Trauma Farm

by Brian Brett

  It’s said we live in the age of information. Modernists make stunning pronouncements like: “The average person today knows fifty thousand more facts than the average peasant from the sixteenth century.” I smile when I hear this. We live in the age of trivia, not information. Real information has become subverted by sound bites and statistics flung about in defence of far-fetched arguments. That’s why I keep in mind Mark Twain’s sassy quip: “There are three kinds of lies—lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Despite my distrust of numbers I still find I also have to use them.

  But we are paying too much attention to the wrong information. Certainly, there’s little harm in zoning out with a well-designed piece of gaming technology. Urban living has many glories. But if we consider how we surround ourselves with repetitive trivial information and celebrity gossip it’s apparent we have become sleepwalkers who’ve forgotten the grandeur of the planet—the osprey and its hunt.

  When I consider the sixteenth-century peasant who supposedly knew so little, I think of someone who could smell hay and recognize its food value, identify hundreds of medicinal flowers, berries, and vegetables, and tell you when to plant or harvest and how to preserve; someone who could milk a cow and create or fix almost any tool in the house; someone who lived for the most part in grace with a natural environment (when not being a victim of the feudal politics of the era). Comparing “old knowledge” with the knowledge of how to operate a remote control or play a new video game, it’s clear that an important range of experience has been lost. What can we say to a world where a child on a bus in Vancouver looks out the window and asks his mother, “Is that a crow?”

  ALMOST EVERY FARMER I know, female or male, has the ability to stand still, gazing—at things or events most urban dwellers wouldn’t even notice—often with the wry, laconic expression of the experienced: “Well, would you look at that?” Yet we’re a diminishing crowd of gawkers standing in our pastures or walking through the frozen wheat fields of the winter prairie, the Brazil nut forests of South America, the Southwestern mesa valleys with their peach trees, or the bamboo jungles of Thailand. “Being there” has become a tourist experience, not a way of life. Now that the human community is urban and cocooned we find ourselves without natural miracles, addicted to the fast-edited images of media that can give people vertigo when the images are flashed at epileptic-fit-inducing frequencies. The world has become a jumpy, twitchy place. Though riding a roller coaster can be fun, we also need the capacity to walk slowly. Like farmers, people from aboriginal cultures also have a tendency to move and talk slowly, until the moment calls for an explosion of action. This leads to a dry humour. If you’ve lived long with the landscape you learn to smile because you never know how the world will come at you.

  Other creatures also stand still, pause, look, listen, smell—gaze meditatively on a meadow. Yeats, the peacock, will sit for hours on the split-rail fence or the second-floor deck outside our bedroom and stare endlessly at nothing— or everything. His meditative skills are extreme. All animals have great reservoirs of patience when they watch their world.

  One hot afternoon Sharon and I walked up the hill to admire the moss and wildflowers in bloom. The last ewe had yet to lamb, late in the season. As we passed the corral by the driveway, we noticed she was down, panting, in the middle of a large circle of stumps, almost ready. Upon returning a half-hour later she was lambing. Since all was going well, we stood in the driveway and watched.

  We suddenly became aware that the whole gang had moved up to where the ewe was lambing, and they were also watching. It was a scene out of a nativity painted by a naive artist. The ram, the other ewes, and their lambs surrounded her. The black horse, Jackson, stood sentinel among the sheep, and the peafowl perched on the stumps, the cock fanning his tail. Our Araucana rooster stood erect and alert on another stump, while the cluster of hens clucked softly, pecked at the grass, and watched. Even the dogs had entered the corral and sat patiently among the chickens. It was as if the creatures of the farm had drawn a holy circle around this birth, blessing it. Grace lives in the land and awaits the moment when it can surprise us with its tenderness.

  NOT LONG AGO a young Steller’s jay fell out of its nest and miraculously survived cats, dogs, and raptors as it ran around our yard, unable to fly, while its parents screamed useless instructions. We heard the ruckus and saw the jay— and the cat closing in. I snatched up the baby jay, and that really sent him and his parents screeching. In one of my few moments of brilliance, I sized up our species quince, which offered little by contemporary standards—a thicket with a scattering of pale, applelike blossoms and a few tiny fruits— unlike the orchard quince, which bore giant, heavy golden fruits, or the decorative quince with its bright red flowers. We’d kept the shrub because its near-impenetrable tangle shelters migrating songbirds from cats. A covey of California quail lived underneath and would spend the day darting out to the fig tree where the bird feeders hung, dining off the scattered seed from sloppy eaters.

  I thrust my arm into this thicket without decapitating the chick and sat him on a branch, safe, while his parents berated me. As I peered at him on his branch—his jay-spike not yet grown so that he reminded me of a mohawked punk standing on a skateboard—he abused me even more.

  For the next few days his parents dutifully brought food to him in the quince while he cursed the world, his parents, and the quail. We were grateful when he finally gained the strength to fly off, though I miss him in the way you miss an irritating yet interesting relative.

