A Voyage of Discovery: Betsy and Bubba on the Road

My new favorites in the barn are the four or five month old Gloucester Old Spots.

They are still quite adorable, frisky and frolicsome, playing with one another in the snow. The full grown adults verge on the grotesque, and it’s almost impossible to distinguish their heads or features from their bodies.

I have had the opportunity to tour a few families around the farm and through the Global Village over the past few days. It’s a pleasure to work with the young kids that come to visit the site. They are open minded and curious, asking good questions to which I frequently don’t know the answer.

Today volunteer training had us lunching in Guatemala with Marikler, one of the staff. We cooked over an open fire, made some rather misshapen tortillas, and Marikler shared a wealth of information about the diverse populations in Guatemala, and the pride in tradition of folks living in rural communities. She finds that there is great discrimination on the part of the urban residents toward the rural populations; they are dismissive of what they refer to as the indians. It seems to me that discrimination is the most common element of every culture.

I’ve joined the Education Volunteers for most of a week of training. They are in the process of revising their procedures in order to have their summer camp accredited by the American Camp Association, an arduous process that requires revisiting everything they’ve ever done, and brings their programs to a high standard of professionalism. Much of what I learned working and volunteering at the Norman Bird Sanctuary is transferable here, but I always need reminders of the things I’ve already learned, particularly as I get older and forget more of it!

We reviewed one of the videos produced by Heifer Project International on Monday. I am so impressed by the way this organization works around the world. They are extremely effective at bringing their techniques and expertise respectfully to cultures around the world.

On a micro level, we must, as educators, be respectful of the comfort level of the groups coming here, and communicate the values of the organization while reaching them where they are.

The group we hosted was indeed snowed in; it appeared that New Jersey was pretty much closed and they weren’t going to get home despite their chaperones’ wishes. We saw them off on the morning of the 13th, and I began to move out of the apartment, awaiting the arrival of Hedi and Carlie Ballantyne, the hosts for the next three weeks. I don’t remember bringing much stuff into the apartment, but I certainly had a lot to move out! Since I was planning a return to Rhode Island with Amelia in a dog crate, everything pretty much got thrown in the van, leaving room for the crate. When I unloaded her, I had quite a mess to settle. Fortunately, Carol offered me a room for the night in Hopkinton, RI, so I didn’t have to sleep in the chaos, and got to enjoy her new pellet stove-marvelous!I enjoyed a couple of days with Maybelline I in Tiverton, had a few nice rides and workouts for the both of us. After a cup of coffee at Maggie’s, Bubba and I loaded up the dog crate, and returned to Overlook Farm for our new life in the van.

Hedi and Charlie, the new hosts, are from Vermont. They have come for years to volunteer as hosts. During their first stay, they were here for 6 months, boarding out their dog. They told the staff that they couldn’t return unless the dog could come, so their dog has come ever since. Their current animal is about Bubba’s size, an elderly female who loves to join us for our walk down the drive for the newspaper early every morning. Hedi is German by origin, was a war refugee when very young. Charlie appears to be quite a bit older. Hedi loves to clean, never my strong suit, and is happily immersed in doing ovens, floors and the likes. The apartment was a bit dirty when I arrived, and I tried to clean it up somewhat, but have no doubt it will be a different place when I move back in at the end of the first week of March.

Cleanliness was not the fate of the camper when we settled back in. Thursday and Friday were warm and wet, and every tromp across the parking lot brought in a little more mud, despite my best efforts to wipe paws and feet. My Sorel boots have taken on a patina of barnyard mud, still fit for human (foot) habitation, but not great to live with. As I became part of the farm chore crew on Thursday, I found myself ankle deep on my way to the compost pile.

The temperature began to drop precipitously Friday night. Saturday saw us doing chores in snow squalls. I spent some time with a group of cub scouts and their families who were intrepid enough to come out in a driving wind to earn a badge on families; we talked about how families lived in other parts of the world, and how farm families live in this part of it. We briefly took shelter in the aquaponics greenhouse where tilapia, herbs and greens are raised, a wonderful 80 degrees or so.

