Rural Exploration 1 by Samantha Ebay |ØwO|
April 4th, 2010 3:24 PMRural Ohio
Ok, so I'm from Ohio, but Columbus, not some farm or even the suburbs. Downtown and Campus (OSU area) were where I hung out. When I first moved to Chicago, I asked someone where a UDF was, and they were like "what's that?" "United Dairy Farmers." which is actually just like a 7-11 but Chicagoans looked at me like I was wearing a cowboy hat and chewing on a piece of hay.
A UDF slash gas station
Me in a cowboy hatA Farm
A few years after my brothers and I moved out my mom decided to buy a farm about an hour away from Columbus, where she could surround herself with peace and quiet and tend to her animals. They bought 57 acre farm outside of Zanesville, OH.
The Exploring
So, yes, I did talk to the person that lives there, my mom. We grokked the land together and have the following photo-tour of the land and animals of Valhalla Acres Farm.
Farm HouseMy mom bought a property with a one-bedroom farm house with the intent that it would be too small for any of her kids to move back home into. It's true - it's not a big place. But very rural. Complete with requisite dogs and cats and a water pump from the well.
It even has its own gas pump (not functional) to keep your farm equipment running. If that's not rural, nothing is.
Next up is an outhouse. Functional when my mom moved in, later repurposed as a chicken coop, now serving as a small storage shed. My mom has a lot of stuff: it's in the house, the crawlspace, the garage, the former outhouse, another shed, and stored in the barns. I have to fight the urge to hold on to stuff, it runs in our family.
My mom has 26 sheep. In the background you can kinda see the sheep barn, and a ram shack. She doesn't have a ram at the moment, as she has stopped breeding the sheep for a bit. So, no lambs this year. :( They are rushing towards us, probably thinking we have some stale hotdog buns to feed them or something.
My mom also has a goat. Her name is Enid, after the character in Ghost World. Good movie. Enid, on the other hand, may be preggers right now. My brother brought a male goat out to the farm that his friend gave him or something (?) Columbus is a weird place and that is another story all together.
See? Even she doesn't know. If you had x-ray vision, this is what you might see. Hopefully it's not a cat in there, as the skeleton might suggest. Hehehe.
The dogs on top of the manure pile. They like it because there is a deer buried in there. On a related note - what do you do when a dog or other animal owned by a neighbor is harrassing your livestock? Around here we abide by the three S's: Shoot, Shovel and Shut Up.
A lot of money is invested in farm equipment.
The Woods
Ok, moving on from grounds near the house, most of the farm is wooded along two ravines that border the property. It is too steep for farming, that is why the place was so cheap. Having 50+ acres of woods to explore and hang out in is cool. Our tour continues into the woods.
This is the "tree house" I built a few summers ago with my stepdad. It is more of a shack, or belvedere, if you will. You can sleep in it, it is dry and has lots of big windows.
We encountered the first wildflowers of spring.
At the corner of the property is "Beech Point" where generations of land owners have been scratching their names into this giant beech tree. Can't see it?
I highlighted the markings with green photoshop. The Fink's originally owned the farm and marked it with their name and 1914. We're not sure who put the 2004 - could be one of my brothers or a friend of theirs, we have a lot of visitors and weirdos come through this way.
The woods are pretty.
This dog went on the walk with us. I hate her, she is ugly and I call her "Dirty Bath Rug". Granted, my mom's other dogs are called (by me) Stupid and Stinky. But this one is worse.
The Finale
The closest thing to a destination on the farm in the waterfall on the northern edge of the property. The water looks pretty clean, but my mom advises against drinking it. Too many neighbors think trash disposal is "thowing it down the crick".
It's nice.
Bathrug tries to clean up, but she is still dirty.
Conclusion
Everyone should have a mom with some rural land and maybe even a farm. You get to hang out, build tree houses, eat former farm animals, ride horses, and visit the Menonite store on the way to town that sells good yogurt cheese. If we're lucky, we might have a baby goat kid soon and possibly some goat milk and/or goat cheese. That's it. Hope you enjoyed the tour.
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Thx, I'm trying to work on my gimp skillz. Also, that picture actually makes the dog look cute. In real life, she is a dirty yellow and has matted gross hair.
Hooray for UDF and Ohio! If you're ever near Cincinnati I'll treat you to a malt.
Wow, apparently in addition to rural exploration, you traveled through time, to a UDF where gas costs half what it does today. C.E. bonus
I'm voting for this.
Please remember that I have voted for this before I say this:
The word groc was used in the task description, and to me, groc has a very hardcore implication. I think you did a very fine job of exploring rural land. But did you really groc it? Y'know, maybe you did. It's just not implicit in the write-up.
I live in an urban environment and I don't feel that I've groced this urban landscape.
For those unfamiliar with the term groc:
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man.
you're right, that is a hardcore interpretation. I appreciate the feedback, and maybe it is true, I didn't blur the line between observer and observed to the fullest extent. at least not on this trip.
If I ever truly grokked rural land, it was when I and a former bf kept up the land for a two weeks while my mom was absent. We shoveled shit for an hour twice a day, bottle fed baby lambs, defended the farm against raccoons, buried a dead raccoon in the manure pile, and slept outside. I didn't even think about writing that up because it was two+ years ago.
NEEEEERrrrrd. Lincoln is a NERD!
And I love that.
And the only reason I criticize at all is someday I plan on doing this, and I plan on trying to really blur that line.
I mean, here at my place I have horses and we get coyote attacks, and I have had to chase bobcats out of the yard, and hauling hay and carrots and tons of horse shit up and down the hill every day and tending the gardens and all of that doesn't even come close in my mind to a real groc as I would define it.
So I've been planning my praxis of this for years and I plan on really trying to groc it. I plan on sleeping out with the horses, to spend my days hanging out in the hay shed, I want the animals to get the feeling that I am one of them. I want to be Jane Goodall of the rural landscape. I just need to find the time and dig deep to find that drive. And find a suitable way to express to all of you what really happened and why I feel I succeeded.
wow - Enid the goat and her x-ray fetus! what is not to like about this farm?
I agree. I love Enid. Even though she mentioned the movie and not the comic book.
yeah, I've read the graphic novel and seen the movie, but my mom's only seen the movie, so that's why I said she was named after the character in the movie.
Other sources of farm animal names: South Park, MST3K, Wagner's operas, my brothers' girlfriends, and dreams where they tell my mom their "true" name (seriously). I've only named one animal on the farm - a horse named Goethe that my mom mistakenly calls Gerta.
Dirty bath rug picture is classic.