The Bucolic Plague

  And this time, I’d started a goat farm, practically overnight. This could potentially be my longest hangover to date.

  Being superstitious, I walked over to close the curtains on the far side of the bed. My grandmother used to warn me that sleeping in the light of the moon would bring on madness. And since I might have lost my marbles, I couldn’t afford Brent going insane as well.

  Brent was already out of bed when I woke up. A quick check of the kitchen showed that he wasn’t making me breakfast in bed either. Not really a surprise. I threw on my coat and pulled on my muddy boots and headed outside. Either he was still mad at me and had gone for a walk, or he’d forgiven me and, well, probably not.

  Even though it was the beginning of June, the morning air was still chill enough to see my breath. The yard had blossomed in the past few days with millions of dandelions. While I supposed most homeowners would’ve been perturbed with their omnipresence, to me they were as beautiful as any wildflower. I’d been pleasantly surprised by the waves of different perennials and wildflowers that had been springing up in the backyard’s formal flower garden. The Beekman grew more beautiful each passing week.

  I slipped quietly through the barn’s side door. The only sound from inside was the rhythmic munching of goats chewing. John must have just finished his morning chores, the last of which was filling the feeders with hay. I’d asked him just after he arrived why the goats didn’t go graze in the fields like the storybook pictures of my youth, and he’d answered that they were still a little too timid. It would take a month or so for the skittish herd to grow adventuresome enough to go exploring.

  “Brent?”

  I heard a whisper from the far end of the barn.

  “Over here. Shhh.”

  My eyes adjusted to the speckled darkness. Bits of hay chaff floated through the air, catching what little light streamed in from the dusty windows.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, approaching him slowly. He was peering intently over the edge of one of the pens.

  “Shh. Come look.”

  “What? I don’t see anything.”

  “Look at that goat in the corner.”

  On the far side of the pen, against the wall, a brown-and-white goat was contentedly munching on a mouthful of hay. She was a Nubian goat, I believe. Farmer John had explained the different breeds to me on their first day here. Her ears were long and floppy, and her nose broader and more pronounced than the Alpines and Saanens.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Just watch a second.”

  The goat held our eye contact for a few seconds longer, then turned to walk back to the feeder for more hay.

  “Holy God!” I said. “What the hell is that?”

  An immense bubble, probably about ten inches in diameter, was protruding from her hindquarters, just beneath her tail. She seemed completely unaware of it as she nudged her fellow goats aside to reach the feeder.

  “It’s the birth sac, I would assume,” Brent said.

  “That thing? It’s huge! Does she even know what’s happening?”

  Just then she raised her head and let out a long, anguished bleat. The bubble pulsed a little and grew larger.

  “I’m pretty sure she knows something’s up,” Brent said.

  “Shouldn’t we go get John?”

  “I already went and knocked on his door, but he must be out,” Brent said. “There’s no truck in the driveway.”

  “Should we call nine-one-one? Is she breathing correctly?” I was remembering the many stories of our pregnant New York City friends who underwent months of Lamaze training and practiced simulated childbirth in family-size hospital hot tubs. None of them ever described a giant bubble being blown out of their hoo-has.

  Brent rolled his eyes. The mother goat raised her head and bleated again, retreating as she did, back toward the corner of the pen.

  “It sounds like she’s in pain,” I said. The translucent bubble bounced as she walked past us. “What’s that stick in there?” I said, noticing a pointy dark protrusion in the shadowy depths of the birth sac.

  “Probably a snout or a leg.”

  “Shouldn’t we do something?” I said, growing far more anxious than the mother appeared to be.

  “She’s just giving birth. It’s totally normal.”

  “Normal? She has a foot-wide bubble coming out of her ass. If I’d figured out that trick when I was a drag queen, I could’ve retired on tips.”

  “Goats give birth all the time,” Brent explained. “There’s no way that Farmer John could be here for every one.”

  We stood and watched in silence for several more minutes as the mother alternated between eating, bleating, walking around, and reclining. While she was lying down a third time, she let out the loudest bleat thus far, and then craned her neck around to inspect her hindquarters.

  “Can you see anything?” I asked Brent. Her back end was facing away from us.

  “She’s licking something,” he answered excitedly. “I think it was born. Let’s go in and check.”

  “Go in? Is that allowed?”

  “Why not?” Brent said. “I don’t see visiting hours posted anywhere.”

  We slowly climbed over the top rung of the pen and hopped down onto the soft hay-covered floor. Several of the other mother goats were startled and stampeded to the other end of the enclosure. But they slowly wandered back a moment later to sniff at our pant legs and sleeves. The youngest kids were bolder, crowding around our feet and nibbling at our shoelaces. The new mother remained reclining, licking at the small glistening jelly-covered shape behind her, which was struggling to stand up on its spindly legs.

  “It’s like Bambi!” I whispered excitedly.

  “Except not a deer,” Brent clarified.

  “Right. Not a deer.”

  We crept closer to inspect the newborn. Its coat looked to be mostly shiny black with several patches of white. Suddenly the mother stood, which severed the umbilical cord and assorted other birth detritus that hung from her hind end. She walked to the far side of the pen, leaving the newborn behind, steaming on the hay.

  “We startled her,” I said. “Maybe we should go.”

  “It’s okay,” Brent said, crouching down next to the newborn. It was roughly a foot and a half long, and in between futile, wobbly efforts to stand, it laid on its side, flanks heaving with its first chilly breaths.

  “It’s beautiful,” I remarked. “Is it a he or a she?”

  “How would I know?” Brent asked.

  “Well, that seems a topic that would’ve been covered sometime during med school.”

  Brent lifted up one of the kid’s hind legs.

  “I believe it’s a boy,” he said, reaching down to pet the slick baby kid. Two other kids, probably not more than a week or so old, came over to greet their new cousin. Not counting a heavily censored sex-ed video in sixth grade, it was the first time I’d actually witnessed something being born. I was shocked at how easy—and messy—it all seemed. The clumps of bloody goo surrounding the new kid looked a little superfluous to me. Was all that glop really necessary? If human beings could engineer a spotless McDonald’s take-out window, couldn’t God have done the same?

  Our perfectly pastoral moment was interrupted by another loud bleat across the pen. It was the same mother again.

  “What’s she doing now?” I asked. “Maybe she wants us to leave her kid alone.”

  As I spoke, another package of slimy goop fell from her back end and landed with a thud on the pen’s floor. The other goats continued with their munching, oblivious.

  “She’s had another,” Brent said, rising from his squatting position.

  “Just like that?” I asked, incredulous. “I thought labor lasted for hours.”

  “Well, I think she’s been in labor at least since I came out this morning.”

  “No, I mean ‘labor.’ As in ‘laborious.’”

  “Giving birth really isn’t that big a deal,” Brent said. “It’s be
en happening without much fanfare forever, you know.”

  “Not with our friends,” I say. “Most of them schedule C-sections to fit in with their yoga schedules.”

  The mother was attending to her second born. She first licked gently around its snout, removing whatever bits of birth Jell-O might have been impeding the kid’s first breaths. The second baby was more fawn in color, punctuated with black spots around its head and neck.

  Having grown completely acclimated to our presence in only a few minutes, all of the goats, except the mother, were now crowding around us. They nudged at our thighs trying to get our attention. For what, I’m not sure. Food? Petting? Maybe it didn’t even matter. They were just happy for the company, it appeared. They even looked to be smiling. Having come out to the barn dressed only in my thin sweatpants and T-shirt, I was grateful for the crowded warmth. Brent seemed to be too, as he scratched two goats under their beards. They craned their necks toward him in sheer bliss. The other baby kids, crowded out by their mothers, retreated en masse to a corner where they began a tiny head-butting Olympics.

  It would’ve been harder for me to feel any further away from the city than I did at this moment. The soft hay under my feet, the earthy smells, the furry textures…there was absolutely nothing remotely similar to it within miles of our Sixty-third Street apartment. I crouched down to envelop myself even more in this living goat group hug, and was immediately tousled and toppled by a surge of curious goat snouts. They licked my ears and hair. I squinched my eyes shut, feeling their hot breaths about my head and neck. I couldn’t help but begin giggling. Brent joined in, tickled at the sight of me being stampeded by a herd of goats.

  Our bliss was again interrupted by a piercing bleat. I struggled to stand to my feet again amidst my adoring fans.

  “My God. She’s dropped another one,” I said. Our prolific mother was already busy licking the coat of her third kid, which had landed smack dab on top of the second. “How many is she going to have?”

  “I’ve got no idea,” Brent said. “Maybe if I knew we had goats before I got here, I could’ve done some research.”

  “She’s not a goat,” I said. “She’s a clown car.”

  We stayed and played with the goats for another hour or so. Eventually, the firstborn kid miraculously managed to half walk, half drag himself over to his two new siblings. The mother finished cleaning them off, as they writhed and struggled in an instinctive urge to stretch tall enough to reach her udder. Before climbing out of the pen, Brent walked slowly over to the mother, who was patiently standing still while her brood lunged for her teats. Brent reached out his hand, and she extended her nose to sniff it. Her demeanor seemed no different from any of the other goats in the pen, as if she was completely unaware of her accomplishments during the previous hour.

  “Good girl,” Brent said softly. “Good mom.” She ducked her head for Brent to scratch around her floppy ears. “Good job.”

  Good job, I agreed silently in my head. In less than an hour, this mother had completely erased any grudges Brent may have held against me this morning. Good job.

  Chapter Nine

  In the course of only a month we’d turned the Beekman back into a living, breathing farm. With goats now grazing in the fields, John had excess milk to feed to a newborn calf he’d bought down the road, whom we immediately named Cow.

  Cow was a Holstein bull calf. John explained to us how dairy farmers often sold off their male calves to their neighbors for very little money, to raise for their own beef. While it seems obvious, we hadn’t realized that on a dairy farm, females rule. With the exception of a stud or two, males of any animal on a dairy farm just take up space and feed. (And since the invention of frozen semen by mail, sometimes not even that.)

  When John explained this fact of dairy life to me, it made perfect sense. Until I looked around and realized that the barn was full of adorable baby kids and roughly half of them, by sheer odds, were male, including one we’d seen born less than one month ago. I swallowed hard.

  “What happens to male kids?” I asked.

  “They go to auction,” he answered. There was that auction word again. “The early ones go for Russian Orthodox Easter, and the later ones for Ramadan.”

  Though I wanted to believe that Russian Orthodox Christians put colorful bonnets on the kids and herded them down the street in a festive Easter parade, I had a sinking feeling that the only parade they’d be attending went from the oven to the table.

  “How much money do you get for them?” I asked.

  “Depends on the day,” John answered. “Sometimes forty dollars. Sometimes fifteen.”

  Fifteen dollars? That was it? I wanted to run into the house and bring out cash to buy up the whole lot of male newborns. But I also knew that that wasn’t how things worked. If this was going to be a working farm, I’d have to play by the rules.

  Another one of those rules was that a farm should grow its own food. It seemed as if the only amenity the Beekman didn’t have when we bought it was a vegetable garden. I’d grown up in a family that ate for most of the year from what was harvested and preserved from our quarter-acre vegetable garden.

  And what we couldn’t grow on our own, we picked by the pound at local farms. From the period of 1978 to 1985, my mother pickled, froze, canned, and preserved metric tons of foodstuffs.

  At the time I hated all of it.

