“If I’m going to work on your farm this summer,” wrote the newly graduated young woman from UC Berkley, “I’ll need assurance that you can provide an emotionally toxic-free environment.” “I also require a diet that is gluten-free and vegetarian.”

Full moon through the trumpet vines

Bypassing that first demand, I asked Cindy, “Jesus, doesn’t anyone read anymore?”

Our farm description on the site that promotes short-term volunteers spells out the basic range of activities, which includes butchering chickens: Here are some of the tasks you might expect to help with: Caring for the livestock, including bees. Planting, weeding, or harvesting in the greenhouse or garden, and pruning in the orchard. Assisting with woodlot management (selective harvesting) and/or our sawmill. Butchering chickens. Making wine, kraut and kimchi, bread, or yogurt.

It is a comprehensive list that is built to give the participant a broad range of experiences and provide us with useful labor. I wrote a polite but to the point response.

“We raise livestock for slaughter, do not cater to special diets, and we are unable to provide timely trigger-warnings. Good luck in your search for a farm to volunteer at this summer.”

Fortunately, a young man in his late 30’s (and yes, sadly, I am at age 58 now able to describe someone who is 38 in that fashion) was staying with us the past ten days. A father of three he was looking for a different experience after an intense year of Covid-family togetherness.

He pitched in and moved electric fences each day, dug post holes for the new wine grape trellis, mucked out stalls, tilled the gardens, weeded and mulched in the garlic and onion plots, brought in composted manure for the vegetable rows in the hoop-house, used the weed-eater, helped build a raised bed with massive and heavy railroad ties, fed and watered the livestock, cleaned out compost bins, loaded sheep for transport, and provided an uncomplaining and a cheerful work presence while he was here on the farm. And, although he had the appalling taste to appreciate the Grateful Dead, we were glad to have him share in the farm life for those days.

However, he did express one area of disappointment, that he didn’t get a chance to butcher chickens. Not that he was desirous of killing a creature. He simply realized that a small diverse farm is built on life cycles and he wanted to experience as many of those as he could while working with us. So, it was with some pleasure that I heard him say, on his last day, that working on our farm had, in a short time, “made me more comfortable with my own mortality.” “Yup, well said,” I replied.

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Reading this weekend: the Louisiana volume in the American Guide Series (1941)