In Teats We Trust

I know I am not getting out enough; I spend my evenings cooking and zoning out to primetime TV (it's free!), my afternoons playing guitar and doing crossword puzzles, and my early mornings talking to goats as if their floppy ears and misshapen pupils process my silhouette and the sounds that emanate from my mouth into a comprehensive personality with which they knowingly interact. I refer to them as "people" and "folks," apologize to them when I slice off parts of their hooves, and thank them when I return them to their pens. I am grateful to them for providing me with both a meager income and all of the near-expired cheese I can imagine consuming.

Biding my time at the farm is giving me time to work on my bilingual comedy routine; my audience is perfect: contained, relatively sedate, and a hair smarter than a chicken. They listen especially well when I wield a flake of alfalfa or a bucket of grain. The latter is the best; while my fellow goatherd sneakily fills the grain tray I can guide a flock of hungry kids in circles with an empty blue bucket to avoid her being trampled by extremely cute hooves. You see, I get very excited about the blue bucket as if there were grain in it, and the silly kids think it's true.

So I've done a lot of goat-related things lately. I have more goat friends than people friends. My right hand can now be officially described as "bigger than my left." My relationship with poop has become more intimate than I think it's reasonable to imagine. When I feel a nibble on my pants or have my hand slammed against a wall by the hoof I'm trying to clean, it's just another day at the office.

I talked to my brother on the phone the other day; he's still in that "disposable income" phase, the phase that would be heaven if not for the hormonal imbalances. He asked me why I had worked on so many farms (3), and why I was doing it. My response was, "well, I have to pay for food and housing and stuff." Something in the way he repeated what I had told him tipped me off: "So you mean you have to pay for housing and all your food and stuff??" He is in Fiscal Flatland; the third dimension of money is a nonentity to him; all he knows is that money is gotten and spent in straight, easy lines. The third dimension, obligation, has yet to be imposed upon him, and is finally coming upon me in ways I had hoped would never furrow my brow.

When I realized his cluelessness, I remembered being that way, giving my paychecks from Olsson's right back for CDs without worrying about gas or food money, much less rent money. Even after being bailed out by my folks for fiscal irresponsibility, it took a few years (and paying rent) for the concept to dawn. This last year I had a job and a living situation that afforded me plenty of extra money for both saving and spending proudly; I left that job and that house and that money (that three-month-long trail of money) to seek a fortune, and my fortune's embryo is a goat. Life is a goat. I'm not dismayed. I like goats well enough. My only hope is that my fortune's larva makes a little more money.

This Morning

3: 40 a.m. First accumulation seen since a glacier in Colorado.

Buxom Does Really Get My Goat!

I woke up at 4:00 this morning, grabbed a hunk of (delicious garlic rosemary) bread, put some muesli in a cup with some rice milk, and ran out the door. I drove past the exit where I was supposed to get off the highway and ended up being a half hour late for my second day of work at Fern's Edge Goat Dairy.

Goats. Where do I begin? My first glimpse of them was yesterday when I came in (right on time) to the milking room and was faced with six goat asses, dangling udders, teats being sucked into pulsating vacuum tubes, milk flowing into a tank. Somehow this didn't phase me, and I learned right quick how to clean, strip (get the juices flowing), and insert the teat into the tube. It's not a very complicated process, and although it's only about 80 goats that get milked (of 200 on the property), it's a very factory-like process. I suppose that's what happens when you mechanize. My prior farm experience involved nothing more mechanical than an auger I used to drill post holes. This is high-tech modernity!

I don't know if you know this, or want to, but teats are far out! Have you ever looked at 80 different sets of teats before? Probably not. They're like snowflakes, but more squeezable. Some of them are large and dangly. Others are small. Some are wrinkly. I think I must have very wide palms because I can only use two or three fingers to squeeze an average sized teat or I spray milk all over my hand. Some teats are in just the right place, and others you might have to search for and pull back a little bit. I don't know how the goats feel about this; they have their heads stuck between metal bars, munching away on grain and kelp powder or trying to bite their neighbor's ear.

The morning shift takes between five and six hours, and involves feeding the multiple pens, milking two sets of goats, twelve at a time, and then feeding all the goats and the cows. It's crazy how fast time passes when you get to work two hours before the sun. I still have most of the day ahead of me. I don't really have any gripes about this job, especially since I got rubber boots. I just gotta go to bed early. Well, my hands smell like goats right now, which is a strange combination of raw milk, hay, and ammonia. You have to deal with a lot of goat shit, which is a small step away from dirt. Also, goats use urine as a sign of posession. I haven't been peed on yet.

It's a relief to know that somebody needs my work in exchange for their money (and they really need me-- very short staffed-- though the pay's not great), and I'm looking forward to hearing the same thing from the U of O (if you take out the "of" it's just You Owe...) pretty soon. I'm pretty sure they're gonna want me.

Goat pictures coming soon.

The Kitchen Spews Forth

Kitchen in America begins here.

My Mom once had a job at the National Children’s Center. She brought home some funny, if not slightly inappropriate, stories of the people there. One man would ask her every day, “What did you have for dinner last night?” That is the question I seek to answer here.

