Agriculture Day 2018

Here are pictures and poems made at my high school’s agriculture day, 20 April:

The nose of a “shambling” bovine, as Odysseus calls them. His men also kill cattle belonging to the Sun God, and it doesn’t go well: “The cattle were dead already …
and the gods soon showed us all some fateful signs—the hides began to crawl, the meat, both raw and roasted, bellowed out on the spits, and we heard a noise
like the moan of lowing oxen.” My sophomore students went to Ag Day for a field trip to see animals that, in The Odyssey, were killed, eaten, ridden out of caves, and created from men.

“EAT! shouted a curly-haired boy as he shoved a handful of hay toward the cattle — as if cows should listen to him. “Gotta be slow around them,” said an Ag Day worker, who also advised that the beasts may not be hungry. Not long after,  Cannon steer eats hay and another boy screams, “IT’S EATING! IT’S EATING!”

Little Brian kept his attention focused on his mud puddle and his truck, but he grew tense wondering when mother would prop Gwen back up and they could act like a normal family again.

I wore my winter coat and a stocking cap on this cool spring day. One of my students told me, “You kinda look like an elf.” “I can live with that,” I said.

Odysseus and crew kill and eat about 109 of these for one meal.

Shiloh goat on red leash passes between Shelby’s jean legs.

The trucks are mired in cocoa powder this cold spring.

“Don’t touch anything unless you have permission from someone in blue,” said one of the blue-shirted Ag Day helpers to visiting elementary-school students.

Patty calf.

Patty’s owner said Jersey calves like Patty have big eyes and “dish face” — kids think they’re deer.

Odysseus’s men were turned into these critters by the enchantress Circe.

A crossed-arms boy supervises the pigs but he too is in the trailer-cage.

The Odyssey didn’t say much about chickens.

“They can’t really fly so much as fall slightly slower,” said an Ag Day staffer to someone’s question about whether chickens can fly.

Cows out on the coffee-grounds pasture.

The ag teacher’s young son hugged a lamb’s neck and said, “this is the only one I can catch.” A high school staffer said he thought the boy could also catch the other two lambs in the small pen, too.

Odysseus’s men rode out of the Cyclops’s cave underneath some sheep. Those sheep were, one hopes, taller than these sheep, and had more wool to hang onto.

Sheep would do terrible work in a creative writing class — they’d all be copying each other, I said. That’s true, said my creative writing student, as we looked at three lambs. I don’t know if it’s true, I said, but it’s fun to think.

The Odyssey didn’t mention llamas.

Llama comes closer.

Llama closer still.

Llama closing in!

Llamas at a pose.

Tim had earned his college degree and was ready for his future to begin, but for now, he’s back home, standing in tar and waiting to shovel the sh*t of levitating cows.