national farm animal day

I heard it on NPR this morning. A brief mention. Today is National Farm Animal Day. Not that you’ll find much about it on the google.

Long-time readers of this blog are aware that I frequently fantasize about keeping farm animals in our back yard. Chickens would be nice — eggs, companionship, pretty feathers, meat; a goat — for the milk; and then there’s that dwarf breed of cow — milk and meat. Although I’ve been informed that since our back yard is a hill, there could be a problem with, ummm… manure in the run-0ff.

I’ve also mentioned our fruit trees, which persist in spite of our inability to tend them properly, the ficus I’ve just recently resurrected with a minimum of attention, and then there were the vegetables that grew the first year we were in the house, since the previous owners had planted them, and the few lettuces and tomato plants we succeeded with temporarily the second year.

When I was in L.A. last weekend, we celebrated my grandmother’s 98th birthday with chocolate cake and fizzy drinks and family at the retirement home. Photo albums were passed around, and stories were told.

There was a photograph of my grandmother’s brother, who lived well into his 90s, in his backyard garden, taken rather late in his life. He tended the vegetable and fruit beds until he was incapacitated. In the photo, he is (suggestively?) brandishing an impressive zucchini.

My grandmother told a story. Her father kept several hens and a rooster in their back yard when she was young, for the eggs, and then later the meat. Which was fine, except she and her sister grew attached to the rooster. So when it was his time, they refused to eat him.

In sum, I feel that my strange passion for farming is thus honestly derived.

Whether I’ll ever get to carry it into reality? Maybe next spring I’ll grow some tomatoes again, just for starters. Maybe this woman will adopt me, or let me “intern” at her Oakland farm? At the least I will go on a tour there sometime.

This weekend, if we can pull it off, we’re planning to go to a big festival at an organic farm two hours north, with folk music, crafts, workshops, a petting zoo, and all the organic food you can afford to eat.

You know Jonah’s going to love the animals. (Oh dear. I hope he doesn’t become a vegetarian. Yikes.)