Rural Intelligence bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: Last year at this time I wrote of what seemed to be the “ho hum” nature of the 8th anniversary of an event that deeply affected our lives and, because it exiled us from our New York apartment for over a year and effectively closed Peter’s businesses during that period, had the effect of jump-starting this as an operating farm. You can read that essay, 9/11/09: Not Just Another Friday at the Farm, in the RI archives. I wish I could again lament 9/11 apathy, but this year the coincidence (or maybe the better word is collision) of the date with end of Ramadan, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, and an out of control national battle over the proposed Islamic cultural center in our lower Manhattan neighborhood have lent the occasion a somewhat more explosive quality. Peter has reminded me that no matter how passionately held my opinions, this is not a place to express them, but that I must keep our focus on agricultural insights. I’ll try. This being the season when Jews blow the ram’s horn to herald the New Year (or, as Maimonides suggested, to wake up the soul), and when Muslims often slaughter lambs not only to enjoy the holiday meal but also to share with their poorer neighbors, sheep and lambs would seem an appropriate subject of rumination. They have been on my mind a lot lately.
Keeping the herd fed and watered is not, it turns out, all there is to keeping sheep. We struggle to keep up with a whole range of ancillary tasks that from time to time prey on my mind because I so often fall behind: tagging and registering the ewes, trimming the hooves (we’ve been trying to do 5 sheep each week, but sometimes it lags), getting the vet in for the next wave of vaccinations. I’ve also been thinking about the sheep because lately Peter and I have been discussing larger strategic questions about the them, questions we keep coming back to that never seem to resolve: can we afford to keep all the nonproductive ewes we’ve grown attached to? Is there a way to make good economic use of the wool that builds up every season in the garage, barn or attic? In general, what makes economic sense?
That debate also leads us to think about the sheep’s place in the social structure of the farm. In many ways, they are quite central because of their wide range of connections to other components. They are the animals that most personally relate to us. They also have an interesting relationship with the cows. They graze with one set of cows during the day and with another set at night. They seem to coexist comfortably but not to socialize, and I wonder what unspoken agreements they have to share or stay out of each others’ ways. If there’s competition for resources, it’s not readily apparent. The sheep also share their space with the turkeys. There’s a small compound in front of the barn where the turkeys graze during the day while the sheep are in the back pastures. In the evening, we move the turkeys from there into the adjacent compound, on their way to their sleeping porch. We then let the sheep back on that side of the barn, where they will generally sleep. Last weekend, after I’d fed the sheep and before driving the turkeys inside, I noticed one of the oddest animal interactions I’ve yet seen. A ewe and three lambs were lined up with the tops of their heads resting on one side of the chain fence, and a couple of turkeys were gently pecking at the tops of their heads from the other side. It made a great deal of sense, of course. The sheep like to rub their heads on posts or trees. They have incredibly thick skulls that can withstand a lot of pecking. The turkeys enjoy the activity of pecking and undoubtedly found delectable morsels, be they vegetable matter or kernels of grain, in the wool. I wonder whether they might develop the kind of symbiosis that hippos and the small birds that live on them enjoy?
Contemplating that spectacle, it strikes me that the farm may be in some senses like my neighborhood in lower Manhattan. Usually, our diverse worlds coexist on the same turf without much interaction, but nevertheless manage to share the space without incident. But occasionally the rubbing together of diverse groups on common ground can result in mutual benefit or even symbiosis. The energy, joy and prosperity of the City has a lot to do with this rubbing together of different elements, and perhaps that will prove true of the farm as well.
