Nourishing Bites | Creature Comforts
There are more cat stories at this farm than one can possibly ever recount, and since Brad’s arrival, the cup has runneth over. Nonetheless, this year’s batch of Nourishing Bites essays would not seem complete if I did not include at least a few feline capers, as I have done most every year since the beginning.
Petite Olivia lives up in the big barn. For months we nearly only saw her shadow, she was a fearful and untrusting creature. But slowly, consistency and good food has eroded that fear, and now she is content to let me go about my morning chores from a safe distance- watchful, but confident. Brad sits with her most every night for a few minutes, playing ‘get the string’ or talking to her. Just this past week she reached over and gave his hand a series of small pats, then recoiled to a safe distance to see what she had stirred up. So now it is clear to us she has a clever sense of humor too. It is only a matter of time before she’ll be in Brad’s lap, soaking up the attention and back scratches he always takes time to dole out.
In addition to Brad’s gentle conversations with her, Olivia’s confidence has come in part from her companion Slim Pickings. Whereas she has existed in the barn as a quiet whisper, Slim’s gregariousness is a rollicking campsong. With the exception of other tomcats, Slim believes everyone is a friend. He wholeheartedly knows all the way down into his paws that all of us are here on this earth to pay attention to him! He takes a lot of initiative to introduce himself to any creature (donkey, goat, chicken, human, even Archie) who happens to wander across his path.
When Slim first appeared, he showed up over and over with boxed and battered ears, or limping, beat up from fight after fight with other critters. We think he started using our barn as his retreat. A place to hole up and heal, where he could rest and recover before heading out on a battle trail of an unknown circuit.
Wounds nonetheless, from the very beginning, Slim wanted to be front and center with a capital P purring for attention, and over time we earned his trust and were eventually able to get him vet care. Uncertain how he would feel about being enclosed in a small space, we loaded him into a huge dog crate to get him to the vet. It was comical-- only because we didn’t know how unflappable he truly is. When they called to let us know he was ready for pickup, it was reported that he had talked the entire time- meowing loudly in a happy way to everyone who walked by. Now, his beautiful silver grey fur has regrown, he no longer lives with ear mites, and his personable nature has blossomed tenfold.
Olivia and Slim have grown quite fond of each other. Upon returning to the barn, she unabashedly greets him warmly, running toward him, meowing and nuzzling his cheeks. We often find them nestled up head to tail. Olivia now takes it upon herself to be the fiercest of protectors. Each morning, she stands watch, positioning her half-pint self strategically between big Slim and that unpredictable, high energy puppy named Archie.
Olivia and Slim Pickings playing ‘String’
Whereas Olivia prefers the low nooks and corner crannies of the barn, Slim loves to climb. And if he can’t get your attention on the ground he’ll walk the tops of the wood fence posts inside the barn to get right at eye level with you, just in case you hadn’t quite heard his request for love.
When our goats were getting their vaccinations, I was bent over holding one of them while the vet worked. Slim walked right over, jumped up onto my back and began yowling, looking the vet in the eye as if to say, “Hey! Forget the goats. What about me?”
And one Sunday Brad and I were in the middle of our farm walk and we heard a loud tinny-banging noise. We looked up to find Slim eight feet up, on top of the steeply slanted roof of one of our old portable pig houses. Another time he was so far up the Gravenstein apple tree Brad thought he was stuck, until minutes later he appeared at his feet begging for pets and conversation.
Olivia and Slim are just two of the felines who live at the farm. Thumper, Mabel and Sherbert prowl and nap and wail for tuna fish down at the house. We often joke that just tending to the cats’ needs is truly a full time job, but honestly it’s more a full time labor of love. I’m convinced there are secret signs only cats know about that direct strays to our place. “This way to paradise.”
I mean, honestly-- if I was a cat, I’d definitely want to live with Brad!
All of the cats are simply one set of creatures who call this farm home. And while our domesticated friends add a certain type of joy, the wild among us bring quite another.
Last Sunday, Brad summoned me from my office work to watch a Cedar Waxwing intent on freeing a small feedsack cotton string that had become tangled on a branch. She worked and worked at it, taking breaks between her efforts to gather other small bits of material and carry them off to a hidden nest in a nearby apple tree. No doubt, she was making a nest for her second brood of the summer.
I feel encouraged and reassured by her approach. I too, when facing difficult or challenging work, employ this technique of setting it down and making progress elsewhere until I have the patience and energy to try again. And again. Sometimes you have to decouple the trying from the succeeding, and undertake the trying for tryings sake alone.
The past few days I’ve harvested summer squash, it has been a slow affair. I have to pick my way down the flower strewn aisles, gently and carefully giving the right of way to the traffic jam of bumble bees, honey bees, wild bees, moths, and Swallowtail butterflies who are feeding on the Marigolds, Borage, Nasturtiums, Echinacea, Yarrow, Tulsi, and Zinnias.
Domestic or wild, I learn from all the creatures, and of course from Brad, who teaches me over and over to take time to pay attention, to notice how grand the world is by holding in awe the smallest of delicate and fleeting details. A goat plucking a green plum and deftly spitting out the pit. The sticky sap of a budding Sunflower glistening in the rising sun like gemstones. The dark coloration of the little tree frog who lives in the cool corners and shady spots of the packing shed.
The farmers and the animals, we experience this same world very differently. We humans are surrounded by role models, and it is good to remember they each have very distinct personalities, desires, and countenances. All are going about their lives, breathing and eating and sleeping and traveling and building and loving in their own way. As I learn how to walk in this world on my own two small feet, the wisdom of my fellow travelers always carries me further than the short distances I’m capable of alone.
Outside, I’m permeable to their teachings in a way I could never be inside a fluorescent lit classroom. Farms are especially powerful in this way. The life lessons never end and blessedly a farmer’s curiosity never dies. No matter the number of legs or wings or paws or ears or beaks, it is these living beings that remind me again and again of what matters and what does not, of what awe and sincere gratitude feel like in my body. In the barn with Slim on my lap, or kneeling in the soft soil with the iridescent beetles traveling across the row, or watching Archie’s black nose bobbing up and down across the chest high field of oats, I know instinctively in these moments how to learn, how to be present, how to love this world and myself within it.
In the pulse and frenetic pace of summer, what a gift- amidst so much work- to spend a flicker of time almost resting in motion, rising up and out of my own shallow story to listen, be with and learn from the brilliance around us all. ~AJ
Work Stoppage | Karen attempts to transplant broccoli. Slim Pickings has other priorities.
