27 Random Things

1. There is a chicken in a cardboard box in my kitchen.
2. The vet says the chicken's knee is dislocated and that she will need to be in the box for quite some time.
3. This is not a situation without olfactory impact.
4. Oliver is starting to talk.
5. Just now he has come to say, "Need Help." Much pointing. "Stuck."
6. The toy is rescued.
7. We are back in business.
8. The market for our milk and ice cream, so far, is staying strong.
9. Thank God.
10. Thank Vermonters.
11. We have ordered enough seeds to grow food to feed our family for the whole year.
12. If the yields are decent.
13. If we manage to get it all harvested and put up.
14. Lot of ifs in this farming game, that's for sure.
15. Chronicle, the Boston TV show that did a thing on the farm and creamery, just called to say we'll be on next Monday at 7:30.
16. I was sort of hoping my fifteen minutes of fame would be for something more thrilling.
17. Involving skiing, or helicopters, or firefighting, a fabulous invention or a book tour or maybe all of them at once.
18. At least the high school classmates I saw at the reunion can see that I wasn't making it all up.
19. Because when you tell tall tales of your fabulous success at high school reunions, naturally they would be about milking cows and gutting chickens.
20. Earl is at the Vermont Farm Show today, talking with farmers and feed dealers and equipment salesmen who stand, universally, with their feet very far apart.
21. When I went to the farm show, years ago, I was glad I didn't have Tourette's Syndrome.
22. There were all these men, puffed up, standing in front of posters of the daughters sired by the bulls whose semen they were peddling.
23. They call themselves Genetics Brokers or AI (Artificial Insemination) Technicians, but we call them cowfuckers around here, and I was glad I could keep that to myself.
24. At the co-op today, someone asked me about the cow I'm feeding in the poster of us on the wall. I didn't recognize her markings and puzzled for a minute until I noticed a shadow in her undercarriage.
25. "Oh, that's a steer," I told him. "We ate him."
26. And you know, it didn't go over so well.
27. I wish vegetarian idealists would wear signs or something.