Barnheart Read online

I can’t speak for any of the other students, but walking into that barn was like crossing a different kind of threshold. My knees started to buckle, just a little. This wasn’t my barn, and these weren’t my sheep, but this was the first time I was ever such a hands-on participant in the life I wanted to take part in. I didn’t have a partner, or land, or a barn, but I was there. And standing in that barn was 100 percent closer to my own flock than I had been the day before. And I was miles closer than I had been sitting in a Borders café in college, paging through a copy of Hobby Farms magazine and daydreaming about livestock. When I couldn’t believe it was really happening, that I was standing in a sheep barn in rural Vermont, I could reach down and feel a lamb’s ear in my hands. It was happening. Consider me pinched.

  Inside the barn, dusty shafts of sunlight revealed fifty ewes and their spring lambs. Multicolored babies skittered and played tag at our feet while their patient parents chewed cud and occasionally baaed at us if we got in their way. Some of the more nervous ewes skittered to the wall, which was lined with a long trough of hay.

  I noticed that the trough was made with slats in different sizes, to enable ewes, lambs, and their guard llama to eat at different places and avoid piling on top of each other. It was simple but ingenious. I found myself taking more notes in the barn than I had in the classroom. I jotted down how hay was presented and where medical supplies were stashed. I asked the farm help where they dumped mulch straw. Or did they prefer the deep-bedding method?

  During all the barn demonstrations, there was a little ram lamb that wouldn’t leave us alone. He was a little black guy with a white blaze on his head. Every time I stopped petting him, he started chewing on my jeans, so I crouched by him and let him lean against my side while I listened to Chet. He was like my own private fan club, a nice little boost when you’re covered in sheep manure from the knees down.

  When Chet asked if anyone would help him catch some ewes to demonstrate handling and foot care, I hopped the fence before anyone else could even get a hand in the air. Together we cornered three or four ewes, and when one tried to race out past me, I crouched and caught the hundred pounds of panic as if I had been doing this my whole life. “Nice catch,” was all Chet said. I beamed.

  We spent the rest of the day handling the animals, watching Chet’s demonstration of the proper way to flip a ewe on her rump, tag ears, crop tails, and inject medicine. I kept my pen hand busy, but most of this was the kind of experience you need to practice firsthand to gain any real competency. That couple getting seventy lambs tomorrow would be able to put all this know-how to use right quick. I realized with some sadness that it might be years — maybe even decades — before I could tag lambs of my own.

  After all, there was a reality to my limitations, both financially and geographically. I was a low-level corporate employee living on my own, so my income was modest. Although I was thrilled to be using Photoshop at a day job in a town where I could be attacked by a puma, it did limit my possibilities. I couldn’t buy my own farm like some of these other classmates already had. I didn’t even rent a farm anymore. In Idaho I’d had land I could grow into, dozens of acres, even if it wasn’t mine. Here in Vermont, I lived in a small cabin, and of the acres I had, only half an acre wasn’t covered with trees. So, even if by some miracle my landlord would allow me a few sheep or a goat, space was still an issue.

  When the barn work was done and we were all back in the classroom, my mood lightened considerably. Before saying thanks and a final “Good luck,” Chet handed each of us a small yellow ledger that looked a lot like a checkbook. It was a lambing record book. It had the University of Vermont logo and a Suffolk lamb outline on the cover. It was a simple record-keeping device and probably cost no more than forty-five cents to print and bind.

  It was nothing special, yet I held this little yellow book like a golden ticket. I sneaked a sly glance at the other attendees to see if anyone else was as excited by it as I was. They didn’t seem to be affected. But how could they not be? We were holding a gem, the talisman of a culture that 99.9 percent of Americans would never know. This was a tool possessed only by people who walked in their fields, bought hay by the truckload, and knew more breeds of sheep than of dogs.

  As far as I was concerned, it was a passport to the future. I’d taken the class, shared a meal with shepherds, and held a scrambling ewe in my arms today. Now I held a little notebook I would someday write in with bloodstained fingers in a dark April barn. It was my proof that I was one of the few, the hay-stained, the happy.

