A hole in a bucket

I ran over a five-gallon plas­tic bucket with my trac­tor and tore a rent in its side. Using it to haul feed or water was no longer viable, but it still could be turned over and sat on while bot­tle feed­ing calves. Over time, how­ever, the tear bulged under the weight (reader dis­cre­tion advised) and so yes­ter­day morn­ing when I went to move the bucket to the next pen, a cat crawled out. For a brief time, he had found com­fort under the bucket which was under me.

The emerg­ing cat set in motion another ordi­nary day on the farm. Usu­ally my mind wan­ders and I rarely notice the going’s on around me, but the cat trick got my atten­tion. I noticed Lady Jane Gray as she tight-rope walked the gate in front of me. My cats want to be close to me, for Hank jumped up on my lap and his brother Harry clawed at my back. With cat in front of me, cat behind me, cat under me and cat on me, I was com­pelled to see cats that morning.

My dog Buck had been beside me, but I wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion. Buck’s prox­im­ity was more self­ish I con­cluded; he wanted to lick the milky lips of the calves. The calves for their part were not self­less either. While Buck licked, they sucked on his ear!

Calves, cats and dog sur­rounded me, but there was more. In one of the pens, a hen scratched away, mak­ing a nest so she could lay her daily egg. And then I remem­bered the fam­ily of foxes that lived under the feed bunk, the coon that eats out of the cat bowl on the front porch, the pos­sum who qui­etly vis­its the chicken yard to clean up the left­over mash.

I thought about the Cana­dian geese pair down by the creek and the wood duck hen with her 12 or so babies pad­dling behind her. Over­head, the great blue herons glide in to fish and the red-tailed hawks squawk at the intru­sion. Every morn­ing, a small herd of deer pass from the woods to the pas­ture and yes­ter­day I saw a lone coy­ote. At dusk, a skunk criss­crosses the field across the road on her jour­ney to the creek. All this method­i­cal ani­mal world going about its busi­ness owing some of its well-being to me, but not all of it, gave me pause. Into that moment I saw life’s per­fec­tion emerge for a split sec­ond; and though it all began with a hole in a use­less bucket, it ended fill­ing me up!

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on May 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.