old folks dinner of grain, senior pony chow, and anti-inflammatory powder, which is the equivalent of a bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with Metamucil. I expect her to start wearing big floppy hats soon and talk about today's degenerate youths.

Whenever I take Coco into the barn, Ruby gets incredibly distraught and prances around calling out for her new best friend.

It is so cute to watch that I did not even notice I filmed a goat's asshole for like an entire minute. I cannot unsee that now.

In addition to making a lot of noise, she stands with her face pressed up against the barn door, hoping to be able to catch a glimpse of whatever Coco is doing inside. The second Coco is done eating, she presses her face up against the glass too.

This picture is like one of those Magic Eye things where you have to spot the second pony.

And of course, once you open the barn door, there is the joyous reunion where they pony kiss and make sure the other one is not dead.

Let's see the government try to stop this marriage.

As if I did not know it, this further solidifies that I want a pony. And then two ponies. AND THEN ALL THE PONIES.

I wonder how my landlord feels about livestock in the yard.

I spend the rest of the day watching the baby goats frolic around and play King of the Mountain on various surfaces.

Then I play the ukulele until the sun goes down and the goats all go to bed. As it is one of my last nights in Rush Valley, I feel that I must cherish the beautiful open space, but it starts getting cold and a bug bites my ear so I go inside and cherish it via Netflix, like the country person that I am.

GOAT OF THE DAY: Diotime

Diotime is the mother of Arjuna and Siddhartha. Her life is spent calling all the baby goats back to the herd and trying to make sure they are not dead or in a situation which would cause them to be dead. Her nickname is Squirrel because she is a total weirdo, like squirrels are.

The mammy of the goat herd.

Day 13

It is time to talk about the turkey poults.

It is a well-documented fact that I hate the big male turkey on this farm. He stands around fluffing his dumb feathers any time I am outside. But more than him, I hate his offspring.

The Dickhole Twins.

These poults follow me. That is not paranoia. THEY ARE FOLLOWING ME EVERYWHERE. I go to water the garden, there they are. I go to water the pumpkins, THERE THEY ARE. And they are total assholes about it too. I will leave the gate slightly ajar, and they will come right in. I have tried to think of ways to deter them from following me into places they are not allowed. I have kicked them in the tail feathers, sprayed them with the hose, and made wildly unattractive flapping motions with my arms while going, "Caw! Caw! Fucking caw, get the fuck out of here you poult bastards!" 

And nothing. Not only have they not left me alone, they have started being more aggressive. Now, instead of just one big turkey fluffing feathers at me, I have these two little shits fluffing their feathers too. It is effrontery of the gravest kind, and there is something seriously disturbing about it. I feel like I am back in middle school, and some kids are following me around making fun of me, but I do not know what they are saying, because they are turkeys, THEY ARE TURKEYS GOOD GOD LEAVE ME ALONE YOU TURKEY TWATS!

 

My point being, the first thing I do today is water the plants.

 

I had made up my mind to never talk to the squash again, because they were mean to me and did not offer proof that I am the most amazing garden grower to ever grow a garden, which is ridiculous, because I am amazing at everything. Unfortunately, my vow is short-lived, because I have to go water them. At least I have my one good squash to console me.

 

NOOOOOOOO!

 

Why can I have nothing good in this life? Honestly. The one good squash that I planted and that actually looked like squash instead of the scrotum of Prince Charles, and it gets scratched up by chickens. The chickens are lucky that this is not my farm, because if it were, it would be less of a farm and more a historical site of the Great Chicken Genocide of 2014. People would come from all over and ask, "What happened here?" and there would be a person who would look grave and say, "The chickens fucked up."

My spirit is defeated, so I figure it is a good time to take a break and play with all the animals.

"How did you know I trade my affection for bribes?"

I force feed Ruby and Coco apples so that they will love me even more than they already do, and it works well because ponies love apples like I love ponies. Basically a lot. 

 

Then I turn my attention to the goats. Only, this is going on, so I immediately rescind all my attention from the goats, because it seems like I have walked in on some weird goat chant that I should not listen to.

 Baa ram ewe.

The only goat I give attention to is little Siddhartha, because he is not being weird, he is just making this face, and that is okay in my book.