For two nights, the wind buffeted the camper, and the night temperatures were indeed chilly. I thought it was pretty cozy under my comforter Saturday night, but awoke to Bubba’s water dish being frozen solid. I may become less conscious of conserving propane and vote in favor of comfort, particularly since I’m nursing a sore back. I am weaning myself from the idea that I can do everything the twentysomethings can, pulled something on Thursday, and found myself really uncomfortable when I returned to RI on Sunday, so much so that I gave up quickly on the idea of riding Ms. Maybelline. I loaned her out and headed back to the farm and my heating pad. Icing it was recommended; I think not! It’s quite cold enough.

Farm chores involve a lot of lugging of food and water. It’s funny to hear the conversation: “I’ll do the llamas in Peru”, “Who’s going to Tibet to feed the yak and dzo?”, “Did anyone get the pigs in North America?”
I’m a little uncomfortable with some of the larger animals, and have been pushing my comfort zone to deal with them. I suspect the backache is from shlepping water buckets down the trail to the Tibet site in the Global Village to feed the yak and dzo. A dzo, by the way, is a cross between a yak and a domestic cow, used as a draft animal. In Nepal and Tibet, the dzo is the male, the female is called a dzomo. A very large animal and a bit of a bully, you need to carry a large stick into his enclosure, and tap him if he gets assertive with his long horns.I’m reminded of our cruise in the Bahamas when Sarah was three. We rowed ashore at one of the cays, and were greeted by iguanas marching across the beach looking for snacks. When approached by a dog or cat, I have a pretty good idea whats on their minds, not so with an iguana. Same goes for a dzo. I cautiously tiptoe into the enclosure for the large boars in the driveway to dump their food; they are so busy snoozing in the hay out of the wind that they don’t even rally for my delivery of donuts.

Chores include a search of the barnyard for eggs, delivery of hay and minerals to the sheep and goats, grain for the llama and alpacas, attempts to give all the livestock fresh water, while it freezes as quickly as we deliver it. I’m going to take a couple of days off from chores while I try to heal my back, and will be attending a training for the education staff.

Some of you have been wondering about my take on current affairs. I admit to being a little removed; while I have followed the current Cheney stories, and caught some of the Olympics, I am finding that I am, a day at a time, mastering keeping my head where my hands are. It is far more satisfying than what I’ve done much of the last few years: railing against things in place that I cannot change. I am, for the moment, finding value in being an infinitesimal piece of a big project to improve lives on a global scale. I hope to continue to escape the grandiose thinking that has so often taken me down. I don’t need to be in charge, and am not suited to it. Even my good ideas are only as good as my ability to work on them with others.

Amelia moved to Four Corners Equestrian Center in Tiverton from Overlook Farm on February 14. Happy Valentines Day, Amelia. Way better than a trip to the slaughterhouse!!

Overlook Farm is situated on a high point in the hills around Worcester, MA. The apartment I’m housed in until Wednesday has sliding glass doors looking out to the east. They tell me that I can see Boston on a clear day, but I’ve not been looking for Boston, just enjoying beautiful vistas of hills and trees. When I first arrived, there’d just been an ice storm, and the hills were glistening in a fairyland coating. Since then we’ve been in the relative tropics, although the wind is always blowing here. Two days ago, the temperature began to drop, and my morning walk down the long dirt road to pick up the newspaper, accompanied by Bubba and Zo, the farm dog, has been chilly. The night skies have been crystal clear, and the stars, vividly bright without the interference of city lights.

It’s not only Rhode Island that works itself into a snit about approaching snow storms, although I’ve not had a chance to see if there’s a parallel run on bread and milk at the Big Y. They began to hype the storm on Thursday. Here there’s more reasons than most places to be concerned. The complex is heated with wood, and houses about 14 volunteers every night. The farm manager is away for the weekend, and the maintenance man lives in the area but not on the grounds. This weekend, we are hosting a church group, middle school and high school students and three adult chaperones, from Montclair, NJ. If the forecasts hold true, their plan to leave at noon tomorrow is more of a fantasy. Friday saw volunteers chopping wood and moving wood to the furnaces, bringing hay under cover, and making plans for easy access to the animals for feeding.

