There's this tub full of pineapple plants in the shed (the kind where you just hack off the top and put them in water). They've been sitting in this tub for months waiting to be planted, and this was my job yesterday. I have to pull each plant out, pull off any rotten lower leaves and plant them in the ground by the pond. This seemed like it was going to be fun and easy. Little did I know. When I went over to the tub, I found a rotting festering mess that smelled horrific. It was very clearly the smell of excrement, and I felt like I had my face in horse shit. It also splashed around and got all over me as I pulled the leaves off, which made this awful squelching noise and were covered with brown sludge. The water in the tub was also FULL of worms and fish and frogs and tadpoles and they got ALL OVER ME. After dealing with the plants, I went over to Liu Zhi and asked if he would help me, miming the international signal for vomit so that he would know what was going on. With his help, of course, we planted them really quickly. I then headed right into the shower and scrubbed it all off. The rest of the day, though, I could smell that disgusting smell and kept asking to see if anyone else could smell it. They couldn't.
In other news: the cows. There are three cows here, Nellie, Norman and Berniece:
While Norman is a steer, he is castrated and therefore unable to perform. It seems, however, that Berneice is pregnant anyhow. This happened before when a bull jumped the fence, but the cow and calf died in childbirth. Cows are pregnant for about the same length of time as humans**, so we're not sure how close Berniece is to delivering, but it seems like it'll be soon. Her udder has dropped and filled with milk, and I took some pictures:
and
I'll keep you posted on this developing story.
That's all for now. Oh, I also wanted to let you guys know that I've decided to stay in Hawaii a little longer... so I'll be back in NYC around the second week of March.
** I got into midwifery school, yay!
5 comments:
Congradulations on school! We are supposed to be signing a lease tonight, so hopefully there will be good news all around.
I can't wait for the post where you describe having to pull a mucousy calf out of a mommy cow like Billy Crystal in City Slickers.
Can you post a picture of a regular cow so I can see the difference in udders? I got really excited about it but I can hardly tell its engorged from the picture. Also, and this is kinda gross, but can you drink milk from a pregnant cow?
thanks phil, good luck with the apartment! i was ready to go in there, man, i was looking for long gloves and everything, but it all worked out with no intervention.
emil, i'm going to take a bunch more cow pictures this weekend. the other cows wouldn't stand up the other day, so i couldn't take the non-preg photos, but i will. you can totally drink milk from a pregnant cow, but at this point it's just colostrum, like a human would have.
Congrats on the school acceptance! I know you'll be missed in old Hawi, but bigger and better things await! Enjoy your last few months "on the farm" - enjoyed reading the posts.
Cambodia Chris
Hooray for midwifery! Congrats babe! Lease signing went through just fine. When you're briefly in NYC, you'll have to come over for dinner.
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