A Day of Bananas

They came like manna from heaven. Actually, Sunflower, a local organic grocery store, called. They had just gotten a shipment of bananas that were all too ripe for people--people being fussier than pigs.

So breakfast for the pigs was bananas, a whole garbage can full of them. Most of the pigs, like Lodo, got right up. 

Although Louie demanded breakfast in bed. When I tossed a few bananas to him, we had a war of wills over whether I’d go in and move the bananas closer to his nose, or refuse to wait on him hand and foot. Patsy resolved it by swooping in and eating both herself. Louie nestled further into his bed of straw and went back to sleep.

Andy pig refused to eat the bananas unless we peeled them for him. He walked around sniffing the bananas with peels and turning his head away—a peel, such a disappointment.

Everyone else got bananas too. The birds had them cut up in their mash. Bob brought a couple of bunches to the steer. The goats got banana treats. Even the humans got in on it—Phil had taken some home the night before and made peanut butter banana bread. We ate it all day in the kitchen.

It reminded me of days late last summer that were days of corn. There was so much sweet corn, people drove it over in trucks. We put bushels of yellow corn into the pig troughs. We husked it and threw it to the chickens who ran to peck off the kernels.

There are random days of bounty when the animals revel in all of the corn or bananas or slightly squished grapes. They don't seem to worry about if it will come again.

This does not mean that they will not grab every banana they can. Alfonso takes a banana and walks away from his friend Petunia as fast as he can with his giant, malformed turkey feet. Bounty doesn’t necessarily mean sharing.

It’s time to start closing the farm for the night. Dawnell looks up how much Kaopectate Lil Jay the goat should get. The banana treats have given him some diarrhea. I come along to hold him by the horns while he gets the dose, but he decides he likes Kaopectate and ends up licking pink all over his mouth.

If there are things undone tonight, we don’t know about them. Or not yet. So much is about noticing what’s right in front of your nose.

The pigs don’t get up fast for dinner. We surmise they’re in a banana coma. The air has cooled and it’s perfect to just let go and relax right where you are: with a stomach full of a morning full of bananas. And a cool evening in a bed of dust and straw under the mountain with the mist rising up and fall still forever away.