These are the ones (I was looking for)

So I bought some Blue Öyster Cult this weekend. 

I know Mirrors very well but Cultösaurus Erectus is largely foreign to me. These albums get short shrift in the popular narrative about the band's career. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Godzilla" and arguably the peak of their career came just before these albums while Fire of Unknown Origin and "Burnin' For You" are soon to come.

But we've got a couple songs written with Michael Moorcock, "The Great Sun Jester" and "Black Blade". And, I would argue, those laid back California vibes made for a nice change of pace on Mirrors. "In Thee" is a very beautiful song, for example. Plus, "A mirror is a negative space with a frame" is just a classic B.Ö.C. line.

Some great music here.

Citra? Simcoe? Mosaic? What are those?

A couple recent beers that I've had.

I've got mixed feelings about the function and the form of The Signal

I enjoyed The Signal, on the whole. The ending was done well as it was rather neat and explained a mystery or two while others were left unsolved. But getting there was something of a mixed bag.

I'm trying to find a nice, concise way to explain the element or elements that left me less impressed. How's this: The Signal is a mix of sci-fi first contact a la Contact and some paranoid conspiracy thriller and the first one that comes to mind is Enemy of the State. Nothing wrong with that but I wish that it had been more of the former and less of the latter.

The enigma of the signal itself was downplayed - even got lost, at times - in favor of Earthly conspiracies and betrayals and the story of a family. I wish the events on the space station hadn't been shown so explicitly in the same way that what happened on the plane was kept shrouded in mystery for most of the show.

I guess I wanted to be tantalized by the signal itself more and see less of Sven and Charlie running from authorities.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 108 - Postlude: Grabby

(Read entry #108.)

So Pekka and Jukka had been drinking in the wilderness for two weeks...: Sahti by Giant Jones Brewing

...during a very cold winter.

Back in their home village, their friend Matti began to get worried about them not returning so he decided to send a trained dog to rescue them. He attached a barrel of vodka to the dog and asked it to find his friends.

Pekka and Jukka were sitting around a camp fire, drinking, when the dog found them. Pekka shouted: “Oh there is the rescue, our best friend coming towards us... But, hold on, what an earth is attached to it?”. “Can't you see?”, answered Jukka, “It is Matti's dog!”

Several years back when I first started to investigate Scandi-noir, I noticed that police stations in Finnish shows such as Bordertown - see above - were these late-20th century bunker-like affairs. Dark, shadowy places with not a window to be seen so there was no natural light, just the fluorescent stuff. A bit like the Humanities building here on the UW campus. This stood in stark contrast to a French cop show called Spiral that I watched around that time where the cop shop was in an old building with open windows everywhere letting in plenty of sunlight and venting all the cigarette smoke as a "Voltaire slept here" sign hung from a wall in the background. 

Finnish cops, when not sitting in a sauna, were always dressed for the cold and snow and seemed ready to defend themselves from murderous reindeer. French cops, on the other hand, were mostly a bunch of bon vivants who wore berets and dipped baguettes into their wine as they puzzled out the next steps of their investigations and quoted Sartre at one another. Finns were serious and taciturn, if not outright dour, while the French were convivial and determined not to let a little thing like murder get in the way of a good time. Plus the French weren't as pale.

But it is the Finns who give us the beer that is sahti. Filtered through spruce boughs and generally made with bread yeast, it smacks of the Finns' boreal homeland and its hardy, unpretentious inhabitants.

A few months back in December I reviewed Giant Jones' Norwegian farmhouse ale, Kornøl. I noted then that Giant Jones also had a sahti on offer and that I hoped to be able to sample it. Well, I finally managed to do so. The thing about Giant Jones' beers is that they're all rather potent so, if you buy some that was bottled in August but don't get around to drinking it until several months later in March, it'll still be good.

Sahti seems to come in the 8%-10% range in its homeland, though there are certainly less potent variations. Rye is common but not all sahti brewers use it. Hops, from what I can tell, are minimal to non-existent. Spruce branches are traditionally used when filtering out the grain but I have read that juniper branches are also used. Sometimes branches are left out completely and berries do all the work. And so Giant Jones had lot of leeway when brewing their Finnish-style ale.

