Moon is eleven months old and I am struggling to train him to come when I call him. If I have a pocket full of treats, he is very attentive. But if I don’t have a pocket full of treats, or if he is too far away from me to see that I do, he [...]
In the morning after chores I feed Moon, and while he is digesting his food, I meditate for twenty minutes. This morning as my brain was twinkling, the chickens screamed in panic, Moon barked and ran to the door, and I very reflexively jumped out of my meditation and ran to open the door for [...]
I am trying to teach Moon to speak chicken. My previous dog, a 150-pound bullmastiff named Henry, spoke perfect chicken and he taught me how to hear it, too. There is a difference between the cackling of hens laying eggs, the decoy screeches as they run across an open space without air cover, the social [...]
The last post gave me a chance to complain and get all my angst out of my system. The big picture is actually lovely. I should be thankful that Moon has turned out to be such a cool dog, my sheepskins took only 30 lbs of salt and not all of Utah to cure, my [...]
I heard a woman say she loved farming but every once in a while it kicked her in the stomach. Today I got kicked hard. My farm helper, Catherine, spent the morning clearing a pasture fence line so we could move the cows to new grass this afternoon. All I had to do was build [...]
My friend Alejandro took this picture of me in autumn of 2009 when, with the help of a professional butcher, I harvested three cows for beef, killing, cleaning, and quartering them out behind the barn, then driving them to the meat locker for aging, cutting, and packing. The grim expression on my face reminds me [...]
My fabulous bullmastiff, Henry, died on November 4th. I didn’t think I was going to get another dog. More than one friend challenged me. ”You can’t have a farm without a dog.” But I just wasn’t ready for the emotional attachment or the risk of loss or the extra work. Then one morning I was [...]