Eat Pie!

   While pickling and canning at Happy Girl Kitchen I had the chance to meet alot of the local farmers as they stopped by with loads of precariously loaded produce in dust coated trucks. Or in the case of David, a neat little hatchback. David was the cook/ reluctant educator at Pie Ranch who lived in sunny Bonny Doon and worked in a big beautiful outdoor kitchen, I thought to myself "that guy has a sweet job" and the thought stuck with me. So when it was nearing the end of our one year lease in PG I decided to sign up for the internship offered at the ranch. A few months later I found myself fingers locked around the teets of a moody goat milking away.
   The summer interns stayed in a little cleared out patch beneath a walnut tree in what ever shelters we brought. The first night it drizzled a bit and a stocky, hardy chap by the name of Coal hadn't brought anything but a Mexican blanket. he just rolled up in it and passed out near the trunk of the tree, sleeping better than anyone else. He was half Native American and half country badass, wearing a thick cross made of stone on a necklace and a cowboy hat that shaded his dusty face, wide grin and squinty knowing eyes. He had a way with the animals, they skipped and pranced when he came to the pasture. He also devised a way to corral the unruly adolescent chickens into the coup for the night rather than grabbing them by the legs and tossing them in which had been the practice. The other summer intern was Li, a lovely intelligent woman who had graduated from UC Berkeley and decided to play in the dirt instead. Li was from Monterey, a town I had, for one reason or another, come to know very well. She played the cello and sung folk songs on a steel string. Looking back we all seemed pretty country, down to Earth kind of kids. At first there was a clear division between us and the apprentices. Some amount of camaraderie is innate just from sleeping outdoors together rather than in the ancient farm house with the year round apprentices. There was a certain amount of disenchantment within the year round group, maybe too much work, too little time. The second year apprentices were frustrated with the plaintive nature of the group and were hoping for the golden times that must have been a big part of last years crew. As the summer progressed we started to meld together and as we bonded through the hard labor of  harvest, riding on the back of jostling trucks packed over full of radish, tomato, kale, carrots and everything you could ever want to eat.
   The animals were a whole new layer of life that I hadn't experienced at all before. Zelda our stubborn lady goat, the only one who had survived repeated cougar attacks on the herd, was a real chore. Hard to get into the stanchion and moody once in place, she would often kick the bucket while you milked, tossing the whole thing to the ground or flinging a flake of poop into the perfect frothy white. She was also a diligent escape artist. backing up and kicking at the ground before leaping over the four foot fence. She wanted to be with the cows and would run baaing over to where they were grazing and munch defiantly on the stubble. Dulce, by name and manner was the sweetest of the cows, the only true jersey, her offspring and granddaughter were a hot headed mix of beef cow and jersey, an error from the AI guy. Dulce was easy to milk and only kicked the bucket when she wanted a little more alfalfa in her feed. Her milk was prolific and fatty, golden in color and rich with flavor. She let you come up and pat her large horned head as she glanced at you somewhat suspiciously but with resignation. Soon it became apparent that she was pregnant. How this was a surprise to the farmers is a mystery to me. You think that you would have remembered something like impregnating your star cow. When she gave birth she was already taking care of her daughter Ginger's calf who was neglected by her angry mother. So now Dulce was mothering two calves and we couldn't milk her anymore. Naturally this left us to milk moody Ginger who had to have her legs tied tight so that she wouldnt kick your hand with full cow fury, but nothing was stopping her shit covered tail from wipping you in the eyes while you tried to suction her teets to the machine. Yes, no hand milking for this one, she wouldn't allow it. She would get so crazy that she would break free from the rope and kick the skin off your hand or take a shit on your legs or break from free from the stanchion and go bucking around in angry circles. Needless to say, when it was your turn to milk her your early morning was a solemn march to the barn because you knew you were in for a beating.