When I think of farmhouse type ales, I think of something unfiltered because it's beer brewed in primitive conditions for immediate or near immediate consumption. This sahti had the right look, to my eyes, with a substantial haze taking the shine off of the yellow liquid. (It appeared gold in the thicker part of the glass.) A tiny white head didn't take long to disappear while I spied a modicum of bubbles through the haze.

The aroma was like a hefeweizen with a prominent banana scent joined by a bit of bubblegum. A hint of something piney hovered in the background.

Beers with a cloudy appearance and/or having a lot of alcohol tend to have heavier bodies but I found the sahti to have a nice medium-light one instead. Fizz was of a similar intensity so it was rather smooth. The aroma bits swapped places here with bubblegum becoming more prominent than banana. There was a bit of rye plus a peppery tasting hoppiness to offer spicy counterpoint to the fruity yeast flavors and the (tempered) grainy sweetness.

Upon swallowing, a pine flavor came through - the stuff was filtered through spruce branches, if memory serves. Not strong but instead deliciously subtle. The yeast and grain flavors departed quickly allowing those peppery hops to take over and make for a rather dry finish with a modicum of bitterness.

I found that, when drunk cold, Sahti has more of a hefeweizen character minus the wheat. Those yeasty banana/bubblegum flavors had center stage. However, as the brew warmed, it lost some of the lighter, fruitier flavors and took on mellow, earthy ones with the hops, rye, and spruce coming together for a taste that was heartier, more redolent of a farmhouse.

And it was this flavor triad that makes Sahti such a great beer. They all came in just the right amounts and melded together just perfectly.

Junk food pairing: Crank up the Sibelius, pour a glass of Sahti, and grab a bag of Gardetto's Roasted Garlic Rye Chips.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 108: That file powder isn't going to use itself

(early September 2023)

(Listen to the prelude.)

The day after our trek out to Heartland Farm, the Frau and I went out to the North Side Farmers Market on yet another overcast day. It and the Monona Farmers Market, which we visit sometimes as well, don't have the spectacle or variety of the Dane County Farmers Market, but they do have the virtue of being less crowded. It's more easy going so I don't feel rushed and I never get that Orwellian feeling that there are people behind me surreptitiously looking over my shoulder at the same bunch of arugula that I am eyeing up.

The fall harvest season is in full swing and the stands were overflowing with nature’s bounty. I am not sure how many vendors grow in a greenhouse but I suspect it's few to none. These vegetables are genuinely seasonal, I'd bet.

It is prime eatin’ time! I know that with California, Florida, cargo planes, and whatnot, my supermarket will always have fresh produce available. But I still love the notion that I am eating something that popped out of the ground ripe not too long ago and was grown by, if not exactly a neighbor, then by someone who at least lives in the same county I do. And that the vegetables weren't grown and picked in some kind of Harvest of Shame scenario.

While not everyone at the stands at the farmers markets are farmers, you do run into one occasionally. Look at their hands. Are they calloused? Or all delicate like mine from typing and mousing for a living? There is something rather neat about buying food from the person who produced it, who got their hands dirty from digging in the earth or from delivering a calf. I realize that cities have throughout history depended on rural areas to feed them (and rural areas on cities to buy their food) but there's just something more genuine and fulfilling about buying tomatoes at the farmers market from a farm 10 miles away than ones grown in California or Peru or wherever the ones at the supermarket are from. Plus, the local ones are actually ripe, more flavorful, and pesticide-free.

While harvest festivals these days are more about local farmers having a good crop and being able to stave off creditors instead of a town celebrating that it won't starve over the winter, I still love them. For me, they are, amongst other things, a reminder that food doesn't just magically appear on the supermarket shelf.

Now, aren't these colors are just wonderful?

I think those little things in the husks are ground cherries. Never having had them, I was intrigued.

Look at those lovely flowers!

It’s scenes like these that make me wish I had a green thumb. Even more satisfying than buying chilies from the farmer who grew them is harvesting ones you grow yourself.

In addition to all of the colors, there were the smells, including some mighty fine aromas coming from this stand selling Afghani food.

