The Gods are smiling on our Open House. A neighborhood kid stacked all of our firewood and put it into the wood shed, a cold front swept through today pushing out the hot and muggy air, the forecast is for sunny and clear and dry days in the 70’s – perfect for our first Open House. The donkeys are brushed, we are trimming and polishing up the grass, Lenore is eager for love,and Red ready to show off his great skills. Maria has rearranged her studio and is getting ready to put out here potholders, hanging pieces and notecards. We are getting excited around here.
I decided to try and capture the perspective of being in the dentist chair, Dawn and Dr. Coco looking down at me before starting my root canal. As it happened, there was no root canal, the problem in my mouth is different, more complex and will require some surgery down the road. These two, who have worked together for 11 years – they are both sports fiends – at the Granville Family Dentistry have taken great care of my big mouth. It’s not a huge big deal, but I don’t care to describe it in much detail, I was, however, happy to get this photo.
Anyone with a farm or a life with animals knows about the Legions Of The Righteous who find it so easy to sit at their computers and make judgements about other people, about things that are not their business. They tell other people what is right and what is wrong and how to live their lives or take care of their animals.
Minding one’s own business used to be an elemental American ethic, we made our own decisions, for better or worse. But the new ethic online – especially rampant in the animal rights and animal world – seems to be that if you share your life honestly, you are asking for it: for rudeness, self-righteousness, for the cruelest and most unthinking attacks at the very time when you most need help and guidance. I hear it all the time.
I first encountered this idea many years ago, before the Internet legitimized rude and obnoxious behavior, eradicated the boundaries of dignity and space, and made the violations of privacy commonplace, even expected. I went to a party during my one year at college and a friend of mine, an attractive young woman, came to me in tears because she had been groped – sexually assaulted – by a young man who was also a friend of mine. She left the party in tears and I was shocked, I asked him why he had done that. “Did you see the dress she was wearing?,” he said. “She was asking for it.” I think of this often when people tell me I am asking for it if I am honest about my life.
Jenn learned this sad lesson this week. She wrote that as someone new to farm life, she is having an experience with rat snakes and Facebook that she needed to share immediately.
Jenn had read my post earlier about the new social media etiquette of minding your business when it comes to people with animals. Jenn has had a big problem with rat snakes coming into her chicken coop and eating her eggs. She used to relocate the snakes, but farms are a great teacher about time and energy and the real lives of real animals, and over the past year, her philosophy has evolved: “now, I immediately kill any snake I find in the coop., because (as I’m sure you know), a snake found in the coop will always come back for more.” They will, for sure, and they will bring their friends as well.
I know this story well. We are big relocators of animals here – we do anything to avoid killing them, we re-home spiders, lady-bugs, pull mice from the cat’s jaws, gently move bats and moles to new homes. But the farm changes perspective, alters values and priorities, reminds us that it comes first. If you wish to live on a farm and stay on a farm, you learn to love your .22 as well. You will need it.
This is generally beyond the consciousness of people on Facebook who live with pets in cities and suburbs. It isn’t that most of them don’t mean well. It’s mostly that they just don’t know any better, and rather than learn, they preach. When they get elected mayor, as has happened in New York, animals and the people who love them – I am thinking of the carriage horses – get in big trouble. So do good people like Jenn.
This issue is so important, because if the people who have pets and live in cities do not learn about the lives of people like Jenn – and me – then there will soon be only pets and no animals in our world. Just see what they are trying to do the horses in New York, and this is why the horse issue reaches far beyond the horses themselves.
In her good-hearted innocence, Jenn shared this snake problem online, where she went for help and guidance. She did not find it, she was, as she put it “judged harshly on Facebook” by people protecting the rights of snakes.
One person even promised to drive nearly an hour to “save” any snakes she found on the coop from then on if she would promise not to harm them. Jenn agreed.
“So,” she wrote, “I saved the snake I found today, the one I discovered breaking my broody hen’s eggs that were a week from hatching. I saved that snake for her, and what do you know: she can’t make the trip for a few days.” I’m afraid anyone on the receiving end of righteous e-mails knows how this story ends. That woman will never make that trip, Jenn will never hear from her again. She is already intruding on someone else’s life, minding somebody else’s business. It is easy to be righteous on a computer, much harder on a farm.