My duties as a volunteer host are pretty simple; I’m here to answer the phone and troubleshoot if need be. I have a wood stove in my apartment, and plenty of food. I’ll make a pot of soup and settle in to enjoy the show nature puts on outside my windows. I pulleed my snowshoes out of the van, ever the optimist, and have them by my door ready for an early morning stroll in the woods.

Wednesday, I’ll move out of the apartment and into the van. A couple who come every year at this time has dibs on the apartment. She apparently takes her responsibilities as volunteer host very seriously, and I will not be permitted to do much of what I’ve been doing the last 10 days. I’m looking forward to getting involved in farm chores when I’m no longer on vacuum duty at 7:30 AM. I was going to be given a room in the volunteer house, but the rules have changed since our visit here in November and Bubba will not be allowed in the house. So we’ll move back into the van, but will cook and eat in the volunteer house, and I’ll have the use of a real bathroom, a luxury for the van dweller.

I headed back to a more mundane existence for a few days. A quick trip to Newport was mostly about meeting with my wonderful tenants, Carlos and Gretchen and their son, Gabriel. They seem to love living in the house, albeit their furniture hasn’t yet arrived from Carlos’ last duty station in Spain. A leaking roof and the need for some painting I didn’t get to have taken their time; I hope we resolved those things while I was in town. The house was much more than just a shelter for us for all of those years. It was warm, sheltered people who loved one another, and saw us through many changes and evolutions. I want it to be loved as much by anyone who lives in it.

Back on the farm, I enjoyed a short visit from Benjamin, who, at 19, has finished his first semester at Middlebury College, and is on a semester break. He spent the night and went on to visit some friends at Boston College before returning to Vermont. I’m not sure what he thought of the place, but it was my sense that he’s a little puzzled by why his mother, who’s shown an historic aversion to cleaning, is essentially working as a volunteer janitor.

