Reading this week:

• The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

This past weekend, my super amazing and super smart and super good-looking girlfriend, who is all those things not only because she is the sole regular reader of this blog, and I had an opportunity for a socially distanced change of scenery, aka spending a few days in an unoccupied house her parents own. So we went! It was really nice being able to spend a few days in her hometown. I even sorta kinda got to meet her parents, from an appropriately social distance. Now I can put accurate imagery to all her stories of her youth.

Some of the most interesting stuff going on was happening in her own back yard. In the area several different solar farms have popped up. I’m all for solar, even if I like nuclear power more, and given the massive area of land that it will take to generate a sufficient amount of solar-powered electricity, we all need to get used to having solar panels near us and around us. But solar panels are of course contentious, unfortunately. People tend to think they change the character of the place. One of the more disappointing things about Yale is that apparently the thing keeping them from covering the whole place in solar panels is that they want to maintain the look of the place. Kinda sad that even at the liberal tree-hugging bastion that is purportedly Yale saving the planet ranks lower than aesthetics (not that a few solar panels on Yale are going to save the planet or anything).

The other interesting development is that nearby a marijuana farm is moving in. This, like solar panels, is also contentious. But soon you’ll be able to stand on the hill and look over fields of solar panels and weed, which has have been the weird wet dream of at least certain hippies back in the ’70s or something. I don’t live in the place, and I didn’t grow up in the place, but a large part of me thinks that these changes should be embraced. Solar farms and marijuana farms aren’t exactly traditional agriculture, but they are farms nonetheless, no?

Although we had to stay socially distant from people, that was very much not true of animals. And fortunately new forms of rural land use have not yet pushed out the wide variety of pastoralism in the region, so there were very many animals to pet. Reviewing my photos, my new kink appears to be pictures of my girlfriend scratching animals’ snouts:

Emmett, the friendly ram.

I like this photo because it looks like this super-cute calf is like INTO whatever she’s got on her hand.

The real bonanza for animals was the local Hancock Shaker Village. The Village is currently closed due to pandemic, but my girlfriend knows some people and was able to take me around for the tour. The place is super cool and I am excited to go back when it’s open and I can see woodworking and blacksmithing and hopefully even more animals. My favorite part was Pepper, the extremely friendly cat pictured up top, who liked to climb on people and demand scritches. These are some of the absolute best cat traits. I carried her around as we checked out the animals, which included a barn full of little babies and even more animals around the grounds. These were a small fraction of the total animals that reside at the Village when it is up and running.

Oh, to be a Very Large pig, relaxing in my pig house.

When we weren’t living the authentic life of a 19th Century Shaker, we spent most of the time in the house, relaxing. And also doing like, homework. We’re grad students, you know, and this involves a lot of homework even or maybe especially in the midst of a pandemic. But when the work got to be too much you could look out the wind and view grazing sheep.

So it was an idyllic few days up in farm country, looking at animals, snuggling on the couch, and eating delicious mac n’ cheese and even more delicious ham. We eventually left in the midst of some rain, to return to sitting in our own apartments. I’m excited to come back up when the weather is nice enough and we can watch clouds that look like sheep go by, and have sheep that look like clouds nibble our pockets.

Barn find (not really).