Dear Folks, The big news of the month is that DON GOT HIS DEER. It was an ELEVEN POINT BUCK! He got it on the first day of muzzle-loader season, with a single shot through the heart.
To understand the import of that news, you have to understand more about Don than I have probably told you. The shooting of an eleven point buck is, next to winning the megabucks lottery, the best thing that could happen to him. All year he stalks the woods around here, watching deer. I think he knows every deer in Plainfield, where it hangs out, what its habits are. He practices target-shooting with his bow all summer and wins trophies in bow-shooting contests. He’s been cleaning and preparing his muzzle loader for weeks.
First we have a bow-hunting season in New Hampshire, followed by a muzzle-loader season, followed by a rifle season. As each new season starts the weapons shoot farther, require less skill, and are deadlier. The deer get spookier. The number of hunters rises. Don and his buddies would be happy to get a deer by any form of hunting, but they prefer to do it before rifle season, so they don’t have to be out in the woods when it’s not safe.
So since bow season began in October Don has put on his camo suit and smeared camo grease on his face every dusk and dawn and taken his bow and disappeared into the woods. He saw lots of deer, but for bow-hunting the animal has to be close and the way completely clear before you have a shot. He never got a bow shot. But the first morning of muzzle-loader season, there was the buck of his dreams.
Eleven points, I should add for you non-connoisseurs, refers to the number of branches of the antlers big enough to hang a ring on. The more points, the more the hunter can brag to his hunting buddies. Don estimates the buck was about four years old, in his prime.
Sylvia, who studied cultural anthropology at Yale, says the trouble with this society is that we have no rituals to welcome the successful hunter home, dance in celebration, and make campfires at night to tell the tale. But I think we did pretty well. We had company that Saturday — Genady Golubev from Russia and Sylvia’s Yale roommate Mary from California — so there were lots of us to turn out when Don appeared with the deer draped over the hood of his jeep. We didn’t whoop and dance and sing, but we sure admired the deer. It was a truly beautiful creature.
Don took it down to the Plainfield store to get it registered — that took about three hours. Saturday morning was the perfect time; everyone in town turns up at the store. The story got better and better in the telling. Then he took it to the gun shop to weigh it — another three hours, lots more telling. 180 pounds, maybe a champion deer for this year. Then he brought it home and hung it in the tractor shed, and various buddies pulled in as the word circulated around town. He called up a taxidermist to find out how to preserve that noble 11-point head. He called up his boss and a few other hunting friends to rub it it, because they kidded him about not getting a deer last year. I wonder how many times Don told the story that day. We may not be Kalahari bushmen, but we have our New England ways of working out our ancient instincts.
It took Don, Karel, Mary, and Sylvia all day Sunday to butcher the beast. By evening I think Karel was ready never to see another piece of meat again. We have over 100 pounds of venison beautifully dressed and wrapped in our freezer — along with a lamb and a bunch of fat meat chickens and uncounted quantities of vegetables. And a root cellar full of potatoes, squash, carrots, cabbage, jelly, and pickles. And jars of dry beans and grinding corn for meal and popcorn. All raised by us or the forest, none touched by pesticides.
By Tuesday night we were ready to eat our first meal of venison, and, vegetarian that I am, I have to say it was really good.
And yes, folks, if Don weren’t so absolutely jubilant, and if he weren’t such a responsible hunter, I would have different feelings about having a dead deer hanging in my tractor shed. Our own 75 acres is posted against hunting — with a child, a large dog, 17 sheep and several adults around, and only half a mile from town, I don’t want folks discharging deadly weapons around here. I’d be content never to eat meat again in my life. And, though I know all the ecological arguments about having to control the deer herd, I’d rather have nature’s own predators do it. I’d rather have that magnificent buck siring more deer right now instead of being in my freezer. But one look at Don’s face as he charged into the house that triumphant Saturday morning, and all my reservations melted. I was just glad for him. We’ll eat well from that deer. I’m willing to listen to the story again every time we do.
Yesterday we engaged in a different kind of slaughter; we prepared our Thanksgiving goose.
The last time you heard of the geese was in July when their noble sire Caesar was killed by an Unknown Predator in the pasture. We never solved that mystery, and we never lost another goose. They wisely took to sleeping on the little island in the pond at night. Geese are the only domestic fowl with any brains — they’re actually smart and interesting birds. So for the rest of the summer the babies fledged out into dazzling-white, proud, imposing birds. They literally stopped traffic on Daniels Road as they swam on the pond. Several neighbors told me the goose family was the best tourist attraction in town.
We left them down there when we brought the sheep up for breeding, because they are so happy by the pond. But last weekend there was a cold snap and the pond iced over. When I got home from Dartmouth one night there were three calls from neighbors on our answering machine. “One of your geese is in trouble. He seems to be frozen in the ice.”