But if he starts grunting, I'm out.

Next up is probably one of the worst jobs I have had on the farm thus far. Lauren wants to lay some rubber mats down in one of the stalls in the barn and turn it into a classroom where she can teach people about goats, orienteering, and why her life is much better than theirs. I am all for that idea, but given that this is a sustainable, she wants to requisition some of the mats she already has. The trouble is, they look like this:

 

Picked this up at the flea market over in Hell.

 

 
I cut 13' off of that mat, which is essentially a big flat tire. In the 87 degree heat, it is a big flat tire that gains sadistic glee from punishing me with reflected hotness. To make the whole picture better, the implement that Lauren gives me to cut through the mat is...a small, serrated kitchen knife.

While I admire her craftiness in procuring tools to get jobs done, she is not the one cutting through this mat of hell. At many points, I ponder if it would be easier to just stab the mat repeatedly and tell her that I am sorry, but I accidentally mutilated it and there is no point to cut through it. But that seems like more energy that just cutting it, so I finish in record time because I hate the mat so much I want to get away from it as quickly as possible.

Don't rest in peace, assholes.

 

We leave the barn after making the glorious floor you see above, and I rub my arms, which have no feeling in them because I have burned my hands pulling hot rubber all the way across the farm. Insanely heavy hot rubber. Offhandedly, I ask Lauren if she has ever considered using her big fat goats to haul shit across the farm. You know, just in case there was ever a job like that. 

 

She replies, "Funny you mention it, that's exactly what we're doing next!" I congratulate myself on being psychic. I do not have time to think about how to use my newfound powers for evil though, because before I know it, we have Ajax saddled up.

"Are we doing something fun? Guys?"

Ajax does not know what horrific exercises in lack of humanity we are about to visit on him. He is a fat goat, and needs to work that fatness off, so we attach him to a piece of fence to use as a harrowing tool out in the pasture. Harrowing flattens the fields and tills a bit too, an important job that is just the thing for a fat goat that has blubber spilling over the straps of the saddle.

It goes okay.

Ajax does not like the piece of fence trailing his butt. He runs like a maniac across the pasture, and the other goats shun him for the fence-ridden leper that he is. It is comically tragic, watching this big fat goat trying to run as fast as the herd, his blubber rippling in the wind, trying desperately to join a herd that is avoiding him like he is a hooker with herpes, bleating at the top of his lungs as if to say, "GUYS! GUYS PLEASE HELP! PLEASE I AM JUST LIKE YOU!"

He settles into it eventually, due entirely to the fact that he is so exhausted that he cannot run anymore, but just dejectedly walk around with the torture fence bumping along behind him. At that point, we take the harrowing thing off, and not a moment too soon, because as exhausting as it has been for Ajax, it has been equally exhausting for me. Just getting the thing on him took all my goat-wrestling skills, and then my goat-chasing skills, and then my goat-cursing skills. Thankfully they are all well-honed.

Now that we are done with Ajax, though, it is time for me to go into town to buy ammo and a saddle pad. I feel suitably country in my quest. When I get to town, everyone is talking about the snow that fell the other day. It is, literally, the talk of the town. At one point, someone mentions the snow to me, and I respond, "Oh it was crazy, we were having trouble with drought, now our crops have to worry about frost too." And the person nodded and agreed, as if I had any idea of what I was talking about.

Country Small Talk Achievement unlocked. Fuck yeah.

When I get home, I go inside to drop off my haul, and see this right inside the door.

"Could you give us some space, we're trying to have a moment here."

The cat knows that she is not allowed in with the chicks, but this turkey was the only one to hatch out of the last round of eggs, and he is lonely. So the cat is keeping him company. The turkey baby is still too cute for me to loathe with the vehemence that I reserve for his older brethren, and also, there is a cat hanging out with him, so it is just too much cuteness for me to feel anything except warmth. Then I realize I am standing too close to the heat lamp and go back outside to ride Coco for a while.

By 6pm, it becomes apparent that I did a lot of physical labor today. I am incredibly tired, and being so tired, I decide to just document animals.

"Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?"

"Dude, you have no idea."

