Beer, Shit and Tornadoes; The Life of a Working Farm Maybe its the paddle boat; unmoored, wind animated, nosing gently but earnestly around the pond across from the front door as if completing a set of invisible tasks. Maybe its the absolute flatness and emptiness of the surrounding landscape where you can see buzzards circling and lone, massive trees from miles away. Certainly the non-stop promenade of chickens, turkeys rabbits and donkeys ambling and playing around the farmhouse contributes. Maybe its as simple as the abundant Shit, in its black and constant glory; shit that is going to enrich one pasture which will be seeded while the crew that shat there moves on to naturally fertilize another (on this working farm all the animals have jobs). The absence of the sound of roaring CTA trains, honking taxis and sensory-devastating fire truck sirens cant hurt. Who knows? But after a few hours on our friend Kims farm ones personal ecosystem calms and levels. Your heartbeat suddenly pulses out towards the horizon like a blown soap bubble rather than a darting pinball. You begin to think in paragraphs not bullet points. You sip a beer and think This is so wonderful. Maybe I could be a farmer? Fair Cousin, let me deflate your rural delusion right now. Raise that eyeline from the frolicking rabbits to the rough islands of scattered timber and metal siding that dot the field beyond. I wasnt here. I cant always be here for every possible tornado. But one came through last year and tore out 10 of my buildings. The ones that are still laying out there froze to the ground before I could get to them. It was a hard winter, very hard, Kim reports as we move from the chickens to the cattle, Ive got so much work left to do just to catch up. She didnt lose any animals (animals do not cower facing a tornado...they improvise). She rebuilt a functional approximation of the buildings herself. She just kept going. There was still a lot of work to do. There always will be. Its both the reality and the point of the way Kim chooses to work. Work, work, work, break even. I love it. I love being physically exhausted. You work all day, come in to the house, have a beer and take a hot bath...and to go to sleep actually physically exhausted? That feels so good. Sometimes Im mentally exhausted too...but not anything like when I was still working Corporate. To Rewind a bit. Kim Snyder of Faiths Farm, an hour outside Our Fair City, is one of Publican Quality Meats favorite Food Artists. She raises animals the right way. They live the natural life they want to live, which is to say nearly wild ones. Her farm has shelter for the animals but no containment. There are some low lying hotwires to separate clans (Pig Clans are a bit like the 5 Families from The Godfather) but aside from that they roam free. Animals are like people, theyre social, they have cliques, they make neighborhoods. Some chickens will hang out with those pigs and no other pigs. They make little societies...unless theyre afraid of something. Then its one big neighborhood. Like a tornado. Kim knows all of her animals. It is in knowing and observing her animals that she teaches herself how to farm better. It is understanding and respecting their personalities that she sharpens her instincts. We did not do a cute tour around the shit fields of Faiths Farm. We got schooled; genetic integrity with Heritage animals, crop rotation, detecting mental instability in an animal, bee hives that add new hives at the bottom not the top (the whole history of Beekeeping is Wrong; it ignored this blunt and obvious fact) and more than this already very long piece can convey. Kims animals know her too. When our trio of City bumblers arrived at the farm and stepped out of the car we expected the chickens and rabbits in the vicinity to scatter and flee but they just went about their business with a glance and a Hey. Theyre not afraid of people and, more broadly, theyre not afraid. I dont wean the animals from their mother. I dont separate the bull from his family. I let the mother pig nurse naturally. Theres a cage that can hold the mother and stop her from laying down and accidentally killing one of her piglets. But the mother makes a sound when shes going to lay down. She tells the kids. I figure the piglet who cant figure that out isnt going to stick around anyhow. Then after she lays down she sings them a song and when shes done she stops singing and gets up. And, as if on cue, the Mom of Kims new batch of 5 Gloucestershire Old Spot Pigs, made the noise. laid down and nursed her avid clan (a few younger newbies tried to sneak into the buffet too...that didnt work out...but mother pigs commonly share parental duties) The best evidence of the truth of this is in the top picture. One should not be able to typically touch, approach or even look at The Bull on a farm. All the animals on Kims farm have jobs. Chickens spread manure with their pecking. In fly season they hop on the backs of the cows and eat the flys off of them. Her trio of Donkeys act as Security Guards for all her animals, dutifully stomping any who dont belong (People I meet at the market tell me Oh, I want to bring my dog down to your farm and Im like...Uhm...I dont know if you want your dog running into my donkeys). The Bulls job is self-evident in title...what happens after that, on a typical production farm, is against nature. The Bull is segragated from his family and sent to make another; constantly doing step one but forever cut off from the natural step two...hanging out with your kids. Kims Bull sits in regal contentment, like a Buddha in the middle of his herd and puts his nose in her hand like a happy pup when she approaches. Its a beautiful thing. We always have something amazing sourced from Kim in our butcher case...right now Lonza and Prosciutto we started curing before we opened. Come in and ask for a taste and find out whats coming up next. Thank you Kim for your hospitality and the great work you do daily.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 12:36:07 +0000
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