Archive for February, 2011

Now farmers will tell you that your animals are not pets. They're there for layin' eggs or givin' milk,  grazin' pasture or Sunday dinner. They're there to pollinate the flowering citrus trees and poop in the pond for fertilizer tea. Farmers will tell you not to give them names or start conversations with them. Don't be talkin' about your childhood and such. They'll tell you to treat them well while being dispassionate and indifferent. So when I found Smarty Pantz dead in the driveway a couple of afternoons ago I realized that I'm not much of a farmer. It's not so much that I broke down into a blubbering mass of supermanly emotion, or that I felt like life would never be the same, but I thought about how significant her energy had become over the years and how her story was one of overcoming the odds to find her little dream life roosting in the monkey pod tree by night and prowling the orchard for tasty morsels by day. She was hatched out at Ideal Poultry some years back. One of millions upon millions of chicks bred every year at one the country's biggest nurseries. It's gotta be pretty long odds when it comes down to being shipped to Maui for an uncaged  life on the slopes of Haleakala. Yes, chickens have karma too. She arrived after an overnight flight from Texas. Her travel mates included some buff leghorns, lakenvelders, and americaunas. About sixty birds in all. A little smorgyborg. We raised them all up together and as they puffed up it became obvious who's who. Being a Speckled Sussex, she had the typical brown and white "speckled" pattern throughout with a slight green iridescence on her sunlit feather tips. She would lay medium sized tan colored eggs. She also had a british accent. Pretty early on in her life, the Pantzer had an eye poked to blindness by another chicklet. Looked like she had a case of glaucoma in her left eye. It didn't seem to phase her. She adjusted quickly to the fact that she only had vision out the right side of her little face. In fact she seemed to become more nimble than the others and somehow picked up on the feeding routine a bit more quickly than her sisters. She'd follow my moves and circle around my feet awaiting the yummy shower of lay pellets. Occasionally she'd seize the opportunity to jump up, balance on the edge of the feed bucket and chow down until I stopped laughing long enough to escort her to the ground. There was a time when all the layers were free ranging in the orchard. The eggs were catch as catch can. They had several nests in the the tall grass and we'd just try to keep up. Turns out that if you leave an egg or two behind they'll keep going to that spot, although they're quite fickle and the smallest change in routine can make them abandon the nest in a twinkle. Contrary to popular opinion, they don't respond to golf balls. Who wants to lay a round egg with a hundred and twenty seven dimples? We decided that it would be better to build enclosures to house the feathered raptors, making feeding and egg collection a whole lot easier. This worked out well for us but not so good for Smarty pantz. I began to notice that due to her blind side, she was getting somewhat beat up during feeding time until finally she started looking like she might, at any moment need a defibrillator. I decided to take her out of the flock and put her into the intensive care unit of the Rancho Relaxzo bird infirmary where she recovered quite nicely and was back in fine fettle within a week. At this point, her life changed because I decided that she should just be allowed to be the full free ranger. No more competing for food or water. No more pecking order. No more being heckled for her disability or her accent. She just took to hanging out with the ducks and roaming around the orchard in an ecstatic little dance. In time, three others joined her by virtue of their escape artist tendencies and the tender mercies of sister Natalie, blessed be thy name. So there she was, D'artagnon to the three musketeers. She staked her claim to a low lying limb of the big old Monkeypod tree behind the wwoof domain, mostly, I think to be within jumping distance of the feed containers. She found a cozy spot underneath a feed bag at the base of the tree that had formed a little cave and she'd give us a couple of eggs every few days. Not bad for a five year old. Death is disturbing. Not so much for its finality but on the contrary for its endurance. Lucky for us that Loves, large and small empower our hearts to absorb, embrace and emit the compassion that comes from such experiences. The form that was the Pantzer is now slowly decomposing beneath a young olive tree on a south facing slope of Rancho Relaxzo. She provides macro and micro nutrients to billions upon billions of organisms which turn those elements into plant food, rich soil and olive oil. Will we ever be able to eat an olive from that tree without seeing her? Too much shmaltz? The pantzer is dead, long live the pantzer. I found a small feather on her roost and sewed it on to my eyelid. O.k, I'm done. Enter Eudocima Fullonia. That's right, you heard me. The nocturnal FRUIT SUCKING MOTH. A creature sent from insect hell to add one more element of frustration to further peak my irascible nature. There really is no rest for the wicked. In all likelihood we have had these winged demons here for awhile, however due to the wet winter and certain invasive vines that provide breeding grounds for the larval forms, they are having the moth equivalent of Burning Man on our white sapote trees. Fermented white sapote juice fuels their frenzy as they attack the green orbs with saw toothed proboscis probing, penetrating and sucking the sweet life force. In their wake are vectored a couple of species of bacteria that make short work of the rotting process, rendering the fruit entirely useless in days. The ground is carpeted with squwishy remains. Oh, and the scent that the bacteria create acts as homing device for the fruitbat wannabe's. This would all be casually edumacational if it wasn't making me throw up every few hours. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that they thrive on EVERY kind of fruit we grow. I was telling the knucklehead about this dilemma when I saw the wheels turning behind those steel gray eyes. Imagining all manner of eradication techniques as well as culinary applications is his specialty. He came out of his micro trance and started enumerating the various ways that we could take our revenge. " If you don't care about the remaining fruit that much, we could just strap on our headlamps, get the shotguns and start blasting away after dark. Or, if you wanna save the fruit, we could go out with a couple of million candle power flashlights and watch their heads explode as they fly toward them. Or, we could release the Kraken. Oh, and I bet Nattie could find a way to make the wings into earings and you could embed them in your chocolate avocado mousse as a special signature trademark." All of that in one breath. I stroked his forehead to bring the fever down and gave silent thanks for having a son such as this. Finally, I'll leave you with an excerpt from the latest contract that Monsanto is offering to its farm customers concerning liability. Reading is weeping. "GROWER'S EXCLUSIVE LIMITED REMEDY: THE EXCLUSIVE REMEDY OF THE GROWER AND THE LIMIT OF THE LIABILITY OF MONSANTO OR ANY SELLER FOR ANY AND ALL LOSSES, INJURY OR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE USE OR HANDLING OF SEED (INCLUDING CLAIMS BASED IN CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, PRODUCT LIABILITY, STRICT LIABILITY, TORT, OR OTHERWISE) SHALL BE THE PRICE PAID BY THE GROWER FOR THE QUANTITY OF THE SEED INVOLVED OR, AT THE ELECTION OF MONSANTO OR THE SEED SELLER, THE REPLACEMENT OF THE SEED. IN NO EVENT SHALL MONSANTO OR ANY SELLER BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES." Such a deal. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Aloha, Jp