I bought a couple of those samosa-like stuffed pastry thingies. They were delicious!

The allure and (some of the) aroma of New Orleans drew me to this stand.

Rue Bourre is a restaurant in-progress owned, I believe, by a couple from Louisiana. It is to open on the east side not too far from us and not far off the path from Acewood Park so it could become a post-hike lunch location. In the meantime, they’re at the farmers market with warm beignets and chicory coffee along with containers of frozen gumbo and jambalaya. I like gumbo. I like jambalaya. And so I brought some of each home with me. That gumbo file on my spice rack isn't going to use itself, after all.

I’ve had various preparations of gumbo over the years. Some were soup-like with a thin broth meaning little to no roux and I was simply incredulous at bowls of these gumbos. I have always been told that, when it comes to Cajun cooking, “First you start with a roux.” (I am not qualified to engage in a debate about the role of okra in making a gumbo a gumbo. However, I was once told by a resident of Houma, Louisiana with a very pronounced Cajun accent giving him a voice of authority that a gumbo with no okra is not gumbo.)

Others had an abundance of roux and were thick.

Rue Bourre splits the difference. The broth has clearly consummated its relationship with the roux but it isn’t stew-like. And it tastes positively toothsome! You’ve got those tasty Maillard reactions from the roux, porcine andouille goodness, the Holy Trinity, thyme, bay – this is great gumbo.

While I enjoyed the jambalaya, it tasted odd to me because it had no tomato and I am used to jambalaya having tomato in it. That acidic fruitiness cuts the starchy-grainy onslaught of the rice in a pleasing way. Good but not great.

I also bought some corn and cooked it the next day on the grill along with some fish.

I love grilled corn! While I may not eat particularly seasonally, I look forward to indulging in fresh sweet corn every August.

********

A few days later, my Frau went up north to attend a wedding so it was just me and the cats. Our eldest, Grabby (a.k.a. – Marilyn) wasn’t feeling well. She was diagnosed with intestinal issues back in 2020, if memory serves. Likely lymphoma, according to the vet. After the diagnosis, she was put on steroids and had been doing well. Occasionally, she’d have a bad couple of days but then whatever it was would pass before long and she’d be back to eating twice her weight in food every day and more spry than most 10 year-old cats, much less ones her age, 16-17.

I kept an eye on Grabby and gave Piper extra treats. Grabby was accustomed to sitting on my Frau’s lap and sleeping on her hip at night. With the usual relaxation spots gone, I got some extra lap time with her which was really nice because I was worried about her. Would she get better? Had her time come?

One morning I drove out to Phil's Woods, a county natural area west of Madison, to take a hike. It’s nestled in the hills dotted with farms that mark the beginning of the Driftless Area.

The Phil in the name refers to Philip LaFollette, son of "Fighting Bob" La Follette. The progressive firebrand represented Wisconsin in Congress as a Representative and a Senator as well as being our governor. His son followed in his footsteps as Phil served as governor of our fair state for three terms. After his death, his widow donated the land.

The county parks website says the plot was too small to be a state park. So, while it wouldn’t be a long walk, it would provide some beautiful scenery. I hit the path.

The trail was hilly but nothing too steep.

At one point, the trail brought me to a corn field and skirted it along one side.

As I continued, I came to another corn field just as the sun had risen above the tree line. It was simply gorgeous out. A blue sky filled with puffy clouds looked down as a layer of gold settled on the trees.

There was a bench along the trail here looking north towards the bluffs of Baraboo some 15 or so miles in the distance. However, they were not visible owing to the tree canopies. I guess a return trip in the fall or next spring is in order.

All too soon, my short hike was over. It was mid-morning and I drove the backroads home to enjoy the scenery and slower pace.

When I walked in the door, I didn’t see either of the cats and so I sought out Grabby to check in and found her lying on a bed. She was listless and I noticed that her food dish, normally licked clean, didn't appear to have been touched. Since she’d been this way for 2 or 3 days, I decided to bring her to the vet to see what was up.

********

Bonus photo. Here’s a picture of the hazy sky from last month. Not only was the sun dimmed by all that smoke from Canada, the air smelled of it too. It brought back that apocalyptic feeling from a few years back during lockdown when it seemed like we were doomed to feel nature's wrath.

