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