Archive for May, 2009

Oh hello, I was five and a half when I began chasing ice cream trucks. By the time I was six, my discontent at being disciplined for such acts led me to a confrontation with my father. I looked up and said, "Listen dad, I've thought this through and my feeling is that i'm not really a member of this family, but the abandoned child of an impoverished and drug addicted ice cream truck driver and that woman Louise who works the morning shift at Dunkin' Donut." I told him the information had come to me in a vivid waking dream and that if he would allow me to cross the street by myself, I was interested in running away. This infuriated him of course, but knowing it to be the truth he just railed at me for the ingrate that i was and told me not to forget to look both ways. Mom clad me in my warmest Doctor Dentons and allowed me to take my woobee since it was december in new york. She packed up a chicken salad sandwich with a couple kosher pickles, handed me a copy of Siddhartha and assured me that when i was able to read, i would dig it. She offered up my violin case and opened the front door. My dad sat in the barcolounger just shuffling a deck of cards over and over. My brother was playing with himself while glued to Howdy Doody. It was easy to hitch rides, being only three foot eleven and wearing red jammies with a tooshy flap. I was pretty cute back then. I got a lift from a trucker dude heading a haul down Florida way and spent three and a half days learning all about drunken whores and amphetamines. He dropped me off in Key West where this kindly old negro woman took a shine to me when she heard me playing "The Volga Boatmen" by the entrance to the Dew Drop Inn. "Why chiiile, you done shook my heart loose", she said. I just looked up, took the last bite of the last kosher pickle and said, "hungry". She took me home and introduced me to her family which numbered twenty something. There were kids and grandkids and uncles and cousins and a husband named Artemus who was mostly in his "workshop" all day fixing things and creating do-dads to stay sane.They lived helter skelter in five or six thrown together shacks that housed as many as seven, not including dogs,cats, goats and chickens. After a couple of months I'd learned every survival skill known to man, from skinnin' a cat to building a raft to growing food and cooking up gumbo. I could even navigate by the stars. Learned the navigating part from an old fisherman friend name of Rudolpho Mink who came by to play Parcheesi with Artemus most every evening. We'd go out to the front yard and lay on our backs looking up at the stars and Rudolpho would school me as to how it all works. So I built a raft and skinned a few cats and set sail (a sheet really) for Venezuela. Worked the oil rigs of Orinoco for the next few years, cutting my teeth (literally) on some of the grittiest work on earth. When I turned nine, my boss Hernando put me on to his cousin in Argentina who ran cattle in Patagonia. In Argentina i learned about fun. Everybody was loose and free. Eating, drinking, laughing. We'd tip cattle at night and drive them to pasture by day. I could have stayed there forever, but it was not to be my fate............. There's this one Keitt mango tree that set bunches of fruit in February. It happened to hit a pocket of time when it stayed still and calm enough for the fruit to take hold. Most of the other mangoes flowered a bit later and didn't hold much fruit as a result of winter rains and wind. I began to notice a few weeks back that there was damage being done to the fruits, as in being eaten by some unholy vermin. By the look of the fruit, i surmised that a rat was the culprit. Put a sticky trap at the base of the tree and banded the main stem and first two axillary branches with twelve inches of aluminium flashing. Didn't work. Saw a few of those pesky little Japonicus finches lurking and realized it was a lost cause. Unlesss, finger food. Too labor intensive. I commenced to harvesting early knowing that the Keitt mango actually gets pretty sweet when harvested green and that those little fuckers were NOT going to eat the only mangoes in the orchard. Its worked out well. Neo-hip Lindsay and i made some froozies the other day using mango, atemoya, banana and white sapote. Holy Moly. Lip smacking barely describes the momentary euphoria imparted by such things. Sad to say, there are bloodied tail feathers showing once again on some of the leghorns. Remind me to buy more brown colored birds next time. The blood doesn't show and i don't get wigged out. Doc Bebockboc concurs and assures me that nature will always move toward creating a balance and reveal solutions along the way. Nurse Sally says they should be dipped in Camphophenic and forced to watch "a clockwork orange" until they cease and desist. Neo hip Andy who has returned to Ohio reports that he is driving a produce truck powered by baby farts. He delivers produce to those deemed worthy. The profiling is simple, really. If you are old, poor, disabled, homeless or mentally unstable you are left to suffer evolutions inexorable fate. Extinction. If you can afford it and are Christian, you get your veggies delivered to your door by a guy wearing a hat made from a hollowed out watermelon. He's in it for the chicks. Life goes on. As for the farm, if you don't know what we're selling by now, you're not paying attention. The more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace out, Jp

