Stagtine, 24. Tilling Ourselves

Section 2, Chapter 8

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Morgan and I spent the next few days thawing and thinking all too deeply on this great task of ours. The land’s saviors, we had a problem to solve.

We first attempted to separate some yearling steers from the main herd to bring Paddy some company. But it aroused the main herd in unsuspecting ways, for it changed their community’s nature and it changed the way that nature operated upon their community.

Calves and their older cousins started crossing the polywire-made paddock’s lines before our non-growing season’s grazing plan allowed for, and the stockpiled grass started to run thin. We would run out of grass months before the spring would return. Removing the steers reorganized the herd’s family units and created a void for the young bull calves to fill prematurely. But Paddy still aggressively paced his fence line.

After the steers failed, we considered bringing in our herd of dairy goats. But we soon learned that there is nothing for goats to eat in the half-frozen and soggy tundra of Virginia’s winter and so we brought them back into the woods to forage on acorns, pine needles, and bark.

In the haste of this movement and some slack in our management, the goats prematurely escaped Paddy’s paddock and rummaged around the farm for a bit. Hours later and with many an unfortunate word said, the goats were once again in their woods and Paddy was once again alone and pacing at his fence line.

Nothing helped. Life had been reduced to its Aristotelian qualities and, no matter the soil health we were building or the complexity we sought or the idea that we were saving the world, life, in the fullest sense, was becoming an outsider on Earth. We controlled it. Deported what did not yield a profit. What did not fit our enforced asceticism.

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