I learned a hundred times over that the way to quickly silence the legions of the righteous online is to suggest that they take charge of the animal involved or pay any costs or damages involved in doing what they suggest. This has never failed to work, they simply vanish, there are all kinds of Jenns out there to feast on. They are not seeking responsibility, they are seeking to make judgements about other people so they might feel better about themselves.
“I’ve learned a valuable lesson from her,” wrote Jenn, “and from you too: to not let non-farmers bully or shame me into making silly or impractical choices. Thanks again.”
Thanks to you, Jenn, it is a valuable and sadly essential lesson if one wishes a life on a farm or a life with animals. You share your life, you do not surrender it. Or hide.
I have learned another lesson from this new idea that by sharing your life, you are asking for cruelty and insensitivity and deserve it. That is to keep writing, and keep sharing your life, and keep making your own decisions. Tell the truth, always, and do not be silenced, ever. Our role is to spread the truth about the real world of real animals, it is getting lost out there in the great sandstorm called animal rights and the boundless messaging of the Internet. It may surprise you, but there are more people that understand than do not, and you will learn to hear them as well.
I hope you continue to stand in your truth, not in the truth of others. Truly, it is not their business. That is your boundary, it is your life, your farm, your money, your chickens, your eggs. And yes, your snakes.
We are losing any kind of respect or understanding of death when it comes to the animal world, a wealthy and politicized new culture that seeks a perfect world for animals rather than people, a world without animal loss, suffering, death or perspective. I am fond of Buddhism, but the Dalai Lama himself has said many times he could never life on a farm and make the decisions farmers make. People like Jenn deserve support and encouragement, not ignorant and invasive criticism. It feels bad enough to kill a living thing without unfeeling people making it worse. It is a low form of life to badger people in distress.
The idea of minding one’s business is perishing under the onslaught of instant and thoughtless messaging and these fantasized new ideas about the lives of animals. There are many people who understand the difficulty of the decisions you make, Jenn, the hard choices of anyone who lives on a farm and has animals of any kind.
I hope you never give up and never get discouraged, we are learning to find one another, those of us who love animals and wish them to remain in our world. We do listen to one another and help each other. And there are lots of us – millions of us. We are also becoming a movement, demanding to be heard. The people in New York are hearing us loud and clear.
I can also tell you that there are many non-farmers out there who are willing to listen and to learn and grow, even when it makes them – and you and me – uncomfortable. It is important to keep talking to them, our way of life and the animals left in our world depend on it. And stay in touch.
I love the parable of the rat snakes and I thank you for sharing it with me.
I might be kidding myself, but I think we will have a nice, quiet, even intimate Open House this weekend, although Simon and Red and the lambs are definitely a big draw – people are coming from all over the place to meet him. Usually the big crowd is in October, Spring is a smaller one, people are still getting ready for the summer.
I think the big draws here are Maria and her art, Simon and Red (a tie), the lambs, hot at the moment and the farm itself. I fit in there somewhere, but mostly I direct traffic to the real stars. This is going to be a fun weekend, I am looking forward to it. A contingent of creatives from the Open Group at Bedlam Farm is coming, George Forss will be doing portraits, Maria has assembled a gifted group of artists who have some wonderful and affordable art, and she is selling some of my photos as notecards and as matted and framed photographs.
Mary Kellogg will be reading some of her poetry on Saturday and Sunday, I will be giving a couple of talks, doing some sheepherding demos. We have most of the firewood in the woodshed, the lawn is mowed, some good helpers are Bedlam-found to help us. We are excited to share our good lives with the good people who have followed our trip. Simon is ready. Bring it on, he has an inexhaustible capacity for carrots and cuddling.
Simon is the symbol of our life in some ways, he has answered the call to life, he has come back from the dead, he is an inspiration, a forgiving, affectionate and patient being.
“Walk up” is the command I give Red to move directly towards the sheep and take control of them. In this command he walks slowly and deliberately, making eye contact, establishing his presence and authority in a calm way that does not panic the sheep or cause them to bolt. I appreciate the clarity and authority in Red’s work, I seek it in my own. Each morning, I do my own version of “walk up,” I set my priorities, my goals and my intentions, and I move forward to see that they are done.