  THE ARRIVAL OF RUFUS WAINWRIGHT AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

  AS MUD SEASON DRIED UP, the state bloomed into the green Xanadu my neighbors and coworkers had promised. The contrast of stick season with the now flowering apple trees surrounded by a carpet of green seemed to happen overnight, as if one day I was driving home from the office and the landscape suddenly woke up. This green all around me was what I missed most when I was living in the West. The Rockies were beautiful and dramatic, but so stark compared to all of this. My northeastern soul preferred these gentle rolling hills, covered bridges, and lush pastures. I think I might be part Hobbit.

  Even as the outdoors started to look warmer, though, there was no mistaking that it was still early spring. Nights dipped into the teens, making it feel more like early January at times. But that hint of green fueled my desire to enlarge my flock. There was plenty of room to house more egg-producing poultry, and I didn’t think a pair of rabbit hutches could hurt either. I made plans to attend the Annual Poultry Swap at the local fairgrounds the first weekend in May. The fact that it coincided with the annual Rutland rabbit show was kismet of epic proportions. Maybe I’d get some laying-age birds and a pair of pedigreed French Angora rabbits and start my own small rabbitry. I had raised them in Idaho; now I could breed them in Vermont.

  Every year the first Sunday in May caters to an unusual crowd at the Schaghticoke Fairgrounds. Just a skip over the state line into New York and you’ll find yourself at what equates to a livestock tailgate party. It’s called the Annual Poultry Swap out of stubbornness for tradition. At one time it was just the local chicken club swapping pullets, but it had long since evolved into the kind of marketplace rarely seen in America today. By eight in the morning the grounds have been transformed from an empty dirt parking lot into a small festival of fur and feathers. True to its name, it is a swap meet. Small farmers and animal breeders come with everything from turkey eggs to two-week-old goat kids, with a mind to sell, barter, or borrow.

  The makeshift roads are lined with the open sides of vans and pickup trucks. Wooden hand-painted signs and cardboard posters leaning against trailer tires list options and prices. Want a pair of Silkie bantams? Looking for a ram lamb to add to your flock? Need a basketful of goslings or guinea hens? How about Angora rabbits or a litter of beagle pups? They’re all here. (I’ve yet to see someone up the ante and bring in a pony, but it’s only a matter of time.) I’m telling you, this swap meet is a ripsnorting hayride for the livestock set, and I make sure I’m there every single year.

  I heard about the event from a local newspaper reporter who was interviewing me about my first book. Since there was a chapter in it dedicated to chickens, we got around to talking about establishing a new flock in Vermont, and she asked if I knew about the event. I didn’t even know swap meets like this still existed, much less that there was one thirty minutes from my cabin! Apparently, word of mouth was the only way news of this event got around. I couldn’t find anything online anywhere, and none of my local Vermont papers listed it. (If they have since that year, well, then, to all rural journalists of New England, I apologize.) I heeded the two words of advice the reporter gave me: Go early.

  I showed up before seven, and mine was one of the few cars in the parking lot, but behind me a steady stream of people was percolating into the fairgrounds. I walked into the agriculture building and spotted an older man with perfectly conformed golden-and-blue Seabright bantams. If fairies were to reenact Th
e Empire Strikes Back, bantams are the kind of tiny beasts they would ride — tiny, fancy tauntauns. The next man over had Dutch rabbits. A woman past him had boxes of chirping babies: day-old chicks and turkey poults. Another man was setting up goslings near a quail pen. And these were only the first exhibitors. Outside, the parked cars formed rows and alleys, truck beds turning into Nubian goat shelters and cage stores. A clever gardener set up a stand of vegetable six-packs. He had the market cornered and could barely keep up with the shouting customers.

  I walked past his booth, turned a corner, and spotted a small horse trailer backing up. A crowd gathered, excited for what was inside. Children jumped up and down and middle-aged women looked on with wild grins. I pricked up my ears and heard a baker’s dozen of tiny baas and nickering. A small gate was raised around the back of the truck, some cedar chips were spilled, and out of the back hatch flew five kicking goat kids and right behind them a pile of baby lambs. There is no animal on this planet more adorable than a two-week-old goat kid.