And to end the day, I decide to invent a first-person shooter game, only instead of shooting people, you will get points for petting ponies. This is what it would probably look like:

 

 

GOAT OF THE DAY: Pandora

 

This is Pan's sister. She does not like anything. Seriously, she is the most skittish and shy little goat, and she mostly just likes crying for her mom.

 

 "You're not my mom..."

Day 12

My time grows short on the farm, which means that the hard jobs are really coming out. Being the young strapping thing that I am, there is a lot of work that these muscley arms can get done, and by gum, that work will be completed.

We start off with sprucing up the garden and making it look less like the shit hole that the high tunnel was intent on turning it into. I start in on some light weeding.

That turns into heavier weeding.

Eventually I am a weeding machine. I at some point decide that I hate all the weeds in the garden, and I will murder them with my bare hands. While I have previously solidified my existence as a non-psychopath due to not wanting to harm animals, I wonder if there is some sort of psychological problems that manifests in wanting to destroy nature. I do not wonder very hard though, because there are plants to kill.

I feel very sustainable and organic today because every plant that I dig up, I feed to the pigs. The Lion King's 'Circle of Life' plays in my head. I am happy that the pigs can eat my vegetative enemies. It is only fitting, since I have been dining on nothing but from-the-farm pork sausages recently. I think the pig's name was Venus. She was friends with these pigs. I do not tell them this.

 "So you want me to get fat and then...what happens again?"

Lauren asks me when I plan on being done weeding, and instead of telling her the truth (NEVER!), I cede that perhaps I am done now. She gives me a few pieces of spare lumber to denote the beds, but my love of lines gets the best of me and the beds end up like this:

Beautiful.

Then it is on to cleaning up what Lauren and Ed call The Boneyard. I am disappointed at the lack of bones, but there are plenty of thistles.
Motherfucking thistle. Let's talk about thistle. Thistle is a useless plant that has giant leaves that will stab you right in the leg just because you're trying to dislodge it from the earth. Nothing likes thistle. Other thistle doesn't even like thistle. Thistle is the bitchy girl with braces who offers to blow you and you're reluctantly like, "Okay..." and then you wake up in the hospital and your penis is gone. Thistle is an asshole.

Naturally, I spend my whole day with it.

 

Fuck nature.

 

I remove all the thistle from The Boneyard, and figure that is that, but Lauren points to another thistle across the yard.

"Could you get that one too?" Sure, I think, no problem. I just mutilated about twenty of those spiny bastards, so one more couldn't hurt.

My stupidity is solidified when I approach the final thistle. It is a behemoth, a monster thistle from which all other thistle sprang forth. It is the Zeus of thistle. Hot, sweaty and tired, I have no desire to fight with this kraken plant, but being the indentured servant that I am, I have no choice in the matter. 

 

 Is it cool if I just burn it down?

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin with this thing. I stare at it for a bit and then poke it with the spade, but my efforts produce nothing. So I start cutting off the leaves with the shovel, hoping to get some clarity on my horrible dilemma, but all it elucidates is that this plant sucks. I dig at the root, and dig at the root, and dig some fucking more until I get the satisfying feeling that the thistle is going to come up. I pull hard and!

The fucker rips in half. Seriously, right down the center of the stalk. I hate this thistle. I hate it with my whole being. I stab the spade into the ground again and pull up the rest of this asshole vegetation, and throw it over the fence.

Immediately, the goats all come to see what I am up to. Lauren said that goats do not like thistle, but they start to nibble, and then full on nom the shit out of the thing. It is a beautiful, cathartic moment. I feel like Genghis Khan routing my enemies from their homeland, and then they get eaten.

 

Victory is delicious.

 

The goats have helped me vanquish my enemy, which means it is time to repay them in kind by giving them torturous nail trimmings. Given that the ground has been wet, this means their hooves will be nice and soft and good for cutting. Ambitious Roxanne decides to fuck over Future Roxanne and trim a bunch of hooves. I get through three goats before Future Roxanne comes back in time and punches Ambitious Roxanne in the face.

The punch lands me right in bed, where I take a nap. It is a much needed nap, because the day is hot and long, and I have a pony to ride.