  DELIGHT IS MULTITUDINOUS. it is everywhere you stop and become aware, when letting it flow through your veins, and perhaps that’s why I often recall that story of the Zen monk and his reaction to the dinner gong, which like a clock striking midnight brought him to perfect attention. Moments. The world is a constant astonishment. Rain in a storm—each drop pounding so hard against the pond surface that the water reaches back up like a fist threatening the sky. An opium poppy suddenly sprouting unseeded and rebelliously wild in our vegetable garden. “Where did that come from?”

  Japanese horticulturalists bred the camellia so that its blossoms begin dying even as they unfold. The idea was to create a pristine, complex blossom that also illustrated the transitory quality of life. Glory and death simultaneously— like discovering a rat-child on the road. It was near dark, the hour after sunset; the birds were shutting down, except for the ravens putting order to the last dregs of the evening. I had shut up the coop and was walking back around the barn. Suddenly I noticed a tiny creature squirming among the weeds and gravel. It was a baby rat. Rats! My nemesis. I had been fighting them for so long in the feed shed that I’d taken to midnight forays with the new pellet shells, which have a range of about ten feet—shooting the rats out of the rafters until I discovered that the minuscule pellets, at close range, could just puncture the tin roof. Now I have two leaks and am even more annoyed at the rats.

  However, this was a blind baby, slow and lost, as if it had accidentally crawled out of the nest too early or someone, cat or dog or raccoon or mink, had murdered its mother and it was on a last, slow, desperate crawl for life. I knew I should kill it, but I didn’t have the heart. I was reminded of Mike once shooting starlings in his cherry trees while simultaneously raising baby starlings that had fallen out of a nest. He hated those starlings for their thievery and the damage they were doing to endangered songbird populations. Yet babies are different. Every creature deserves the chance to reach its prime. However, an adult pest is another story, and then it’s every bird or man for himself. I knew I’d bring this rat baby into the house, feed it, warm it by the fire, and then release it far away in the bush. Sharon would be annoyed at first, superficially, before she helped with great tenderness.

  Sam, the border collie, came up behind me. She saw the baby rat and, before I could move, snatched it, killing it instantly. Then she tossed it up in the air as if it were a toy, caught it, and swallowed it whole, happily trotting off down the road again, while
I stood alone in the bluing darkness, overwhelmed once more by the arbitrary casualness of death.

  WHEN YOU CAN’T STOP moving, then you have stopped living. We exist in a strange era whose landscape remains as slow as ever, yet our lives keep speeding up. Trauma Farm provides us and our guests the opportunity to stop moving—to regard the world. A string of hummingbirds following their mother like beads on an invisible chain floating through the air. A fairy slipper orchid at the edge of the clearing hit by a streak of low yellow light as the sun sets, or the haunted flower of the ghost orchid beside a stump in deep forest . . . .

  Summer afternoons I often sneak away to a local swimming hole. Every year a truck mysteriously appears and dumps sand on this patch of road allowance fronting the lake. The docks anchored offshore are anonymously maintained and replaced by unknown farmers and citizens. All is unspoken because of today’s liability laws and wacky insurance claims. Rumour has it there’s even a mysterious bank account where locals can donate $50 to cover general maintenance, but like everyone else I have no idea who runs it. Another farmer donates a portable outdoor toilet to stand on his neighbour’s property just next to the beach. All this allows the glory of summer to unfold for the many island children who luxuriate at the beach daily.

  Salt Spring is fortunate to have a swimming hole for every social group, or maybe islanders worked it out through the mysteries of community osmosis. There is the howling mass of children at Stowel Lake, swimming and banging about among the trout, water lilies, leeches, and docks, while once in a while a turtle with a six-inch shell swims blithely among them. I’ve watched it several times, its sage’s head on a snaky neck high above the water. Yet somehow, magically, the children seldom notice these gentle, wise old creatures usually sunning on a nearby log.

  Blackburn Lake has a nudist dock surrounded by mud and lilies. This is where the young island workers with their beer and joints stop by for a dip after a hot day roofing or house framing. It also is frequented by a squad of young tattooed women with face metal dangling from their piercings, as well as hippie elders, everyone enjoying the luxury of a swim and an opportunity to dry naked in the sun. This dock can be hilarious around five in the afternoon when it gets crowded and sinks to water level under the weight of too many sunbathers. Thousands of daddy-long-legs live on its floats and are forced to surface onto the decking as the floats sink, which causes eruptions of panicked sunbathers fleeing the harmless spiders. Lately, this dock has been overrun by what the locals call “skids and vandals,” who insist on bringing their dogs.

  Then there’s the dock anchored in the middle of Weston Lake, usually occupied by our wealthier elders, also without clothes—quiet and meditative. You have to enter the lake via a narrow trail and swim out to the dock. It’s calm and relaxing. Cushion Lake has a wharf and seems to be fancied more by teenagers and local families, but this dock is looked down upon by a few waterfront residents who would prefer the lake for themselves and fret about liability and pollution of their drinking water by the swimmers.

