Goats Get Dandruff
Goats
-two armfuls of hay every morning
-half a scoop of grain each
-give Grace extra grain as you milk her
-if they escape, use sunflower seeds to coax them back into barn (They did escape and the seeds were a lifesaver.)
Chickens
-heaping bucket of grain every morning
-refill water as needed
-collect eggs after lunch
-The black hen is very old. If she dies, place her under pine tree next to compost heap.
-keep electric fences on overnight
Crops
-weed turnips, broccoli and radishes
-pull tomato plants out
-harvest kale, eggplant, bell peppers, parsley, beets, leeks, raspberries, grapes, midnight tomatoes
-pick peas every three days
Kitten…
I stopped taking notes here. Simone, 8, knew exactly how to care for Cedar, the 4-month-old white and orange spotted kitten. I knew what I was doing too despite the careful notes I was taking as Sarah and Ryan led me on one last walk around the farm. In a couple of hours they’d be on their way to Nova Scotia for two weeks and I would be farm-sitting. Me in charge of paradise. It felt like all my birthdays at once.
I had gotten to know Sarah and Ryan through Wwoofing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). It was something I used to do in my 20’s along with other backpackers from all over the world. In exchange for room and board, adventure and varying degrees of fun and misery, I worked on farms providing labour that a small farm owner could not otherwise afford.
Fast forward to my mid-thirties when Simone was a year old and about to go on her first trip to Halifax with her dad to see his family. She’d be gone for three nights and my anxiety had spiked with a vengeance. Suddenly I remembered wwoofing and the way it used to light me up. In this first flash of reconnecting with what fed me in the past, I scoped out farms close to Toronto. I found one in Peterborough, a two-hour bus ride away, who was graciously open to taking wwoofers for short-term visits. Within hours of Simone’s departure, my hands were deep in the rich, cooling soil.
For the next few days, I stayed as busy as I could. I squeezed milk from my rock-hard breasts amid the rows of carrots when my fellow 20-something wwoofers had gone for a walk to smoke a joint. By dark, I was deliciously exhausted and reminded of how much satisfaction I got from a day in the fields. Coming home to myself was a balm to my longing. When Simone came back, I held her for a long time and whispered to her about the sheep and the trees and the rows and rows of carrots that her mama weeded.
A few years later, when I had less than $100 in the bank, I wondered how I was going to give my daughter a summer adventure. Like an old friend, wwoofing crossed my mind once again. I realized for the first time that adventure didn’t have to be a plane ride away. This time I looked for farms with children and struck gold when I found one in Port Perry and then later Sarah and Ryan’s farm in Stouffville. Both farms welcomed us with a warmth that I will never forget and that had us going back year after year.
Getting to share my love of wwoofing with Simone, made these adventures even richer.
I remember the look of astonishment when Simone bit into her first sun-warmed strawberry. She held up the fruit to examine the ruby red interior,
“Mama, there’s no white inside.”
Simone learned that chicken eggs come in varying sizes and different shades of brown, white and pale blue as she delicately collected them from the eclectic flock. These farms were where my urban kiddo, who always had to stick close to mama in the city, could disappear into the rows of tall tomato plants and return ages later with Cedar slung over her shoulder proudly holding up his dead mouse.
But these trips weren’t just for Simone. I needed them too. The farms were where I recalibrated as my body reset itself to the rhythm of the natural world. It was where I woke up to roosters instead of beeping garbage trucks and saw lush greenery rather than pavement.
Over the years, I’ve come to believe that anxiety is a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. That, as social beings, we can eat, clothe ourselves and hold a job without interacting with another human is absurd. I don’t want to adapt to always having a device within arm’s reach. I don’t want to learn how to tune out the world with ear buds or to avoid eye contact by checking my phone. I want to crave the stars and miss the sound of crickets. I want to notice that goats get dandruff and that chickens take dirt baths.