Daughts drives down our farm to market road a lot and has mentioned to me that the sights she sees are quite different from heading out of our old neighborhood in the city where all she saw was,

Mr. M. putting out his re-cycle bin, or

Mrs. S. loading her four children into the van, or

The school bus doing its rounds.

Now she has different stories to tell about her observations as she drives along the local county lanes,

“I had to get out of the car this morning to move a tree that had fallen across the road…

“come and cut it up, it’s terrific firewood…”

Thanks but no thanks, I thought, it was 8am on a Saturday and I wasn’t in lumberjack mode.

As we turn out of our dirt road there’s a flock of chickens that take their free-range dangerously close to the black-top,

“Watch out for the road-kill at the top of the lane Mum…tastes just like chicken!”  Daughts warned us one morning.  By the time we passed by it had gone…

The surrounding farmers rotate their livestock and sometimes Daughts will text,

“There are about 30 new goats in that vacant field next to the vineyard, they’re fat and smelly, I had to close my sunroof.”

I asked my friend at Caudalie about them and she said,

“Those are meat goats…”

“Oh yes,” I said, “thinking about adding cabrito to your evening menu?”

There may be doe crossing from one field to another along a quiet stretch, startled by the sound of my car they effortlessly glide over the fences and stop at a safe distance (out of firing range I’m guessing) to turn and stare at me and my iPhone.

We were exchanging sightings with Daughts one evening and I mentioned a vulture we’d seen dead in the road,

“It probably had its head buried deep in the carrion…” I said, “and been a goner before it knew what hit him!”

“I was on my way to work this afternoon,” said Daughts, “and I saw a vulture lingering just a moment too long over its mid-road meal,  a truck breached the rise just as it was taking off and splat…”

“Yep!  That must have been the one!”  We all laughed.

Our conversation includes sightings of young bulls being fattened up for market and lyrical waxings over neatly baled rounds of hay lined up alongside barns.

There are sheep that during the spring rains look as though they’ve been rolling in the mud

raising the question,

“I wonder if the farmers shampoo them before or after the shearing?”

Some days I’ll get a text like,

“Guess what I just saw?  A trio of foals running across the field, just because… anything good happening where you are?”  I can hear the amusement emoting from her smiley face!

And it’s not every day that one can boast of seeing a tractor toting a bale of hay in one’s neighborhood…

There are donkeys in most fields.  I am enamored of these hoofed companions,

they’re eyeing up the dogs I have with me!

Daughts spotted a drove of them in a remote field one evening and had to take me along to see them…stubborn as they are they hold a certain gentle charm!

I caught these juvenile bovines who had broken into a garden adjacent to where the farmer had left them contentedly grazing…or so he thought!

They had just come down off the front porch and stopped to pose for my camera as if to say,

“What’s going on?  This grass really is greener!”

And to cap the unusual country sightings Daughts was beside herself with giggles when she told me about her encounter with some real cowboys,

At first they told her,

“This’ll take a while Ma’am.”

Then they waved her on to drive slowly through the oncoming beefy traffic,

“Never in my wildest dreams…”  she said and posted,

“You know you live in the country when you have to drive through a herd of cattle to get to work!”

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