 

 

 (Go view the feline postlude.)

IMAX in Fitchburg to show a documentary once again

Just about a year ago I lamented that the IMAX screen at AMC in Fitchburg no longer shows documentaries like it used to, back when it was Star.

Well, I have discovered that this is about to change as Deep Sky opens on 19 April.

"Deep Sky brings the awe-inspiring images captured by NASA's Webb Telescope to IMAX® — taking audiences on a journey to the beginning of time and space, to never-before-seen cosmic landscapes, and to recently discovered exoplanets, planets around other stars."

I'm glad to see that a documentary will screen on the IMAX here, even if it's a one-off.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 108 - Prelude: Jambalaya

A Glorious Time at the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Last week I ventured down to Lincoln Hall in Chicago to see Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. I'd been aware of SGM for 15+ years but only ever ventured to listen to song or two every once in a while. I have no recollection of how I'd heard of them and I suspect that my first listen to their avant-rock, Zeuhl, or whatever genre you think best classifies their music proved to be a bit more than I could chew and so I put investigating them further on indefinite hold.

They played here in Madison in 2010 and I have conflicting memories that explain why I didn't attend. One is that I only found out about their stop at Memorial Union until days later while another is that I hemmed and hawed and finally opted out.

I had no idea that they'd called it quits in 2011 when I read earlier this year that they had reunited and were going on tour once more with the closest stop in Chicago. And so I made the trek down to Lincoln Park on a Wednesday evening.

Two Chicago bands opened - Cheer-Accident and Dead Rider.

Cheer-Accident are veterans of the Chicago music scene having been around since the mid-80s or thereabouts. Led by drummer/singer Thymme Jones, I got some Magma vibes, at first. But they were quickly dispelled as the horns kicked in with a blast of something vaguely like you'd get from a marching band to send the opening tune on a tangent as the band showed it was willing to throw in every twist and turn they could with a dose of lighthearted silliness that drew Madison legends The Gomers to mind. A million miles from that Coltrane/Orff-laced hybrid from France. Jones is a fine drummer and he seemed to play just behind the beat on the first couple songs which gives you that "something's not quite right here" feeling. Good stuff.

Dead Rider were in a sense even odder in that guitarist/singer Todd Rittmann almost rapped once or twice and songs alternated between those with Rittmann playing some more straight forward licks with a flying-V bringing Wishbone Ash to mind and songs with a heavy synthesized rhythm track. I enjoyed their set but talk about contrasts!

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum took the stage in costume with a few of the members donning face paint. I am only slightly more familiar with their music now than when I was at the show. Very slightly. But I was thrilled when they played "Phthisis", one of 2 or 3 of their songs that I actually know. While there were moments of peace with a bucolic sounding flute adding mellow vibes, most of the time these folks were rocking hard. King Crimson came to mind a lot, especially "THRAK" with those chopping guitars.

Nils Frykdahl sang and played guitar and flute and perhaps other things too. His singing had the dramatics and piercing intensity of Peter Hammill but he often took it into overdrive with an almost black metal growl. Carla Kihlstedt played mostly violin, often in sharp, angular bursts, but her voice was clear and angelic (even if that angel was sometimes a vengeful one), not unlike Jon Anderson's, in contrast to Frykdahl's and the opposing styles proved oddly harmonious.

For one song, Dan Rathbun, who looked uncannily like the cartoon Egon Spengler, played what looked like an oversized pedal steel guitar but I think it was a homebrew thing consisting of a 2"x4" about 8 feet long with strings running the length and some C clamps acting as capos. Kihlstedt had a smaller version and they both seemed to alternate sliding drumsticks along the strings and hitting them as if their instruments were piano viscera wrenched from the case.

Michael Iago Mellender is the utility player here as he played guitar, xylophone, keyboards, trumpet, a small drum kit, if I recall correctly. The mid-90s King Crimson vibe was made even stronger when he played his kit. He definitely did his part in giving them a big, dense sound. But I have to admit that I had a hard time not watching drummer Matthias Bossi. The guy's playing was just amazing.