Today, I am committed to jumping Coco. She may not like it, but having shed my previous dislike of making girls cry from the day before, I am ready to do things she does not enjoy.

We warm up, and then queue up for the jump. We canter towards it, take the first jump, and then--

She pulls off to the right and avoids it completely.

NOT TODAY, PONY!

Under Lauren's tutelage, I wrangle the pony into doing my bidding. I hold her left rein tight, and make it evident that there is no way she is getting away with trying to buffalo me again. We queue up, run to the jump, she feints right, and I pull left...

Clearing Mt. Everest over here.

I'M JUMPING ON PONIES!

Well, not literally jumping ON the pony. But I am jumping with ponies! Coco cedes defeat at tricking me out of jumping, and we spend the whole afternoon learning to ride together. By the end of the day, she is fully trusting of me on her back, which is not something I would have said twelve days ago.

Lauren compliments me on my progress, and says that I seem to have a natural affinity with ponies. It is the best thing anyone has ever said to me. I try not to die of happiness, but it is a near thing. Coco and I then ride around for an hour, alternating between running hell-for-leather across the pasture and then just walking around like we will never have another responsibility in our lives.

Eventually we must return to life, though, and I take her to the barn to feed her her medicine. I sit in contentment, delighted in the afternoon, not even remembering how much I hate thistle.

And then I see her.

For the two weeks I have been here, there has been a, shall we say, rogue chicken. She is a Cornish hen, and according to Lauren and Ed, she is basically feral. They have been trying to catch her for ages because she is big and beautiful and will make lovely chicken babies, but the bitchy bird that she is, she remains elusive.

Now here I sit, in the barn, and she is there. With four walls around her.

I poke my head out of the barn and ask Lauren to hand me a net. What follows next is one of the silliest moments of my life. I consider marketing chicken-chasing as a cure for depression, because you cannot take yourself seriously or not laugh your ass off when you are trying to catch a chicken. It is an absurd endeavor. I chase the hen into a corner, trying to bop her on the head with the net to catch her, but she evades and runs faster than Usain Bolt on PCP. I chase her all around the barn, and then suddenly, I lose sight of her.

I am upset, thinking she got out of the barn. But I have been too vigilant. I blocked all the exits.

She is in here.

I tiptoe around the barn, checking through the window of each stall, but I only see the smaller hens scratching for bugs. No big fat red Cornish. I refuse to be outsmarted. I pick a stall, and go in, creeping up to a small wooden box. I see a small black hen hunkered down, and trying to hide under her, the Cornish.

It becomes a game of air hockey, where I hold the net over the top of the box and slide it quickly back and forth, only instead of trying to repel a puck, I'm trying to capture a chicken. Realizing she is cornered, she dives for a hole in the hay bales. I panic, thinking she will escape, and throw the net away and snatch her by the leg.

The moment I grab her, she seems to sag her shoulders in defeat. I add the count of enemies destroyed today: 21 thistle, 2309482304 weeds, 1 chicken.

It is a Good Day.

Lauren and Ed are astounded that I have caught her. I can actually feel myself rising in esteem. Instead of being a worthless city girl, I am the Catcher of the Rogue Chicken. I make plans to have that added to my birth certificate. The people must know.

I take my rightful place as hero of the farm, and we sit outside for hours, because it is a perfect afternoon with just the right amount of sun and breeze. Ruby comes over to congratulate me on my victory as The Most Awesome Person Ever.

 Bestiiiiiieeeessss!

My goal at the farm was to be best friends with all the ponies, and it only took twelve days and six apples to achieve my goal. SUCK ON THAT, LONG-TERM GOALS! 

I guess I can die now.

Already in heaven.

GOAT OF THE DAY: Odysseus

Odysseus really just doesn't give a fuck. I have not seen this goat do anything that could be construed as 'active.' He is the goat I most frequently find in this position. In fact, he is the only goat I find in this position. I doubt he will be embarking on any major quests that take him across the ocean any time soon.

 

"A little busy here."

 

Day 11

The day starts off ominously.

That pony is plotting something, I can tell.

Not in the "Oh god we're all going to die" way, but more in the "oh look, clouds" way. So not ominous at all. Mostly just cloudy.

