Harmony Part VI

What was left of the hive.

Minor injury in line of chicken duty.

They look cute, and might provide us with delicious protein, but they're blood-thirsty!

Milking the goats.

   For those concerned about the well-being of the yellow jackets, none appeared mortally harmed. Can't say the same for the hive, which was in the way of the planned fence line. Before my three week stay at Harmony was finished, Larry sought to have it completed-all eight, galvanized, welded wire metal rolls, each comprised of 165 ft in length and 6 ft in height-in order to provide the livestock with an upgraded, more voluminous, 660-sq feet grazing area. Tedious is hardly descriptive enough for a project so entirely time-consuming (to the point where it was difficult to find the time to catch up on other daily tasks), and the unpredictable with setbacks (which on many occasions required Carlos and/or myself to backtrack half the 40-acres to retrieve the necessary doohickey to fix said setback). When unaided by the opportune location of a Douglas Fir tree to staple to along the tree line encompassing about half of the planned area, we placed several metal 8-footer T-Posts every 5 to 10 feet or so to secure the wire fence.

   The work wasn't all a drag, however. Tearing out the completely rusted-over, partially entangled with brush and ground, old fencing discarded behind by the previous owners, was done by the efficacious, late 80's Ford 150 XLT and a solid chain hoist pulley. For someone that got by largely without the presence of my biological father and going to boarding academy for high school, I wasn't afforded the opportunity to play with 4 wheel drive man toys much. Until now. It was time to make up for lost time! Also, pounding away on the countless posts thru a suitable depth in the fairly dense topsoil, with a 14 lb steel driver, worked well enough as a workout in lieu of a gym membership. Regularly during the project, K103-Portland's Soft Rock would cloyingly seep from the truck's radio. One sunny afternoon, shortly after a lunchbreak, John Mellancamp's 'Small Town' snuck into the rotation. For the first time in my life, I didn't want to introduce the speakers to a Louisville Slugger out of my usual annoyance with the song. Call it idyllic! Something in me during those 4 minutes saw it's intended complementary value flitting with the pastural setting before my eyes.

  No longer provided the safety of an office cubicle, there were a couple of 'work-related injuries' inflicted on me. Ananda, the 700 pound +, full grown female cow, aimlessly stepped on my feet, on two separate occasions to complete the pair, while I guided her to the grazing area. The verdant grass at my side was perfectly too alluring to pass up for her. Perhaps wanting to additionally get on the action, a thrill-seeking chicken managed to escape one day during feeding and after I deftly grasped it's right leg with my ninja arm swoop, it managed to inflict a decently-sized scratch on my wrist with it's free hind claw.

   Larry obviously expected more out of the volunteer crew than the suggested 4 to 6 hour days, 5 days a week by WWOOF-USA. And the mucky living conditions certainly didn't make matters better. So what led me to stay in Buxton as long as I did?

   It helped that the Matthews and Carlos did their best to make me feel welcome. Anyone with a God-complex can be found guilty of negligence and being self-absorbed, but I never found Larry to be malicious. Besides providing a roof over my head and meals for three weeks, I was given the green to light to muster as much of the stacked pine wood pile as desired to place in the Van, which would come in handy for future camp stops. Plus, right before my departure, the mister and misses handed over 2 dozen eggs, and snacks to be enjoyed for the trip. Carlos showed his appreciation for my help, after an earlier discussion on favorite beers and a personal preference to spicy foods, by presenting me with tall boys of Dos Equis and his wife's, day fresh, made-from-scratch, mouth watering/firing salsa (diablo, muy bueno!).

   Part of my determination to stay was the challenge arising from the foreman initial prediction that I'd only last three or four days before packing, based on his past experiences with other volunteers. It definitely provoked a stronger work ethic in me.  Also, having the chance to work day in and day out with a migrant worker and hearing the argument from his end verses having to rely on opinionated, hotheaded hosts on 24/7 cycle news channels appealed to me.

   Most importantly, though, it was a persistently building desire to learn permaculture farming, keeping livestock, and living off the land in a sustainable way. Ideally, there won't any dependance on the heavily tax-subsidized, corporate, agribusiness model from my end later in life. To further my greener than green knowledge of farming, I came to the conclusion that an effective way to new skills is to learn from other's mistakes and/or carelessness, which Harmony had in abundance.