  I watched the babies romp and play and the people haggle over prices for the stock inside. The woman was a local farmer and was asking fifty dollars a lamb or kid. I thought that was fair. If it were a pet, fifty dollars is a heck of a lot less than the cost of a poodle. And if it were destined to be dinner? Well, you just bought what would end up being a hundred and fifty pounds of freezer meat for the price of three large pizzas and a two-liter soda at Pizza Hut.

  I was there to experience the festivities, but I was also on a specific mission: I needed a rooster for my flock. I had already picked up some laying hens on a road trip near Lake Champlain, but as yet there were no men in the picture. Hens don’t need a rooster to lay eggs, but they’re happier in the company of their male counterparts. A rooster’s job is to protect and rally his flock. He’s part guard, part lover, and part caterer. The roosters I’ve known have always kept a watchful eye over their ladies, performed their role as a mate (a lot), then spent the rest of their free time finding delicious things to eat and yelling for everyone to come check them out. My hens were laying just fine and didn’t ask for my dating services, but for my own peace of mind I wanted a security guard on duty. I was hoping to score a nice young cockerel for under twenty bucks.

  Usually, finding a spare rooster isn’t a tough thing to do. People in the country are always giving them away. The rural Craigslist Farm and Garden posts were teeming with mistakenly gendered “laying hens” looking for new homes. I’d seen the ads and could have answered them, but shopping at the swap meant I could peruse at my own pace and have my pick of the gentlemen. So whenever I walked by a cage or truck with a rooster, I’d let my gut reaction and my wallet have a conversation. Most of the roosters were older and scrappy (calling them “pot stock” would be putting it kindly). Others were beautiful but were either fancy bantams (I don’t think a Silkie bantam rooster can even reach a Jersey Giant’s wings, if you get my point) or giant Cochins sold in pairs. I didn’t need a rooster as big as a toddler: I had only one hen he could service without putting her in traction. I kept on looking.

  Then I noticed a teenager pulling crates out of the back of a van. His business was clearly the beautiful wooden cages he was selling to people who needed to take home new animals, but he also had a few birds for sale. Among them was a red-and-gold rooster with a long green tail. I recognized the breed right away; my mentor in Idaho raised these birds. It was an Ameraucana. His grayish green feet were the dead giveaway, but other standout features like cheek feather fluffs and those wild party colors made me certain of the identification. I asked the boy how old the rooster was, and he said all the birds he had that day had recently turned a year.

  My instincts were rooting for him. I asked, “How much?” The boy seemed shocked that I wanted to pay for a rooster but stuttered out, “Fifteen dollars.” I handed him a twenty and he handed me a five-spot and seven pounds of squawking feathers. I held the bird close to my chest. He calmed down and rested against me. I carried him through the crowd to my station wagon, where I had a small cage ready in the back seat. As I walked through the throngs of onlookers, some people commented that I’d found the best-looking rooster at the swap. I gratefully agreed.

  When I got to the car, I loaded him gently into the cage and suddenly realized he needed a name. I watched him strut and move around the small pen with style. He might have been terrified, but he was playing it cool. He bobbed his head as though he was keeping time with a song in his head. I couldn’t get over the music in him, and his long green tail feathers seemed like lavish coattails. He cocked his head and looked up at me with his tiny yellow eyes. Then he firmed his footing, ruffled his feathers, and busted out a long, smooth croon. This rooster wasn’t just crowing; he was singing. Suddenly, the perfect moniker popped into my head, and I rested my hands on my hips, satisfied with the decision. I named him Rufus Wainwright, after the musician I’d come to admire, whose own style and voice seemed to fit this wayward bird.

  I woke up early the next day and drove north to Rutland. The Long Trail Rabbit Club was holding an American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA)-sanctioned rabbit show, and at this particular show, I was going to pick up my breeding stock. The animals I hoped to attain were French Angoras — a beautiful breed of fiber rabbits that grow wool so dense and soft, it’s been called the warmest on earth by people in the biz. The breeder was a woman from Massachusetts named Nancy Platts, who specialized in this breed. She said to meet her at the rabbit show at 9:00 a.m., so we could go over pedigrees and care and feeding before I took my pair home.

