cows

It feels like an awful betrayal when a dairy farmer takes away the dairy cow’s calf. The farmer either sells the calf or grows it to be eaten. You’re taking care of that dairy cow and she gives you her child because she trusts you so much. I’m complicit in this act: the farmer kidnaps the calf and slaughters it, then the farmer sits down at the dinner table to eat a steak he cooked on a grill so close to the barn that the dairy cow could smell it, and the next day the farmer walks out to the barn and pets the dairy cow on the nose, looking her in the eyes, saying “sweet girl” and milking her. I’m hiding in the woods near the barn and hurry out of the shadows to snag my portion of the cream. Later I come back to buy some ground beef.

Seems like the only ethical dairy/beef is to raise the calf and then slaughter it at a reasonable old age. So you’d end up with a circulation of cows up to the age of 15-20, meaning you would have 15-20 cows at a time, plus the original dairy cow mother. It would cost a lot of money just to have cow pets like that. Like having 15-20 dogs and the cows need a lot of space. And all of the manure. But you’d have 15-20 sources of meat in case of emergency.

Eventually you would have a million cows. You would pay somebody in cows to move around the manure and all of the other work you don’t want to do. You’d probably sell some cows so you can move your home far away from the smelly barns with a million cows, in which case the buyer might eat the cows. I guess you can’t get rich without letting somebody eat your cows.

I don’t know about cows anymore.

living fantasies

Just remembered when my neighbors did a big renovation on their house before they listed the house for sell, then somebody bought the house and did another renovation, undoing the original renovation. I sat on my front porch and watched it all. For at least eight months they had all sort of workers going in and out, carpenters and painters and plumbers and electricians. And a big dumpster, twice, for both renovations. The buyers got an incredible deal and I was very jealous (see “MY BRAIN IS A TEAM OF RIVALS” post about landlords.)

Recently I went down a renovation obsession where I didn’t do much except scheme about buying this 14 acres with an old farmhouse in the middle of the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. Next to a lot of trails and a 2 mile bike ride to a fishing lake. With an antique dairy barn, has a small brook running through it, southern exposure, half of it was in wetlands with a beaver pond. Most of the property borders National Forest land. It’s on a dirt road, but the road is plowed regularly in the winter.

The current owner is selling their vacation home, but only after ripping up all of the floors and completely demolishing the bathroom and pulling out a structural wall and letting the pipes burst and threw out the kitchen drawers and a metal roof panel is missing and backed a car into the garage door. They’re abandoning the renovation, left it in a mess. I don’t think they wanted to spend the amount of money it would take to get the place in order. So I spent a lot of time learning about how to get a renovation loan and designing/dreaming about the small space (I’m now a home design expert) and budgeting how much it might cost if I could even get a contractor to come work on it in the middle of nowhere in a state where all of the good contractors are booked until next year. But I don’t have money nor will they give me a loan.

Wish somebody would just give me a bunch of money with the promise that I would give it back to them, eventually, you can trust me. I will DIY the entire project and subcontract anything that touches water or electricity, I swear the project will succeed, I have no choice if I live there because it needs a bathroom. Please! Give me the money! Email me at smcalilly@gmail.com.

The house is like 7 miles from where the poet Robert Frost had his summer home. It’s 3 miles from where the poet Ruth Stone had her summer home, and where her granddaughter the poet Bianca Stone hosts readings and writing workshops, in the town of Goshen, Vermont, population 162. Would’ve been isolating to move out there by ourselves but we would’ve been in a divine spot otherwise, especially if we could’ve made one or two friends out of the 162 friends available. And it’s close enough to Ripton (where the Frost house is), and Ripton has like 576 people.

I would like to live there, surrounded by all of the trees like that, looking at a mountain all the time hearing that brook. The barn would’ve been a good spot to have writers come stay and work for a couple of weeks, like a fake little writing residency. I ain’t go no money tho, and they’d be eating home grown beef from a recently slaughtered 15-20 year old cow alongside butter and cheese from the cow’s mother and heirloom green beans.

green beans

My family has an heirloom green bean that we’ve been growing since the Civil War. My ancestor was conscripted to fight in the war and he returned home to a place that was ravaged by Sherman’s March. Food was hard to find, but they obtained a bag of field peas. A few green bean seeds were included in the bag. We’ve been growing them ever since.

I don’t know if that story is true but I continue the myth. My garden plot was flooded by a historic flood after Hurricane Beryl came from the Gulf of Mexico up into Vermont. A 100 year flood or so (aka 1% chance of happening). It was a devastating flood for a lot of people. It took out our beets, greens, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, peppers, some tomatoes, and herbs. But the family green beans survived.

bread and puppet theater

We saw the Bread and Puppet Theater perform “The Beginning after the End of Humanity Circus”. How wonderful. So unique, creative, funny, sad, alive, inspiring, just everything that makes art great, as close to perfection as we can touch.

We learned about Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race while watching the performance. Somebody came out with a big puppet head and said in a goofy puppet talking head voice, “Ladies and gentleman, I am the President of the United States, and I am dropping out of the race!” Everybody was like, “What??? No way!” and a guy next to us said, “It’s true! I saw it on Twitter a little while ago.”

So we continued watching the performance with that news, which I didn’t believe, and it didn’t change my enjoyment of the show, except maybe made it more surreal.

After the circus, they fed us bread with garlic aioli. Then they had a small pageant where they sang a couple of songs. Then they led us to the Museum of Anti-Modern Art. The crowd walked alongside the performers, all mixed in together, when I realized that I was walking next to the director, Peter Schumann. I awkwardly let him go ahead of me and I just followed behind looking at him, not often getting the chance to be so close to such genius. I could see the soles of his feet as he took each step, wearing his sandals, the way he walked as an old man with his graceful stride, with the dirt in his toe nails.

The Museum of Anti-Modern Art was a barn with art on the walls: woodblock prints on cloth banners hanging from the ceiling, featuring plants and animals and people, with poetry painted on some of the pieces. The performers stood in front of the art, chanting the words painted on the banners, making their noises with the horns and proto-banjo and drum, while the crowd walked around looking at the banners. I had another encounter with Peter Schumann when we walked towards each other and I did the awkward “which way are we walking so we don’t run into each other” shuffle.