But there is a feeling to the air like it is going to rain. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that it is raining. Just a light drizzle, but the arid desert is now being pelted with life-giving water. Lauren is ecstatic, because this means that they are out of the drought that they have been in, and that the pastures will grow some grass that the goats can eat, and maybe the damn squash will live.

I do not comment on the plight of the squash. We have broken up. 

 

Since it is raining, there is no need for me to water anything, so I ignore the squash completely and make my way to the garden. Lauren is going into town today, which means I am on my own, so she sets me a few tasks that she knows I can complete well, but will also take enough time that she can be certain I am not just sitting on a stump somewhere telling Facebook how I am totally farming right now.

Given that proficiency is digging holes and putting poop in said holes, she tasks me with finishing digging a trench in the garden and securing the rest of the trellises, and then digging little trenches. Just like the other day, only in other parts. This suits me just fine. It has started to rain, and I am feeling tranquil and sedate. I am a perfect digging machine, with no thoughts other than turning over dirt. I wish that someone would hitch a plow to me so I could walk around all day just turning over the earth.

My one true calling.

 

I am an insane amount of productivity this morning. I dig three trenches (filled with manure, naturally), and install two fence posts, all before noon. By the time I am finished with my work, I am starting to realize that I am cold. Like, really cold. And wet. The temperature was actually warmer in the morning, and as the day goes on, it is dropping, and the rain and wind are picking up. My jacket is only water-resistant, and it is starting to get soaked. Lauren is still not home, so I consider this a good time to sit down and be a useless twat.

 

I go inside and Ed asks me why I have been slaving away out in the rain, when Lauren would never ask that I work in such conditions. I say that I am from Oregon, and we live in the rain. I neglect to add that when I am in Oregon, I would never be caught dead working in the rain. Working in the rain blows.

Immediately after I get in and take off my wet things and sit on the bed under a cozy warm blanket, Lauren calls from Tooele and asks if I wouldn't mind cleaning the barn office, aka The Room With The Cat. She is kind enough to think of a warm, inside job for me, but I already have a warm inside job, and that is keeping this bed from not being sat on. I remember that I am here for working, and fight my Oregon nature to crawl under the bed until it is warm again. I put on my muddy boots and tromp out to the barn office.

Lauren has instructed me to dust and clean The Room With The Cat. I am increasingly tickled by her devotion to keeping things neat. She is fastidious about her animals, making sure the horses are bathed nearly every day, and that the goats are brushed and hoof-trimmed. Apparently, this is a Strange Thing in this neck of the woods. I chalk it up to her being from Southern California. I do not think the patio is going to be clean, and I do not know how one dusts a room that is covered in dust with open windows through which more dust blows whenever there is a gentle breeze, or, much more likely, a goddamn gale force wind.

But I do appreciate her desire for cleanliness, so I start cleaning anyway.

Something up in this bitch is getting cleaned.

I move some things around halfheartedly. I am not entirely certain what she wants me to do. She mentioned cleaning up the things on the floor, but the things that are on the floor seem like they belong there. 

 

Do I arrange these alphabetically or what?

 

I begin to sweep, and then I catch the cleaning fever. I want everything to be clean. I want to dust the shelves and 409 the shit out of something. I consider arranging all her bags of feed alphabetically. This is a cautionary tale about not drinking copious amounts of Diet Coke.

I rein in my ambition to scrub everything when I notice that a lot of what is in the barn office is filled with spiderwebs. I have a pact with spiders: I don't bother them in their homes, they don't bother me in mine. If spiders come into my house, they get beaten with a shoe. Why no catch and release? Because they know what they did.

 

The Room With The Cat technically counts as people territory, but then I think it is actually cat territory. We have not negotiated any contingencies for third-party species. I figure the spiders have pretty much solidified their squatters' rights, so I let the dust and webs be.

 

Lauren returns from town, and she is delighted with the progress I have made on the office. This is clearly one of those situations where you see something so many times in one way, and then all of a sudden you see all the small changes that make it an entirely different thing, like when your ugly shitty girlfriend goes away on vacation and dies and you hook up with a hotter cooler girl in celebration. Whatever the case, Lauren is happy, so I am happy.

