McEachron Road

   December 15, 2008 – In his essay “A Literature of Place,” Barry Lopez describes writing that embraces a storied relationship to a place, and he claims that “if you’re intimate with a place, a place with whose history you’re familiar, and you establish an ethical conversation with it, the implication that follows this is this: the place knows you’re there. It feels you. You will not be forgotten, cut off, abandoned.”
  I appreciate this message sent by Trish. I am in conversation with this farm. It does know I am there, and I know it is there. It feels me, and I feel it, intimately and every day. I feel the rain and snow on it, and the gullies of mud, and the woods and the grass.
 I talk to the farm all the time, as Lopez suggests, an ethical conversation with a place. I have referred several times this year to suffering from mental illness, especially last year, and many people write thanking me for saying that. I am not ashamed of it. It has given me some of my greatest gifts – relationships, my writing, the joy of discovering my art in photography, a sense of purpose in life, a sense of fulfillment. Some of the best people I know are nuts.
  The farm has been speaking to me of late, and sending me this message: simplify, reflect the times, be your authentic self, not a person who doesn’t know who or where he is. Protect the farm. Save it.
  Ethical conversations are difficult, personal, painful. It is easier not to have them.
  I have decided to sent my steers and cows – Elvis, Luna, Harold – to market, and to give the meat to a teenage homeless shelter in Glens Falls, N.Y., a shelter I hope to support regularly, in a number of different ways.
  This was a long and careful decision, that included pastors, vets, therapists, friends, farmers, neighbors. I do not regret getting these animals. I have enjoyed them, written about them, spent wonderful times with them.
  Ultimately, I decided they are not appropriate pets for me, especially at a time of suffering. Caring for them had become unwieldy and expensive – tractors, round bales, mud and manure. They were getting older, and approaching the orthopedic problems that are not treatable in animals that size, and a vet cautioned me that once they got lame or fell, they would have to be killed, and that would not be easy or painless. Steers are not bred to stand or live long.
  I talked to a number of farmers – a dozen – and my conversations convinced me that no working farmer could sustain such large and hungry creatures as pets, and it was almost offensive to ask them.
  It was becoming difficult for me to sustain the cost and care as well.
  I was very fond of Elvis. He had a great few years, and so did Luna, his faithful companion. I did find a home for her, where she will be bred. Sunday, farmers came from Vermont and threw some grain in a truck and Elvis and Luna hopped in. Harold jumped the fence and had a merry run around the farm before he hopped in the truck too.
  I spoke to the farmer today and was given detailed information about the slaughter process, which was quick and instantaneous. All of the meat will go to feed kids who are hungry and a shelter in great need of support.
  Although I talked to many people about it, this was my decision, and mine alone, and I am comfortable with it. I am sure many people will not be.
  I appreciate that many people loved Elvis, largely as a result of my writing about him.
  Farms need change and consideration to survive and prosper. I mean for Bedlam Farm to survive, and to mean something. So I’ve made the changes I felt I needed to make, as a person, a writer and an artist.
  I would not accept a steer as a pet today. It would seem foolish and wasteful to me. I am not sorry I took in Elvis, nor do I regret the great run he had.
  Ethics are important to me, and as always, I read the moral philosopher Hannah Arendt, who urges that you have to respect yourself, and not be bound by the decisions of others. I want the farm to be a calm, manageable place,and there are plenty of animals left. I want to focus more on the dogs. Rose, Lenore and Izzy are remarkable, and they need and deserve my attention. I can do great things with them, from sheepherding to hospice and other kinds of therapy work. The farm is more important than any of its parts, including me.
  I have pledged to be open on this blog, insofar as I can, and it would be dishonest not to share this information right away. I will continue to post photos of the goats and of Elvis and Luna.
  Before they came to get Elvis, I brought him a chocolate donut and an apple, which he happily slurped. “Thanks, pal,” I said. “You were great.”
   When he left I shook my head at the mound of manure and mud that were piling up around the snow and ice. I teared up a bit, and breathed a long sigh of relief.
 
    Tonight, I re-read a poem Arendt wrote when she was young:

   “Evening falling –
    a soft lamenting
    sounds in the bird calls
    I have summoned.

    Greyish walls
    tumble down.

    My own hands
    find themselves again.
    What I have loved
    I cannot hold.
   What lies around me
   I cannot leave

   Everything declines
   while darkness rises.
   Nothing overcomes me –
   this must be life’s way.”