Greetings, weary blog-trawler, and welcome to another installment of The Adventures of Quickstride & Shambler! This also happens to be my 150th article/post. That means there are 150 instances of free knowledge transfer and entertainment available here at Norseman Creative. Wow. So very generous. I’m even giving loyal readers 15% off orders of $25 or more in the shop with the code “onefiddy”. Now go buy my book(s)!
During those dark days of COVID Quarantines, when the whole world turned to telework, Jenny and I realized that we could work from pretty much anywhere. Even though we were both in the Air Force, we weren’t working in a traditional Squadron. We were stationed at Hanscom Air Force Base, just outside of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Hanscom is basically an office park protected by Air Force Security Forces and staffed primarily by DoD Civilians.
Since nobody really understood COVID during the early days of “two weeks to stop the spread,” the powers that be for Hanscom AFB and Air Force Materiel Center (AFMC) decided the military might as well telework too. So telework we did, mostly from home, but also from locations all over New England. One of those locations was an Air BnB in Cape Cod.
Jenny and I traveled down to Cape Cod on a Thursday afternoon with our friends, Alex and Laura Leigh, to take advantage of our telework arrangement. We arrived at the Air BnB and met the hosts, who seemed pretty relieved that someone was willing to rent their house during a time when nobody really understood COVID. The news was awash with stories about people dying left and right from COVID, or it was the COVID vaccine, or it was none of it. It really just depended upon who you got your news from.
As we followed our host around at a social six-foot distance, they explained the pains they went through in order to ensure the house was sanitary: Ozone treatments, advanced laundering, and more Pine Sol than you could shake a stick at. With our walkthrough complete, we dropped our bags in the distinctly cleaner scented house and set about the business of exploring.
Our Cape Cod adventure had two strikes against it. First and foremost, the world was only just out of the darkest part of the COVID restrictions, restaurants were just reopening, and only seating people outside. Second, even if the world hadn’t slipped into the psychotic despair that was 2020 – 2022, a lot of the restaurants and attractions wouldn’t have been open anyway because we were in Cape Cod during the off-season.
This was more or less fine, but it did put a damper on Jenny’s mission to try as many Lobster Rolls as possible. Plus, I suppose we were supposed to work while we were down there. Our work plans were simple, get to the house on Thursday evening, work as much as required of a Federal Government Employee on a Friday (not very much), adventure around over the weekend, then attend our morning meetings on Monday before checking out of the Air BnB and driving the hour or so back home.
My attitude towards photography at the time was, unfortunately, fairly lax. As I was writing this article that attitude really came to bite me, because now we don’t have much photographic proof of the absolute nuthouse of a farm we went to through the Air BnB Experience we booked.
Since much of Cape Cod was closed, Jenny booked one of the only thing that was available: an Air BnB Experience at a local farm where we would see their goats and chickens, walk through their orchard, and look at their crops. At the end of the tour, we would get to make our own soap out of Goat Milk! Alex, Laura Leigh, Jenny, and I all figured “Why not?” At the very least it would get us out of the house.
We piled into Laura Leigh’s SUV and made our way to the “farm.” Right away, we could tell something was off about the agricultural experience we were about to all have. When one pictures a farm, one expects to be driving further away from town, not towards it. Alex, piloting his wife’s SUV, was bringing us just outside the center of a quaint little Cape Cod village. We pulled into a driveway shaded by tall oak trees and found ourselves parked in front of a large, detached garage next to a large, brown house. The house would not have looked out of place in a European fable about a witch who turns children into book bindings, lamp shades, or some other leather product. The house did, however, look out of place on Cape Cod, and definitely looked out of place on a “farm.”
The Farmer walked off the large porch to welcome us to their “farm.” Short and rotund, the Farmer had a shock of grey hair, glasses, and sported the obligatory-for-the-times COVID mask. They were wearing a worn-out blue t-shirt and a pair of grey shorts with red checkering that stopped about mid-calf, just above a pair of untied duck boots. The Farmer very enthusiastically told us all about her “farm,” then brought us over to the first stop on the tour, the goat pen.
Next to the foreboding farmhouse, there was what I originally thought was a shed with a dog-run attached to it. That shed, turned out to be the “farm’s” combination goat shelter and chicken coop. The Farmer walked over, unlatched the door, and three goats came trotting out to greet us. By this odd point in my life, I had experienced goats of several different varieties, feral ones in Texas and Middle Eastern goats to name two, so I was expecting the goats to stink. These goats on this “farm” did not stink. In fact, they smelled vaguely shampooed, and I said as much to the Farmer.
“Thank you,” the Farmer seemed chuffed that I had noticed. “I like having clean goats.”
We were going to milk one of the goats, but first we had to feed them. Feeding the goats was accomplished by grabbing a nearby oak tree and pulling a low hanging branch down. The goats then stood on their hind legs and nibbled the leaves off the branch. One of the goats gave Alex a little sack-tap, and another wandered over to Laura Leigh’s SUV to investigate. The Farmer shouted at the errant goat much like you would at a precocious adolescent dog, but not in time to stop the goat from putting a few hoof marks in the rear quarter panel of Laura Leigh’s Lincoln.