  Despite the many children screaming and kicking sand, my favourite swimming hole remains the tiny community beach at Stowel Lake, where dozens of babies, kids, teenagers, parents, and grandparents all gather in a mutual chaos that works out just fine. And I’m hoping we can eventually rescue the nudist Blackburn Lake from the dog owners who make it miserable.

  the swimming hole

  I’m sorry,

  my darling

  but the chores are undone,

  the lambs unfed,

  the wood unchopped,

  the beans not weeded.

  It was hot

  and the sun lives

  in a strange sky.

  It made me think of many things.

  I found myself at the lake,

  floating past the dock,

  where girls with enormous breasts

  sun naked on the cedar planks

  while the skinny boys pretend

  they are only dancing in water,

  but I was not watching.

  The sky unnaturally blue,

  the bullfrogs humming among the lily pads,

  I was drifting in a black lake,

  stunned by a single scudding cloud.

  It’s the swimming hole.

  What can I say?

  There are so few of them left.

  I floated away

  on my back, defenceless

  in a changing world,

  the limpid water

  very soft,

  and very sweet.

  Working with earth and animals draws us into the world, nourishing our ability to be surprised—empathy— the ability to pull up our lawn chairs and blankets and wine and hot chocolates with good friends and their children on the grass of a meadow on a summer night under the stars. The Perseids in full fiery glory, the avalanche of shooting stars catching our attention in the clear August evenings. Embers of white light shooting across the sky while we exclaim and laugh and love the night. Thomas Mann said: “Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfilment.” He knew the world, like that crazy monk throwing down his hoe.

  The ground is changing beneath my feet. It always has. Living with the land is living within the river of life. By the time this story becomes a book there will be many more victories and defeats. Lives and legislation will change. Change is everything, always was. I write these words as a mirror to a moment—what I know and what I’ve seen—so that the children who follow will learn what was lost, what was won, and what still lives.

  This afternoon the air is warm and yet there’s a restlessness in it, and I see the swallows are flying low over the pond, which means the barometric pressure is driving the mosquitoes down, and there’s a composty taste to the air. The weather will shift tomorrow, maybe even tonight, although only a few cirrus clouds are parked on the horizon. As if the same thoughts have just occurred to her, Chloe the goose raises her snakelike head and utters a long, plaintive honk, the sound wave dimpling the dark slate of the pond.

  14

  ONE MORE FOR THE BIRDS

  (AND THEIR FRIENDS)

  THE PLAINTIVE CRY of Chloe on a humid afternoon is like a gong flooding my mind year after year through our timeless story pool at Trauma Farm. And she will always be here every afternoon that I am alive on this land. She was the oldest survivor of our original flock of Toulouse geese—the most ancient domesticated variety of goose I know—descended from the wild Graylag.

  There’s the usual confusion about how long ago the goose was domesticated. Even Darwin could only remark that it “is of very ancient date.” We know ducks lived with the Chinese at least four thousand years in the past, but the goose slipped more seamlessly into our culture, likely around then. Ducks and geese were the earliest poultry because they were large and gregarious and self-sufficient. The ancient Egyptians were fond of their geese, and according to Pliny, the temple geese of Rome were given the most “tender food.” This was because the sacred geese of Juno were credited with saving Rome in 390 bc when a raiding party of barbarians, sneaking in to sack the city, accidentally awoke the temple geese, which alerted the guards, and in the ensuing cacophony the whole city woke up and thrashed the unlucky pillagers. Geese are better than dogs as alarms, and they can create a spectacular racket if disturbed. This is why Dumbarton Distillery kept its beloved “Scotch Watch” of a hundred Chinese geese, enough to discourage the most ardent whisky thief.

  At Trauma Farm visitors seldom catch us by surprise. Our earliest warning is the parrot, who has a view of the driveway from his window, and makes raucous, sometimes mortifying invitations. Outside, the geese start up (especially when we had the full flock), alerting Raj the peacock, and then the dogs rush down the road, barking. Although no neighbour is within sight of the farm, everyone hears that we have guests.

  UPON BUYING THE FARM, we were informed there was a tradition of maintaining the three resident geese�
��Lucy, Maude, and Chloe—and we thought it a good tradition. The interim caretakers (who had no interest in farming) told me they’d named them after a film about lesbian lovers. These geese were my first chance to study free-range animal behaviour for an extended period of years. That’s one of the delights of farming—living with the politics of animals.

  During the first months there was a ruckus every day, with much squawking and honking, so we decided these geese needed a gander to sort them out. We were told to visit the elderly but still spry Howard Byron. There was nothing Howard didn’t know about animals, and what he didn’t know, his brother, Mike, did. After we negotiated a price for a gander in its prime, Howard ordered his collie, Big Mac, to fetch it.

  Howard stood imperiously in his field, leaning on a long-handled fishnet, while the dog herded a goose through the maze of chickens, sheep, cattle, goats, and his blind pet deer. Mac, unerring and unrelenting, edged the gander up to Howard, who casually dropped the net on it. He was showing off, yet it was such a hammy display I fell for it. Mac got a biscuit and a pat on the head. We promptly named the gander Toulouse the Goose because that was the breed of our flock.