My duties here at Overlook Farm include hosting groups for the weekend. Although education and farm volunteers do most of the programs, I am a general facilitator and trouble shooter. We did double duty this weekend. We had a group of middle schoolers and adult chaperones from a church in Westchester County, arriving Friday night. In the afternoon, we learned that a group from St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, supposed to come in a few weeks, made a little error in timing and were on their way. We had a group in the dormitory and another sleeping on the floor of the conference room. The chaperones of both groups were pleasant, involved and committed.
On Saturday, I worked in the morning with Bishnu on the stove. Heifer works in countries throughout the world, and their local staff members often come to the states with a variety of goals. Bishnu has worked with Heifer in Nepal for ten years. She is here for three months, with the particular goal of improving her English, which strikes me as pretty excellent. Her communication is slow but effective. She arrived in mid-Januaryfor a three month stint, leaving her husband and beautiful three-year-old daughter at home in Nepal.
Many of the weekend programs include a meal in the global village. The global village recreates homes in the styles of the communities where Heifer works: a Peruvian house, a yurt, a Thai bamboo platform, a Kenyan hut…even an Appalachian trailer. Bishnu was preparing a bean soup and rice pudding, nepalese style. She had a fragrant bag of seasoning she’d brought from Nepal to mix in with the beans and a rich supply of garlic-delicious! She put me on the rice pudding task, and shared pictures of her family and her wedding while we cooked.
I’ve been getting to know the other resident volunteers over the weekend. Ross just graduated from Warren Wilson College, and knows Sarah. Emma is from a small farm town in Iowa. Curtis is in a hiatus between college and graduate school in Latin American studies. Berta is a student at Lehigh and is taking a semester here instead of one abroad. Sarah is from Washington state, graduated from college and is coordinating local volunteers before she returns to graduate school. Caleb is from Duluth and on a break from college. There are many others, with a diverse background, small town, city and rural. Most are Americorps volunteers, planning to return to school at the end of nine months or a year. They are committed and energetic. Most of them live communally in the volunteer house. I expect I’ll be cooking a bunch of meals for them and spending more time with them in a few weeks, when the older couple takes over the apartment I’m in now and I repair to Maybelline II. (At the very least, they’ll share a shower and toilet with me during those cold weeks!)
I learned this weekend that there are a few gaps in the information I had as a host. Last night there was a medical emergency with one of the college students, EMTs were called. This morning at 7, the klaxon of a fire alarm awoke the few who weren’t already up in the main building, when the church group burned their french toast and set off the smoke detectors and alarms; no one on site immediately knew how to shut the alarms off. This wasn’t the tranquil farm life Bubba looked forward to!
I’vre adopted Amelia. She is a yearling doe (goat) half Saanen half Boer, who was destined for the slaughterhouse on Tuesday as they tried to thin out the numbers before the kidding season later in the month. They work on concepts of sustainable agriculture, and recognize that the land will support only certain numbers. Hard decisions must be made. Some are practical; for instance, at the Saturday pancake breakfasts during March, sausage from the Farm’s pigs will be served. But Amelia is a bit of a favorite with the farm volunteers. So next week she’ll be loaded into a dog crate in Maybelline II and will move to Tiverton, Rhode Island, to the Four Corners Equestrian Center where Maybelline I lives.
Much of the factual information and ethic communicated in the programs offered here is about the uneven distribution of resources around the globe. We in the United States have perhaps 5% of the world’s population, and 34% of the world’s resources. We are the ultimate profligate consumers. We support mega-farms rather than our local farmers, and the cost, in the energy used to transport our food to the market, is astronomical. Part of Heifer’s mission at its Learning Centers is to educate its visitors about resources. I was interested in the reaction of the visitors from Saint Peter’s College. Many of the students indicated an interest in further volunteer work for Heifer or other organizations dealing with hunger and poverty. those same students wouldn’t bring their shoes home because there was manure on the shoes, took them to the dumpster before they left. I am impressed by the factual accuracy and passion with which the volunteer staff conveys the organization’s message, but of course they can’t control how it is received!
There will be a conference here on February 25 on seed saving. Folks from throughout the region will be coming together to discuss techniques and to share seeds A lot of focus will be on heritage species. In the same vein, most of the breeds of livestock here are heritage breeds. Perhaps not the most prolific milkers or layers but sustainable, effective users of the natural environment without overgrazing or abusing it, hardy, suited to the climate, and reasonably productive. Not what would work for agribusiness, but a great model for the communities with which the organization works.
Perhaps the novelty will wear off, but, for today, I am delighting in having my head and my hands in the same place. Much of my day was about sweeping, mopping and scrubbing. There is great satisfaction in being part of a team working toward a common goal, something that has been missing from my work for the last few years. There is equally great satisfaction in doing a job well, no matter how mundane. Tomorrow will be a lesson in contrasts. I’ll do chores here early, then drive into Boston to meet with a lawyer, and then on to Tiverton to see my horse and help with farmchores there. Not much question which parts of the day I’ll enjoy the most!

