Bee Tree Farm

Here, it is finally – legitimately – fall.  After an abundance of rain, it’s safe to burn piles of brush and cactus, cedar trees and dead elm that didn’t make it through the years long drought.  This October, like every October, Saturdays mean woodsmoke, beers before lunch, leaning against a tractor, scratching a cow with a free hand.  The football game comes through on a radio with warbly reception.  Lunch is served in the pasture and on top of whatever farm implement is free of manure, clean enough to be a temporary table.  The goats munch fallen acorns and wood crackles and burns just beyond the hay bale surrounded by assorted donkeys and cows.  A chicken gallops between cow legs with a baby ratsnake in its mouth trailed by five jealous hens.  The fridge is bursting with milk that, today, needs to become cheese, but there’s time for that later.  I wait all year for this moment in the pasture, and I’ll stay here just a little longer.