Crazy Grazey Lady

After she gave up with the too-big post hole digger, we sat under an apple tree just outside the pigs' enclosure. The sun was warm and bright and she had to shade her eyes with her forearm, until she pulled her chair a bit further under the branches' dappling. She put a small table over the fresh cow pie between our chairs, and Nick placed a gorgeous tray with two tall glasses of fresh, homemade iced tea with a lemon slice, a bowl of multi-coloured cherry tomatoes and another of deep blue grapes.

It was glorious to be away from my gray cubicle and in the last warm sunshine of September. It didn't smell much like a farm. The wind just whiffed a few farmy breezes now and then.

So we sat in this dreamy setting and watched the pigs snuffle from their feeder and bump each other and watched the cows mow the grass by the driveway and we talked about nutrition and abattoirs and soil health and the problems with organic farming and the problems with conventional farming.

She is deeply pragmatic. "They don't know they'll be dinner in a few months."

"We leave at 9 in the morning and they're dead by noon."

I didn't photograph much, opting instead to get a feel for the place and for her. I hope she lets me come back.