I just returned from five days on the farm. I cleared fallen limbs and branches, started painting the stage and ate more meat than any man (or woman for that matter) should.

The weather couldn’t have been nicer if I’d made it myself. Every day was rain-free. The few clouds were more picturesque than threatening.

I watched my first bull testing, a process so graphic everyone should be made to watch it. The smells…musky bull, earth, shit, and something else I won’t even try to describe though it’s the most palpable…more intuitive than sense-oriented. Loud, angry, frightened bulls don’t moo. They scream, honk, howl. They kick and thrust and fall onto their front knees drooling, their enormous mouths flinging spit and snot and occasionally blood in every direction while their heads are held in place by giant metal bars.

I saw a day-old calf, still wet and wobbly. 104 pounds. (I don’t care how big the mom is, that’s gotta be uncomfortable.)

The meadow and the pasture are starting to bud and bloom. It’s invigorating, physically and emotionally. Every time I leave there I wonder when I’ll be able to go back. (I wonder if I would appreciate it as much had I’d grown up there.)

People in “the country” know a lot about their world. More than the people I daily see. Black walnut trees (and how the taste is different from English walnuts), and multiflora rose (apparently invasive and a total nuisance), and garlic chives (growing wild everywhere in clumps and patches).

This wedding is going to be amazing.