Oh behave, Had a break-in the other day. I was sauntering down the stairs from my bedroom in the pinkish grey glow of dawn a couple of mornings ago, shaking off the sandman and grateful to feel the life force flowing through this ol' bag of bones when I saw what appeared to be one of the Aracaunas (blue egg layers) trying to fly out of Club Leghorn. She kept launching into flight only to be rebuffed by the deer netting that forms the roof of oll our chick domains. I thought, "thats weird". Thats when the real weirdness began. Turns out upon closer inspection it was a wild turkey caught inside. "No way", I thought. How's a feral turkey supposed to break into an escape proof chicken enclosure? Foregoing much of my usual morning ritual involving bathroom evacuations, yoga salutations, cacao preparations, doobage inhalations, premature injaculations, internet informations and standard prayers invoking generous monied people with a penchant for trickling down on the random visionary, I put on my work duds and my best tactical mindset and headed down the path to negotiate the release of this unwilling and apparently innocent detainee. Now unlike the cranky doofuses' bred for Thanksgiving and other non essential holidays the wild turkeys around here are pretty wiley and while not the type to actually pick a fight with a lumbering human will do their best to evade and defend. All of this is going through my mind as i'm walking and trying to figure out how best to approach this freaked out fowl. At this point, she's running head on into the chicken wire fence trying to fit through a two inch opening. I guess she figured that if her head fit through, the rest would follow. Poor geometry skills. I got into a kava kava mindset, you know, the one where whatever happens will be just another step toward a finite number of steps guiding us to a dirt nap, so might as well step lightly with open hearted acceptance and meet fate with a sardonic grin. It was with a measure of this acceptance that I entered Club Leghorn. The turkey had conveniently manuevered itself into a long narrow portion of the enclosure and didn't really sense my presence. She continued to test the fence as if any moment she would morph into a sawsall and fly free. I just stood there about ten feet away, watching this little slice play itself out. Figured if nothing else she'd get all tuckered out before long. I think she was about to take the flying approach again when she looked up and noticed me. I said, "hi there, you must be beat". I spread my arms out and hunkered down to guide her into the dead end. She trotted away toward no escape, all the while poking at the fence. When she got to the allys end I could tell she was breathing feverishly and not so much freaked out as exhausted. I still didn't have any real plan for this bird that stood as tall as my navel bearing claws that could snatch a small feral pig into a swoop and was trapped like a rat. Here comes the fun part. For some reason which will forever remain unknown , I recalled the prologue to Chaucers Canterbury Tales which I had learned from Mr. Curtis at Proctor Academy for the Horny,in 1963. So I started reciting Chaucer in the original middle english. "Wan that aprille with his shoures soote. The droght of marche hath perced to the roote, and bathed every veyne in swich licour, of which vertu engendred is the flour" and so on. I did it in kind of a singsongy way that seemed to calm her down. Long story short, I just walked up to her, mid recitation, picked her up from behind and carried her genlty out of the enclosure. When i put her down she took a couple of steps and looked back as if to say, "what the fuck just happened", trotted off and took flight. It got funnier when after freeing the turkey I remembered that the little Leghorns were kind of watching this whole thing go down, especially the part where I carried her out. They were huddled together like the peanut gallery at a Soupy Sales show and out of the corner of my eye I could see their little heads following the action as I passed by. Too cute. For everything else, there's master card (i get paid to say thet. Please forgive me). I did a thorough reconnoiter of the enclosure, inside and out, top to bottom and found NO WAY that that turkey could have gotten in there. Sweytagawd. I'm chalking it up to Natures way of telling me not to get too comfy in my routine and by all means, to expect the unexpected. In this case if I don't move on, its total brainfreeze. I love inexplicable moments. Anyway, she's still hanging around. I see her cruising the property. I know its her because she blushes when she sees me. Truth be told, she's kinda sexy. Hell, with gay marriage gaining widespread acceptance, the last great envelope to push would be acceptance of trans-species relationships, and I know she'd be loyal cause I'm the only one who knows how to take the top off the garbage can that holds the three way scratch, which as everyone knows, is bird world crack. If you came by today, you could get atemoya, cherimoya, papaya, avocado, eggs, some citrus, all kinds of greens, some beans and the usual House of Yumm lip smackers. I can say with some certainty that the same would be true tomorrow. Throw in a few culinary and medicinal herbs and a couple of live plants and you've had yourself a Green Moment. Hell, bring a friend. I've attached a picture of the turkey that I took right outside my kitchen door. She's getting a little forward, dontcha think? Went to my first rehearsal with the Hillbillys in three months tonite. Big gig on Friday. It was like a drive by shooting at Sam Goodys. Good times..................... Give us a call 878-6287, or 205-0430 for the nursery and come by for a shmooze. The more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace, jp