The only difference I see is my camera is dirty now.

She tells me to finish up what I am doing and then come inside because she is going to light a fire. I dink around a bit more in the office, and then I smell the wood burning, and I cannot resist the idea of a nice warm place. I put up the broom and walk out into the barn to this weird fucking scene.

"Join us, human."

The fire I was smelling was not from the house. Apparently there is a big metal barrel in the barn, like hobos have. And like hobos, the goats are huddled around it, less for warmth, and more to get stoned out of their damned gourds. Bleating fills the barn, but it is not the urgent calls that I am used to hearing. These are clearly maaaaahs that translate to, "Dude...what if, like, in another universe, we're the humans and they're the goats?"

Sure enough, I check their pupils and they are not the normal Satanic-looking goat pupil. They are all dilated into big round saucers, making the goats look almost human. It is deeply unsettling and I leave immediately.

 

True to her word, Lauren is lighting a fire. As for myself, using the power of Amazon, I have procured basmati rice and saffron in Utah, and I prepare to make loobia polo (Persian green bean rice) for dinner. This is shitty because:

 

a. I hate cooking.

b. It makes me want to die.

c. I don't like people watching me cook because it makes me nervous.

I have the exact same conversation with Lauren that I have had with so many people. No, I do not find it relaxing. No, I do not find it therapeutic. I find it stressful and annoying. Why are there so many steps in between me and my food? Why can't the food just be in me? She suggests I snack while I cook, but I do not want snacks, I want what I am cooking. It is the world's most frustrating and unfulfilling activity.

As I put the stew to simmer, she invites me to sit with her by the fire. I tell her that is impossible. Given that my legs and general body function seem to be in working order, she cannot fathom why I cannot walk the five steps into the den to sit next to the fire. I tell her it is less about mechanics and more about my cooking anxiety. I cannot leave the kitchen for fear that something will go wrong. She laughs at me and asks if I have ever heard the phrase 'a watched pot never boils.' I say absolutely, which is why I have my back to the stove.

She laughs even harder, and says in all her years, she has never met anyone with cooking anxiety. It is the strangest anxiety she has ever encountered. I have now made Top Two Worst Mistakes and Number One Weirdest Anxiety. I would pin a medal on myself for winning the Shittiest Things To Win contest, but I am too busy making sure my food does not try to become not food.

The loobia polo is actually a big hit with the two of them. Ed does not even like rice, but he likes this. Lauren is ecstatic that she gets to eat ethnic food in Rush Valley. As we eat, I regale them with tales of how Persians invented everything that is important, including goats. Lauren says I am like a bonus because having me around is like having a Middle Eastern exchange student. I tell her Persians invented exchange studenting. 

Thoroughly full and exhausted from the heightened anxiety of having to cook a meal, I turn in for the night and read a book about how to manage a small farm. It is from the 90s and tells me to not invest my time in a website, because no one knows how that technology is going to pan out. As I read, the sun starts to come out and show off what the dickhole clouds were up to all day.

Yo Utah, it's the middle of June, get your shit together.

 

"DON'T TELL ME HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE!

 

Snow. In the middle of June. Whatever, Utah, you guys are weird.

 

GOAT OF THE DAY: Ajax (with bonus picture of Siddhartha)

 

Ajax is a fat pack goat that literally has rolls of blubber that flutter like butterfly wings when he walks. You can slap his belly and it will roll like the ocean. He looks like his chubs will soon overtake the earth. He does not like carrying backpacks because you have to squeeze the straps around all of his fat, and then he looks like he has giant tumorfats hanging out of his armpits. It is grotesque and hysterical all at once.

"Take it from me, kid, you load up on treats and you'll get no respect at all."

Day 10

Ten days in and I am starting to feel absolutely exhausted. Pushing your body to the physical limit every day is, apparently, a tiring endeavor. Who knew?

Ruby only knows I have apples.

 

The first act of the day is to splash water on my face and ask myself when it will be time to sleep forever. The answer seems to be when I am dead, and not particularly being in a mood to die, I go to plant some seeds instead. 

