We landed in Pagosa Springs last night just in time to soak
our tired legs at the hot springs.
We’d been hiking all day. I
love this place—they graciously allow us park Butter behind the resort for
free, and we get to enjoy wireless internet from the comforts of our sofa or
their cozy living room, whichever suits our fancy, while sipping free tea and
coffee from the lobby inside. I
was searching online for a farmers market in town when I stumbled upon a link
to a lovely little farm called Heaven on Earth that looked like an interesting
place to visit, so I phoned Jonni, the owner, and left a message. Shortly after, she returned my call and
invited us to the farm for a little tour.
In her mid-sixties, Jonni is a fireball who built the place
from the ground up mostly by herself.
She slept on a tarp under a tree for nearly two months while a road was
being built for trucks to haul in construction materials and supplies. When we arrived, the goats welcomed us
in. I was taken back to Boone’s
Farm for just a moment, Michael’s cheese, my time with Roger. I don't think I’ll ever eat goat cheese
again without comparing it to Mook’s.
A past life, for now. A few
of the bunnies on Jonni’s farm had turned renegade and were running freely from
one building to the next. I
wondered if she raised them for meat.
She had quite the zoo, actually—on top of the goats and rabbits, her
farm houses turkeys, chickens, her dog Osha, bears who, “out of boredom like to
reek havoc on the other farm animals,” and hundreds of chipmunks who devour the
seeds in her garden with lightning speed.
We sat for a long while, waiting for the summer storm to pass,
discussing how she moved to and acquired the farm, her lifestyle, political
views, and the sort. I felt like
we’d been friends for years.
She spent most of her life in California as a dog groomer,
and raised goats while she was there, which explains why she’s so knowledgeable
after having only been on this land for 13 years. A former hunter, she once shot an elk from her front porch,
but now she doesn’t see the need to kill for meat because of the abundance of
roadkill. In fact, she has a
“contact” who calls each morning on his way to work to report death sightings,
then quickly hops in the car with Osha and her toolkit to go get what she
can. She’s amazingly spry, and I
was thoroughly impressed by her ability to deal with a 700-pound carcass
(“blood all over the car”), and her openness to share the stories that would
gross out most people.
The rain passed and Jonni took us on a tour of her
property. She fed me oregano,
lemon verbena, and snap peas from the upper garden, and then we all piled into
her electric golf cart and headed towards the big dome that housed the plants
during the cold winters. There,
she fed us tomatoes and taught us about ring of fire tincture. Andre needed to
grab a sweater, so I used the time alone with her to have a little girl
talk—asking deep questions about killing animals, like how did she learn to
hunt, how did it feel to take a life for food. She said her angels told her that they couldn’t do the dirty
work for her, so she figured out a way to make it as easy on the animal as she
could, but it was still hard on her.
I’ve been longing to become more attached to my meat. I already fish, but struggle with the
killing part. I’ll do it, but not
without a little suffering. The
thing is, I like meat. I don’t eat
it very often, maybe a couple of times a month, if that. But when I look into the eyes of
another being and think about taking its life… animals have families just like
we do. The struggle of a forager.
Andre returned and we headed towards the murals that were
recently painted, and we met the goats, by name. Somewhere between Moonshadow and Moonie, Jonni grabbed her
22-caliber gun and quietly walked to the door. A bear? No.
Chipmunks. One bullet and it was
dead, making a total of 287 this summer.
Yes, she shoots chipmunks.
It’s her method of seed saving.
Andre and I looked at each other and just smiled. It’s certainly better than poison.
On our way out, she gifted us with chard, purple
lambsquarter seeds, and welcomed us back anytime. We let her choose from our collection of polished stones. What
a farm, what a woman, what an inspiration.
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