Actually, all 3 drummers that night were great but I got to hear and see Bossi the longest. And he had the biggest kit. He drove songs ahead with his energetic playing yet managed to deftly slip in these great little fills which would often lead the song off in a totally different direction. Bossi's playing was absolutely frenetic, even maniacal at times, and I just loved watching him and wondering what he'd slip in or where he'd go next. Plus he had a splash cymbal. I love me some splash!

As noted above, I am still very much getting to know SGM and their aggressively controlled chaos. Their music is heavy and I adore the drama of it all. There's an operatic quality to it, if we're talking about an opera based on the Book of Revelation.

Their entire performance was recorded on video:

Cheer-Accident's set was also captured:

One day she was on the ground

Earlier this week I went to catch Yolo at the cinema. It's a Chinese movie that, I learned towards the end of the credits, is a remake of a 2014 Japanese movie called 100 Yen Love. Yolo has been doing very good box office in its home country, if not worldwide, and this probably explains how it ended up here in Madison.

The movie is a Bildungsfilm, I guess you could say, which chronicles the transformation of Du Leying, a woman in her early 30s, from an overweight slacker into a lean, mean boxing machine whose motto is carpe diem.

When the story opens, we find her sleeping, something she does most of the time, apparently. Unemployed and living at home, Leying has basically retreated from life into a shell. We witness her and her sister get into a fight and Leying leaves home out of spite. She gets a job at a barbecue restaurant and rents an apartment that is, shall we say, not the height of luxury. Then one day she accidentally runs into a trainer from a local boxing gym named Hao Kun and they eventually become romantically involved.

And so the first part of the movie is a romantic comedy with Hao Kun's interest slowly luring Leying into the gym and out of her shell.

With some help from his new ladyfriend behind the scenes, Hao Kun ends up at the city championship bout. However, when Leying goes into the locker room, she discovers that he has taken a large amount of money to throw the match. When she confronts him saying that he can win and that he shouldn't take the money and retire from the sport as he plans, Hao Kun becomes distraught, angry, and defensive. He eventually tells Leying that their relationship is over.

Seeing Hao Kun give up inspires Leying to engage with life even more. She vows to win at least once in her life. To this end, she trains for the next year, losing a lot of weight. After becoming a lean, mean fighting machine, she enters a match with an experienced professional. Although she loses the bout, Leying feels good about herself for finally having accomplished and won something in her life.

This romantic comedy cum Ugly Duckling/Rocky inspirational drama was fun overall. There were genuine laughs to be had and largely not cheap ones about Leying's weight. Director Jia Ling also stars as Leying and she apparently put on weight and then lost about 100 pounds for the role. There were 3 young women sitting down the row from me and I think they were Chinese as they laughed at times when I felt mildly confused about a Chinese cultural reference. There weren't many of these instances and I don't feel like I missed anything important - just a few jokes.

The Rocky theme was used during the weight loss/training montage which I felt was longer than it would have been in an American movie. There were a couple more montages that seemed to be twice as long as I'd expect from a similar domestic flick. Plus, there was the scene where Leying leaves the locker room in slow motion and walks down a hallway towards the ring for the final match. She looks at the windows that line one side of the hall which reflect her image but she sees her weightier self. Not just a couple times but lots and lots. That slo-mo walk was a short film in itself. I wonder if this common in Chinese cinema or a stylistic choice particular to the director and editor(s).

Yolo tread a lot of familiar ground and I wouldn't have gone to see it if it was an American flick. Still, I appreciated that Leying and Hao Kun didn't live happily ever after and that she didn't manage some hyper-unrealistic come from behind victory in the ring against that professional pugilist. But she was victorious despite all that. She stopped floating down the river of life and started steering her own course.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 107 - Postlude: Barnyard Therapy

(Read entry #107.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 107: Scratching a pig's tummy is more potent then even Calgon

(late-August 2023)

(Listen to the prelude.)

It seems long ago now that Anthony Fauci was on TV everyday reassuring us that all we needed to do remain safe and sound from the novel coronavirus going around was for us to get vaccinated, wear masks, and isolate ourselves. This was just under four years ago yet the lockdowns seem so far away in my mind.