Olleh ho bruddahs and sistahs and hopelessly white people alike, So it's really quite a revelation on a number of different levels to witness a mongoose, and not a big one mind you, with jaws clamped around a large white egg scurrying with its teeny legs windmilling away to make its escape through the chicken wire and out to the egg "bone yard". There, one can see the cracked and bleached remains of would be omelets or aspiring benedict, never meant to experience the rush of hitting a hot, nonstick frypan. Pppssssssssssst. A mini greek tragic moment being played out before my eyes. I mean, all the "what ifs" rallied like some demented merry go round in my head. "That egg coulda Been somebody". But then I thought that in the end, one way or another that egg was gonna get eaten, digested and eliminated, contributing to the universal and apparently irreversible cyle turning food into dirt and dirt back into food. Burst my little existential bubble pretty darn quick there. Put a bunch of philosophical models right in their place too. You know, the ones which suggest that all the epileptics in the audience please stop fidgeting, and here's how. There's a time for calm and a time for action. Used an egg as bait, and set a couple of live catch traps. Drowned three of the little fuckers in the past four days but not before using nonlethal interrogation methods to gleen the whereabouts of the mongoose mastermind, Mergatroid chizzltooth (thats what they told us). We know where he's hole up and how to get there, but they all warned us that the place is boobytrapped like Oprahs chastity belt. Mostly army surplus claymores and rusty metal rakes with the prongs facing up. We're not sure what the mongeese use. We're working with computer models of the landscape to figure the best way in, or who amongst our limited cadre of friends we could convince to "scout" it out. We are, of course also dealing with having to cross foreign territory in a situation where time is of the essence and getting "permission" may mean sacrificing valuable and strategically critical moments. We have opened diplomatic channels with the leaders of these lands as well as a representative from the deer group, ironically named John, the pig consortium and the Partridge family. Will keep you posted as to the progress in bringing Chizzltooth to justice. Any idea how small a mongoose mouth is. Only way he could have carried it like that is if he took just enough of a bite out of the narrower end to hold it, but not break it. The egg was WAY bigger than his head. Amazing. Got a call from my pal Theodotious Latteh the other day telling me that he had spied a grunter on his property and chased it off in my direction. He asked if i'd seen it and I told him no, but that i'd be sure to burn some sulphur and puncture an effigy in his honor for sending it my way. Wellllllll, last night at about the time i get up to piss if i forgot to go before going to bed, I heard it grunting away under the Sharwil avocado tree having a merry ol' time. So I donned my hoody and tippytoed down to the living room,. snatched up my gun, turned on the flashlight strategically taped to the barrel and did my best Elmer Fudd impression. Keep in mind that my hoody was all i had on (too much info? not for Danielle). Let me interject here that you got your "oinkers" and you got your "grunters". The grunters are usually male, not necessarily bigger, but more aggressive. This was a grunter and he stayed a few steps too many ahead of me to put any bird shot in his hide, but by the time I gave up the prospect of tracking his grunts into the night, I found myself out at the pond, in the still silvery moonlight. Turned off the flashlight and tuned in the night sounds and sights and smells including the night blooming jasmine which never fails to give me a woody which then conveniently guided me, like a biological gps system around the orchard and back to my house. When I got into the house I mused, what if a heart attack had overcome me in that sweet and peaceful moment and the next day some knucklehead came driving in to find me clad in only a hoody, splayed out, flat on my back, the shiteatingest of grins on my face and "el Capitan" looking like some mushroom cloud frozen in time with nobody to contaminate. We've got atemoya, cherimoya, jaboticaba, papaya, banana, EGGS, beans, pepino dulce, greens of all kinds and a multitude of sarcastic remarks on most any subject. House of Yumm offerings include pesto, chocavopousse and froozies (plain or w/raw cacao swirls). I'd like to send o big huzzzzhuzzah to those of you who take the time to correct my spelling and comment on my shoddy writing style with all its run on sentences and nonsensical slang. I feel like i'm being loved by many mommies at once. Warm fuzzies back at ya. Might I suggest that an evolution of style itself is being birthed in these missives and that for wont of a better term we can call that style "Scream of Conciousmess", wherein only the limitations of ones perception inhibit the sublime and complete transmission and understanding of nonsense in its purest and most transparent form allowing the reader to cry "Feh, feh" and find fault, or simply give up, like that peak moment ablaze on some entheogen when the truth cannot be denied, and accept that the tree of writing has produced a chimera capable of unique expression and replete with transcendental coverage for all. Or somethin' lilke that. Read about a real sign of evolution and ultimately hope for mankind. Apparently there is an Orangutan at the Liepzig zoo that has taught himself how to whistle and has recently completed his first cd. Doesn't it just warm your heart to see signs of awakening? Does this not portend great things to come? We're naming a stalk of bananas in his honor. Soooo, as the middle aged spring feels the burn of summers approach, i wish you long cool nights and sweet dreamy siestas. Give us a call @ 8786287 and make a date to participate. The more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace, jp

