symbiotic

I was tossing around  a few ideas to write about this week, including the fact that I might need an ox because farm equipment sucks and only exists to piss you off,  but then a friend of ours pulled up with a trailer the other day and dropped off a horse. We had discussed the idea of taking this little horse as a companion for our lonely spoiled calf, but were not expecting her to arrive on this particular day.  Yet, the husband and I just looked at each other as if it was the most normal thing in the world for someone to drop off a horse.  This got me thinking about our relationship.

For the most part the husband and I are a total ying and yang. Call it symbiosis, co-dependence or a girl who was looking for a daddy figure in a boy who was looking for a mommy figure: It works.  This is not to say that he is my best friend.  I love him and thoroughly enjoy his company, but I already had a best friend when I met him.  In fact, whenever I read some wedding announcement in "The New York Times" or some article in "People Magazine" about a woman who is marrying her, "best friend," I want to send her the business card for a divorce lawyer as a wedding present, because either he is gay or you are going to be sorely disappointed in your marriage.  While the former may work for many including Michelle Bachmann, most of us who are married to a heterosexual guy know they are not going to want to trash talk about the mom who lets her six year old play "Halo" (Oh yeah, that's me), and he is not going to help you Netflix stalk every movie Jeremy Renner has been in because he is cute, but not in the obvious kind of way.  These are things friends are for.

Anyway, I digress.  The husband is the jump in with both feet kind of guy who takes on a project without knowing what the hell he is doing and completes it.  I am more of a worst case scenario, research it to death, and though it will make most of my friends who knew me in my twenties roll over in fits of laughter as they read the following description of myself; cautious conservative kind of gal.

Sometimes the husband's impulsivity leads to some costly mistakes, but it is also why we have a full fledged farm in less than a year, so I don't get on his case too much about the fuck ups.  Plus, the, "I told you so" moment I got to bask in as the used pick up I warned him not to buy was towed into the driveway a couple of weeks after he purchased it, was worth every penny of the $2000 he spent on the piece of junk.

The one flaw to our perfect symbiotic relationship is my love of animals.  This is how the woman who only wanted a few chickens and four sheep to make cheese with ended up with a 72 chickens, 13 guinea keets, five cats, two dogs, a rabbit, a heifer and now a miniature horse.  But even more than my inability to say no to an animal, I have come to realize the balance of a farm is much like the balance of a marriage or any good relationship.

In the garden you plant beets with bush beans because they help each other grow.  Carrots and onions repel each others pests.  Cows like to eat the tall part of the grass while sheep and horses like the short grass.  The chickens like to eat the bugs and worms in the manure of both and spread the seeds to make an even more lush and nutrient dense pasture and the dogs protect all of these creatures from predators.  Of course, 72 chickens might be a little excessive in this situation, but this is where the husband's go big or go home attitude comes into play. The delicate balance of any relationship or society for that matter needs to be about helping each other.  I have had a plethora of ah ha moments about the meanings behind dozens of old time sayings since beginning of my farming journey, and I can honestly say, what's good for the goose really is good for the gander.

It is when we think we can game this precious symbiosis that the shit hits the fan.  Think of an abusive marriage or the Dust Bowl or the gardener who only grows one crop or the factory farms that only raise one type of meat or the housing bubble.  When all energy goes into one side of the relationship, the microcosm withers and dies. Perhaps we should all consider this dillema. The farmers I have had the privilege to meet since moving up to the farmette seem to understand it implicitly.