 

Though I do not want to die, Lauren does seem to have a death wish for her plants, because there is no way I am doing this right. I dig a couple of narrow trenches, fill them up with poop, and then some dirt, and then dig more little trenches to sow the seeds. I feel like Johnny Appleseed, only instead of apple trees, I am growing beans and sunflowers. So probably more like Jack in the beanstalk story, but I do not feel like him, I feel like Johnny Appleseed.

 

Roxanne Beanandflowerseed.

I am excited to grow sunflowers, but I am sad because I realize I will not be around to witness the fruits of my efforts. That is the hardest part about helping out with the growing, is that I will not see any of it do any of the fun parts of having plants, namely being flowers or things that I can put in my mouth. Petting the goats is instant gratification, because they look all goat-happy and you know you did a Good Thing, but planting these seeds is like teaching an inner city kid how to read and then never talking to him ever again. Did he become president? A criminal? Die slowly because he wasn't planted low enough in the ground? It is all very stressful to consider.

 

Annuus.

 

All my beds made and trenches filled, I secure the trellises. I step back and decide that they have given some life to the dead shell of greenhouse. Like putting makeup on a corpse, the trellises make me feel slightly more comfortable. 

 

"Tell me I'm pretty!"

 

I move on to cleaning the patio. I KNEW IT WOULDN'T STAY CLEAN. But this time it is not poop I am after, oh no. The baby goats are getting older, and Merlin has been letting all the lady goats know that he is still available by doing a weird thing where he kind of cough-chokes, goes EEEUGGHHHHAAAMMAAAH with his tongue sticking out like he is having a stroke, and then pissing all over everything with his weird goatpiss smell.

 

Please believe me when I say it is...funky.

 

So I spray it off of the patio, the deck tables, the house. He is a thorough goat, but I am more thorough. Soon the patio is wafting with the fragrant scent of Utah hose water, and I grab Fugs to trim his hooves.

 

I quickly realize this is a stupid thing to do. Fugs has a weird club foot, and so after successfully trimming three of his feet, I get to the fourth, which is like a strange mess of sideways overgrown hoof. I try to break through the adamantium nail that he's got going on, but given that my clippers are not made out of equally hard imaginary metals, I am shit out of luck. Lauren brings out a jar of warm water, and we try to soak his hoof in it to soften the keratin beast, but unbeknownst to us, goats to not enjoy you jamming their feet into jars of water. It topples over like a 120-pound girl who just got hit with a goat, and we give up. Go forth, Fugly goat, and enjoy your one long hoofnail that is totally going to make the other goats think you do goat cocaine.

Now, for the past ten days, I have held my silence about a suspicious box that has been on Lauren's kitchen table, because it is not my place to ask about these sorts of things. It is not that the box itself was suspicious. It was just a normal white cardboard box, big enough to hold two decks of cards. No, it was the description that was suspicious. On the label it said "STD TATTOO KIT." 

I had been wondering and wondering what the hell this thing was all about. Not one to pry, I just assumed it was a kit for people who wanted to tattoo their STDs to themselves. I don't know. But I learn today that the kit is actually for tattooing codes on the goat ears for...some purpose. I forget to ask, because Lauren tells me that I have to hold the baby goats while she pierces their ears with an instrument that will burn with the pain of a thousand suns.

While I am all on board for the first part, that second bit sounds a bit unpleasant. But farm life is often unpleasant, so we decide to start with the most social and sweetest of the babies.

RUN, PAN! RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIFE!

I said run, bitch.

Pan does not, in fact, run away. He runs right up to me, and puts his cute little hooves on my legs like he will, and I scoop him up and hold him while Lauren prepares the torture device. Pan is perfectly delighted to be held, and he gives me little goat kisses. Then Lauren puts some green ink on his ear and presses down.

"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Pan yells out in pain, but thankfully it is short-lived. I let him go and he runs to his mother, and I am sad because I do not think he will love me anymore. This is a silly fear because immediately after he checks in with his mom, he comes back and gives my hand some more goat kisses. My conscience is soothed, and I am happy that the whole terrible ordeal is over with.

 

What's a little forced mutilation between friends?

 

"Okay, now we have to do his sister," Lauren says, loading up the tattoo clamp with new numbers.