Hmmmm, People, like cows are ruminants too, only people chew their thoughts and emotions over and over using a variety of "digestive" mechanisms in an attempt to come up with byproducts which nurture and nourish inner worth and outer connections in and attempt to create networks which envision and build models of behaviour that reflect that worth and grow those connections; hopefully in the direction of love, trust, wisdom, shit like that. Inner worth without outer connections wanders blind. Outer connections without inner worth are meaningless. We chew and chew the collective cud of our zietgiest, our raison d'etre and continue to come up a day late and a dollar short. At this point its not so much about getting behind the curve a bit, its more like missing the curve entirely going a buck sixty, careening through a guard rail and for one blissful, collective human moment thinking that the feeling of flying through space into an abyss of unknown depth and certain death is kinda cool. You know, you can shut the engine off and just feel the breeze blowin' and your tummy rise up to meet the free fall, and its so quiet and peaceful, and because you know you're doomed, you can finally relax. Now in the days of the somewhat sustainable family farms of the past it was good to be a cow. Maybe not worshipped like their bovine yogi cousins (western cows being too fat to sit lotus), but prized for their ability to provide so many things necessary to living well. Why there's milk and meat and butter and ghee and cheese and hides and manure and pasture management and the pipi's are so cute when they're not all freaked out by being crammed into paddocks too small for half their numbers, fed rendered animal parts, gmo grains, bovine growth hormone and antibiotics, stand around in their own feces and wait, either to be machine milked or stamped u.s. grade A. La vache qui rit. Not laughing so loud now, are ya? In the day of the sustainable family farm, keen observation served to unite all the necessary components needed to thrive. Components joined together in service to the whole and which, when cared for would produce surpluses galore while paying homage to the land. Now, we're all left out of the process. Compartmentalized like so many cuts of meat packaged and sealed with no sense of the whole animal in sight. Out of touch with the mostly gruesome realities of food supply and ecological degradation taking place on a massive scale worldwide. The collective political/financial brain trust of the world has, in large part done what some dreadspected they would do, which is to smile and then with a somewhat stern look say, "there there, be courageous, the banks will make everything better", and then go about looting lives like they were so many gun shops after a flood. Not fair, you say. Saturated with the slimey rancid sebacious stench of greed wearing Old Spice, you say. Don't worry, says I, there will be bigger and better superhero movies coming this summer to see us through the free fall and give us a sense of hope shimmering behind the selective seretonin reuptake inhibitors. Did I mention that we have eggs now? We do, and they're pretty. We got shades of white and brown and some with speckles and some that are blue (see pic). When Doc Bebockboc returned from Romania with what he told me would be the answer to all my prayers, I recieved the news with a certain skepticism. He said that this famous underground chemist guy name of Bi-lacho Bengalo, who writes a blog in code had given him the code in the town of Judetul Covasna after testing his trustworthyness in ways that he said would make a jaded longshoreman pass gas. He told the doc to go to the site and retrieve an article from the archives entitled: "Jesus, messiah or jewboytoy". So he did. He said that once the encryption was undone it revealed a formula made from readily available household chemicals that would render any animal totally receptive to suggestion. So we rigged up a device that we strapped on the smallest wwoofer on hand, stuck a bunch a feathers in her hair and clothing and after spiking their water with the hypnotic amalgm, sent her into the A.F.B.W.A. (asylum for birds with amnesia). She proceeded to strut around like the new sheriff in town and when she had their attention, squatted down and pulled a string on the device that gave the appearance of an egg isssuing forth from her ass. She did her best rendition of the bbbboooocccc bebocccbocc sound that they make passing an egg and continued to strut around "laying" eggs until the supply ran out. She then kicked up some dust with her rebocks and exited in a huff. Apparently they got the message. Within days we were getting more than a dozen colorful eggs a day. While not permitted to give you the proportions, the ingredients are lemon pledge, handi wipes, dr pepper and clearasil. I'm gonna try it on my imaginary girlfriend tonight. She's been kind of distant lately. We've got a fresh harvest of WWoofs headed our way. Two on board now (a lovely couple from Iceland who are traveling with twelve suitcases full of money so they can buy oatmeal and seaweed) and two more on the way (one from boulder where she's an environmental planner, and one from nocal without much experience, but she's 21, so heh). We'll be wailing on the summer vegetable gardens, laying down ferts and mulch, starting seed, pruning and prettifying. Firing up the Froozie maker sometime this week to lay in a fresh batch. Got a bunch of basil starts popping and intend to amp up the department of pesto to a cabinet position. What else.................oh, yeah, the more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp