Our outdoor kitchen is infested with crazy chickens. Crazy or just incredibly dumb, but then dumb just comes with chicken territory. These two ladies take the cake, though. It all started normally enough, with them selecting roosting spots within the kitchen. Ever seen it happen? It’s cute. Like newlyweds apartment hunting, the rooster leads the hens …
Bucket Brigade
We have endless water at the farm. Most of the time. It’s a true luxury. It runs day and night, and we do our best to route it to the most useful places so that its abundance isn’t wasted. It’s easy to be casual about it, because if it isn’t used it just means that …
Fotocrônica: Drink Milk
Our region is famous for its milk production. It’s ranching country around here. Lots of local little producers, who deliver their milk daily to larger distributors who then either re-sell it to customers in-town or to larger, national buyers. Every morning the milk farmers drive their milk into town by pickup truck or by strapping their 50-liter …
Fotocrônica: I’ve Arrived
It’s orange season! Around here almost everyone has an orange tree in their back yard, or knows someone who does. We all sit around snacking on oranges until we can’t stand it anymore. Most of these trees are juice oranges and they don’t peel easily. Thus, the correct way to eat a Brazilian orange is to slice off …
Munchies
She came to us because her mother died in a tragic accident. Our relatives couldn’t raise her, so they brought this little orphan to us. How could you say “no” to those big brown eyes? Veadiniha (“Little Deer”) is too young to put straight out into the pasture to feed. She’s been living within the …
Swisschard
The seeds sat mixed among a display of ordinary local vegetables. Taste of my homeland summers I clutched them to my heart, hand-carried them to the register, and brought them home from that distant supermarket. I hoard each seed. I’ll probably never get any more. We are kindred souls, my swisschard and I. Not born …
Fotocrônica: Work Gloves
See those thorns the size of effing knitting needles? That’s a wild lemon tree, which grow all over our property. Good for caipirinhas at the end of a long day, not so good for those doing the yardwork. It seems everything has thorns here. Last year started counting thorny and stinging plant varieties as a way to …
Common Ground
This place is magic. When I was young, the road rippled like a Willy-Wonka roller-coaster and my dad–despite the oppressive fair traffic–would turn the car around at the fairgrounds and drive the whole distance again just to give me another chance to go: “WhEEEE!!”. Today the walk from the parking lot to the fair is …
Trash
I get a lot of thinking done while swinging a scythe. Shamefully, today I spent most of my time mentally cursing out the in-laws who had dumped their trash among the bushes I was trying to clear. Bottles, lost shoes, tin cans–I never knew what I was going to hit. How could they be so …