  When I pulled into the Vermont State Fairgrounds, I could not believe the cars. Rows and rows of rabbit people were parked there, with license plates from all over New England that read MINIREX and SHORABTS. I guess rabbits were a bigger deal than I’d realized.

  Inside the ag building were hundreds of cages and rabbits (surprisingly, it smelled fine), and along the walls were stewards taking notes and judges in white coats examining every inch of their subjects. They’d feel their heads and feet and talk aloud about their bone structure and bite. I watched a few judges work with a breed called the Flemish Giant, a huge rabbit with a satin short coat, then walked across the building to see the Jersey Woolies — small, long-haired bunnies — being judged. It amazed me how different rabbits could look from one another. Like a lineup of purebred dogs, each had its own purpose and history.

  I went back to Nancy and sat with her by a judges’ station, while she went through the two rabbits’ pedigrees with me. The buck I was buying was a big guy with light brown wool. I named him Benjamin Franklin because he looked like a Ben, and who doesn’t love that sassy character? The doe was a fawny cream color called Lynx and had giant brown eyes. I named her Bean Blossom after my dream banjo of the same name.

  The plan for the two fluff balls was to raise them to breeding age and mate them. If all went as planned, I would have my own purebred rabbit kits in the backyard hutch. Since I would be getting into the business of breeding rabbits, I joined the ARBA and, with the help of more experienced locals, would be bringing some adorable little Angoras into the world by midsummer. Along with the income from selling bunnies, I’d be selling their fiber and spinning some of my own.

  Later that spring I made a split-second decision in a feed store that would end up causing trouble come November. I had gone to Whitman’s Feed in North Bennington to pick up my order of poultry: six light Brahmas, six Ameraucanas, and two Toulouse goslings. The chickens were all pullets — laying hens for my egg supply. I bought the geese as a pair, simply because I liked them. I had always liked geese, and finally, I was living a life where “What the hell, throw in two French geese with my order; I’ll just bring a bigger box” was a normal sentence.

  I walked into the back room of the feed store and happened upon four giant, waist-high wooden and wire cages, filled with chicks basking in the soft glow of warm heat lamps. Day-old chicks are ridiculously adorable; you hold them in your palms and feel their
heartbeats in their talons. They cock their heads and pivot tiny black eyes around the room. I held my fourteen new beings one at a time, saying hello, listening to their soprano voices, which sounded the same even though they were different species. Om may be the sound of the universe, but peep is the cry of all future poultry.

  As I headed to the register with my boxful of livestock, I spotted a sign that read EXTRA BROAD BREASTED WHITE TURKEYS! $5!!! A little enlightenment seeped into my brain. I made a decision right then and there in the cacophony of chirps and the orange glow of the feed-store heat lamps that I would be taking home a turkey. I’d give it the best life I possibly could, and then, after a few months under my care, he’d become part of my family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

  The plain fact was that, come November, my family was going to eat a turkey. I’m the lone vegetarian in a family of fervent carnivores (my grandfather was a butcher). They would not be swayed by a flaccid serving of Tofurky, nor would they abstain from eating meat. Since they would be eating a bird regardless of my preferences, they had two choices. They could go to the supermarket and buy a turkey that had lived in some factory farm or they could opt for something that had lived naturally, outside in the sunshine.

  In a few months my turkey grew from a poult that was smaller than a side of mashed potatoes into a cute, quirky, creepily smart teenage bird scampering in the grass with laying hens, sled dogs, geese, a duck, and a new litter of cripplingly adorable Angora rabbits. He ran freely among my menagerie with a languid jog — a tiny velociraptor on lithium, his white baby feathers almost gone from his leathery pink neck. Sometimes, when he wanted to impress the hens he grew up with, he puffed up his pathetic teenage plumage, lifted his tail, and actually looked something like the turkeys you see on television. The hens weren’t impressed and walked away, bored. His vulnerability was endearing.