   Road Trip Tunes:
   Pearl Jam, 'Radio Free Germany’ (Immortality)
   Beastie Boys, ‘Ill Communication’ (Rickie's Theme)
   Jackson 5, 'Jacksons Story: Number 1's' (ABC)

   Elvis Costello, 'This Years Model' (Radio Radio)

Harmony Part V

   Equivalent to the level of wrongful negligence toward his animals was Larry’s reckless, and often imperious management style over his work crew (ie Carlos, me and a later WWOOF’er arrival, to a lesser extent). Wednesday’s served as Mr. Matthews one day a week away from the shop. In lieu of enjoying a moment of repose, he spent the entirety of the daylit hours tending to the property; during which time, us ‘farmhands’, would occasionally be placed in precarious situations.  

   Ultimately, his priority was saving money. Concern for safety and keeping the workforce in good-spirits certainly? Not so much. Why else would he rely on an illegal immigrant and volunteers? In the chance Carlos had quarrel’s with the job, Larry could easily drive to the nearest Home Depot for a capable replacement. One who would be might be open to do the work for a dollar or two cheaper an hour. As for volunteer organic wanna-be-farmers like myself, well, we could leave anytime we wanted if we felt his methods too much to deal with. And if the WWOOF’ers labors weren’t performing to his satisfactory standard, Larry had the power to show them the door. No severance package required!

   The time spent attempting to re-track a Hitachi Trackhoe Excavator best exemplified his frightful carelessness. Larry was in the beginning stage of a compost pile project along the south-facing sloping area, adjacent to the house’s rear deck. The plan is to dig out a series of 8 to 10-feet deep trenches in parallel lines, perpendicular to the slope to later be filled with food scraps, tree slash, livestock waste and hay bedding, amongst other ‘compostables’. Eventually the material would be re-dug and provide an efficient fertilizer. On my first full day on the Harmony job, moments after twisting the excavator's ignition, Larry somehow unfastened the track from the front wheel on the hoe's right hand side. He remained behind the wheel and stubbornly sought to steer and occasionally jerk it back into place, all while anchoring the bucket and arm on the lower slope. 

   Rather than ‘waste’ $500+ of his money on a mechanic on realignment, the majority of the lifting and resetting, and the seemingly half-ton weight of it, fell to Carlos and myself while Larry remained chiefly in the cab. Even the subsequent aid of a chain and pulley, secured and hoisted by the excavator’s arm, didn’t prevent us from ineptly creating a hulking, haphazardly-positioned, mono-tired vehicle, positioned atop it’s rubber wheel (as evidenced by the attached photos). We wouldn’t have had anything to show for the days work if it weren’t for the handful of hours spent mounting a 100 lb control panel for the solar power unit on the basement wall and the daily animal commitments.

   A week later, Kent, another volunteer, showed up for a planned week and a half stay. A mid to late 30's, single male, Wisconsin-native, equipped with a heavy load of corpulence; likely resulting from a full-time sedentary lifestyle. How farm work stirred interest out of a man who without hesitation makes daily stops for fast food and drives a gas hog SUV I never quite made sense of.  Plus his preference of indoors work with the dishes and sweeping over outdoors chores involving a plant or animal quickly became glaringly obvious. 

   One of the first jobs Larry sought our combined abilities for was clearing brush and slash along a soon to be placed fence line. The incautious bossman neglected to mention the Poison Oak and yellow jacket hives we'd be up against. Unacquainted on how to spot the toxic shrub, my co-woofer's stay might have been a bit on the itchy side if I had not pointed them out to him before we started lopping and digging out old scraps of fence line tangled in the forest duff. Lucky for him, the wasps acted relatively quiet with the dropping winter temperatures, at least at the time.

  Kent's scheduled 13 day work vacation @ Harmony in reality became an 80 hour stop-off. After barely saying his departing words he got his vehicle in gear and hurried off with the driveway's suspended dust seemingly in tow.  Over anything else, having to drive 30 miles out for a decent wifi signal every night and attempting to catch up on the pigsty of a kitchen,  along with the daily 4 to 5 dish cycles and discarding of food scraps littering the floor tied into it, were the ultimate deciding factors. Taking off at the ass crack of dawn on the 2nd Wednesday of mine spent in Buxton, he left without being subjected to a full, straight day of Larry's commands. That lucky son of a bitch. Disinclined to taking out/in the heedlessly, aggressive male goat with it's leash, having no run-in with yellow jackets himself, and not getting the chance to partake in the second attempt at retracking the excavator, the wwoofer from the badger state never quite experienced the 'thrills' I did. The flying, pestering stingers reanimated themselves a week later and postponed 1/2 day of planned work, till Carlos and I smoked them out fully.