Last night was pretty special. I started in the morning, actually, with a poolish (2 c. water, 2 c. flour, ¼ t. yeast). That’s the easy part; it just sits there. Same with the soaking chickpeas. It was great to come out in the morning and see they had inflated so much as to pop off the lid of the yogurt container. The little successes are just as tickling as the big ones.

In the afternoon I cooked the chickpeas to the tenderness of a clump of dry soil; easy to mash (electric appliances here = toaster oven). I then created my dough:

2 c. poolish 3.5 c. bread flour ½ T. salt ½ t. yeast 1 T. fresh rosemary ¾ c. water

It turned out to be a really dense dough, and it took a very short knead to get that gluten developed (I haven’t worked with bread flour in quite a while). My original intent was loaves, but the more I thought about it, the more pita seemed the logical end. Turns out that pita dough is basically the same as bread dough. Go figure! I plopped the dough into a bowl with some olive oil and turned back to the hummus:

3 c. soft chickpeas 3 T. tahini juice of ½ lemon 2 t. salt 2 cloves of garlic any herbs you choose (I chose some paprika, pepper, and 1 T. rosemary, since our rosemary bush is HUGE)

Mash all that together, or if you’re fancy, process it until it’s as smooth as you want it to be (I like mine smoother than Smoove B., but the potato masher is no match for a metal blade spinning faster than John McCain’s head two weeks ago. Chunky it was.).

Back to the pita. It’s freaking easy. Preheat your oven to 475. If you have a baking stone, you know what to do with it. If not… you’re on your own. Divide the (risen) dough into as many pieces as you see fit, ball them, then press them into discs (don’t roll them yet) and wait 20 minutes (science note: the gluten has to adjust to the stretching it’s about to receive. If you don’t give it a preliminary squish, it will keep springing back when you try to roll it out.) Roll the pieces out thin, about ¼ inch. Let them sit (unstacked, if possible) for 10 minutes, then spritz your baking stone with water and put on as many as will fit. Now is the fun part.

I like to watch my bread rise in the oven. It’s like watching a fetus grow, but it takes just a few minutes and you can eat it afterward. Watching the pita has a cinematic bent to it; suspense builds as you see little bubbles form on the surface, and you’re not sure whether that’s all you’re going to get, or if it’ll go all the way and form a big steamy pocket. After three minutes, you will know. If it inflates all the way, congratulations, it’s a pita. If not, if your dough lacks some gluteny chromosomes and it miscarriages, do not worry; you have a darling bubbly baby naan! Carry on. Don’t let these brown or they’ll be too crispy and not moist and floppy.

This last bit I credit to Liz for the inspiration; she wanted tempeh. A quick sauté of red pepper, fresh-from-the-CSA-box specialty onion (I don’t know what specialty, it was light purple and shaped like a tamale), toss the tempeh in until brown, and garnish with some cilantro. That’s it! Make a bed of hummus on a plate, put the tempeh on, and serve with hot pita (that’s been sitting under something, keeping it warm and moist).

What a delicious meal; our recent cooking had lacked that Mediterranean flavor, and this was the perfect remedy. The rosemary and cilantro really perk things up, and the textures all went together so well. Filling, too; one serving was just enough.

Giada, eat your heart out.

Next: Tempeh-mental!

Mushroom, Mushroom!

They poke their little heads out of the duff...


Or emerge like seashells from stumps...


This lobster used to be a russala until a parasite attacked it.


This chanterelle looks like a butt.


A slug: a more mobile, slimy form of mushroom.


These white ones were my favorite; they were soft, velvety, and looked like ghosts.


Eat 'em up, YUM!

Home Space

View into the back yard. Note apple tree.


Artichokes?


Chardy chard!


The back yard looking at the house.


Living space.


First whole wheat bread and caraway/currant scones! Deeeeeelish!

Underdog Vs. The Invisible Snowball

This true, new babe from the woods, used to having income poured into his lap, knew nothing of what it means to be, still, Lost In America.

New intelligence:
house
job tentacles

New house! Gas stove! No cats! Garden!
Practically paradise in every way. Pictures coming when I stop stealing slow internet and go to the library.


Still waiting. Not tables. Just waiting. Turning compost, turning pages of my crossword book, turning slowly into vegetable matter via ingestion. Turning in applications.

I know I'm perfect for this job. That job is me, and I have to wait until the 2nd week of December before I know, unless they do the obvious thing: close the classified ad, toss out all the other applications, and hire me now, which is what they really ought to do. I'm gonna tell them so when I get the chance. In the meantime, I'm waiting for a call from a temp agency. And for Publisher's Clearinghouse to knock on my door. And for that CEO's extra tax money to enter my bank account. And for ... well, you get it.

Here's a very sappy ode to some people who deserve an ode (the odeious):

You are responsible for my cold toes;
your good vibes warmed my heart.


Michael Glaser, eat your heart out.

I'm no longer pacing the way I was a couple weeks ago; the move and the groove have kept me busy enough. Halloween had me dancing in drag in a house designed with the intent of having psychedelic raves. Since then I've been cooking and baking. Yesterday, the DIVA center showed selections from the Punto y Raya film festival, which should be an inspiration to anybody who loves electronic distortion and epilepsy (that's you, Noise Test!). Today... I will be thinking of ways to use the garden over winter, prepare it for spring.