Here’s a quick update about the latest goings on at the farm.
This year we got to collaborate on a really fun project with the ceramics studio Cone Zero to produce a line of split-leg pottery aprons. They will be available for sale at the Cone Zero store in Catskill, NY. All are hand dyed and hand stitched here on the farm. We will be continuing to prototype workwear and textiles throughout the new year - the Willow has yielded very interesting dye results.
We took the last of the '23 geese, five this time, to slaughter on Tuesday. It wasn't as routine as the last trip, but it wasn't as heartbreaking as the first.
Two pairs of Cotton Patch for our breeding stock and two white Asiatic to guard our incoming chicken flock remain on the farm.
Until the chickens get on pasture, the two groups of geese will be deployed to different stretches of fence to work on much needed grass cleanup before spring brings relentless new growth.
That's all for now, but here's something I wrote just before taking the first group of geese to slaughter:
The day is approaching when five of my geese go to slaughter. It's part of the plan, but the plan is hard.
What's especially hard isn't my attachment to them. Of course I'm attached, they even have names thanks to Z. I have been with them every day, multiple times a day for 20 weeks, attachment was unavoidable. But that's not it, I'm looking forward to detaching from a few geese.
What cuts to my heart is this: I have seen them making sense of the world. Like myself, and like every creature on the planet, using what they've got to understand what's going on.
Staring up, they contemplate airplanes and wild geese. The regularity and duration of their staring suggests they perceive something familiar.
For these geese, the journey will be cut short. And I'll be doing the cutting, figuratively speaking.
The question about whether it's right is one I don't feel comfortable answering. But, it's the uncomfortable unanswerability that has me respect their gooseness and treat them with kindness while they're in my care.
I'm comforted to see reflected in their behavior the work of many dead gosherds and in their eyes, the same sky in mine.
So long.
So long, fair geese 💕