AgriCulture: They Have Spoken

Rural Intelligence Blogs AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week they write together:

When we announced in a brief Christmas e-mail blast to our farm customers that we planned to follow up on the old belief that on Christmas Eve farm animals speak, and that we intended to learn what they actually had to say, we got a lot more immediate responses than we anticipated. They ranged from the skeptical (our New York City neighbor, Mary Perillo, asked that we get a surveillance camera so she could see their lips move) to the enthusiastic (Dr. Ana Lups of Pleroma Farm told us of singing Christmas carols to her animals, some of whom, particularly the chickens and roosters, joined in). Most responders were simply very curious. So on Christmas Eve, once chores were finished and presents arranged around the tree, we busied ourselves setting up recording devices at the barn, where we knew the animals, once given their freedom, would gather.

Rural Intelligence Blogs Peter was sure the group would be talking about the baby Lord Jesus, maybe even singing his praises and anticipating his imminent arrival, a scene straight out of St. Francis of Assisi. I, on the other hand, figured that our animals were a pretty diverse lot, and that the winter solstice, the Friday night sabbath, and maybe just plain hay and grain might be competing for their attention. I think we were both greatly surprised when we played back the secretly recorded proceedings the next day.

The variety of accents and habits of speech took a lot of getting used to, and required us to play back the recording several times. The down home Gullah drawl of the Ossabaw pigs contrasted with the formal aristocratic speech of the British White cattle. The Karakul sheep, though apparently well spoken in their native tongue, had the thick Central Asian accent of Borat when speaking English. The Chinese geese spoke tonally, while our Rhode Island Red chickens screeched out their New England origins and our senior faverolle hen was oh so francaise.

The conversation, surprisingly, started with the usual sorts of casual topics you’d expect when neighbors get together (gossip, competition for status, real estate). To our dismay, it quickly progressed to a chorus of complaints and a litany of grievances, mostly directed at us. As a result, our livestock seemed to us to be all too human.

The gossip part hurt. It’s tempting to want to hear what others have to say about you in private, but take it from me, you may be better off not knowing. Once I was able to make out what they were saying, I was shocked and hurt to hear the peacock referring to me as “the slob,” making fun of the ratty, holed gray sweater I’ve been wearing to do chores. I have great affection for that sweater, my mother having knit it as a ski sweater for me when I was in high school, and it’s exceptionally warm. Pea fowl, who preen a good part of the day, see only its shortcomings and my failure to maintain the requisite standard of sartorial splendor. They clearly prefer Peter, whose own barnyard nickname, “Fancy Dan {the dandy},” evidences the high standards he brings to dressing for chores and life in general. At one point, I heard the pea hen, precisely enunciating each clipped syllable, hold forth about Peter: “I think he is a veritable honey, ” she declared in a tone evocative of the Raj, or at least of Citibank’s Mumbai call center.

When it came to one upmanship, the big competition on Christmas Eve, as would be expected, centered on gifts, those anticipated on Christmas Day but more particularly on those they had gotten in the past few months. The cows quietly trumpeted the rich store of apples the Riders, whose orchard is next door, had bestowed on them. The chickens crowed in return that Anne Golden had sent them two full bags of mealy worms—“live bait by mail order, don’t ya know.” But Vernon, our Ossabaw boar, who has clearly charmed many a visitor, was positively overbearing in recounting the mountain of gifts he and his sow soulmates had received. “We got us some truckloads of pumpkins, first from little ol’ Dotin’ Darlene and last month from Brer Chuck Abraham up yonder on Old Saw Mill,” reported Vernon, “and we was feastin’ for the month before that on a passel of acorns, most kindly provided by Brer Robert Remez and Sister Harriet Greisser, and by Bossman Hart Perry, as well as dotin’ Darlene and, I do declare, even by li’l Jack Newell from up Delmar way.” Vernon knows he is a star, and gobbles up all these complimentary vittles in stride.

Rural Intelligence Blogs We, of course, expected a less competitive approach from the sheep, but we overheard our darling Sultana, one of our bottle-fed lambs and now a very willful lady, bragging about the Christmas-y music she had heard emanating from our house. She baaed, “I hear them play music ‘We like Sheep, we like sheep…’ over and over.”
“You think that’s a good thing?” honked one of our aggressive Chinese geese. “Honk - it means your goose is cooked.”
“What you mean?,” asked our bottle fed wether, Orhan, “what’s wrong with, ‘they like sheep’?”
“Think about it, dumbo. How—honk—do they like sheep? Sounds to me like—honk—they like sheep on a plate.”
“But you must listen to all,” Orhan retorted, nuzzling up. “Whole line says: ‘Oh, we like sheep have gone astray ay ay ay ay.’ Handel, don’t you know?”
“Well…,” baaed Sultana, ” Handel schmandel, maybe goose has a point. Think, Orhan—where do all our ramlings go?”

This sad thought seemed to put all the creatures in a somewhat pensive and decidedly unfestive state. A torrent of complaints against us followed.

Our ancient French faverolle hen, clearly in a fowl mood, clucked that it had been two months since we’d brought them a cartload of weeds. “It is nine years, ma foi, since I am arrived, and I’ve seen the slob and Fancy Dan act comme ca before. Zut alors! Immediately it gets cold, they rest inside and, merde, our weed supply goes poof. Not even dotin’ Darlene arrive ici maintenant— je veux dire comes here anymore now.”

Tommy, the bull, butted his head against a railing like a metronome, keeping time, while muttering, barely audibly, “Tisn’t just the garden.” Behind him, like sequined backup singers, the bevy of cows who share the big pasture with him mooed out a low bovine chorus, “NOo NOO, not just the garden, OOh NOO.”

“What, mes cheries, does ziss mean, ‘not just the garden?’ ” asked the faverolle.

Tommy, too, was quick to place the blame on us. “Tut, tut, tut, my dear little feathered lady, when our gentlemen stopped moving us to fresh, verdant pasture, the grass just bloody well stopped growing. They daren’t walk around and move fences in the cold weather, so they’ve reduced us to eating from these big white bales that come off a lorry, by jove, like nothing so much as meals-on-wheels.”

To our surprise, our dear tusky boar Vernon, who usually runs over to be petted whenever we arrive, was the most accusatory of all. He said, “Land sakes, the grass you cows lost ain’t nothin’ compared to the daylight that done got taken from us. Stole clean away. These fellas and even dotin’ Darlene come round for afternoon feedin’ now round about 4 o’clock, and you know what that means. Sure as shootin’, the sun go right down right round half past four, all because they done decided to do the feedin’ so danged early.”

After hearing all of this animal chatter, we realized that we had become the butt of our own livestocks’ anger, chiefly because they needed an evil spiritual force to blame for winter and its deprivations. From what we could see, they’ve got the concept of a spiritual force, all right, but just haven’t yet figured out the concept of deliverance by a just and merciful God. This message may be easier to deliver in the Spring, but we figure that with some judicious proselytizing between now and next Christmas, we may find our critters breaking out in universal paeans of harmony, unending gratitude, and universal love when that holy night once again rolls around. —Mark Scherzer & Peter Davies

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