# January

**Published by:** [planet](https://paragraph.com/@planet/)
**Published on:** 2022-11-04
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@planet/january

## Content

In January we bought a herd of beef cattle from a farmer who was in the middle of a clearance sale. These were Scottish Highland cattle, wild-looking, with wide horns, thick wavy coats, some red, some black, some silver, and long bangs that hung over their eyes. More than one person stopped and asked if we were raising yaks. We buy mountain cattle because their price is very favorable, and such a breed has certain advantages, which fits our situation very well. This is the oldest breed ever, and their genes were formed in a harsh environment.They are known for tolerating marginal pastures, for being easy to produce, for being good at raising young, and for eating grass rather than grain. Their extremely thick fur is also advantageous in the winter. In the cold spring rain, their fur is as waterproof as a sheep's. The disadvantage is that they grow very slowly, taking two years or more to grow to slaughter weight. Besides, these cattle are wild. As we were unloading them, a young bull mysteriously slipped through a very small gap between the trailer and the fence. He ran all over the farm, his mother snorting and trying to knock the door down. He was white and fluffy, just like a big sheep. We named him Willie. The seeds arrive on Tuesday, and the whole future farm is in this box. Of all the mysteries I had encountered on the farm, this one seemed the most profound.It was hard for me to imagine how tons of food could grow out of a box so small and light that I could pick it up with one hand. Mark and I spent the last few nights poring over the seed catalog, which had arrived in the darkest week of winter and was stacked by the bed like a farmer's erotica. The glossy Johnny catalog, with its four-color compartments of computer-modified crops, is aimed, I'm sure, at farmers who like visual stimulation. And the cluttered Fedco catalog, which was just newsprint and line drawings but had a gorgeous description, was aimed at people like me, who like to work with words. If it were up to me, we would have planted every seed in the catalog that year. For the squash section alone, I've drawn a dozen interesting varieties, including Candy Roaster, Turk's Turban, Pink Banana, and Galeux d'Eysines, which, from a contextual perspective, It means "cobblestone decoration". The vanilla part is even more of a fan. How can you not order a pack of each? There's saltwort, sneezewort, motherwort, and Saint-John's-wort, plus mad-dog skullcap, which the article says is a folk remedy for rabies. It's only a dollar a pack. How can you go wrong? The whole trick of the seed catalogue is that they arrive in winter, anything is possible, the planting work is so far away that it's hard to see ahead of time. Luckily, Mark knew this and quietly pulled out my list and crumpled it up. So the seeds that arrive on our farms are basically edible crops, universally loved, of reasonable varieties, nothing that ends in "grass." We sorted the seeds to separate those that could be planted directly in the ground from those that needed to be grown in the conservatory for a few weeks earlier. We don't have a conservatory yet, but building one is on our list.

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