The first thing I see when I wake up, every morning, is my dog Rudy’s long red nose. He’s mostly pit-bull, and the red nose is what scares most people off when they first meet. However, he is 11, and though a bit neurotic, he is all love. He wants to jump up into bed to savor the last moments of sleep lying between us. I oblige, because, well he is 11, and it is all about the simplest pleasures for a dog of his age.
After pulling myself away from my still sleeping dog and boyfriend I sit, blinking, on the edge of the bed looking out to the paddock directly below. This is the winter paddock for a handful of the animals on our farm and, nearly every morning the 35 year old buckskin, Sabia, is standing on 3 legs below my window, allowing the fourth lame leg to rest. Sabia lets out these subtle snorts, his tail swishing back and forth as he patiently waits for my arrival.
After a quick breakfast of yogurt and muesli I layer old farm clothes on and Nick’s boots and scurry down to Sabia’s paddock. He shares this paddock with two aging Scottish Highlander cows, Leche and Canela (Milk and Cinnamon, in Spanish). There also lives here two donkeys, Bella and Cholula, and one young bull-calf named Ted. Sabia gets breakfast first as, even with animals you must respect seniority. He neighs with what I can only imagine is excitement as I pour a scoop of molasses encrusted grain into his bowl. Ted gets a bottle of warm milk that I have fetched from his mother Winnie. Then finally, I bring a bale of hay out to the cows and donkeys. Everyone is thrilled. It is as though they have never had such a breakfast. Now, they can start their day.
I move on down the long, steep, driveway, to the milking barn where the rest of the animals live. It’s nearly 7:30am which is known as milking time here. Winnie is our one milk cow and she is standing at the barn doors, waiting to come in. She is backlit as the sun comes over the hills behind her but I can still see, to my dismay, too many bony ribs on her slight frame. She has been eating furiously since we purchased her from a farm in the western part of the state where they fed her little and gave her no winter shelter. Though skinny she is the sweetest cow and she gives us nearly 3 gallons of milk every day. So here she is waiting, methodically chewing her cud, at the barn doors.
I let Winnie in and set her up in the stanchion so she can begin eating the grain we give her to put extra weight on. While she eats I scurry around to the chickens as they have been up since sunrise and wish to be let out. They cluck and half fly past me and out the door. Their duck-friend, Pascale waddles after them. Pascale has been raised with the chickens as her mother abandoned her.
I toss the pigs, Rose and Van Gogh, their slop of barley soaked in whey. They love it. As most of us on the farm love anything from Winnie. Finally I swing by Bella-cow (we have, inexplicably, 2 Bellas on the property). We have raised her since she was 2 months old and she is the only being on this farm that isn’t concerned with food so early in the morning. She wants love. Ever since Winnie’s arrival, Bella has seemed to sulk with the shift of attention. So, I try to show her how much I still love her by scratching her chin and neck and placing kisses on her. It seems to briefly placate her but she wants to come in, with Winnie. She wants the royal treatment of the dairy cow but she is still too young.
Finally, after everyone has been fed and my hands washed I sit down to my favorite farm chore; milking. Milking one cow is not the same as milking an entire herd. It is a much more intimate chore. I have no machine, just my hands and a clean bucket. My hands have become unrecognizable to me as I continue to milk Winnie day after day. They are rough and larger and more muscular, and this is good because they help me better to get the milk from her full udder.
As I milk I rest my forehead on her great belly. At times she is impatient, but most often she is gentle and giving. She wants this milk out of swollen udder, just as much as we want it for our breakfast table.
When I have the last of her milk I let her out of her stanchion and she slowly backs out knowing, without collar or lead where to next. With Winnie and Bella back together I throw them down a new bale of hay from the loft.
I walk over to the pigs, who are now finished eating and are calm. I scratch Van Gogh on the scar that was once his ear. He lost the ear in a vulture attack as a newborn piglet. It has healed but he loves to have it scratched. He lies down to fully enjoy the attention and presents his belly for a rub. Rose, his little sister, never allows Van Gogh to have all of my attention and comes right over to lay next to me. She too likes a good belly rub and, before I know it I have a pig on either side as I sit in their pen, and scratch their bellies.
A couple of the chickens that I know better than others come over to check out the downed pigs. They use the opportunity to clean out the pigs’ bowls. Soon, all the chickens are around us, including Pascale the duck. They seem to like the human sitting in the pig-pen. It signifies safety to them. No hawks will swoop with me in the field.
Before I leave to go back up to the house and greet the rest of the day I go to Bella’s pen and sit before her. She looks at me warily. Two months earlier, before Winnie, she would come right to me. Now something has changed. She’s not so sure of her place or mine in this ragtag barnyard. I wait, coo-ing to her, Come here Bella Belle. Come on. After what seems like much deliberation she turns her great weight slowly towards me and walks the few steps to my arms. There she lays her great head in my lap as I hold it to scratch and kiss.
My mornings and my evenings revolve almost exclusively around the animals I share this land with. First taking care of their most immediate needs of food, water, and clean, dry shelter. Then I give them love and they give it back to me. It would be simple for anyone to cast off the notes on my animals as projections. That I am projecting Bella’s hurt feelings, or Pascale’s chicken sense, or Sabia’s pride, or Ted’s need for a mama or Rudy’s love for me and Nick. Perhaps, I am projecting or misinterpreting their actions. Perhaps Bella has lost her dominance in the herd. Maybe Pascale doesn’t particularly like chickens but has no choice as we have no other ducks. It could be that Sabia is just old and slow, not stoic or honorable. And, Ted might not need his mama, he may just be hungry. An Animal’s first and most primary concern in the morning is food, there is no doubt. But, it is the same for all beings, including us. I would argue that once these needs are met there is more to them than food, water, and shelter. They have and crave relationships with one another. They have emotions. They can feel pain. They are extraordinary, sentient beings that I feel so fortunate to communicate with morning and night, every day of the year.