As you may recall me writing then, I started my workdays during that harrowing time by watching short videos on Twitter from Caenhill Countryside Centre over in the UK featuring the morning rush hour from the farm. Caenhill is a farm for rescue animals and Farmer Chris Franklin would take video of a barn door being opened every morning. He would cry "Greetings and good morning and sometimes goodnight" and let slip a hungry horde of ducks, chickens, ostriches, sheep, donkeys, etc. which would stream out into the barnyard looking to break their fasts.

These videos were a lovely, heartwarming way to start my workdays. All of those creatures with whom we share this planet with were cute and often times funny and the scenes were just the opposite of life in lockdown. There was no social distancing, no fighting over toilet paper, nobody losing a job, no one protesting mask or vaccine mandates. Just the bucolic English countryside and some hungry farm animals oblivious to human anxiety. What care does a farm cat writhing in the grass have? With death or, at least the threat of it, seemingly all around us, it was wonderful to have 2 minutes every morning set aside for something more life-affirming.

Our two cats, Grabby and Piper, did a fine job of satisfying our desire for animal company but I still thought it would be neat to visit Caenhill. Since that was impossible, I wondered if there was such a farm a bit closer to home and discovered that indeed there was – Heartland Farm Sanctuary. But, as with every “non-essential” place, it was not accepting visitors. And so paying a visit got put on my to-do list where it sat for 3 or 4 years. Until now.

The farm is a bit south of Madison and just east of the town of Stoughton so it was a fairly short drive from home. The sky was cloudy making it rather temperate out which was fine by me. Barns do not smell particularly pleasing when it’s below freezing much less an 80+ degree day when things are quite, shall we say, aromatic. So I counted us lucky.

We met our guide in the gift shop and poked around the t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, and whatnot for a little while as we waited to see if anyone else was going to show up to join us on the tour. No one did so the guide, a woman whose name I must admit I do not recall, gave us her introductory speech which outlined the history of the farm, including its recent move from rural Verona (to the west a bit) to its current home. We were also given an idea of what to expect on the tour: being animals, some of whom have come from rather poor living conditions or otherwise suffered at the hands of a human, they may want nothing to do with us; animals poop and pee wherever they feel like it, etc.

The tour began just across the yard with the chicken coop where a couple of fowl friends awaited us.

Our guide explained where they had acquired the chickens as well as some of the other animals. The specifics of the chickens are lost to me but I recall her saying that one of the pigs was rescued after the pen it was in fell off a truck on the highway. Sometimes when animal owners die, their families don’t want the animals and they’re sent to slaughter. But occasionally a family member or friend intervenes and suggests the animals go to a rescue farm such as Heartland instead of being put down.

I believe that one or more of the chickens came to Heartland via that route.

Here’s a turkey.

Most of, if not all, the animals were unwanted by their previous owners but, at Heartland, they were given a loving home where they could live out their lives in comfort. Some were just going to be a burden while others were sick or injured. But here the sick and injured are nursed back to health and tended to by a crew of dedicated caretakers, many of whom are volunteers.

Here's the area behind the coops. Or was it behind the barn that the ducks and geese called home?

Still in the bird section of the farm, we spied emus off on the far side of the yard. Emus look funny to me as they have this head that is tiny compared with the size of the rest of their bodies. But I think there's enough of a brain in there to have my eyes pecked out if I got too close. And so I kept my distance.

Eventually we wandered over to an adjacent open area where we found the llamas out enjoying the day.

I wasn’t sure if they were llamas or alpacas. When I lived up north, there was an alpaca farm (Maybe. Or was it llamas?) a bit more than a mile away from our house as the crow flies but my memory failed me. I think those were llamas on that farm as I seem to recall being told to avoid them lest I get spit at.

Up to this point, the animals smelled us humans and had kept their distance. None ran away from us in terror but they wanted to just relax in peace. Our guide then led us down the driveway to the farm’s shiny new barn.

As we entered the new digs, our noses were greeted with that familiar barn aroma. The scent always brings me back to my high school days when I would meet friends who lived on farms and perhaps help out with some chores so they’d be free to go out and have fun or just chat with them as they went about their work, usually in a milking parlor.