The first stop on the voyage of discovery is in Rutland, Massachusetts, at Overlook Farm, one of the learning centers for Heifer International.I learned about Heifer International about seven years ago. A wise friend and adviser gave me a card for the holidays that read in part,”Hope for the future: Nearly a billion people worldwide suffer from malnutrition. The great majority who make a living from agriculture live in rural areas, where jobs are often scarce and opportunities are few. For them, a gift of livestock from Heifer International can provide a steady supply of much-needed food and income- and mean the difference between thriving and merely surviving. That’s why this gift made in your honor is vitally important to ending world hunger and poverty.”
That first gift from Lu was a flock of chicks donated in my honor. I loved it. The link to ending hunger for a family was so clear: a child’s daily supply of protein in the shape of an egg; a source of fertilizer, protein, meat; even a way to get rid of the bugs you don’t want in your garden.
I began to give donations to Heifer for family and friends. They weren’t all received with the enthusiasm with which I received my flock, but I reckoned that we all had too much stuff anyway (and if I had doubts about that, my confidence was reinforced when I packed up the house last month!). I found you could even editorialize with your gifts: a goat for the stubborn one, a pig for the dirty one, a rabbit for the fertile one?
I kept feeling that Heifer was calling my name, and went in April 2005 to learn more about it. Heifer’s Learning Centers sponsor a variety of education programs. One that had particularly intrigued me was the Women’s Lambing Experience. I signed up months in advance, and spent three rainy nights on the farm in late April. An eclectic gang of 18 women from New England, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, collected at the farm. Our welcome session was interrupted by a word from the farm manager: one of the ewes was about to give birth if we were ready for our introduction to sheep midwifery. In the course of three and 1/2 days on the farm we attended a number of sessions on globalization, hunger, the feminization of poverty worldwide. We also served as the night crew checking on the ewes and assisting, giving the farm manager the night off. We assigned ourselves to crews of two or three on shifts all night. A steady procession of middle-aged women clambered down ladders from the top bunks in the dormitories all night and headed out into the rain to bottle feed abandoned babes, assist ewes with the birthing, clean up the babies and assist them in their first nursing. We also had an opportunity to spend some time with one of the program partners, a woman from Kenya who had originally become involved with Heifer as a representative of her community group seeking assistance to combat hunger in their community. Many years later, she works with Heifer, and could tell us first hand about the importance of that work for poor and starving rural communities.
I was sold. I signed up before I left to become a resident volunteer at the farm. In a spontaneous moment, something pretty new to me, I selected dates and thus determined when I would leave home nearly a year thence.
Bubba and I were interviewed in November, wanting to be sure that he and I would both be a fit here. He’s not talented like the resident farm dog, but will surely learn a lot while he’s here. I’m most qualified for many of my responsibilities. As a resident host volunteer, I clean the bathrooms and the public spaces, answer phones, serve as the weekend receptionist, and, beyond those chores, am free to assist where I would like. That includes farm chores, helping with resident volunteer policy development, greeting and assisting with visiting groups, educational outreach.
We arrived on Wednesday and moved into a very comfortable little apartment. We have the use of the apartment for two weeks, then will move out to the van for three weeks while a couple that comes each year takes up their usual residence. For our last five weeks, Bubba and I will move back in and share the apartment with a woman from Newburyport, MA, with occasional conjugal visits from her husband. She is tolerant of the idea of living with a large, self-indulgent and somewhat undisciplined dog; we’ll see how his reality works out for her.

It was fourteen years ago when I dragged two small children off on an adventure to the west. I was in the middle of personal melodrama–not by accident that my father called me Sarah Heartburn–in the wake of divorce, and thought that I would reshape my family through a trip to the unknown, or some such silliness. What I never anticipated was that I would get off a plane in Billings, Montana, and have my heart absolutely stolen by the incredible presence of the region. A funny state of affairs for a native New Englander who’s never lived away from the pull of the tides.

In that first trip, I vowed that I would return to stay when my youngest child was off to college. I’ve been back for several short vacations, with and without kids. As the date got closer, fear of the unknown caused me some trepidations. But life is not a dress rehearsal. I’ll be 58 in a month and there are far fewer days in front of me than behind. Besides, Steinbeck set out with Charlie at age 58; Bubba and I can do the same.

Bubba is a 3 year old mutt, rescued from the streets of Asheville, North Carolina and delivered to me through the good graces of the Asheville Humane Society. Our Rocinante is actually named Maybelline II, and is a used RoadTrek Van purchased froma young couple who hope to make a living chartering a sailboat. Bubba and I find it quite spacious, although they market this little land yacht as a home potentially for three. I don’t believe that there would still be three alive after the first night. Bubba thinks we’re living in a good sized dog crate, and is gracious enough to share it with me.

The leaving required the packing up of my family home for the past 22 years. I moved to that house married and pregnant. The house witnessed so many changes in my life: the birth of two children, the failing and death of a marriage, the creation of a new way of life. While my children shared other homes with their father, this was their first and constant home. I’ve anguished over the rightness of giving it up. It felt more right when a family with a six-year old boy fell in love with it, moving in this week. But the removal of each picture of my children from the walls brought so many memories. It was a slow and emotional process.

Now it’s done. The house is packed up. The basics are in the van. The heat works well and gracious friends welcome me into their bathrooms, warm and spacious. I have turned over the keys to the house we never locked, and we’re on our way, with Bubba riding shotgun.