September Gurls.

I was sitting at home alone in my house for the 156^th night in a row, listening to the song, September Gurls by Big Star, and it made me realize that as September approaches, there are no cute gurlies around. In fact there weren’t any in July or August either. So I would like to take this opportunity to bemoan the fact that I ain’t getting none and the future is looking quite dim here in East Thetford, Vermont.

That out of the way, on to some farm talk. When I was in high school and applying to colleges my parents were really anxious for me to go to University of Illinois. As well as being a fine institution of higher learning it was also in state and a whole lot cheaper than everywhere else I applied to. It’s actually a really hard school to get into, but we found out that if you applied to the Agriculture department the entry standards were a little lower than the others.

So much being at stake, my Dad took over the duty of writing the letter. You know the one where you say that although you live in a city of ten million you’ve always been drawn to farming and when you were a kid you always loved playing in the garden etc. They must get thousands of these letters every year from people trying to slip in the back door so they can transfer out into some other department. I ended up going to school in Indiana.

I think this is funny as here I am seventeen years later, saying to myself “even though I am a city person and have lived in cities most of my life, I really am drawn to this farming thing and still do love the feeling of dirt under my nails.”

Someone told me last week that my blog was too serious, so here’s a lighthearted and fancyfree story which happened a few days after I moved to Maryland for my first farm experience in 1997.

I really was a city slicker back when I got my first and only taste of something called calf gelding. Michael, the farm manager came over to the field crew as we were performing the relatively mundane task of weeding onions and asked for someone to come help him with the cows. I jumped up right away, eager for a little break from our monotonous task, ready to sink my teeth into some real farm stuff. Animals and the like.

Minutes later we were herding the little boy bovines into a pen where their neck was crammed into a small opening to prevent them from moving. One person held a board trapping the neck, another hooked the hind legs to prevent the calf from kicking and a third held an object I will refer to simply as THE TOOL. Actually here’s a picture so you get the idea of what it does.

More humane than using a butcher’s knife to slice off the nuts, but unsettling nonetheless. The mere sight of THE TOOL is enough to induce nausea in most men. No blood is drawn but a well placed clamping in the right place (the vas deferens) prevents sperm development and saves the calves from humping their mothers and sisters. It only hurts for a few seconds, buy they are saved from a life of inbreeding. When I got back to the onions I realized that it would be strictly veggies from now on.

So the weird thing about the blog thingy is that it makes one a lot more prone to self-censorship than other forms of communication. It being so public and all. Why do I bring this up? Well throughout my adult life I have made quite a few decisions which ended up being a gamble (traveling around the world, uprooting myself several times to move across country), but they have always worked out and I have never had regrets.

I haven't mentioned this before, but now after five months of being in Vermont I am coming to terms with the fact that I made a bad decision moving out here. I knew that I was trading in my social life for an opportunity to learn farming and gladly accepted that, but the apprenticeship program that I moved here for doesn’t actually exist. It took me awhile to discover this and has only been mitigated by the fact that I have been really motivated in trying to have my own learning experience. I have been learning a lot and it’s not a total washout, but without anyone else on the farm looking out for me (and making sure that I’m not just another worker) I will leave the farm in November with a far from fulfilling experience. If I didn’t want to farm then it probably wouldn’t be a big deal and I could just make the most of being in a beautiful place (by myself) for the next two and a half months. The fact that I do love this work, but don’t feel adequately prepared to take the next step, is leading me to look at apprenticeships for next year. I am considering Portland, OR, somewhere near the Bay Area, and other farms in New England. Next week I visit a farm in MA which has an organized program and is only a couple of hours from here.

I am signing off now as the storm from New Orleans is arriving in Vermont and I have a feeling that the power will be gone soon.

Farmer Simon

PS – Here’s a list of some great albums I discovered (and rediscovered) this summer.

1. Sufjan Stevens – Come on feel the Illinoise. (going to see him next week)

2. Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk at cubist Castle

3. Kanye west – Late Registration

4. Red Hot and Riot – Tribute to Fela

5. Smokey and Miho – both of their EPs

6. De la Soul – Grind Date

7. Debut – Bjork

8. Aladdin Sane – David Bowie

9. Billy Bragg and Wilco – Mermaid Ave volumes one and two.

10. Tribalistas – Tribalistas

11. Trojan – Originals box set

12. Apostle of Hustle - Folkloric Feel

13. Squeeze - Singles 45s and under

Farmer Simon goes to the big city

Now I’ve been to New York many times before, but this was the first time I had culture shock.

Every Saturday I work the farmers’ market in nearby Norwich. So last Saturday I got back to the farm, hopped in the shower and then hopped in my car to head south. The 300 mile ride to NYC gets progressively more urban and with it a concomitant stink and ugliness. Man have I missed urban life. Five hours later I got out of my car in Queens and within five minutes I was at an outdoor dance party with 2,000 people at the MOMA, shaking my skinny little limey ass to deep house mixed in with a little drill and bass. Or maybe it was just Chicago house and down tempo. I might have to look it up on the internets and get back to you.

Most of the people in the area around the farm tend to be older and married or 18-year old Dartmouth students. Imagine my delight then to be surrounded by more beautiful people than you would see in a lifetime here in the Upper Valley. Just hours before I was listening to my co-workers discussing the best type of gun to dispose of the cauliflower eating woodchuck that lives on our farm with. Now here I was at the epicenter of urban hipness. And the best part about it, I kind of fit in. It being summer and all, everyone is wearing a t-shirt and shorts and fashion doesn’t really count. The dance floor was so densely packed too that no one could even tell if you were doing a hippie dance. Even though I haven’t listened to the Dead or Phish in over ten years I still feel like always be a recovering hippie dancer. Better to hide in crowds and take it one step at a time.

The dance party ended at nine and then it was off to a house party. Or should I say a roof party. People hanging out on a roof, talking to each other, eating food, drinking beer and talking about San Francisco. That’s right San Francisco. For some reason almost all the people at the party had lived in SF at some point or other and had come back to NY and found others of their ilk. I even felt a little pride at being more of a SF native than some of them. “Oh you were only there for two years, huh. Oh me well on and off for about twelve years or so.”

That’s six times longer than some of those posers. I am pretty shy at parties and I did my usual act of pretending to look at stuff from the roof, drinking copious amounts of beer, and walking incessantly from room to room as if looking for someone. I made it until 2:30 am and then Brooke and I rode our bikes home drunk through the deserted streets of Brooklyn. Helmets tightly fastened of course. That was my latest night of the summer by more than 3 hours!!!

The next day I rode about 30 miles through Manhattan and watched a free hip hop concert in Central Park. Even though I love living in the country I need to have urban fun more than once every four months. To be continued (hopefully soon). The next blog will be about farming I promise.

Farmer Simon

PS - Here's a list, I almost forgot. Eleven books you should read. AKA my favorite books. In no order except the first. This was really hard because all of my books are in a basement in Berkeley and i needed a visual cue.

1. Midnight's children - Salman Rushdie
2. Good scent from a strange mountain - Robert Olen Butler
3. Self-Help - Lorrie Moore
4. Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
5. Wind up bird chronicle - Haruki Murakami
6. Love in the time of cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(this is the best love story ever written)
7. Poisonwood bible - Barbara Kingsolver
8. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
9. Everything is illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
10. High fidelity - Nick Hornby
11. Son of a circus - John Irving