Walking to one end of the barn, we were introduced to farm’s cow, Daisy, from afar.

Sadly, Daisy was a widow, her male partner having been euthanized a couple weeks before. Our guide told us that Daisy had been melancholy ever since and mainly spent her days alone out in the barnyard. Is it anthropomorphizing to suggest that a cow might feel some shade of grief after losing a partner cow?

Going further into the barn, we found that it was home to all kinds of animals such sheep, goats, pigs – lots of pigs, and the odd goose.

Now, if memory serves, I believe this goat was ill. He, I think it was a he, ignored us and just squatted over by the wall. If I recall correctly, the guide intimated that he was not long of this earth. Poor fellow. But it's a memento mori. At the end of the day he and I will both return to the soil.

Now, this guy, on the other hand, was either showing off or being extra vigilant, I wasn’t sure. "Beware the strangers!"

A goose was taking a bath as we wandered by. Oops! Sorry!

As I said, there were lots of pigs. This is Betty White and I do believe she is a Yorkshire.

And she was a big sow too. Didn’t want much to do with the humans and was instead keen on digging into the hay with her snout and relaxing. She may have been the pig whose pen fell off a truck. Poor thing. At least she is living like a queen now.

The goats were happy to be petted as was the donkey who took no prodding to come over to get some ear scratching. Petting this cute, furry head reminded me of seeing Eo and Au Hasard Balthazar earlier in the year. Such a gentle creature and eager for attention.

We were also given a look behind the scenes.

There were dishes and buckets everywhere in addition to shelves full of canned fruits and vegetables which complemented the fresh stuff.

Here’s the feeding rota:

And here’s the one for getting the animals out in the pasture for some quality roaming time.

Although Heartland is a small farm in the grand scheme of things, feeding and caring for the animals and hauling all that poop out is no mean feat.

Since we were the only people on the tour, our guide let us meet a pig named Harriet, an encounter normally reserved for folks on private (and pricier) tours.

Harriet eagerly came over to us as we entered her pen.

After she laid down, our guide gave me a telescoping scratching stick and I proceeded to give her belly a good scratch and it appeared that she enjoyed every minute of it. A fine way to end the tour.

I think I speak for my Frau when I say that we both enjoyed every minute too. The tour was such a joy! To be outside and breathing in that fresh dairy air and to spend a little time with some of the other non-human denizens of Dane County.

Heartland doesn’t just let city slickers pet animals, though. They also offer therapy for children which, I gather, involves a therapist leading them around the farm to interact with the animals and work on their mental and emotional health. There are also various youth programs that allow the kids to visit the farm, learn about the animals, and hopefully develop a compassionate view towards them. And, I presume, there’s a healthy dose of environmental stewardship thrown in.

Wandering the farm and receiving all of its good tidings was a great way to put work out of my mind; to leave bills and problems behind. There is something salutary, perhaps even restorative, about being out in the countryside and interacting with the fauna. I find that, not only do the stresses of life seep away with every step through a barn, with every scratch given behind a donkey's ear, but I am reminded that we humans too are part of nature and, perhaps, not so far removed from the pigs and goats and cows as we think/hope.

I bet that, if you were to have scanned my brain while I was on the tour, you'd see the stress centers go dark and the happy parts light up. My blood pressure was no doubt lowered. The simple act of scratching a pig's tummy is a potent source of unalloyed joy. You can feel your cares fall away.

The tour also reminded me that farming, whether it be animals, dairy, or crop, is hard, back-breaking work.

After the tour, we went into Stoughton and grabbed coffee and a snack. My clothes and shoes may have been a little stinky, but my mind felt udderly (ahem) refreshed.

********

Bonus photo. No cats this time. Instead it’s a screenshot of a news headline that made me chuckle.

Another house coming at Royster Corners

A couple weeks ago I posted something seeing another hole in the ground over at Royster Corners. Well, it wasn't long after that when I spied forms.

 

 

 A new house will be there before long.

Sorry, Mr. Hansen

When I saw this sign saying "Two Monitors and Thunderbolt" posted at a cubicle, I just couldn't help myself.