  My friends all ate brown-bag lunches consisting of whatever was the most current prepared snack food being advertised on Saturday-morning television. I, on the other hand, ate raw snap peas and plain jelly sandwiches made from strawberries that I’d picked, washed, and stirred in five-gallon stock pots over a hot stove in the middle of July. I still have a slight hunchback from spending the daylight hours of every summer vacation hunched over, pulling up the crabgrass and stinging nettle growing between the endless rows of green bean plants. When McDonald’s first came to Oconomowoc—which was an unattainable luxury for us—I remember my mother baking breaded zucchini sticks and trying to convince me that they were “just like” the French fries we couldn’t afford.

  They weren’t.

  Once I moved to New York City—the epicenter of gourmet food markets—I saw that my mother could have made a killing with her elderberry jellies and raw fermented sauerkrauts if she’d only had access to the buyer for Balducci’s. I too had come to belatedly appreciate my indentured green-thumbed upbringing. Maybe it was the first time I forked over seventy-six dollars for a dozen heirloom tomatoes at the Union Square Greenmarket that I finally realized the gifts my parents had given me with our garden.

  The garden seemed like so much work as a kid. But now it seemed quaint in comparison to the daily stresses I faced with my job, Brent’s job, and New York City in general. At least at the end of a long row of green beans, I used to have a basket of something to show for my work. What did I have to show for myself now? A reel of television commercials and a tiny two-room apartment that would have fit in the garage of our modest Wisconsin ranch house.

  I’d decided that we needed to have a vegetable garden at the Beekman in order for it to be a true farm. It was getting fairly late in the season to put one in. If I wanted to have any kind of harvest this fall, I’d have to start now. Luckily I had the four-day Memorial Day weekend ahead of me to get it accomplished.

  “I think I’m going to put in a garden this weekend,” I told John.

  “That’s good,” John replied.

  I’d learned that John was a man of remarkably few words. Part was due to shyness, but another part was that brevity seemed to be the official local dialect. I am the sort of person who could chat on and on about everything from the war in Afghanistan to the latest in spring menswear. In Sharon Springs, however, I was learning that the art of conversation was less like the rapid volleying of bon mots, and more like playing volleyball with balloons. It was almost as if there was a daily quota of words assigned to the county, so each response was measured and meted out as carefully a
s candy to a child.

  “Can I borrow the rototiller?” I asked.

  Part of John’s initial letter to us listed every piece of farming equipment he would be bringing with him. Pretty much the only piece of machinery I recognized was the rototiller. It was certainly the only one I had any hope of successfully operating.

  “Sure. I gassed it up yesterday,” John answered.

  “I think the best spot is out on the other side of the old silo foundation, out past the raspberry patch.”

  “Um-hm,” John responded, sounding neither overly affirmative nor pessimistic.

  “Do you think the soil will be good there?’

  “Could be.”

  “I got some pea seeds down at the Agway.”

  “Might be a little late for peas.”

  “Do you think so? I was reading online that they could be planted up until the end of May.”

  If John were the chuckling sort, I’m sure he was stifling one. I doubted many people in Sharon Springs got their gardening information from any source ending in “.com.”

  “If it stays cool enough, maybe,” John said doubtfully.

  “It’s been a cool spring,” I said, repeating a tidbit I’d picked up at Agway along with the peas.

  “It has.”

  “And there was a surprise frost last night.” Another Agway sound bite.

  “Yep.”

  I could see that John’s daily noun/verb ration was running out, so I wandered over to the tiller, gave it a grunting push, and rolled it out into the sunlight. It was heavy…and stubborn. It took me five minutes to push it a mere twenty yards.

  I was halfway across the barnyard, alternating between pushing and tugging the reluctant machine toward the prospective garden patch, when John took a break from his own chores. He walked over to me and gave the starter cord on the tiller a mighty pull. It turned over with a roar. He put the machine into gear and the wheels sprang into action. He quickly squeezed the clutch on the handle to keep the tiller from sprinting across the yard. Over the noise, he motioned for me to grab hold where his hand was, and proceeded to wordlessly show me which gears moved the machine forward or reverse, and which activated the tines.