With the goats fed, it was now time to milk one. The Farmer ushered us into the shed, secured the lucky goat to the milking apparatus, and brought out a bucket. Settling in for a quick demonstration, the Farmer showed us how to milk the goat, then turned it over to Laura Leigh to be the first to try it. With us all watching, Laura Leigh managed to get a few squirts of milk into the bucket. Apparently, she was not fast enough, because the Farmer jumped in and took over. The Farmer demonstrated again how to milk the goats, this time taking the opportunity to spray Alex with warm goat milk a couple times.
We all took a turn attempting to milk the goat, and when it came time for me to try, I think I did alright, except the goat got antsy and put her foot down into the bucket, completely ruining the work we had done thus far. The Farmer, undeterred but obviously a little annoyed, produced another bucket for us to try again, but suddenly changed their mind and used the opportunity to spray Alex with more goat milk.
After milking the goats, it was now time for the tour of the “farm.” Our first stop of the tour was the other side of the shed, where the chicken coop was. The Farmer showed us what I had originally thought was a dog kennel but actually turned out to be a chicken pen. I forget how many chickens the Farmer had, but however many there were when we were visiting, it was fewer than the night before. As the Farmer explained, “the damned raccoons” were somehow getting through the impenetrable layer of chicken wire and chain link fence.
In the middle of the chicken pen was a large oak tree, and around that large oak tree was a larger than raccoon-diameter space between the tree and the overhead fence. Perhaps that had something to do with the raccoons’ successful predation?
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” the Farmer said confidently, brushing me off and ushering us on to the next stop on the tour. Now it was time to visit the orchard.
The Farmer brought us to a clearing in between the main yard and the road we drove in on. They gestured around proudly at their orchard and started talking animatedly about their apple trees. Alex, Laura Leigh, Jenny, and I looked all around while the Farmer talked, but couldn’t see any trees at all, other than the large oaks that ringed the property. Finally, the Farmer squatted down next to what I had assumed was a twig that had fallen from a high branch and impacted hard enough to skewer itself into the dirt. Only then did we realize that there were five of these little twigs, presumably Apple Tree saplings, in a haphazard line, spaced several yards apart. The Farmer explained that they had planted the saplings earlier in the year, and expected a crop of apples in the following fall.
Us four visitors shared a quick, stifled look. At this point in the tour, we weren’t sure if this was some sort of elaborate prank, or if the Farmer was being serious. They were very serious.
With the orchard thoroughly explored, the Farmer ushered us further down the trail, to the next part of the “farm.” Here, we found ourselves inspecting four planter boxes, all of them about four feet wide and four feet long. Inside the planter boxes, little green sprouts of something were just beginning to show themselves in this mid-September afternoon. The Farmer excitedly asked us to guess what was growing in each of the boxes in turn.
For the life of me, I could have sworn they were all planted with clover. Nothing looked like a food crop of any type. So, at the first box I guessed kale.
“What do you take me for,” the Farmer asked surprisingly angry at the mere mention of kale, “some kind of weirdo?” (Yes.)
It turned out that the first box was full of turnips. If I remember correctly, the other boxes were full of cabbage, carrots, and some other food. I don’t know much about plants or flowers, but gardening is one of Alex’s hobbies, and he didn’t seem convinced about the existence of any turnips or other foodstuffs in any of the boxes.
Again, we tourists shared a look. A look that was meant to ask each other, “Surely this Farmer is messing with us, right?”
With the botany portion of our “farm” tour accomplished, the Farmer brought us back to the garage. It was now time for the Soap Making portion of the tour. Even though the Air BnB experience advertised that we would be making our own soap, the Farmer did literally all the work while explaining how they turned goat milk into bars of soap using a few household chemicals and a microwave. It turned out that, even if we had been able to make our own bars of soap, they take several days to set, so we wouldn’t have been able to take them home anyway. The Farmer did give us someone else’s soap as a consolation prize.
Now that we had been given bars of soap, Alex, Laura Leigh, Jenny, and I all thought the tour was over. We were wrong. At this point, the Farmer explained that, due to Massachusetts tax laws or something, this “farm” couldn’t legally be called a farm. Massachusetts only considers “farms” to be farms when they are over five acres in size, this particular “farm” was only about four acres. Which jived with everything we had seen on our tour. This was also the point in which the Farmer’s Wife came home.
The Farmer’s Wife did not look pleased to see us. She parked her car, ignored the Farmer’s greeting, and hustled into their house. The Farmer explained that the Farmer’s Wife was a professor at a prestigious university, in fact, the Farmer used to also be a professor at the same prestigious university, but had quit (or maybe was fired?). Apparently, the Farmer’s Wife did not appreciate the goats, the “farm,” any of it really. It also sounded like the reason the Farmer quit professoring was murky, ill-explained, and probably not the true tale.
I think the four of us may have been the only outside human interaction the Farmer had experienced in a long time, because as we were trying to slowly, politely, ease our way back to our vehicle, the Farmer kept talking to us. They shared far too much detail about their life, and about the time the Farmer revealed that the Farmer and their Wife had been involved in some sort of weird spouse-swapping situation, we made our final good-byes, threw the doors of the SUV open, and made our escape.
It was quiet in the Lincoln as Alex piloted us away. For several minutes, we all just sat there digesting what we had experienced.
Laura Leigh broke the silence. “What. The. Fuck. Was THAT?“
Love this. 💓💓💓