I learned this week that a blog post should always tell a story, beginning with, “Once upon a time.”
Once upon a time, there was a four-acre hillside that housed seven potbelly pigs, one potbelly pig, three donkeys, eight goats, two turkeys, nine geese, eight ducks, and an indeterminate number of chickens because that number seem to fluctuate every morning when new roosters appeared. Very mysterious. All of these animals were disgruntled. They didn’t get second breakfast.
No matter how sad they looked when a car passed their fence, when the house people that they just knew could hear them disgruntling didn’t give them their second breakfast, and the door to the hay mow didn’t open no matter how hard they banged on it, food did not appear.
November nights were sometimes warm and sometimes cold. The animals buried into the straw on cold nights and dream that the next day’s breakfast would multiply until suppertime.
On November 7, a car did stop. Only it wasn’t a car. It was a truck. It was a truck pulling a wagon. The wagon was full of pumpkins: big round juicy seed-and-pulp-filled pumpkins. Magic Dave and Jane had arrived! Dave and Jane were the best people in the whole world. When these Great Pumpkins visited, squash rained from the sky. Orange fruits hit the ground and burst open with squashy orange goodness.
The animals ate until their bellies dragged on the ground. The sun warmed the chilly November ground and their full bellies. When evening came, they ate their supper and finished what juicy bits were on the ground for dessert. Donkeys kept watch over the wagon. Pigs snored, dreaming of lip-dripping squash threads. Fowl purred contentedly in their roosts. Goats burped (they always burp.) The people in the house sang songs of praise for peace, delivered by Great Pumpkins.
Last summer, Sandy and Doug visited Mister Bill here on The Quarry Farm. They brought him treats, delectable items that he unwillingly shared with most of the other goats. While walking the gardens and sharing a human lunch outside Red Fox Cabin, we told Sandy about our intent to hang paintings around the perimeter of the sanctuary. The package that came in the mail was the size and shape of just such a painting.