Well there was a dilemma. The ice was by no means hard enough to support us. The goose wasn’t frozen in, but he was thoroughly panicked by the fact that his watery world had suddenly gone all hard and slippery. The other geese were fine. They slid and stumbled and propelled themselves with their wings and managed to be mobile, but this one sat pathetically in one remaining liquid patch by the island, flailing his wings and honking desperately. Sylvia and I marched the others up the road to the barnyard (stopping traffic — it was a beautiful and funny parade), because their Coyote Protection had iced up and we had to get them home. We threw rocks toward the stuck one trying either to break the ice or scare him into flight. The town cop stopped and tried to help. I could envision the headline in the Valley News, “CONSTABLE AND RESIDENTS FALL THROUGH ICE TRYING TO SAVE GOOSE.” But we didn’t go through the ice, and we also didn’t free the goose.
Don finally solved the problem with one of his 40-foot painters’ ladders. He used it to make a bridge to the island, went out on it, and that was finally enough to spook the goose into flying. The goose landed in the pasture and Don ran him down. Silly goose. Troublemaker. I hope he’s the one we did in yesterday.
It’s been a long time since I plucked a goose. Dennis and I raised a lot of them in the early days on the farm, and I dry-plucked them to keep the down for comforters. As I recall it took 12 geese to give enough down for a double-bed-size comforter. Since we only have four geese to slaughter this year, I thought we might make a cover for Heather.
I had remembered what an awe-inspiring job it was to pluck a goose. The feathers are shingled beautifully over the down layer, so the down is always dry and insulating, even when the goose is in the water. I had kind of forgotten how long it takes, though, and how messy it is. First of all the decapitated goose is still bleeding out. (You have to pluck it right away while it’s still warm, or you’ll never get the feathers out at all.) Second, little bits of fluff fly everywhere, no matter how careful you are. Fluff stuck in drying blood. That’s probably enough to say to give you the general picture.
It occurs to me that this newsletter has been uncommonly violent so far and that I may have lost some of my more gentle-hearted readers. especially those of the animal-rights persuasion. It’s very hard to communicate across the gulf between those who directly participate in the activities that bring them food and those who would rather not even think about those activities. How can I express to you the solemnity and reverence with which Don butchers a deer or I pluck a goose? How can I transfer to you the feeling of deep authenticity, of completion, of wholeness, and of love that comes from being responsible for the entire process that brings food to the table? No one knows or loves the deer more than Don does. No one loves the geese more than I do.
I actually have a thing about geese. Geese and potatoes are my two favorite products of the farm, both in the raising and the eating. Not ducks, not chickens, not tomatoes. I attribute this quirk of mine to my ancestry from both sides of my family. I’d guess my genes were fed for generations by geese and potatoes.
One of my North German grandfathers was a preacher, the other was a farmer. (Explains a lot about me, doesn’t it?) The minister grandfather died when I was small and I remember him primarily through the stories my mother told me about him. He was a fanatic gardener, and laid out his plots in strict straight lines, a trait I seem not to have inherited.
The farmer grandfather, the one who always signed my birthday cards “Grandpapa Fritz,” loved geese. Even after he retired from farming and moved to town, he would buy geese from his friends and bring them to my grandmother to cook. That was how I first tasted roast goose. My grandmother didn’t especially like to cook goose, so my grandfather would secrete them in the freezers of friends and pop them on her on special occasions. I remember her exasperation, and his delight.
I think of that grandfather every time I pluck geese or plant petunias. After he left farming he became the supervisor of the Barrington, Illinois, sewage treatment plant. Being a good farmer, he couldn’t stand throwing the sludge into the Illinois River, which was the practice then. So he laid out dozens of sludge beds around the treatment plant and planted petunias in them. The place became a park. I have vivid memories of it. Every year I plant a swath of petunias in the front yard and think of it as the Fred Hager Memorial Petunia Garden.
How on earth did I get off on my grandfathers? Oh yes, geese.
So this week we will have roast venison and roast goose for Thanksgiving, and squash, Brussels sprouts, and leeks from the garden. Thanksgiving is a festival that has real meaning on a farm. It has always been my favorite day. Suzanne and Dennis will be coming up to make it right — a Thanksgiving on this farm without them wouldn’t be complete.
And as I wrote that a great wave of sadness came over me, because even with them, Thanksgiving won’t be complete. I will be remembering last year, with Anna, glowing with pleasure, presiding over the turkey, which she had helped pluck on Marguerite Conley’s farm. I never thought anniversaries really had any meaning — there’s no reason to miss Anna more on any day than on any other day. But the world provides memory triggers as anniversaries come around. The darkening days, the brisk air, the warm woodstoves, the preparations for Thanksgiving. It was a year ago tomorrow that I was diagnosed with cancer. It was a year ago Thanksgiving that I felt so blessed, with the farm family and Suzanne and Dennis all together. And ten days after that Anna was killed. And the sadness is still sometimes overwhelming.
Well, the miracle is that we’ve gotten through this year. We’ve done better than gotten through — we’ve learned and grown and healed. There is a tremendous lot to be thankful for, even though there is also a sadness that will not go away.
That’s what I’ll try to remember during this anniversary time.
Love to you all, and may you have much to be thankful for, Dana