Pandora is, shall we say, less friendly than her brother. She is a skittish little goat, and I honestly do not even know if I have pet her the entire time I have been here. She does not frequently hang out with Pan, or even her mom, Paula. So it is a little difficult to pick her out of a baby goat crowd, especially because she is nearly identical to one of the other baby goats.

I grab a baby and hope I've made the right choice (my preferred method of procuring children), but Lauren says, "I think the balls on that goat would imply he is not Pandora."

The one time in my life I didn't check, and it was when there was a test!

Oh well. Process of elimination says that if it is not the baby I chose, it is the other baby goat. Pandora is not an easy goat to catch, being nimble as a motherfucking deer and strong like a toddler. I catch a back hoof, and nearly get kicked in the face multiple times. It is adorable. I grab her other back foot and immobilize the poor goat, then take her to her horrible fate. Lauren cleans off her ear, applies some ink, and punches the needles in.

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Pandora wails. Seriously, there is no other word to describe it. For anyone who is not familiar with baby goats, they make cute little goat noises, sure, but they also have the uncanny ability to sound like human children. It is surely evidence that there is a sadistic deity governing our lives, because I cannot imagine why evolution would make this a biological imperative. Now I am sitting on a bench, holding a little goat, and hear a scream that would shatter the heart of Satan, and I am certain that I would never make a good serial killer because I have just now learned that I do not like holding small animals down and inflicting unreasonable pain on them, especially when they sound like toddlers.

Which means I'm not a psychopath! Yay!

"Mom, tell Dad to kill that person, pretty please?"

I release Pandora and she runs immediately to her mom, just like Pan. But unlike Pan, she does not come to offer me any forgiveness for what I did. I will be surprised if she even looks at me for the rest of my stay. Girls hold grudges a bit more firmly, it would seem.

 

Then it is time to make at least some of my efforts become something beautiful. We take the pieces of wood Ed chopped up with his chainsaw and turn them into this wondrous thing.

 

Professional quality, right there.

We construct a jump that literally blows over in a soft breeze. Given that I am not a fancy person who even knows anything about riding horses, that seems just about right for my level.

Coco and I warm up, and then it is time to take the jump. I am exceedingly nervous, because I have a tendency to fall off of things, and when they are moving, that makes the likelihood of hurting myself go to about 1000%. We have set up a small pile of logs a little shorter than the jump, and I kick Coco into a canter.

She takes the logs.

She takes the jump!

WHOO! FLAWLESS VICTORY!

We execute the jump in a way that did not cause me to die, i.e. perfectly. Lauren is ecstatic for me, and I am the champion of everything. I tell her please to do not think of me differently just because I am god of all things now. She tells me to do it again. I figure that is no problem. I queue up just as I did before, and kick Coco into a canter.

Imagine, if you will, that you are driving your car. You see the exit you need to take, and you flip on your blinker and go to make the turn. And then your car is like, "WHAT DUDE YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT? FUCK THAT SHIT I'M OUT" and pulls over to the side of the road and starts trying to eat grass.

That is what the next hour of my life is like. Coco does not want to do it, and having already forced one little girl to experience torturous pain, I am loathe to force an old lady into the same. I do not call it quitting so much as compassionate break-taking.

 

Besides, it is growing late, and I am very tired. I lay down for a while until the sun starts setting, and the setting sun is the most important part of the day because that is when the baby goats start getting all weird. Thankfully, I am around to film it all.

As if the cuteness could not be enough, I make friends with one of the No Name Twins. Up until now, they have been very shy, but one of the little dudes seems to approve of my defacing two of his buddies and decides to hang out with me.

With my heart full of baby goats, I go back inside and do things that are mundane and uninteresting and then go to bed.

Goodnight, grass.

GOAT OF THE DAY: Paula

Paula is the mother of Pan and Pandora. She is a very placid goat who just happens to...like, be there. All the time. Every time I turn around, there is Paula. Where are her kids? Who knows. She is not concerned with things like children when there are treats to be had. In fact, her and Kitt probably have a club about ignoring their kids in favor of candy. If I have kids, I want to be in their club.

"Did you bring mommy her special candy? No? Then get out."