Because we're English

There is much rejoicing on the farm because Bianca, our moody horse, has found a new place to live. She has been living in Ian's old tool shed, beside the free range chickens, Harry the gigantic hog, and Kate, the mischievous little pig who leaps out of her pen and wanders the slopes, searching for food under rocks that, when lifted, wind up on the road.

Ian and Sally have great hearts but, like Phil and Chris in Ireland, they're English. While the connotations of "English" are different in Spain and Ireland, but when it comes to animal husbandry "English" is a common moniker in both cultures. That is to say, whereas Irish and Spanish kill their animals when they are of no use, hanging their hunting dogs and leaving horses tied up, unfed, to be the latest mortal victims of the economic downturn, Phil and Chris would rather see themselves dehydrated than the goats go without. Ian and Sally, Englishpeople, balk in disbelief at the cruelty of their neighbors, Sally doing a 180 km walk to raise awareness about animal cruelty–specifically for hunting dogs–some years ago. So, often when they are not killed, unwanted animals get schlepped upon the porches of the English.

The goats here, formerly of Spanish ownership, browse the hillsides for their simple sustenance. Bianca, however, is like a big, temperamental, also Spanish baby with the strength and appetite of an Austrian bodybuilder. Despite both of them being kicked, Ian tries to train her with the techniques he's used with dogs, pigs, and other animals. The harsh truth, however, is that there are miles of jobs to do before Bianca can be fully attended to, and Ian needs his body to help Sally at the farm, and to wander off to build in order to pay bills, so he cannot afford to be kicked again. So it is with much joy and some wistfulness that Bianca finds a new home, though for the meanwhile she remains here, dear as this morning's newborn piglets, the pack of nine dogs trailing us up the road, and a cup of hot tea amid a day's labors like a breath of fresh air.

Watching "Scrubs" while dinner is cooking

We’re stable as Chris cooks a mean dinner in the next room and Phil comes in, soaked, from the Irish rain. The wolfhounds take up about half the kitchen space, but that’s how it goes around here. Milo, the small table of his head, pushes me, waiting to be scratched, and it feels like someone is pushing me bodily out of the way; then I see the happy, drooling dogface.

We milk goats twice a day by machine, after we hand-milk a bit to check color and consistency. As we come in, most of them stand up on the doors of their pens, their long ears flopping down and looking like shoulder-length hair as they ask: Food! We walk greyhounds, feed pigs. Fred the horse is my favorite, though, a big, lumbering horse that makes me amazed that such powerful animals can be so gentle.

We’re blessed to be here, both in learning to use our gas-fed caravan whose stove we have to start with a lighter; with the goats whom I now know by name and can milk on our own; the Irish countryside stretching green, punctuated by upraised ditches, cottages, herds of cows and sheep, and the roaring, cliffside sea. We work hard here, more than we’re asked to, and Phil and Chris take us to the shore, framed with infinity and rocky shores.

How good it is, but currently unpoetic it is for me to be stable. I look forward to the day I have a family and will slow down some, but for now I have more countries to see, more poems to read, and more wood-burning stoves to write in front of.

Ballymacoda & Magpie Cottage Dairy

Monnica and Patrick see us off at the corner next to a green, closed-down sports store where Ben, with whom I’ve only spoken on the phone, is going to meet us. Joe is with us too, speaking of the rugby tickets he’s just bought for 80 Euro to see Ireland and Australia in one of the last games at Cork Stadium. The first two are setting off in a rental car for Patrick’s family history to imbibe from baptismal records.

Once Ben arrives, he takes us through incredible countryside to the Magpie Cottage Dairy, where the goats stand outside and favor us interestedly in the beautiful weather. Ben’s here for a few weeks finishing his parents’ kitchen, and the parents – Phil and Chris – run the small place, which just won second place at the World Cheese Awards. They’re English, settling down in Ireland when Sussex got too dangerous.

The males eye the female goats wantonly from across the field, trapped by their own pens. Occasionally they let out a bleat, and the ladies don’t pay them half as much mind as when Ryan and I bring food. Running with Dusty, one of four greyhounds, he almost skips side-to-side to play with me, and I’m running full tilt. There are two Irish wolfhounds, four pigs, chickens, and Fred the horse.

Here, we eat our first home-cooked meal since Rachel sent us off. It’s delicious and a wondrous departure from peanut butter, sausage, bread, apples, cheese, and sardines.