I drive an hour north every Friday. This week, as I headed towards the upper barn, a sentry in blue jumped on top of a pick up truck, faced me down and reminded me to sign in and pick up my keys before I go any further. He looked so handsome in his dress blues, I couldn’t say no.
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Last week I chauffeured an abandoned piglet to his new home here, after he’d spent a harrowing night in the Brooklyn dog pound. Today, everyone’s trying to come up with a name for the new kid. The kid in question gets understandably skittish when he hears suggestions like Bacon and Pork Chops, and is mildly offended with the possibility of being called Humpty Dumpty. After all, his little piggie balls have been unceremoniously whisked away this past week, and there will be no more Humpty Dumping in his future. We settle on Hamlet, throw a harness on him and take him for a walk around campus, at the end of which everyone on farm as well as two neighboring counties wonders if perhaps Screaming Mimi might have been a better choice, name-wise.
It takes four adults and a chart to figure out how to assemble the harness for the llama cart. Luckily the llama in question is not only handsome and affectionate, but extremely patient. It’s been a year since Java has pulled the cart, so after grooming and the initial hook up, we take him for test drive around campus.
At the end of the day, after shit had been shoveled and dumped, hay had been fluffed and sawdust spread, when everyone with four legs, two legs, feathers, fur or pants had been fed, watered and cleaned up, it was time to sex Walter’s recent brood of little baby bunnies. There’s rarely a shortage of rabbits or cats (spay and neuter people, spay and neuter, please!), so it’s important to know who is going to be rooming with whom. Especially, after Walter turned out not to be fat at all, or properly named for that matter, but the proud papa mama of four baby bunnies. Surprise!!!
The drive up is an hour.
The drive home is an hour and a half.
In between, are the hours that sustain me for the rest of the week.
