saving lady susan

 



It’s a very long story filled with very smelly, intense, "too much information", but this week our Jersey cow, Lady Susan, nearly died due to a condition called frothy bloat. The vet did a procedure called a rumenotomy, and I have just spent 4 days and nights doing things I never would have dreamed of... including finding foreign debris that I slowly but surely was able to pull out of the area the vet made in her rumen.

She was born on a 7000+ dairy lot in North Dakota, and eventually made it to a nice little dairy farm near here. But when cows are young, they’re very curious, just like children. If they can find it, they may put it in their mouth. I pulled out long, large, clear plastic bags, webbed and knotted ropes of twine, more plastic, rubber coated copper wire, and two very acidified, hard things that I could tell were leather gloves. During this time, she was given very good pain medication, so although it was traumatizing, her pain was minimized.

Ever since we got her, we tried to put weight on her and baby her with organic hay and treats. Nothing worked. Four days ago, it was looking like we may need to euthanize and try to save her calf. I went deep ... sort of became a Pelagian witch doctor ... did healing energy work and prayer... and released any possession of her that I felt, surrendering her to the great One Life... and then told her stories of how good her body will feel now if she could get up... and... eventually she got up! She’s eating and her whole system is working. I’m still at it, giving her mixtures if molasses, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, spruce tip tea, and water. She’s eating delicious hay and drinking water and all of it is moving through her.
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She’s still low energy after all the trauma, but we’re hopeful that this member of the family and of our burgeoning ecosystem is on the mend. 

I was already a locavore before this happened, but as I massaged her in the middle of the night, and talked to her, and loved her, a very profound awareness of being a participant in the great circle, came to me. No pyramids... but a circle of humility and life... and that none of the food we eat, should be just "a product". There is more to all of this than spread sheets of functioning, or not so functioning. That we ourselves should not be a product or a cog, but a wild participant in this beautiful, uncontrollable Life. And that if I am at all able, when I die, my wish is to be composted on this land, so the herds that graze here in the future can eat the grass my body sustains, as it becomes soil. 

We are like the grass. 

I feel the presence of Angels... and plant me here.

It was Gary Snyder's 90th birthday yesterday, so I'll leave some quotes of his here in honour of him and his work, and my burgeoning, inner curmudgeon ...

"Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility."

"As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth... the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalanced and ignorance of our times."

"Nature is not a place to visit. It is home."

"The other side of the sacred is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots."



(The photo above was taken this morning!)