December 2, 2008 – E.B. White wrote from his farm in Maine that he imagined his friends and neighbors there must have watched him and thought of a little girl playing house. His notion of farming, he conceded, was a cheap imitation of the real thing. I know what he meant.
  Real farming is nothing much like my farm. Farmers pound hand-made stakes into the ground with strands of barbed wire to make fences and chug manure and sileage around all day and night. They working back-breaking hours for little or no money and keep dead trucks and cars around for years for cannibalized parts.
  Still, as White wrote, there is nothing that beats this life for surprise. Today, I found a feral cat in the barn, saw Minnie the barn cat curl up and sleep with Winston, my fading rooster, watched one of he neutered rams brawl with Lulu the donkey for position at the hay feeder, looked up the path in the woods to see a coyote staring at me, watched as all three goats climbed up onto the picnic table to catch some brief sun, saw the most amazing sky turn colors, had about a dozen deer burst out of the woods while my dogs and I looked on in shock, and felt the ground shake as Elvis and Luna nuzzled each other out behind the barn. “You never know where the enemy will strike,” wrote White.